New Unionism and the Transformation of the Korean Industrial Relations System

Chang-Hee Lee
Additional contact information
Chang-Hee Lee: International Labour Office, Switzerland

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 1998, vol. 19, issue 2, 347-373

Abstract: This article explores the impact of new unionism on the transformation of the Korean industrial relations (IR) system at both national and enterprise level. It is argued that the presence of a strong union movement added a unique dimension to the structural shift of Korea from low-cost export-oriented industrialization (EOI) to higher value-added EOI, different from other Asian newly industrialized countries (NICs). Employees' new found strength brought on a development of internal labour markets in large companies, forcing management to adopt new IR/HRM (human resource management) policies. The author notes two different orientations, solidarity-oriented industrial unionism and micro- corporatistic enterprise unionism, within the Korean labour movement. The article attempts to make a comparison of IR between Japan and Korea, highlighting differences as well as similarities.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X98192006 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:19:y:1998:i:2:p:347-373

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X98192006

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().