Homeworking: negotiating the psychological contract

This article explores the psychological contract of female clerical homeworkers who work from home full‐time and are employed at a local authority. Qualitative interviews were carried out with homeworkers and their supervisors. Temporal flexibility was desired by all the homeworkers in order to achieve a better work–life balance, and was deemed important by women without children as well as those with childcare responsibilities. Our findings highlight that homeworkers were able to negotiate their own idiosyncratic deals with line managers in order to attain their desired levels of temporal flexibility. However, the issue of flexibility remains ambiguous with some supervisory staff being more comfortable with the concept than others, leading to some homeworkers enjoying different levels of temporal flexibility than their co‐workers. Our findings suggest that employees perceive flexibility idiosyncratic deals of co‐workers as fair as long as they achieve their own personal levels of temporal flexibility. The potential implications for organisations are discussed.     

Young people as teachers and learners in the workplace: challenging the novice–expert dichotomy

Conventionally, apprenticeship is understood as a linear journey from novice to expert in which ‘old‐timers’ mould their successors. This paper challenges the assumptions that expertise is equated solely with status and experience in the workplace, and that all novices and experts, regardless of context, are seen as the same.     

Donor survival analysis: an alternative perspective on lifecycle modelling

There is considerable pressure on charities and voluntary organisations, both to reduce ‘wasted’ expenditure on administrative costs and unwanted mailings, and to deliver more and better services from their voluntary support. Modern tools allow organisations to tailor mailing requirements to individual needs easily and cheaply. Charities need to become ever more efficient: improving the response rates, while reducing overall expenditure on money‐raising activities. Simple means and summary statistics can be seriously biased and misleading for this type of data. Survival analysis is a good, sound and flexible tool to analyse length of time to next donation and membership data. This can lead to a better understanding and more efficient use of the available budgets. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Do Women Leaders Promote Sustainability? Analyzing the Effect of Corporate Governance Composition on Environmental Performance

In this study, we investigate the impact women leaders have on the corporate environmental strategies of organizations. Using a dataset of all Fortune 500 CEOs and boards of directors for a ten‐year period, we examine several aspects of gender in leadership on environmental strategy. Specifically, we test the impact of women CEOs, the proportion of women on the BOD, the number of interlinks women board members hold, and the interactive and cumulative effects of women CEOs and gender diverse boards. Findings suggest that firms characterized by gender diverse leadership teams are more effective than other firms at pursuing environmentally friendly strategies. This study contributes to research on corporate governance and environmental performance by showing how the gender composition of leaders affects corporate practice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The determinants and labour market effects of lifelong learning

Despite the policy importance of lifelong learning, there is very little hard evidence from the UK on (a) who undertakes lifelong learning and why, and (b) the economic benefits of lifelong learning. This paper uses a rich longitudinal panel data set to look at key factors that determine whether someone undertakes lifelong learning and then models the effect of the different qualifications acquired via lifelong learning on individuals’ economic outcomes, namely wages and the likelihood of being employed. Those who left school with O-level qualifications or above were much more likely to undertake lifelong learning. Undertaking one episode of lifelong learning also increased the probability of undertaking more lifelong learning. We found little evidence of positive wage effects from lifelong learning. However, males who left school with only low-level qualifications do earn substantially more if they undertake a degree via lifelong learning. We also found important positive employment effects from lifelong learning.     

Unions and Efficient Training

The paper examines the optimal level of training investment when trained workers are mobile, wage contracts are time-consistent, and training comprises both specific and general skills. The firm has ex post monopsonistic power that drives trained workers' wages below the social optimum. The emergence of a trade union bargaining at the firm-level can increase social welfare, by counterbalancing the firm's ex post monopsonistic power in wage determination. Local union-firm wage bargaining ensures that the post-training wage is set sufficiently high to deter at least some quits, so that the number of workers the firm trains is nearer the social optimum     

Understanding the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy: Evidence from Australia

Using micro‐data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, and the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition technique, this paper examines the determinants of the gender gap in financial literacy. The analysis suggests that human capital variables, such as age and education, are not important in explaining the gender gap in financial literacy. Labour market variables, such as sector, occupation, industry, union membership and labour market status, are important and explain around 16 per cent of the gap. This finding is dependent on the assumption that these variables are exogenous. There is a large unexplained gap, suggesting that the main determinants are neither human capital nor labour market factors.     

Do employers discriminate by gender? A field experiment in female-dominated occupations

We test for gender discrimination by sending fake CVs to apply for entry-level jobs. Female candidates are more likely to receive a callback, with the difference being largest in occupations that are more female-dominated.