Essays on workplace practices in different institutional settings

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays investigating how organizational policies operate within different institutional contexts and in the face of migration, demographic shifts, and globalization. The first essay examines why, given apparent widespread violations, some migrant workers choose not to pursue remedies. Using survey data from China, I find only one fourth of surveyed workers who experience labor law violations interpret their experiences as labor rights violations, and workers' social relationship with the employers prior to migration explains some of this gap. This essay extends worker grievance research tradition within labor relations by drawing on research from the sociology of law and immigration to understand how these subjective interpretative processes and social identities outside of the workplace influence grievance behaviors. The second essay investigates whether flexible working time policies reduce the likelihood that individuals leave their employer.

Using linked employer-employee data from Germany, I find that by addressing mothers' needs at a critical period in their lives, flexible working time policies encourage women of young children to both remain in the labor force and continue building their careers in a given establishment even in context with extensive state policies that support work-family reconciliation. Further, I find flexible working time policies reduce young workers' likelihood of turnover. It suggests the policies can play an important role in helping young workers develop their human capital and advance their careers. The third essay studies an international self-regulatory initiative -- the SA8000 social responsibility certification --

focused on labor standards. Using industrial microdata from China, we find firms that self-regulated exhibited higher average wages than non-adopters even in context without effective surveillance and sanctions. To explain this puzzle, we theorize about self-regulation in pursuit of reputation-sensitive buyers. These buyers privately monitor their suppliers, making up for deficiencies in the broader institutional environment and reducing the expected returns of low-road firms bribing their way into self-regulatory institutions. Consistent with our theory, we find exports increased markedly after adopting self-regulation and domestic sales did not. This essay also provides further specification of the challenges of improving labor standards privately through supply chain standards.