Factors affecting industrial relations in the electronics industry of Hong Kong - an empirical research analysis

This paper attempts to study the factors affecting industrial relations in the electronics industry in Hong Kong. Comparative surveys were carried out, in selected companies and a major union, with management and workers. Results showed that basic financial, physical and physiological factors are still important for affecting workers' attitude towards industrial relations. However, socio-psychological satisfactions are increasing as a result of demands by younger and better educated workers, the major workforce of the industry. The ‘pendulum’ attitude of workers towards the management and the unions leads to a delicate situation in the industrial relations of the industry.     

An examination of the effects of rescue workers meaning transfer,attitudes and subjective norms towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities on civic engagement intention

The present investigation used the transfer‐meaning model to assess the influence of rescue workers meaning after a major catastrophic event. Specifically, we examined the influence of rescue workers meaning on subjective norms and attitudes towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities and the influence of these on online and offline civic engagement intention. 300 Mexican undergraduate and graduate students completed a battery of questionnaires assessing meaning transfer, subjective norms, attitudes and behavioural intentions towards offline and online civic engagement. Results showed a significant positive effect of rescue workers meaning on subjective norms and attitude towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities. In addition, subjective norms and attitudes were significant antecedents of offline and online civic participation intention. The theoretical and managerial implications of our results were discussed.     

Migrants Encounter Migrants in the City: the Changing Context of ‘Home’ for Second‐Generation Greek‐American Return Migrants

This article looks at the ‘return’ migration of second‐generation Greek Americans to their parents’ homeland, Greece. It is based on interviews with, and written accounts supplied by, 40 participants in the research, all now living in the Athens region. The article addresses two main sets of questions. First, why do they relocate to Greece, what are they looking for, and how do they cope with difficulties and disappointments? Second, and more specifically, how do they react to the fact that Greece is no longer a homogenous hellenistic society, but has become in recent years a de facto multicultural one due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families? Three hypotheses are proposed for this inter‐migrant encounter: returnees, shocked by the ‘new immigration’, view it negatively as upsetting the ‘pure Greek’ homeland they had hoped to find; returnees are more sympathetic because of their own families’ history as immigrants in multicultural America; and returnees differentiate themselves as ‘good’ migrants from Greece’s immigrants who are constructed as ‘bad’ migrants. Evidence from the migrants’ testimonies is found to support all three hypotheses; however, there is more support for the second one. In addition, a fourth outcome was voiced: that of discrimination against Greek Americans who are made to feel, in certain circumstances, outsiders by the ‘true’ Greeks. Suggestions are made for further comparative research.     

The impact of team characteristics on the supervisor’s attitude towards telework: a mixed-method study

Abstract

This study examines the impact of team characteristics on the supervisor’s attitude towards telework through a mixed-method approach. First, in the quantitative part, we test hypotheses drawing on disruption and dependency theory, using data of 205 supervisors from four Belgian organizations. The data confirm the hypothesized negative correlation between task interdependence and supervisors’ supportive attitude towards telework, as well as the moderating role of supervisor’s dependency on his or her team on this relation. We found no impact of team heterogeneity and lack of team effort and low performance. Second, we use qualitative data collected through 39 semi-structured face-to-face interviews with supervisors to gain a better understanding of supervisors’ reasoning behind their attitude towards telework. These data provide insight into how task interdependence, team heterogeneity and lack of team effort and low performance affect it. Our team-centred conceptualization of the antecedents of supervisors’ attitude towards telework enables to highlight the key role of structural aspects in shaping supervisors’ attitudes towards telework. This is particularly important for policy, as organizations are better placed to remediate aspects at the team level that contribute to supervisors’ negative attitude towards telework, rather than those at the inter-individual one.     

Determinants of government underfunded public pension liabilities in the OECD

Underfunded government liabilities for public pensions constitutes a major expenditure in the management of social programmes in many countries, but to date has not attracted much attention from accountants as it does not easily fit within an accrual-based accounting system. This paper discusses major measurement problems associated with this liability and then examines determinants of variations in projected flow-based funding patterns among OECD governments. Alternative ‘behavioural persistence’ and ‘regression to the mean’ hypotheses about the determinants of underfunding practices are formulated and tested using an OECD data set describing the financial and socio-economic characteristics of government-sponsored public pension systems in these countries. Consistent with the behavioural persistence hypothesis, cross-sectional variations are found to be associated with the funding ratio and the rate of taxation required to keep government debt constant. Variations in underfunding practices across the sample are also sensitive to cultural differences in attitude towards public pension accountability between continental European and Anglo-American countries.     

Using a dual system of reasoning in small businesses: Entrepreneurial decisions and subjective risk intelligence

This study aims at introducing subjective risk intelligence (SRI) in the context of small businesses to analyze how both rationality and intuition may influence the entrepreneurial decision-making process, particularly in affecting firms’ financial equilibrium.

SRI aggregates four dimensions: two positive attitudes (imaginative capability and problem-solving self-efficacy) and two detrimental ones (emotional stress vulnerability and negative attitude towards uncertainty). In particular, we argue that imaginative capability and emotional stress vulnerability refer to Kahneman’s System 1 (the intuitive), while problem-solving self-efficacy and negative attitude towards uncertainty appertain to System 2 (the rational).

We conducted an empirical investigation collecting data from an ad hoc survey administered to owners and managers of small businesses and their balance sheets over 2013–2017. After testing the proposed constructs’ reliability, we tested the influence that both Systems 1 and 2 have on SMEs’ financial structure through a pooled OLS regression estimator.

Results show that the intuitive and the rational components of risk intelligence affect entrepreneurs’ decision-making differently. The rational component seems to stimulate the entrepreneurial orientation to risk tolerance. The intuitive component limits the entrepreneurial propensity to take financial risks due to the desire for stability attached to this cognitive process. Accordingly, we highlight the importance of enhancing a balance between the two systems of thinking. Practical implications suggest that entrepreneurs with a dominant attitude towards problem-solving self-efficacy, or a positive attitude towards uncertainty, should invest in developing imaginative capabilities or emotional control, and vice versa.

     

Values,gender and attitudes towards environmental policy: A study of future managers

This study explores if the value priorities and their impact on future managers' attitudes towards environmental responsibilities vary with gender. While relevant prior studies mostly focus on gender‐based variations of individuals' personal values in developed economies, we concentrate on both personal values and pro‐environmental attitudes in an emerging economy. This study is built on MBA students (a proxy for future managers) in India since India is characterized as a male‐dominated society and a producer of larger number of MBA graduates. Overall, our results show that personal values and attitude towards environmental responsibilities do not vary significantly with gender. Only two values (among the 21 values) and one value type (out of 10 values) get significantly higher ranking from females compared with males. Further, although ‘universalism’ and ‘benevolence’ are found to have a statistically significant impact on respondents' attitude towards environmental responsibility, the latter is invariant to the respondents' gender. Our findings may indicate India's transformation from a male‐dominated society towards a more gender‐balanced society. These findings can be used to operationalize a pro‐environmental recruitment policy and to formulate strategies to improve female participation in MBA cohorts of business schools.     

Red cadres and specialists as modern managers: an empirical assessment of managerial competencies in China

It was suggested that the Chinese managers' backgrounds affect the characteristics of their knowledge and skills, values and attitudes, and personal connections, which, in turn, influence their competencies in fulfilling various aspects of the required managerial responsibilities. Hypothesized positive effects of tertiary training on related dimensions of managerial competencies were not fully supported. The ‘ed cadres’ who lacked tertiary training reported superior capabilities in managerial tasks requiring empathy towards employees and ideological identity with the government as predicted. However, the upward and lateral connections supposedly enjoyed by the red cadres did not appear to result in managerial advantages.     

Human Resources in the People's Republic of China: the ‘Three Systems’ Reforms

This article discusses the human resources implications of the comprehensive ‘three-systems’ reforms in state-owned enterprises introduced in the early 1990s in Northeast China in terms of labour contracts, rewards systems and social insurance. It critically examines current developments in industrial relations vis-a-vis each of these categories. the upshot of these changes is a move away from the old ‘iron-rice-bowl’ employment system towards a labour-market ‘with Chinese characteristics’. Such a strategy is not without its political risks, particularly if it leads to greater joblessness without a nationwide welfare ‘safety-net’ being fully put in place. If the ‘three systems’ reforms were first piloted in 1992, it was not until 1995 that they began to be extended nationally. Such changes may be of considerable potential importance to HRM managers in multinational companies interested in forming strategic alliances and joint ventures with Chinese state-owned enterprises.     

Foreign remedies for local difficulties: the case of three Scottish manufacturing firms

Literature on Japanese transplant manufacturing firms in the automotive sector often emphasise the importance placed on attitude as opposed to skills in the hiring decisions for line workers. In this paper, a case study of one second-tier components supplier for a major Japanese automotive assembler in the Midwestern United States provides the opinions of senior managers and human resource associates regarding recruitment and selection practices. In-depth interviews, carried out over a two-week period in August 2000, are used to develop an understanding of the recruitment and selection process for line workers as well as to investigate the desired skills and value of previous Japanese experience. Results of the case study analysis are compared with two models from the literature: (1) a model of recruitment and selection at Japanese automotive-related firms in Japan and (2) a model of recruitment and selection at Japanese transplant automotive-related firms abroad. Deviations from the two models point not to a new paradigm of ‘second-generation’ Japanese transplants – those that have moved into regions quite familiar with Japanese firms and related management and production methods – but rather to overall weaknesses in the stereotypical models. Managerial opinions within the case study firm place limited value on familiarity with a Japanese environment, considering such experience secondary to attitudes and work ethics that are in line with the philosophy of the case study firm.     

Are religious people more caring? Exploring the impact of religiosity on charitable organizations in a developing country

• The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of religiosity on reasons that individuals volunteer. Additionally, this study will investigate the pro‐social attitudes towards helping others and charitable organizations. This study focuses on Indonesia where religion plays an important role in daily life. The data were derived from a convenience sampling at a large private university in Surabaya, Indonesia (N = 258). The results showed that individuals with high intrinsic and extrinsic personal religiosity were more likely to have ‘other‐oriented’ reasons when performing philanthropic activities. Nonetheless, religiosity did not influence attitudes of individuals towards helping others. This study contributes to the debate regarding the effect of religious values on pro‐social attitudes in the context of a developing country. Furthermore, the study provides social implications for researchers, policy makers and practitioners operating in a developing country. This is one of the first few studies exploring the impact of religion on attitude towards charitable organization in Indonesia.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do cultural differences explain differences in attitudes towards unions? Culture and attitudes towards unions among call centre workers in Britain and India

This article adds to the literature on worker attitudes towards unions by investigating the impact of cultural attitudes and the call centre labour process on union attitudes among call centre workers in Britain and India. It is hypothesised that workers with egalitarian and collectivist cultural attitudes will be more likely to have pro‐union attitudes than other workers, although if the impact of cultural attitudes is mediated by history and institutions, it might be expected that this relationship is stronger for British than Indian workers. Conversely, if union attitudes are largely a function of the call centre labour process, we would expect union attitudes to be similar among workers in both countries. Our results only partially support our hypotheses. Collectivist attitudes are only weakly related to union attitudes among the British sample but are more strongly related in the Indian sample. There are significant differences between union attitudes among our British and Indian samples. The article concludes that relationship between cultural attitudes and union attitudes are heavily dependent on institutional context. Cultural attitudes are unlikely to be either a constraint or a facilitator of union efforts to organise workers.     

The effect of human image in B2C website design: an eye-tracking study

On B2C shopping websites, effective visual designs can bring about consumers’ positive emotional experience. From this perspective, this article developed a research model to explore the impact of human image as a visual element on consumers’ online shopping emotions and subsequent attitudes towards websites. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to collect both eye movement data and questionnaire data to test the research model. Questionnaire data analysis showed that product pictures combined with human image induced positive emotions among participants, thus promoting their attitudes towards online shopping websites. Specifically, product pictures with human image first produced higher levels of image appeal and perceived social presence, thus stimulating higher levels of enjoyment and subsequent positive attitudes towards the websites. Moreover, a moderating effect of product type was demonstrated on the relationship between the presence of human image and the level of image appeal. Specifically, human image significantly increased the level of image appeal when integrated in entertainment product pictures while this relationship was not significant in terms of utilitarian products. Eye-tracking data analysis further supported these results and provided plausible explanations. The presence of human image significantly increased the pupil size of participants regardless of product types. For entertainment products, participants paid more attention to product pictures integrated with human image whereas for utilitarian products more attention was paid to functional information of products than to product pictures no matter whether or not integrated with human image.     

Attitudes Toward Surveys, Attitude Accessibility and the Effect on Respondents’ Susceptibility to Nonresponse

This paper analyzes whether respondents’ attitudes toward surveys explain their susceptibility to item nonresponse. In contrast to previous studies, the decision to refuse to provide income information, not to answer other questions and the probability of ‘don’t know’ responses is tested separately. Furthermore, the interviewers’ overall judgments of response willingness was included as well. Respondents with a positive and cognitively accessible attitude toward surveys were expected to adopt a cooperative orientation and were thus deemed more likely to answer difficult as well as sensitive questions. Attitudes were measured with a 16-item instrument and the response latencies were used as an indicator for attitude accessibility. We found that respondents with more favorable evaluations of surveys had lower values on all kinds of nonresponse indicators. Except for the strong effect on the prevalence of ‘don’t knows’, survey attitudes were increasingly more predictive for all other aspects of nonresponse when these attitude answers were faster and thus cognitively more accessible. This accessibility, and thus how relevant survey attitudes are for nonresponse, was found to increase with the subjects’ exposure to surveys in the past.     

God and green: Investigating the impact of religiousness on green marketing

As the population increases, more people are now aware of the impact of their consumption on the natural environment. Nonetheless, 1 important factor that is often neglected is religiousness. Studies of the impact of religiousness on individual behavior have become increasingly important because the majority of the world population belongs to 1 of the major world religions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of consumers' religiousness toward proenvironmental identity, attitudes toward environmental issues, and subjective norms about the environment. Subsequently, this study investigates the impact of these variables on purchase intention of green products. Using sampling from Indonesia (n = 649), which has the largest Muslim population, the results show significant differences between religions. In general, similar findings were found in both samples of Muslim and Christian consumers, where intrinsic religiousness has a positive impact on proenvironmental identity, attitudes towards environmental issues, and subjective norms about the environment. The study also found that the 3 variables (proenvironmental identity, attitudes towards environmental issues, and subjective norms) are positive determinants of intention to purchase green products. Nevertheless, the role of extrinsic religiousness is different for the 2 samples. Extrinsic religiousness is negatively related to attitude towards environmental issues for Muslim consumers, where it has a positive influence on proenvironmental identity among Christian consumers. The results of this study have significant implications not only to managers but also religious leaders on how to encourage more positive attitudes toward the environment.     

The Meanings of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. An Explanation for the Forbid/Allow Asymmetry

Survey questions worded with the verb ‘forbid’ prove not to elicit opposite answers to equivalent questions worded with the verb ‘allow’ (Rugg 1941). Although ‘forbid’ and ‘allow’ are generally considered each other’s counterparts, respondents rather answer ‘no, not forbid’ than ‘yes, allow’. In order to find out which question is a more valid measure of the underlying attitude, this asymmetry in the answers has to be explained. Experiments show that the asymmetry arises because respondents translate similar attitudes differently into the answering options to forbid/allow questions are equally valid, but the way the attitudes are expressed on the answering scale differs due to the use of ‘forbid’ or ‘allow’. How does this translation process work? The leading hypothesis in forbid/allow research predicts that respondents holding moderate opinions feel that ‘yes forbid’ and ‘yes allow’ are very extreme, causing moderate respondents to prefer answering ‘not forbid’, or ‘not allow’. This article presents the results of 10 experiments investigating the meanings of the answering options to forbid/allow questions. Extreme connotations are shown to only provide part of the explanation for the occurrence of the forbid/allow asymmetry. In order to describe the answering process for forbid/allow questions, well-definedness of meanings proves to be an important additional factor. The meanings of answering options to allow questions are ill-defined compared of those to forbid questions, which causes allow questions to be less homogeneous measures of the underlying attitude than forbid questions.     

“I don’t think Turkish used here is normal”: language attitudes of Turkish university students towards Cypriot Turkish

As a significant factor in social relationships, language attitudes of students are important to explore when building a school culture of tolerance. This study examines the language attitudes of university students from Turkey towards Cypriot Turkish (CT) and Standard Turkish. A mixed methods approach was adopted where 94 Turkish university students studying in the northern part of Cyprus where the two varieties are spoken, responded to a questionnaire in the first phase. The results of the analysis of this survey showed that the participants had somewhat negative attitudes towards CT. In the second phase of the study, where three focus groups were conducted, the findings of the first phase were confirmed. Intertwined with discourses of class, the participants specifically referred to “correctness” and “intelligibility” as important issues for their evaluations of CT and its speakers. CT was also perceived as an important marker of Turkish Cypriotness by the participants and was projected to be lower than any other variety of Turkish spoken in Turkey.

     

Unravelling the complexities of high commitment: an employee‐level analysis

Research within HRM has faced criticism for failing to focus adequately on employee experiences of HR practice. In particular, the ‘high‐commitment’ models fail to recognise employee perspectives on HRM, the complexities of the commitment construct and the possibility that organisations configure HR systems in various ways. This paper explores the impact of employee attitudes towards HR practices on affective, continuance and normative commitment, and intention to leave in three organisational contexts. The findings suggest that different HR systems can yield different attitudes towards HR practices, which in turn can impact on different forms of commitment and levels of intention to leave. The findings provide insights into the ways in which organisations manage the commitment process through HR practices and the response by employees to these interventions.     

Developing and validating an instrument for measuring managers’ attitudes toward older workers

Three studies were carried out to develop and validate an instrument for measuring managers’ attitudes toward older workers. In the first study we explore (a) managers’ attitudes toward older workers, and (b) retirees’ perceptions about their last experiences before retirement. In the second study, 51 items emerging from the first study and from the literature were developed. The corresponding questionnaire was then applied to a sample of 224 Portuguese managers who were also invited to make decisions in three scenarios involving younger and older workers. The third study replicated the second one with a sample of 249 Brazilian managers. The main findings are: (a) five types of managers’ attitudes toward older workers were identified (adaptability, value of older workers’ competencies, organizational conscientiousness, social capital/generosity and performance); (b) these attitudes predict how managers select older vs. younger workers in hiring and selecting employees to participate in training; (c) the empirical patterns identified in the Portuguese and Brazilian samples are similar; (d) in spite of recognizing positive qualities in older workers, managers discriminate against them; (e) managers develop different attitudinal profiles toward older workers, which has consequences for how they make decisions about those workers.     

Learning to stay ahead in an uncertain environment

As the work environment changes and careers become increasingly fragmented in contemporary society, workers need to ensure that they remain attractive hires to current and future employers. The advent of boundaryless careers, for example, in this era of turbulence has shifted the responsibility for career management and development from the organization to the employees. This research explores the careers of a cross-section of the Hong Kong (China) labour force and their attitudes and behaviours towards life-long learning, which is proposed here to be central to individuals maintaining their marketability and employability. The qualitative data collected in this study depicts these Chinese workers as being strongly self-motivated and possessing very positive attitudes towards learning. However, while most seemed to have a genuine commitment to enhancing themselves, stimulated by a consciousness of the growing and changing demands placed on them by employers in a dynamic knowledge-based society, the findings indicate that many interviewees were driven more by a fear of the consequences of not engaging in continuous learning, than by an intrinsic desire to learn.