Karen Williams

My background is in Linguistics and International Relations and my research interests have mainly been in the cross-international comparative research area. I have completed research projects on conflict management in workplaces in the engineering sector in Germany and the UK. This sparked an interest in multinational companies and the ways in which they manage their international subsidiaries. I completed a research project with a team of German researchers on the globalisation strategies of multinational companies which were the global leaders in the heavy engineering sector of lift and escalator manufacture. We focused in particular on management practices in their HQs and subsidiaries in Germany and the UK for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin. My most recent project was on food retail multinational companies in Europe for the Hans Boeckler Foundation in Germany. As an international team of researchers we investigated the work and employment practices of the multinationals, both food retail hypermarkets and discounters, across 8 countries in Europe. A number of papers have been published and more are ongoing. Current work I am doing focuses research into new non-standard employment practices and their implications for both employers and employees and well as the wider society. We have so far looked at new practices being used in the fitness industry and I am also working with colleagues on the impact of zero hours contracts across a range of sectors.