Developments in Union Recognition and Derecognition in Britain, 1994–1998

This research note shows a marked change in the relative incidence of cases of derecognition and recognition in the period 1994–1998. It shows that the level of derecognition has fallen significantly in recent years while that of the signing of new recognition agreements has continued at its former level, so that on balance new recognition agreements clearly outnumber cases of derecognition. The context and reasons for this are explained by reference to developments in public policy, employer views and union practice. The results of derecognition and the prospects for union recognition are also examined.     

Annual Review Article 1991

This paper reviews a number of themes or subject areas in British industrial relations which attained a particular level of prominence in 1991. The leading themes covered are wage determination in the context of recession, public-sector industrial relations, union recognition and derecognition developments, training, HRM competitive strategy and international joint ventures. Among the personal observations and comments made are that derecognition is far from being the most important indicator of management opposition to unions, that some criticisms of HRM are rather misplaced, and that the growth of international joint ventures warrants more attention from industrial relations researchers.     

The Employers' Offensive in the Provincial Newspaper Industry

This paper examines the widespread moves made by the employers in the provincial newspaper industry since 1987 to derecognize the National Union of Journalists. Based on personal structured interviews with NUJ lay and full-time officials, and editors and managers, it looks at the extent of the changes and the methods of introducing derecognition. This and several other indicators are used to argue that the employers' actions can be characterized as a strategic offensive. Finally the paper examines the reasons for the employers' offensive, disputing in part the arguments of other researchers in their explanation of the employers' reasons for derecognition.     

Changes in Wage-setting Arrangements and Trade Union Presence in the 1980s

In this paper we detail the results of a retrospective survey of changes in trade union and wage-setting arrangements in the 1980s for a sample of 558 UK companies. Our key findings are as follows. (1) Complete derecognition of unions in a firm was rare even in firms with low trade union density. (2) Partial derecognition in multi-plant firms was more common. Some 13 per cent of companies with recognized unions in 1984 had had at least partial derecognition by 1990. (3) Large falls in trade union density within a firm have also been rare, though small but observable declines have been commonplace. (4) The coverage of the closed shop has substantially declined, and this decline has been most marked in the last five years. Around one-quarter of firms with recognized unions in 1990, however, still had closed-shop arrangement for at least part of their work-force. (5) There has been no clear decline in the prevalence of multi-unionism or multiple bargaining units. (6) There has been a significant move away from national/industry-wide bargaining, towards negotiations at the individual company or more often the establishment level. (7) In the absence of collective bargaining there have been clear moves away from wage-setting by formal external links, such as wages councils and multi-employer agreements, and even away from worker consultation towards more managerial discretion. (8) In deciding wage settlements, managers are increasingly influenced by company performance and less by multi-employer wage settlements.     

Have Unions Turned the Corner? New Evidence on Recent Trends in Union Recognition in UK Firms

This paper reports results from a recent survey conducted on unionization in over 650 firms in the private sector in the UK. The survey shows that since 1997 there has been a slight fall in derecognition, but a relatively large increase in union recognition. This increase in new recognition agreements is consistent with the idea that the incoming Labour government had a positive effect on the ability of unions to gain recognition, either through the 1999 legislation or more indirectly through changing the political climate.     

我国最低工资标准的就业效应——基于全国和地区的实证研究

利用1996年～2007年全国27个省、直辖市、自治区的面板数据模型，考察了最低工资标准对就业的影响。实证结果表明，最低工资标准的提高对全国总体就业有负影响，但影响力度很小。进一步的地区分析表明，最低工资标准的提高对东、西部地区的就业有负影响，对中部地区的就业则无显著性影响。最后给出了相关的政策建议。     

Patterns of abnormal returns and the competitive effects of horizontal mergers

This paper examines the abnormal stock returns of rivals of firms undertaking horizontal mergers that were challenged by the FTC over the period 1981–1987. At the time of merger announcements, the rivals earn positive abnormal return on average; at the time of the antitrust complaints, the rivals earn normal returns. Past studies have argued that this specific pattern of abnormal returns necessarily indicates that mergers could not have reduced competition. This paper finds that this pattern of abnormal returns is a result of the different effects of antitrust complaints on smaller and larger rivals. The evidence suggests that the mergers may have created efficiencies, but the pattern of abnormal returns is not inconsistent with mergers that may also have resulted in higher product prices.     

Consumer behavior towards on-net/off-net price differentiation

This paper explores how consumers react towards price differentiation between on-net and off-net calls in mobile telecommunications - a pricing policy that is common in many mobile telecommunications markets. Based on a survey of 1044 students it is demonstrated that some consumers may suffer from a "price differentiation bias", i.e., a fair number of consumers may overestimate the savings that result from reduced on-net and/or off-net charges, as they do not appear to weigh the prices with the probabilities of placing off-net and on-net calls. This may help to explain why it have been the smaller operators in various countries who have introduced on-net/off-net price differentiation. The paper also discusses the implications that such a consumer bias may have for market competition.     

Response to Farjoun's ‘Strategy making,novelty, and analogical reasoning — commentary on Gavetti,Levinthal, and Rivkin (2005)’

In his thoughtful commentary on our 2005 paper (Gavetti, Levinthal, and Rivkin, 2005), Farjoun offers three critiques and extensions. First, he suggests our approach should have explicitly considered a constructionist logic. Second, Farjoun argues that we have neglected the full array of modes of cognition between rational choice and feedback‐based adaptive learning and have therefore overstated the role of our focal mode, reasoning by analogy. Third, he highlights some of the contingencies under which the various modes of cognition he identifies are effective. In response, we address each point. We first argue that a constructionist perspective is not alien either to the role of analogical reasoning or to the particular modeling apparatus we have developed. We then suggest that despite the richness of modes of cognition that lie between rational choice and adaptive learning, theorizing about them requires simplification and the identification of underlying categories that classify such modes, which is the approach our paper employs. Finally, we clarify how our paper adopts the contingent logic advocated by Farjoun. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hiring,Training, and Retaining the Hard-Core

The objective of this paper is to present a model that can explain and predict behavior on programs designed to hire, train, and retain the hard-core unemployed. More than 50 variables and their relationships have been specified. Some of these variables have been identified in other studies, or can be derived from the organization change literature, but this paper tries to provide a comprehensive list of the extensive set of empirically based variables.     

企业社会责任行为与消费者响应——消费者个人特征和价格信号的调节

本文从捐助慈善事业、保护环境以及善待员工三个层次,对企业承担社会责任行为与我国消费者响应的关系进行了实证研究。数据分析结果表明,三个层次的企业社会责任行为对消费者购买意向和产品质量感知均有显著影响。本文发现,企业社会责任行为与消费者响应之间的复杂关系,既受到消费者个人特征(如消费者是否支持企业社会责任行为(CSR-support))的影响,也受到产品自身特征(如价格信号)的影响。另外,本文也发现消费者对不同层次的企业社会责任行为的响应存在差别。     

Managerial incentives as a strategic variable in duopolistic environment

The paper investigates two interrelated problems. The first is the output choice of a firm in which decisions are made cooperatively by managers who might have conflicting objectives. The second is the managerial incentives scheme as a strategic choice of owners who wish to maximize profits. Using an example in which a duopolistic market is studied, the paper shows that giving managers incentives that combine profit and sales maximization might be the dominant strategy for the owners.     

The structure of service firms and their marketing policies

There is a growing interest in understanding the way in which firms' marketing and manufacturing policies interact. The studies carried out so far have almost entirely concerned themselves with goods-producing organizations. However this paper suggests that these studies also provide useful insights into the problems faced by service firms in organizing themselves efficiently. Furthermore it suggests that a distinctive problem faced by such firms is that adaption of their organizations may have a significant effect upon consumers' perceptions of the service they offer. The paper first outlines some investigators' views of the link between marketing and manufacturing and follows this by discussing the concept of ‘production’, ‘delivery’ and ‘consumption’ of services. A brief consideration of the pressures for change which particularly impinge upon service firms precedes a discussion of the problems, and apparent contradictions, whch are linked with the concepts of standardization and personalization of services. The paper concludes with three examples of the issues discussed.     

Collective Bargaining and Within-firm Wage Dispersion in Spain

This paper analyses the effect of collective bargaining on within‐firm wage dispersion for the case of Spain. What is relevant in the Spanish case is to compare the effect of the two basic levels of bargaining (firm and sector) on wage dispersion. By using the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, this paper concludes that collective agreements at firm level have a negative effect on wage dispersion. At the same time, firms that have signed these types of agreements show greater wage dispersion than those covered by agreements at the sector level, owing to the positive and compensating effect of firms’ and workers’ features.     

Local Multipliers,Mobility, and Agglomeration Economies

This paper demonstrates that when one new job is generated by attracting a new business in the tradable sector in a local economy, a significant number of additional jobs are created in the nontradable sector when labor mobility is high. However, these multipliers disappear when labor mobility is low. This paper confirms that regions with higher labor inflow have larger multipliers. Furthermore, the spillover effect of agglomeration economies in the tradable sector is significantly positive on the nontradable sector.     

On the dual-stacking transition to IPv6: A forlorn hope?

The assumption that IPv6 will inevitably replace IPv4 as the dominant network layer protocol on the Internet is almost universal. A failure of IPv6 to diffuse is thought to have far-reaching and long-lasting economic and social consequences, yet there have been no prior analyses of the dual-stacking transition mechanism by which IPv6 diffusion is expected to be achieved in order to understand whether it is likely to succeed. Guided by economic theory, this paper presents such an analysis, and concludes that the dual-stacking transition strategy is unlikely to work, leaving the Internet with no workable means of achieving migration to IPv6. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations for regulatory and policy bodies, end-user organisations and network operators.     

An unsung success story: A forty-year retrospective on U.S. communications policy

This paper looks back at forty years of U.S. communications policy, and concludes that all of the challenges that were salient when Telecommunications Policy published its first issue—the lack of competition in CPE, long distance, local telephone service, television networks, and multichannel video program distribution—have essentially been addressed. The other technology that has grown in importance since 1976—the Internet—is widely regarded as a raging success. Although no history is completely uniform, the past forty years illustrates the key considerations underlying the choice between whether to impose access regulations or whether to rely on facilities-based competition. Moreover, the paper considers the important role that U.S. courts have played in promoting competition and consumer welfare. In many cases, timely judicial intervention has forced regulators to retreat from positions that protected incumbents and limited competition. The paper concludes with outlooks on new issues and debates that will continue to arise.     

On whether to prosecute suspected price-fixing conspi racies: A hypothesis-testing approach

This paper analyses the antitrust policy decision of whether to sue prosecute a suspected price-fixing cartel. The analysis is conducted in the Bayesian hypothesis-testing mode, using a Cournot market. framework. This approach recognizes that the decisions to instilute an investigation, file suit, or go to trial, are all binary decisions that involve testing a null hypothesis: notably. the hypothesis that the antitrust laws have not been violated versus the alternative hypothesis that they have been violated. Rejecting the null hypothesis is equivalent to electing to proceed along the prosecution path. The paper demonstrates that formalization of the decision-making process can help to enhance our understanding of the factors that underlie the various decisions, and particularly how those factors can influence the decisions, and provides guldellnes for antllrust administration under the current U. S. antitrusl laws.     

Multiple versions of markets: Multiplicity and performativity in market practice

Recent research efforts in economic sociology have attended to the performativity of economic sciences, that is, to the import of various economic theories on economic reality. Hitherto, these efforts have been limited to idiosyncratic market situations such as financial and auction markets. Moreover, the efforts have largely focused on the performativity of economics and financial economics (narrowly defined). This paper argues for the need to broaden the discussion on performativity to take into account multiple theoretical influences and for the importance of studying performativity in more mundane markets. The paper contributes to this endeavor by developing a practice-based framework that deals with the multiple theoretical influences that can be expected to take part in the shaping of markets.     

The 18C's model for a successful long-term outsourcing arrangement

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that contribute to a successful long-term outsourcing arrangement, particularly in the facilities management area. Organisations expect to achieve many benefits from outsourcing, despite the fact that there are significant risks associated with unsuccessful outsourcing. The paper analyses a successful multiple activity outsourcing case study. Six managers and team leaders, who have initiated and managed the sixteen outsourced activities during an eight year period, were interviewed. In order to complement and confirm the interviews, the observation of four monthly performance review meetings was conducted. Eighteen key success factors for a long-term outsourcing arrangement have been identified and approved by the interviewees. They have been used to construct the 18C's model.