ABSTRACT
Missing from this explanation, however, is the role of employers and the dynamics of workplace industrial relations. The key argument developed in the book is that employers, in particular the large family-owned chaebol, have played a central role in the historical development of South Korean industrial relations. While the state provided the regulatory framework, it was the chaebol who remained responsible for determining industrial relations arrangements at workplace level. Although a number of recent studies by Korean scholars have begun to focus attention upon the role of the chaebol, a detailed historical analysis of labour management across a variety of business divisions within a single chaebol has been lacking. This book has examined the historical development of Hyundai’s management policies and practices across three of its key business divisions, HECC, HMC and HHI, and demonstrated the central role played by the chaebol in shaping Korean workplace industrial relations. Hyundai’s labour-management policies were integrally shaped by its family ownership structure, its symbiotic relationship with the state, changing business cycles, as well as the responses of its workers and their trade unions. This conclusion briefly reviews the major themes to emerge from the historical analysis of Hyundai’s labour-management policies and practices. It then goes on to critically examine the strengths and limitations of existing literature on management strategy and their degree of applicability to the Korean case. A number of implications for broader debates about labour-management strategy within large conglomerates in Northeast Asia can be derived from this analysis of the Hyundai case.
