Research Highlights

Research is a core component of SMLR's mission, and our faculty are the world’s leading source of expertise on managing and representing workers, designing effective organizations, and building strong employment relationships.

Based upon their research and scholarly productivity, as well as key leadership roles served in professional associations, faculty members are acknowledged, both in the United States and abroad, as leaders in their respective fields.  

You may also want to explore our Research Briefs and Publications.

Douglas Kruse Despite growth in the economy, the economic climate for American workers hasn’t improved much since last Labor Day, and they are significantly worse off on most measures than they were a decade ago, according to the third annual Labor Scorecard compiled by Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR).  View the 2011 Labor Scorecard.		Charles Heckscher discussing the large changes occuring in the system of work.
Paula Voos  was recently part of a team of scholars (which included John McCarthy, Adrienne Eaton, Doug Kruse, and Joseph Blasi)  from SMLR who investigated the relationship between American unions and financial participation—programs like profit-sharing, gainsharing, and widespread employee stock ownership that some have termed “shared capitalism.” The history of the relationship between unions and such programs reveals why unions are sometimes leery of such contingent pay. Unions are concerned that such compensation is in addition to adequate and stable base pay, and that employees actually have the ability to influence the outcomes that determine additional bonuses. On the other hand, unions sometimes welcome such participation as a source of additional compensation for employees and as a way to improve the performance of unionized enterprises.  The team found that there is currently evidence of a synergy between unions and financial participation on a set of outcomes on which there was data in a large survey done by the NBER.  A positive interaction was found for employee loyalty, the overall grade employee’s give employers on employee relations, and employee’s perception of their involvement in decision making.
Randall Schuler's current research interests revolve around global talent challenges and global talent management. Each of these topics is extremely important and his research interests are in identifying how companies manage their global talent challenges through various human resource policies and practices associated with global talent management. He is conducting this research with several colleagues in Asia, Europe and North America.		David Bensman is studying employment relations in the global logistics industry with an emphasis on the U.S., Germany, China and India. His research on the port trucking industry in the United States focuses on issues of industry structure, misclassification of workers as independent contractors, and the environmental impact of industry structure and employment practices.