DescriptionThe global economy has witnessed an expanding army of labor dispatch workers over the last few decades. Although China could hardly avoid this employment transformation given its role in the global value chain, its distinct treatment of this interior group of employees is worthy of particular attention. This dissertation is composed of three essays concerning labor dispatch in China. Each of the three essays touches on one aspect of this critical form of employment and attempts to answer one set of questions of great interest to scholars of political science, employment relations, and management. The first essay attempts to answer why the Chinese government deviated from the precarious deregulation trends in the Global North and put stringent regulations on using dispatch workers in firms. Based on extensive field work in China, the essay investigates the underlying logic of the institutional formation of the Chinese labor dispatch system, which set China apart from the global pace of precarious work deregulation. The second essay compares compensation and welfare, working conditions, voice and representation, and labor-management relations of dispatch workers with those of regular workers. Data were derived from a national survey of employees conducted by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in 2012. Taking a management perspective, the third essay explores the managerial implications of the clear-cut divide of regular and dispatch workers within an organization for the performance of dispatch workers and the boundary conditions of these relationships.