Dr Ying Xu

Non-union employee representation (NER) can be generally defi ned as ¿one or more employees who act in an agency function for other employees in dealings with management over issues of mutual concern, including the terms and conditions under which people work¿ (Kaufman and Taras 2000: 7). More specifi cally, Kaufman and Taras (2010) describe the way NER works as Selected workers¿ representatives meet with managers, usually in committee-type structures in which communication and exchange of thoughts is fostered. Representatives usually are internal to the company and serve in leadership roles for limited terms. NER is based on a quid pro quo between managers and workers. In setting up such plans, management expects that the plans will encourage cooperative, advisory, and consultative modes of interaction so that problems can be creatively resolved and frictions amicably reduced. In taking on a representational function, workers expect that NER will provide a meaningful forum for employee voice, a capacity to infl uence managerial decision making and recognition by managers that workers have a right to fair and respectful treatment.

Employee voice is profoundly influenced by the law. The law determines the forms of voice that are permitted or encouraged, the structure of workplace institutions, and the relationship between management and employees. Yet there is a ¿relative absence¿ of legal perspectives in the industrial relations (IR) literature on employee voice (Novitz and Bogg 2011: 3). The lack of research linking legal provisions to workplace practices and outcomes (see also Bogg and Novitz 2012) is an important oversight in the existing scholarship. This is especially so since legal regulation is a key determinant of workplace democracy, organizational efficiency and employee well-being (see, for example, Bogg and Novitz 2012; Gollan and Patmore 2006; Kaine 2012; Perrett 2007). This chapter addresses the lacuna in the literature by providing an overview of the existing and emerging research regarding legal regulation of employee voice in the USA and Australia, with a particular focus on the regulation of collective bargaining. We compare the progenitor of labour law reform in Anglo countries, the National Labor Relations Act 29 USC ßß 151-69 (hereafter NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act (1935)), with the most recent form of such regulation, the Australian Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (herein FWA). There has been relatively little recent research comparing these two countries since the enactment of the FWA in 2009 (Forsyth 2012). Our comparison highlights the fact that there are varieties of national legislation regulating employee voice.

The central challenge for HRM under the corporate sustainability agenda is to move organizations to adopt sustainable practices and structures towards different organizational strategies and create a climate whereby employees¿ potential can be released for a system of renewal and regeneration. However, there is a gap between organization¿s intention to adopt sustainable HRM and some practical strategies or management tools for them to achieve such goals. Therefore, this chapter is primarily focused on the challenging question of how to realize sustainable HRM for the fostering of corporate sustainability. We argue that for organizations with varied levels of commitment to sustainability and different features of HRM involvement, their approaches to implementing sustainable HRM can be quite different. A typology of firms¿ sustainable HRM is thus developed and two different approaches are proposed: an integrative diagnostic approach which is more in line with interpretive systems theory and the CAS approach based on complexity theory, with a focus on the latter. The chapter concludes with implications and direction for future research and practice.