My research agenda is focused on topics of comparative management, employment relations and HRM. I follow a comparative sociological, institutional and political economy perspective to analyse challenges for employees and firms stemming from lage scale processes of globalization, technological change and competitive dynamics.
Current collaborative projects include a study of the impact of automation in knowledge-intensive business services particularly the impact on skills and work and the role of employee voice and workplace institutions. This is an ongoing project and the first part has been funded by the ESRC Digit Innovation Fund. It belongs to a broader research programme on digitalization of service work across advanced industrialised countries and key sectors of interest include financial services and IT/telecommunications.
Another line of research inquiry is focussing on the exploration of workplace practices in organizations in the healthcare and social care sectors including issues of professional & technological change, issues of control, autonomy, skills, turnover and productivity.
I have developed an interest in the interplay between the regulatory and institutional context, and corporate strategies, and the dynamics of change in the concentration of market power among firms, especially big tech platforms in comparative perspective. This brings together my research agenda that the regulation of labour markets is intrinsically linked to the regulation of product markets.
Finally, a continued theme is the question of voice and collective action among key stakeholders, namely trade unions as representatives of employees (labour market side) and business associations as representatives of firms (product market side). I am especially interested in how these actors deal with challenges stemming from lage scale processes of globalization, technological change and the intensification of competition.