Biography
Miguel was born in London and attended Aylestone Comprehensive (now Queens Park Community School). He then studied for a BA (Hons.) in Economics and Government and then a SSRC sponsored MA in Latin American Government and Politics at Essex University (1979-1983). He was a Researcher located in the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid’s Sociology Department (1983-84) financed by a British Council/Spanish Ministry of Education Scholarship and later a Vicente Cañada Blanch Foundation/University of London Fellowship (1986-87). He completed his PhD in Industrial Relations in 1988 with an ESRC scholarship (1984-86) at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. He has worked at Cardiff University, Keele University, Leeds University, and Bradford University.
Research Interests
The main focus of his research during the past twenty years as an academic has been concerned with the changing patterns of rights and regulation within employment relations and human resource management. Much of this work has a comparative and international perspective. The central concern of much of his work is the position and role of regulation and institutions in the context of globalisation, increasing managerialism, and socio-economic uncertainty.
In the first instance, he has researched on the changing identity and structures of industrial relations and human resource management: the impact of new forms of management and workplace organisation on workers and trade unions in terms of individualisation and fragmentation, the emergence of new frameworks of firm level regulation such as social partnership and market facing representation, the impact of organisational practices such as quality management and teamworking on worker politics, and the general globalisation of industrial relations and human resource management in a range of sectors such as automobiles, financial services, and airlines and how they challenge traditional forms of regulation.
Secondly, he has studied such changes through a range of research projects in relation to questions of deregulation, privatisation and marketisation in terms of work, employment and management in the public sector and privatised industries across various countries, e.g. the health services, postal services, the airline sector, local state administration. The emergence of the strategy and discourse of human resource management, the impact of ‘Americanisation’ within management and organisational practices, and new forms of organisational participation are the subject of a range of his empirical and analytical papers.
Thirdly, a large part of this work also focuses on the broader social and political context of change in terms of new forms of labour organisation. This dimension has been developed in terms of the changing nature of collectivism at work, trade union renewal and modernisation, new forms of labour networking, and more recently the changing composition of collective voice mechanisms in work and employment in terms of racial and ethnic minorities. His work explores the way organised labour and workers respond to economic, organisational and social change and fragmentation.
Significant aspects of this research have been financed by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Anglo-German Foundation, the British Council and various trade union and public policy bodies. He works in an individual capacity and also with colleagues at various institutions in the UK, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the USA. There are a range of public reports and public interventions in terms of his work that complement the academic articles and texts he has produced.
Additional Information
Miguel has taught a range of modules over the past twenty years: Human Resource Management (both National and International), Employment and Industrial Relations, Public Policy and Management, European Public Policy, Research Methods, Management Theory, and the Sociology of Work. He has supervised a range of doctorial students and has taught on doctoral and masters programmes in the UK (e.g. Ruskin College) and in Spain (e.g. the University Autonoma of Madrid, University of Zaragoza and the University of Oviedo). He is currently teaching Contemporary Employment Relations, Human Resource Management (Context and Organisation), and International Human Resource Management at the Undergraduate and Posgraduate level. He is the Director for the Masters in International HRM and Comparative IR at MBS.
In addition, he is on a range of editorial boards and committees: the International Journal of HRM, the European Journal of Industrial Relations, Critical Perspectives in International Business, amongst others. He has been an advisor and evaluator for various bodies such as trade unions (e.g. UNISON, UNITE, the CWU, UCATT, the TUC nationally and regionally, and the ETUC) and public bodies (e.g. BIS, ACAS).
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