Erling Rasmussen steps down as Editor
Dr Erling Rasmussen is resigning as editor of the New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations. Erling has been an editor of the NZJER since 2004, initially with Dr Felicity Lamm and Dr Rupert Tipples as co-editors. However, Erling’s involvement with the NZJER (then the NZ Journal of Industrial Relations) started in the 1990s as a reviewer and especially his research and writing of the Chronicle in each Journal issue during 1995-2012 was an important contribution.
As part of his editorial role, Erling has been involved in many significant changes to the Journal. In particular, he has driven the change towards online and open access publishing. The change to publishing the NZJER in an online format was prompted for practical reasons – printing and postage costs – as well as an attempt to benefit from technological change and broaden reader access. The move to open access publishing was in line with textbook changes (see Rasmussen, Lamm & Molineaux, 2022) and this benefited again from ongoing technological advancement and new publishing platforms. Open access publishing had also become more popular as a way of curbing the exploitation of readers and universities caused by exorbitant profits of large international publishers and, just as importantly, provided other publishing avenues for researchers and commentators (Rasmussen, Lamm & Molineaux, 2020).
Besides his involvement with the NZJER, Erling has participated in numerous research projects, often in a leadership role and in collaboration with unions and employer associations. His published research on New Zealand and international employment relations together with public policy research and evaluations is well-established. A special interest of Erling’s has been to make employment relations analysis more accessible. This has resulted in several textbooks and edited books on New Zealand employment relations and an array of public lectures. In spite of the fact that he took on many university managerial positions, Erling has always insisted that as a senior academic, teaching employment relations should be both a priority and the experience should be enjoyable and worthwhile. He has also participated in numerous international conferences and many conferences run by AIRAANZ (Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand). He was President of AIRAANZ twice, has contributed AIRAANZ conference papers for more than 30 years, and he was awarded the Vic Taylor Long Term Contribution Award by AIRAANZ in February 2025.
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