Unions and Flexible Employment in Britain and Spain: A Descriptive Note

Spain and Britain are known to have different labor market structures and degrees of employment protection. Despite such differences, they show remarkably similar associations of unionization with temporary employment and nonstandard hours of work. In particular, we find that unionization in both countries is correlated neither with overtime/long hours of work nor temporary employment. In both economies, instead, part-time work is negatively associated with unionization. These cross-national similarities warrant a rethinking of the strategies of enlargement toward flexible forms of work that unions have supposedly adopted in recent years.     

Executive Compensation in American Unions

We explore compensation of labor union leaders using U.S. panel data on more than 75,000 organization‐years from 2000 to 2007. We find that membership, estimated average wages, and dues are strongly related to the compensation of the leaders of American labor unions, even after controlling for organization size and organization fixed effects. That is, within the same union over time, higher levels of these measures are associated with higher levels of pay for union leaders.     

Negotiating Amalgamations: Territorial and Political Consolidation and Administrative Reform in Public-Sector Service Unions in the UK

Since 1990 there has been a series of union amalgamations among Britain's public-sector unions. This study examines three amalgamations and one aborted amalgamation. Each was initiated by union leaders reacting to government-sponsored reforms of the public sector, and all involved unions with either defensive or consolidatory merger motivations. The complex negotiations are presented as resolving issues of political, democratic and administrative concerns. It is argued that the balance of power on critical constitutional issues lay with the leaders of the consolidatory unions, particularly the dominant activist groups within such unions. As a consequence, success in amalgamation negotiations lay in satisfying such group's interests in sustaining the existing political ethos and democratic system, while securing agreement on the desired administrative reforms.     

Trade Unions and Work‐life Balance: Changing Times in France and the UK?

The mixed empirical findings to date have indicated that some, but not all, unions in industrialized countries are actively involved in campaigning and bargaining around work–life balance (WLB) issues, as part of a modernization agenda linked to feminization and to 'positive flexibility'. This article seeks to identify factors that might encourage or inhibit trade unions from involvement in WLB issues, within a cross-national comparative perspective focusing on two countries (France and the UK) that have contrasting working time regimes and approaches to WLB. It draws on original research carried out in two sectors — insurance and social work — in these two countries. The article links the emergence of union WLB programmes and bargaining agendas to gender-equality concerns within the union and to the gender composition of the sector, as well as to the working time regime, including the mode of action, partnership being a significant corollary of WLB campaigning in the UK. We find support for the modernization thesis in the UK, particularly in the public sector, but within severe constraints defined by employer initiative.     

The Duration of Union Membership in Italy: A Research Note

Thanks to direct access to union databases, this note can answer two new questions in industrial relations: how long union membership lasts and what are the determinants of its duration within an open‐shop context. This also allows for conceptualizing union membership as a much more dynamic phenomenon than in previous studies, where it was considered a static condition whose causes or effects were to be investigated. Regression analysis applied to a sample of 29,035 Italian workers highlights that union membership duration is a positive but declining function of age. Furthermore, women, flexible workers, foreign ones, and those working in cities tend to show less attachment to union membership than the other workers.     

Contested Resources: Unions,Employers, and the Adoption of New Work Practices in US and UK Telecommunications

The pattern of adoption of high‐performance work practices has been explained in terms of strategic contingency and in terms of union presence. We compare the post‐deregulation/privatization changes in work practice at AT&T, Bell Atlantic and British Telecom. On the basis of these cases, we argue that the choice of new work practices should be understood as a consequence not only of the company's resources or changes in its environment, nor of a simple union presence, but also as a consequence of the practices' effects on union power, the nature of the union's engagement, and the union's strategic choices.     

A Research Note on Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

This paper examines the hypothesis that mortgage lenders rank applications from better to worst and encourage the better ones to apply. A second ranking occurs when the application is ranked by the loan committee and funds are approved from the top of the list until exhausted. A theoretically correct procedure for analyzing the resulting multivariate ordinal data is the little known rank multiple discriminant analysis. Preliminary results have revealed that this technique produces a "best" model with fewer variables and a higher classification rate than the commonly known multiple discriminant analysis, logit, or probit.     

A Comparison of American and Japanese Work Practices: Skill Formation, Communications, and Conflict Resolution

This article examines whether American work practices are becoming more similar to Japanese work practices with regard to skill formation, communications, and conflict resolution. I find that separated skills, self-managing teams, and the dual conflict settlement procedure prevalent in three American unionized plants contrast with the practices found in three Japanese unionized plants, where integrated skills, middle-up-down decision making led by assistant and first-line supervisors, and an informal and one-channel conflict settlement procedure are used.     

A Note on Ranking Real Estate Research Journals

An understanding of how thirty real estate journals are perceived for promotion and tenure and for professional applicability was sought by surveying members of the two most important real estate academic organizations. Several subgroup comparisons were made revealing some common perceptions but a significant amount of disagreement as well. Among findings robust across the surveyed community were that the Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (changed to Real Estate Economics in 1995) is the most important outlet for promotion and tenure and the Appraisal Journal is the most important outlet for professional applicability. Two distinct journal groupings emerged: an academic group composed of eight journals and a professional group of twenty.     

PDMA Research on New Product Development Practices: Updating Trends and Benchmarking Best Practices

Product development professionals may have the feeling that yet another buzzword or magic bullet always lurks just around the corner. However, researchers have devoted considerable effort to helping practioners determine which tools, techniques, and methods really do offer a competitive edge. Starting 30 years ago, research efforts have aimed at understanding NPD practices and identifying those which are deemed “best practices.” During the past five years, pursuit of this goal has produced numerous privately available reports and two research efforts sponsored by the PDMA. Abbie Griffin summarizes the results of research efforts undertaken during the past five years and presents findings from the most recent PDMA survey on NPD best practices. This survey, conducted slightly more than five years after PDMA's first best-practices survey, updates trends in processes, organizations, and outcomes for NPD in the U.S., and determines which practices are more commonly associated with firms that are more successsful in developing new products. The survey has the following objectives: determining the current status of NPD practices and performance; understanding how product development has changed from five years ago; determining whether NPD practice and performance differ across industry segments; and, investigating process and product development tools that differentiate product development success. The survey findings indicate that NPD processes continue to evolve and become more sophisticated. NPD changes continually on multiple fronts, and firms that fail to keep their NPD practices up to date will suffer an increasingly marked competitive disadvantage. Interestingly, although more than half of the respondents use a cross-functional stage-gate process for NPD, more than one-third of all firms in the study still use no formal process for managing NPD. The findings suggest that firms are not adequately handling the issue of team-based rewards. Project-completion dinners are for the most frequently used NPD reward; they are also the only reward used more by best-practice firms than by the rest of the respondents. The best-practice firms participating in the study do not use financial rewards for NPD. Compared to the other firms in the study, best-practice firms use more multifunctional teams, are more likely to measure NPD processes and outcomes, and expect more from their NPD programs.     

Unions and Profits: A Meta‐Regression Analysis1

The effect of unions on profits continues to be an unresolved theoretical and empirical issue. In this paper, clustered data analysis and hierarchical linear meta‐regression models are applied to the population of forty‐five econometric studies that report 532 estimates of the direct effect of unions on profits. Unions have a significant negative effect on profits in the United States, and this effect is larger when market‐based measures of profits are used. Separate meta‐regression analyses are used to identify the effects of market power and long‐lived assets on profits, as well as the sources of union‐profit effects. The accumulated evidence rejects market power as a source of union‐profit effects. While the case is not yet proven, there is some evidence in support of the appropriation of quasi‐rent hypothesis. There is a clear need for further American and non‐American primary research in this area.     

Unions and Employee Ownership: A Road to Economic Democracy?*

In the relationship between unions and employee share ownership, neither threatened the other, and their combination led to benefits for employees, particularly where unionized employees were majority owners. Companies adding communication, training, and participation reported performance gains. These practices were more common among majority‐owned companies and in companies facing economic threats. Economic performance and benefits were comparable, whether unionized employees owned a majority of the stock, a minority, or none at all.     

物价变动会计理论研究

物价变动会计是西方一新会计理论,主要研究物价变动对财务报表的影响。其理论一般通过固定货币单位会计模式、现行成本会计模式或现行成本/固定货币单位会计模式来计量物价变动在财务报表中的表现。其理论对我国企业很有参考价值。     

Why Fewer Workers Join Unions in Europe: A Social Custom Explanation of Membership Trends

Can the recent decline in union density in Europe be attributed to specific economic, social or institutional causes? Can unions influence these causes and reverse decline? Using two data sources — a representative survey of Dutch employees and a data set for European countries between 1950 and 1997 — the author examines the determinants of union decline. The theoretical model is based on a social custom approach to unionization, integrating rational choice and social network theory. The empirical results show improbable small margins of union resurgence, that is, if institutional support for union representation can be maintained or regained within and beyond workplaces.     

Union Involvement in Workplace Change: A Comparative Study of Local Unions in Canada and Mexico

This paper examines the sources of local union power to cope with workplace change. Are workplace unions active participants, merely passengers, outright opponents, or entirely excluded from the change process? Drawing on 18 case studies and a survey conducted in the auto and metalworking industries in Mexico and Canada, the results suggest that greater internal solidarity, stronger articulation with other levels of union and community activity and the pursuit of an autonomous agenda all provide the basis for enhanced local union bargaining power in the context of globalization. This general conclusion applies to Canadian as well as Mexican local unions and suggests analytical paths for understanding the construction and renewal of union power.