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Introduction: Transnational Interest Representation and the Articulation of Employee Interests

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Abstract

Transnational employee representation operates in a highly complex environment. Multinational companies (MNCs) typically consist of numerous operations distributed across a large number of countries, embracing a wide range of activities and diverse groups of employees. Against this background, this chapter draws attention to the two fundamental challenges confronting transnational employee representation within MNCs. The first of these is to understand and work within the interrelationships between the different levels and institutions of interest representation found in MNCs. The second challenge for transnational employee representatives is that of responding to the need to develop a shared social practice and aggregate employee interests across different operations, countries, and employee groups within companies. By taking stock of the current state of knowledge of transnational employee representation, this chapter argues that a wider framework is needed to guide empirical investigation of employee representation within MNCs.

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Haipeter, T., Hertwig, M., Rosenbohm, S. (2019). Introduction: Transnational Interest Representation and the Articulation of Employee Interests. In: Employee Representation in Multinational Companies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97559-7_1

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