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This chapter builds from the first one, focusing on contextual differences between employee relations in different countries, and the way work is changing. The chapter also picks up the ‘language’ theme of the book, pointing out the symbiotic relationship between words such as ‘work’ and ‘employment’, and ‘employment relations’, and the way scholars are addressing these issues.

This chapter discusses the way that Human Resource Management and particularly Strategic HRM which is the in-company, financial outcome focused version, has become a panacea. It is assumed that by applying ‘good practice’ SHRM within the organization results will be improved. We draw on the previous literature, particularly the original ‘Harvard model’ of HRM to argue that this severely underestimates the impact of the environment, the importance of multiple stakeholders and the implications of a longer-term perspective. We suggest that attention to these issues will take us beyond SHRM to something that reflects the real world better, is more rewarding for researchers and more valuable for practitioners.

This chapter examines the historical precedents of Korean employment and labor relations in detail, beginning with pre-industrial origins and Japanese occupation through the compressed-development modern era with its two defining events, the Great Labor Offensive and the Asian Financial Crisis. The authors sum up Korea’s labor movement history as ‘late flowering, early decline’, and identify three defining characteristics of employment and labor-management relations in Korea: a confrontational and conflict-ridden nature, strong enterprise-orientation, and the lack of legal approbation. Each of these characteristics are traced to their historical roots in occupation, under authoritarianism, and from Korean culture, leading to a discussion of their contribution to new problems such as ongoing hostility between social partners, labor market polarization and uncertain legal protections.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the conceptual development of business expatriates over the past 50 years. We do so in light of the rapid growth in new forms of expatriates and other types of international work, and due to an increasing proliferation of terms and sloppy application of concepts in the field of expatriate studies most especially over the last decade. Our goal is to narrow the focus to establish construct clarity and to develop a theory-specific statement about business expatriates. Our intention is three-fold: (1) to illustrate poor construct clarity by demonstrating that the word ‘expatriate’ no longer adequately describes the concept it claims to investigate in management studies; (2) to assist the field of expatriate studies to be clearer about whom it is actually researching; and, (3) to stimulate and provoke a necessary debate towards improving conceptualization of the business expatriate concept. We begin by defining expatriates more broadly and providing an overview of the categorization of international work experiences. We then critique the conceptualization of business expatriates by first discussing the problem of terminological confusion in the field of expatriate studies in general and then developing a clearer theory-specific statement about business expatriates in particular. Next, we examine business expatriates in the literature and categorize them into two streams – organization-assigned expatriates (AEs) and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) – including in each stream their various types and forms. Critiquing the literature to determine the distinction between business expatriates and sojourners, migrants and business travellers follows this. Lastly we draw some conclusions and provide a glossary of terms for future research.

At the start of the fourth industrial revolution, clear signs are emerging as to how outsourcing, artificial intelligence (AI) and the ‘gig’ economy are creating and will create major change in the workplace, with the potential to drive this change deep into highly skilled white-collar jobs in advanced market economies. This is a situation people undertaking these roles and careers never contemplated. These pervading themes hide a significant change – such work is bringing in the fragmentation of the employment relationship and associated aspects of employee well-being and voice. As such, we suggest that the fourth industrial revolution is different from that of previous technological revolutions, and we discuss the implications for those of us who study work and employment. We argue that there are the options to take the high road or a low road to the management of technology, employment and work, and we provide a framework to contribute to this debate.