Researching Korean Employer Associations: Using Resource Dependence Theory as an Explanatory Framework

Employer associations in South Korea (Korea) have suffered scholarly neglect, particularly at a conceptual level. This article seeks to help remedy this neglect by explaining how the use of resource dependence theory might usefully serve as an overarching explanatory framework for studying Korean employer associations and, in particular, the Korea Employers’ Federation. This theory, which has also suffered surprising neglect from scholars of employer associations in other countries, brings a number of advantages. It facilitates dynamic analyses that can accommodate the interplay of associations and their external environments and also how these interrelationships interact with associations’ own internal dynamics. If employer associations mostly form in response to challenges from unionism or government, changes to these associations come as they respond not only to further external challenges but also as they seek organisational sustainability through meeting internal challenges of ‘associability’ and ‘governability’. These changes carry implications for associations’ internal dynamics that include the effects of heterogeneous memberships and the particular roles of paid officials. This suggests the necessity of considering the question of how associations, or their leaderships, arrive at strategic choices within environmental constraints – internal as well as external to that association. This paper examines how resource dependence theory – used together with other theories specifically developed to explain employer associations elsewhere – can help provide a coherent intellectual approach to further the study of Korean employer associations.