Employment experience effects on socio-politically extreme beliefs. Cross-national evidence from Europe

Birmingham Business School, Department of Management Research Seminar Series 2024/2025 with Professor Ryan Lamare (LSE). 

• 21 May 2025, 1-2pm, G05 University House
• Buffet lunch available from 12:30pm
• Hosted by Tony Dobbins
• Followed by a short British Journal of Industrial Relations (BJIR) editorial workshop session. 

Abstract

While it is well-known that spillovers occur between workplace employment practices and wider civic society, examinations of these spillovers are largely limited to how individual and collective voice correlate with neutral civic participation. The spillover from broader positive work experiences to wider and more extreme socio-political beliefs and attitudes is less established, even as organizations are recognized as important political arenas for workers amid rising extremism. We theorize that certain work experiences help reduce individual-level socio-political extremism. We start by using European Social Survey data from 31 European countries in 2020-2021 (Round 10), parsing employment experiences into individual-level empowerment, organizational-level empowerment, supportive work networks, exposure to diverse work environments, and union membership. We compartmentalize socio-political extremism into conspiratorial thinking, climate denial, authoritarian support, inequality tolerance, homophobia, and xenophobia. Multivariate analysis reveals multidirectional but largely negative correlations between positive employment practices and socio-political extremism, which hold after conditioning on numerous confounders, including political ideology, job characteristics, and beliefs outside work. We then conduct an original experiment to reinforce key findings and address endogeneity. Our outcomes have implications for the wider social and political consequences of work and suggest that positive employment practices may help dampen socio-politically extreme beliefs. 

Bio

Ryan Lamare is Professor of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at the London School of Economics (LSE). Prior to joining LSE, he was the Reuben G. Soderstrom International Labor Relations Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has held previous positions at Penn State University, the University of Manchester, and the University of Limerick. He received his PhD in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. Ryan’s main research interests are in quantitative empirical analyses of the interactions between institutions and ER/HR actors. His research consists of two main projects connected to this theme: the relationships between workplace actors and the political arena, and the use of private workplace conflict management systems at organizations. In related projects, he examines the ties between institutions and employee voice at multinational firms, and the ways in which macro-level shocks affect workplaces. He has published widely on these issues at outlets like British Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, and Industrial Relations, as well as top journals in HR and management, work sociology, law, and political science. He is currently Editor-in-Chief at British Journal of Industrial Relations.