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ILO's Nobel Peace Prize Lectures
Central European University, Budapest, 27-30 November 2001

Simon Deakin
Robert Monks Professor of Corporate Governance,
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom


Renewing Labour Market Institutions

Lecture 1: The futures of the contract of employment

Lecture 2: The reorganization of work: regulatory responses

Lecture 3: Corporate governance: a post-stakeholder world?

Lecture 4: The work-life balance: reconceptualising career pathways and capabilities

Lecture 5: Globalisation and regulatory competition: re-inventing the rules of the game

Lecture 1:

The futures of the contract of employment

The contract of employment heads the list of those labour market institutions whose continued usefulness is called into question by what appear to be fundamental changes in the world of work. However, given the multiple tasks of classification, regulation and redistribution which it has historically been called on to perform, it is the durability of the contract of employment, rather than its supposed ineffectiveness, which requires explanation. From an evolutionary perspective, the employment contract is best understood as a governance mechanism which links together work organisation with labour supply in such a way as to make it possible to manage long-term economic risks. This first lecture set out a number of possible futures for the employment contract as a mechanism for risk management, and identified 'mutations' within the conceptual framework of employment law which suggest possible directions of change.

Lecture 2:

The reorganization of work: regulatory responses

Outsourcing of production and the growing use of subcontract forms of labour have cast doubt on the sustainability of traditionally, vertically-integrated labour markets. The rise of agency work and the use of corporate forms to split the risk-distribution and management coordination functions of the enterprise have put forms of labour law regulation under pressure. However, new forms of regulatory response are emerging to address these issues. These include efforts to extend worker representation to the self-employed; changes to tax law designed to combat casualisation; and legal devices for re-allocating social and economic risks among enterprises and groups.

Lecture 3:

Corporate governance: a post-stakeholder world?

The norm of shareholder primacy in Anglo-American corporate governance appears to have survived the critique of the 'stakeholder debate' of the mid-1990s, and there are some signs that the shareholder value norm is having a growing influence on continental European and Japanese practice. It seems that we live in a post-stakeholder world in which the fundamental issues of corporate ownership and control have been settled, a point of view appropriately enough summed up in the idea of 'the end of history in corporate law' (Hansmann and Kraakman). A closer inspection of corporate governance practice suggests otherwise. In the US and British systems, managers in large, publicly-held companies continue to have a central role in reconciling the long-term expectations of different stakeholders. This leads to a variety of strategic approaches towards building the trust of employees, customer and suppliers. In mainland Europe, systems of employee voice remain significant, and from a global perspective it is far from clear that we are seeing convergence around a norm of dispersed shareholder ownership.

Lecture 4:

The work-life balance: reconceptualising career pathways and capabilities

Traditional forms of labour protection which were constructed around the model of the male breadwinner family are rapidly losing ground as a consequence of changing patterns of labour supply and the impact of equal treatment legislation. At the same time there is a growing debate about the role of social insurance and occupational social security systems in deliving effective protection in a dual-earner household model. A number of initiatives to preserve human capital during career breaks and recognize the value of non-waged work to society suggest that the transition from the male breadwinner model can be made without disrupting existing systems of collective support against economic risk.

Lecture 5:

Globalisation and regulatory competition: re-inventing the rules of the game

The proponents of deregulation in the economic and social spheres have used the internationalization of trade as a lever to open up national-level laws and practices to scrutiny by analogising them to barriers to trade. In practice, such interventions threaten to undermine national democracy and the diversity on which regulatory learning depends. The EC's open method of coordination and the related idea of 'reflexive harmonisation' suggest a way out of this debate, and the promise of novel forms of transnational regulation which harness the energies of local-level actors.