Work and Employment in a Globalized Era: An Asia-Pacific Focus edited by Yaw A. Debrah and Ian G. Smith, London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001, 264 pp., ISBN 0-7146-5135-4 (cloth).

This book sets itself a very ambitious target: it wants to “bring to the fore the diverse impacts of globalization on work and employment in the Asia Pacific region.” There are at least two immediate, related barriers to achieving this lofty ambition. First, the book draws on contributions to a broadly themed conference, in this case the 14^th Annual Employment Research Unit Conference organized by the Cardiff Business School at the University of Wales under the general title of “Globalization, Workplace and Employment: Responses for the Millennium.” Almost inevitably, the products of such conferences are not sufficiently integrated to systematically attack ambitious targets. Second, the chapters are from the “best papers on the Asia-Pacific region”. While there may be some imprecision about what is the Asia-Pacific region, an over-concentration on the English-speaking parts is not conducive to assessing the diverse impacts of globalization. Of the nine substantive chapters, four focus on Australia, one on New Zealand while another, the only cross-national paper, covers New Zealand and Singapore. Again, the exigency of the Conference borders the choice of chapters. Rather than assess this book against its stated aim, it should be considered as a collection of papers focused on a limited number of countries in the Asia Pacific region. What then is of specific interest in this volume? Focusing initially on the four Australian chapters, the issues analysed are the transformation of the coal industry, trade unions’ response to HRM, a labour response to globalization and the link between cross-cultural diversity, leadership and workplace relations. The chapter on the coal industry traces supply and demand factors, the role of Japanese cartels in the global coal market and how the major coal union has attempted to respond to these influences. A wealth of solid industry data is included, though unfortunately ending with 1997 figures. Some company specifics are offered by way of a mini-case study of Rio Tinto, one of the leading mining companies. The chapter also makes the very important point that in Australia, the leading exporter of steam coal, intra-national competition can be as much the driver of change as international competition. Overall, this is a solid chapter that provides a useful introduction to industrial relations in a key Australian industry. The contribution on union responses’ to human resource management initiatives is a well-structured piece drawing on research at greenfield sites. It spends a lot of time on preliminaries, setting out different HR perspectives and the changing landscape of Australian industrial relations. Equally, much of the discussion of the fifteen case studies presents actual HR practices rather than union responses. Nevertheless, there are useful commentaries on what unions have achieved and are trying to achieve in what is, for them, a new environment. The next two chapters are somewhat narrow and, in my view, largely for the cognoscenti. “Labour Responses to Globalization” is a discursive attack on the Accord, the social contract negotiated between a federal Labor government and the union movement between 1983 and 1996. The third sentence of this essay sets the tone: “under a neo-liberal, technocratic hegemony, the Australian Labor party of 1983-96 increased social inequity and drove Australia towards a possible Brazilian or Asian economic crisis.” If you are an initiate of recent Australian industrial relations history, if you enjoy social contracts literature or if you are a devotee of technocratic discourse, this chapter may be of interest to you. The final Australian contribution tests the impact of transactional and transformational leadership on subordinates’ levels of job satisfaction. Two groups of subordinates, drawn from four manufacturing plants, are examined: “Australian and Vietnamese cultural and subordinate …