Influential Leaders
Santanu Sarkar
Summary
Santanu Sarkar is a professor of human resource management at XLRI–Xavier School of Management. He has published in numerous HR-related journals and is considered an authority in the field. Specifically, his work on cross-cultural issues in labor relations among emerging economy sectors, along with his work on the independent labor movement, trade and labor policies, and unions in the Global South, has become part of course readings for students and scholars in the West as well as policy tools for trade unions in India and abroad.
Description of Research Impact
Sarkar’s research has focused primarily on conditions of labor in the Global South. He has studied employees in call centers in India, worker cooperatives in mining, the judicial interpretation of employment protection laws, trade policies and labor standards, and the local articulation of global campaigns in developing countries.
Sarkar has also been studying a broad array of issues related to collectivization, labor disputes, work precarity, reforms, and employment conditions of vulnerable sections of the working class. Additionally, his research on unions in the Global South has been referred to by scholars in the field of labor transnationalism and by global union federations in engaging multinational corporations across their global supply chain. Sarkar’s views on the success of the independent labor movement in Southeast and South Asia have been endorsed by policy research groups involved in changing the political landscape of the trade union movement.
In addition, Sarkar has consulted for the World Bank, studying the effect of the bank’s projects on local communities in different parts of India. Through this work, he helped create a toolkit on compliance and due diligence for regional bank contractors, with an aim to minimize the effect of labor influx in project areas and to develop mitigation measures. The bank has used the kit and its measures in projects since 2019.
Sarkar also worked for the Hans Böckler Foundation in a study on implementing global framework agreements in Indian subsidiaries of German multinationals. The study resulted in multinationals signing the framework agreements with global unions and union federations. The study report has been used by global unions and European Works Councils of multinational corporations in revising their codes of conduct. The result has been improved employment conditions of workers who form part of the global supply chain of corporations in the Indian sub-continent.