Global issues in employment relations Assignment

Assignment question

Construct an annotated bibliography which analyses a particular employment relations issue from one of the following countries: Australia, Japan or Germany (Choose only one country).

How to approach this assignment

Choose a topic (see information below)

Select four (4) journal articles (these are also called citations in the instructions) based on the topic. These should be from the period 2006 to present. If your sources are older you need to justify why you have chosen them. You will be assessed on the relevance of your sources.

Read these articles thoroughly and summarise the information required for the annotated bibliography (see information below about what is required)

The word count allows for 500 words for each article

Include an introduction and conclusion

The introduction should introduce the topic and the aspects of the topic which will be covered

The conclusion should highlight the findings of your analysis. You can do this by examining the similarities and differences in the findings of the journal articles and highlighting the main points.

What topic should you choose?

You might choose an issue, such as: the decline of union membership in Australia.

Journal articles used could include this one: Peetz, D. & Bailey, J., (2012), Dancing alone: the Australian union movement over three decades, Journal of Industrial Relations, 54 (4), pp. 525-541.

Other relevant journal articles can be found in the Journal of Industrial Relations.

Or, you might choose to write about migrant labour in Australia or perhaps in another country.

Or, you might choose to explore bargaining in Germany

Nienhueser, W., (2009), The effects of different kinds of works councils on bargaining outcomes: the results of an empirical study, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 30 (3), pp. 372-400.

What is an annotated bibliography?

The UNSW website gives some really useful information about an annotated bibliography.

The following information is drawn from the UNSW site: An annotated bibliography provides a brief account of the available research on a particular topic. It is a list of research sources that include concise descriptions and evaluations of each source. The UNSW instructions state that each citation (for each journal article) should only be one paragraph, however two or three paragraphs would be preferable for this assignment.

For each journal article:

1. List the citation for the article using the Harvard referencing style

2. Write a brief introduction for the article, where you justify why you have chosen it (perhaps because of the background or credibility of the authors)

3. List the aims and research methods

4. Outline the scope of the research

5. Explain the usefulness of this research to the topic

6. List the limitations of the research (not all articles will list limitations)

7. Highlight the conclusions

8. Reflect on the how this work illuminates the topic

There is a sample annotated bibliography on the UNSW website (at the link above) which you might find useful. Where you find there is a difference in information between what is provided here and on other websites about annotated bibliographies, make sure that you follow the guidelines provided here, other information is supplementary to this.