Franchise Firms: Changing Employment Relations?

Ashlea Kellner, Keith Townsend and Adrian Wilkinson

Chapter 5 in The Future of Employment Relations, 2011, pp 67-82 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Modern franchises can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century when franchising began to emerge as the distribution model of choice in the automotive industry. Henry Ford lacked the required capital to establish company-owned chains to sell vehicles and so focussed his efforts on developing a network of dealers to both market and sell his product (Justis & Judd, 2003). This approach was so successful that it was replicated by other automotive businesses and is still a popular distribution model in the automotive industry. However, modern franchising began to develop more significantly in the mid 1950s, when Ray Croc and Colonel Harlan Sanders opened their iconic American franchises, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken respectively. Into the 1960s a plethora of businesses followed suit, operating franchise systems that sold products and services as varied as clothing retail, lawn mowing, and convenience stores (Justis & Judd, 2003). Franchising is currently the world’s fastest growing form of retailing (Dant, 2008). Franchises are complex forms of organization and hold important implications for the future of employment relations (ER). Some of these implications are explored in this chapter.

Keywords: Small Firm; Human Resource Management; Agency Theory; Business Format; Business Venture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-34942-1_5

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230349421_5

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