Refashioning Organizational Boundaries: Outsourcing Customer Service Work*

abstract In recent years there has been a discernible trend towards the outsourcing and subcontracting of work. However, there has been very little empirical research on employees' attitudes to work in outsourced firms. This study is conducted in the area of call centre services where there has been a substantial growth in the provision of external market suppliers. It examines employees' perceptions of their work and employment arrangements in both an in‐house producer and an external service provider and identifies and compares the factors that shape their organizational commitment and intentions to quit. The research found that the character of the internal labour market and the nature of the work regime were more important explanations of organizational commitment and intentions to quit in the external market supplier than in the in‐house producer. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for the quality of customer service provided under subcontracting arrangements.     

Robert Beachy, Beatrice Craig, and Alastair Owens, eds. Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres

This volume consolidates a session at the European Social ScienceHistory Conference in 2002. It comprises case studies of women'sactivities in various sectors of the European economy, fromfinancial investment to varied business and entrepreneurialroles, from women artisans to women in the more traditionalshop-keeping and retail trades and the time-honored, domesticand prostitution services. Their scope covers a variety of countries,including Germany, England, The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria,Spain, and     

Learning teaching in the sustainability classroom

This article analyzes the experience of a particular sustainability learning classroom model, examining the classroom composition, structure, positioning, and atmosphere components in an experimental course on the topic of sustainable buildings. The course, called Angles on Green Building, offered as the second in a suite by the Learning City sustainability in higher education collaborative, experimented with content, which concerned the emerging practice and policy of green building, and with form, exploring the most appropriate pedagogical methods for the advancement of sustainability learning and action. The course took as its practical focus the green building industry in Vancouver, Canada, with an initial case study of the new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), a green building and research facility planned for completion in 2009. This article uses evidence drawn from the instructors, students and visiting professionals in the course, together a diverse and interdisciplinary group from four different higher education institutions in Vancouver. Our findings contain lessons about the careful attention needed for instructors to design, run and implement courses in sustainability topics that enable students from widely different backgrounds and levels of self-directedness to engage with, take responsibility for, and transform their behaviours in favour of sustainability.     

基于平均利润率的中国市场化改革绩效分析

本文通过分析市场经济的特点,明确了市场经济的价格调节机制在起作用的过程中必然使各行业的利润率逐步趋于平均利润率的规律,并利用这个规律创建了各行业利润率与平均利润率之离差和指标,最后,利用这个指标来分析中国市场化改革的绩效。     

Gendered patterns in computing work in the late 1990s

Computing is one of the most growing industries offering many opportunities for employment and advancement. Furthermore it is one of the newest industries which comprises of mainly young firms and relatively freshly constituted forms of working practices. Using empirical work in the UK, this paper presents and asesses gendered patterns of work and employment in the computing sector whilst comparing it to other traditionally male-dominated sectors.     

Reconceptualizing professional service firm innovation capability: Scale development

Building on capability theory, this paper presents a reconceptualization of the innovation capability construct within a knowledge-intensive service context, specifically, professional service firms (PSFs). Employing a rigorous multi-stage scale development process we interviewed 37 participants and surveyed 463 respondents across a wide range of PSFs including lawyers, accountants, consulting engineers and management consultants. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses highlight the multi-dimensional nature of innovation capability within this context. Three dimensions were identified: client-focused, marketing-focused, and technology-focused innovation capability. We provide evidence of face validity, content validity, convergent and discriminant validity, nomological validity and reliability of our scale. Our scale offers a new way to measure innovation capability within PSFs and highlights the need to move beyond the narrow manufacturing mind-set focus of prior innovation research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Quantifying perceived differences in type styles: An exploratory study

This article reports on the results of an experiment to determine whether type style is a significant influence on readers' affective response to print. A repeated-measures, full-factorial design employing 250 subjects revealed that readers respond differently to both serif and sans serif general print types and to specific types within these major classifications. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Multinational Management Strategy and Human Resource Decision Making In the Single European Market*

There has been considerable academic interest in the consequences of European integration for multinational companies and their subsidiaries, and the co-ordination and control of human resource decision making. Against the backdrop of this debate, this paper examines the impact of European integration on management organization and human resource decision making in 13 British multinational companies. Although there were partial moves towards the development of European managers, a European-wide approach to human resource matters was not yet a conspicuous feature of this sample of multinationals. the global preoccupations of the companies, as well as the persistence of national variations in consumer markets and modes of product regulation, were clearly major constraints on the emergence of European forms of corporate organization and underpinned the lack of enthusiasm for distinctively European approaches to employee management.     

Does Gravity Matter in a Service Economy?

This paper estimates gravity equations for bilateral services trade in a sample of 28 countries. It finds that the standard gravity variables of economic size and geographic proximity are significant factors in services trade. It also reveals positive effects of linguistic ties on services trade. There is evidence of a positive link between regional trade arrangements and services trade. Much of that effect appears to reflect the impact of bilateral goods trade on services trade. This implies that efforts to enhance goods trade—bilateral or multilateral—should lead to more services trade as well. JEL no. F13, F15, L80