A survey of fifty years of research on the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Acts reveals that researchers' conclusions about the NLRA and its enforcement have generally depended upon their perceptions of the law's purpose; most researchers do not seem to consult relevant research outside their own...

The percentage of the U.S. work force that is unionized is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. Although many studies have sought the reasons for this decline, few have investigated characteristics of unions themselves as possible factors. This paper focuses on unions as organizations, and...

The authors investigate whether, as commonly believed, union members and their families strongly support the political candidates endorsed by union leaders. Using 1978 data on U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and gubernatorial races, they find that union members, and to a lesser...

This study uses Bacharach and Lawler's behavioral theory of bargaining to derive hypotheses about the impact of strikes and compulsory interest arbitration on teacher salaries. Those hypotheses are tested with data sets on Illinois and Iowa school districts and on a national sample of teachers...

The authors use union contract and laboratory experiment data to assess whether the distinction between mandatory and permissive bargaining subjects affects collective bargaining outcomes. In general, the findings suggest that the distinction has an impact. The contract analysis suggests that...

Although it is commonly argued that unions need to innovate in order to grow and achieve success, little is known about the characteristics of unions that facilitate or hinder innovation. The authors of this study develop a model of union innovation and test it using data collected from many...

Over the past decade, several leading U.S. scholars have advanced a new industrial relations paradigm, according to which “high performance†work and human resource management (HRM) practices have replaced unions and collective bargaining as the innovative force in industrial...

The authors of this literature review find that empirical research on unions' political activity since World War II has failed to answer many important questions. Not only have researchers neglected some issues outright, but disparate data sources and statistical methods, lack of a guiding...

This paper examines the effects of information technology (IT) on organizing and union effectiveness in US national unions. Original survey data and data from government and independent sources are combined to model outcomes including membership growth, success in representation elections, and...

Over the past decade, several leading U.S. scholars have advanced a new industrial relations paradigm, according to which "high performance" work and human resource management (HRM) practices have replaced unions and collective bargaining as the innovative force in industrial relations. Although...