HIGH-INVOLVEMENT MANAGEMENT PRACTICES, TRADE UNION REPRESENTATION AND WORKPLACE PERFORMANCE IN BRITAIN

Debates about Britain's productivity performance have often drawn attention to the roles played by working practices and employment relations. In the 1980s and 1990s, trade unions were a prime focus; more recently, attention has turned to high‐involvement management (HIM) practices (also referred to as ‘high‐performance work systems’). We combine the two to investigate the relationships between work organisation, trade union representation and workplace performance. We find that HIM has a positive impact on labour productivity. However, this effect is restricted to unionised workplaces, and seems more readily explained by concessionary wage bargaining than ‘mutual gains’, given the absence of any association with financial performance. These findings raise questions about the universal applicability of HIM as a route to improved workplace performance.     

Firm ownership and internal labour practices in a transition economy

One feature common to many post‐socialist transition economies is a relatively compressed wage structure in the state‐owned sector. We conjecture that this compressed wage structure creates weak incentives for work effort and worker skill acquisition and thus presents adverse consequences for the entire transition economy if a substantial portion of the labour force works in the state sector. We explore firm wage incentives and worker training, as well as other labour practices and outcomes, in a transition setting with matched firm and worker data collected in one of the largest provinces of Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City. The Vietnamese state sector exhibits a compressed wage distribution in relation to privately owned firms with foreign ownership. State wage practices stress tenure over worker productivity and their wage policies result in flatter wage–experience profiles and lower returns to education. The state work force is in greater need of formal training, a need that is in part met through direct government financing. In spite of the opportunities for government financed training and at least partly due to inefficient worker incentives, state firms, by certain measures, exhibit lower levels of labour productivity. The private sector comparison group to state firms for all of these findings is foreign owned firms. The internal labour practices of foreign firms are more consistent with a view of profit‐maximizing firms operating with no political constraints. This is not the case for Vietnamese de novo private firms that exhibit much more idiosyncratic behaviour and whose labour practices are often indistinguishable from state firms. The exact reasons for this remain a topic of on‐going research yet we conjecture that various private sector constraints, including limited access to formal capital, play an important role.     

High‐Performance Management Practices and Employee Outcomes in Denmark

High‐performance work practices are frequently considered to have positive effects on corporate performance, but what do they do for employees? After assessing the correlation between organizational innovation and firm performance, this article investigates whether high‐involvement work practices affect workers in terms of wages, wage inequality and workforce composition. The analysis is based on a survey directed at Danish firms matched with linked employer–employee data and also examines whether the relationship between high‐involvement work practices and employee outcomes is affected by the industrial relations context.     

MINING SURPLUS: MODELING JAMES A. SCHMITZ'S LINK BETWEEN COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

James A. Schmitz documents, in a well‐known case study (Journal of Political Economy 113 (2005), 582–625), a dramatic rise in productivity in the American and Canadian iron‐ore industry following an increase in competition from Brazil. Prior to the increased competition, the industry was not competitive. Economic profits were divided between business and unions. Schmitz attributes the increase in productivity to a change in work practices in the industry, as old negotiated union work rules were abandoned or modified. This research formalizes a mechanism through which a rise in competition can lead to increased productivity in the iron‐ore industry.     

质量管理实践、新产品开发能力与新产品开发绩效关系研究

新产品开发企业可以利用质量管理系统优化新产品开发过程,改善新产品开发绩效,但质量管理改善新产品开发绩效的机理并不明确,质量管理实践与新产品开发绩效间关系的研究结论也不一致。将质量管理实践分为基础质量管理实践和核心质量管理实践两类,根据能力理论构建了质量管理实践、新产品开发能力与新产品开发绩效的影响机理模型。研究发现,基础质量管理实践能够显著促进新产品开发能力提升,而核心质量管理实践对新产品开发能力的影响不显著;基础质量管理实践能显著促进新产品开发绩效,而核心质量管理实践在一定程度上会阻碍新产品开发绩效。     

Working time, employment, and work sharing: Evidence from Sweden

We study three questions which are important for work sharing to increase employment. First, is there a negative long-run relation between working time and employment? Second, are hours per worker exogenous with respect to wages and employment? Third, can policy makers influence actual hours per worker? We formulate a theoretical model for employment, hours per worker, production, and real wages. A VAR model with cointegrating constraints is estimated by maximum likelihood using Swedish private sector data 1970:1–1990:4. We find (i) no long-run relation between hours per worker and employment, (ii) that hours per worker are endogenous with respect to the estimation of long-run parameters, and (iii) that legislated working time and hours per worker are related to each other in the long run. First version received: September 1997/final version accepted: June 1999     

Unobserved Heterogeneity,Exit Rates,and Re‐Employment Wages

Exit rates from unemployment and re‐employment wages decline over a period of unemployment, after controlling for worker observable characteristics. We study the role of unobserved heterogeneity in an economy with asymmetric information and directed search. We show that the unique equilibrium is separating and that skilled workers have more job opportunities and higher wages. The composition of the unemployed varies with the duration of unemployment, so average exit rates and wages fall with time. The separating equilibrium relies on performance‐related pay schemes and the ability of firms to commit to renting an input that is complementary to worker skills.     

Fairness Considerations in Labor Union Wage Setting – A Theoretical Analysis

We consider a theoretical model in which unions not only take the outside option into account, but also care about the performance of the firm and base their wage‐setting decisions on a firm internal reference, called the fairness reference. Two references, which measure the earnings situation of the firm, are considered – productivity and profits per worker. Wage and employment outcomes as well as the degree of wage rigidity depend on the size of the fairness reference relative to the outside option. A high fairness reference leads to wage pressure and real wage rigidity, whereas a low fairness reference leads to wage moderation and real wage flexibility. An increase in the weight on the fairness reference amplifies these deviations from the standard model.     

US Credit Unions: An Empirical Investigation of Size, Age and Growth

Abstract ** :  An econometric analysis of the growth performance of US credit unions for the period 1992–2001 investigates empirical relationships between size, age and growth. Ceteris paribus larger credit unions grew faster than smaller unions. State credit unions grew faster than federal credit unions, and single bond credit unions grew faster than multiple bond credit unions. The size‐growth gradients were generally steeper for state than for federal credit unions, and for single bond than for multiple bond credit unions. These patterns are attributed to variations in legislation and regulatory treatment. There is some evidence that younger credit unions tended to outgrow older ones. This seems consistent with a life cycle typology of credit union growth and development. There is also evidence of a positive persistence of growth effect. The cross‐sectional variance of growth is inversely related to size, but is largely independent of age .     

A tale of two unions: divergent platforms and their constituencies

ABSTRACT

The median voter theorem has regularly been used in economics to represent the behaviour of teachers unions. Little empirical work, however, tests whether this framework is a good fit for teachers unions. We examine voting behaviour in union representative elections between the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers and find evidence of divergent constituencies. We investigate whether the median voter explains the outcomes of elections in 1977–1979. If both teachers unions select the platform desired by the median voter, there should be no systematic differences in voter preferences for unions. We find that these unions were fundamentally different and attracted distinct voting coalitions. The main implication of this study is that researchers should consider these two unions, and their effect on districts, as distinct.     

WEB ADOPTION BY IRISH CREDIT UNIONS: PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of this paper is to examine website adoption and its resultant effects on credit union performance in Ireland over the period 2002 to 2010. While there has been a steady increase in web adoption over the period a sizeable proportion (53%) of credit unions did not have a web‐based facility in 2010. To gauge web functionality the researchers accessed all websites in 2010/2011 and it transpired that most sites were classified as informational with limited transactional options. Panel data techniques are then used to capture the dynamic nature of website diffusion and to investigate the effect of website adoption on cost and performance. The empirical analysis reveals that credit unions that have web‐based functionality have a reduced spread between the loan and pay‐out rate with this primarily caused by reduced loan rates. This reduced spread, although small, is found to both persist and increase over time.     

Guest‐worker Migration,Human Capital and Fertility

This work focuses on a temporary guest‐worker‐type migration of individuals from the middle class of the wealth distribution. The article demonstrates that the possibility of a low‐skilled guest‐worker employment in a higher wage foreign country lowers the relative attractiveness of the skilled employment in the home country. Thus, it prevents a fraction of individuals from acquiring human capital. Therefore, even if all individuals who acquired education remain in the home country, the actual number of educated workers in the source economy decreases, and the aggregate level of human capital in this economy would thus be negatively affected.     

Good Jobs,Bad Jobs and Redistribution*

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the policy‐maker is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a “good jobs” sector due to the capture of quasi‐rents by trade unions. With strong unions and high planner preference for income equality, the optimal policy is a combination of investment subsidies and progressive income taxation. If unions are weaker, the policy‐maker may instead choose to tax investment.     

International Trade and Unemployment—the Worker‐selection Effect

This paper investigates the labor market effects of trade liberalization. We incorporate trade unions and heterogeneous workers into the Melitz framework. Workers differ with respect to their abilities. Our main findings are: (i) trade liberalization harms low‐ability workers, they lose their job and switch to long‐term unemployment (worker‐selection effect); (ii) high‐ability workers are better off in terms of both higher wages and higher employment; (iii) if a country is endowed with a large fraction of low‐ability workers, trade liberalization leads to a rise in aggregate unemployment—in this case, trade liberalization may harm a country's welfare; (iv) the overall employment and welfare effect crucially hinges on the characteristics of the wage bargain.     

Free automotive unions,industrial work and precariousness in provincial Russia

This article draws on ethnographic work carried out since 2009 on workers and automotive unions in Kaluga, Russia. The contrast between secure and temporary contract workers in foreign-owned car plants is a focus of activism among emerging alternative trade unions in Kaluga. Workers in both the ‘new’ production-scape of high-tech foreign-owned automotive assembly, and the ‘old’ low-tech Soviet production contexts articulate similar interpretive understandings of what constitutes ‘precarious’ work: lack of autonomy and the lack of a ‘social wage’ generally in labour. We interrogate this through in-depth interviews with unionised and non-unionised workers in the auto sector and other industries locally. A divide emerges between workers who go to work for the car plants, and those who remain in Soviet-types firms and who reject the labour relations model that it offers and which they understand to contrast with a traditional ‘paternalistic’ Russian model.     

UNION–FIRM BARGAINING AGENDA REVISITED: WHEN UNIONS HAVE DISTINCT PREFERENCES

In this paper we revisit the issue of the scope of bargaining between firms and unions by considering a more general union's utility function with distinct preferences and sequential negotiations. First, we compare exogenously given labour market institutions; i.e., right‐to‐manage (RTM) and sequential efficient bargaining (SEB). We show that the conventional wisdom, which states that firms always prefer RTM, no longer holds. In fact, when unions are adequately wage aggressive and have strong enough bargaining power, firms may prefer SEB negotiations; however, firms switch their preference to RTM when unions are very strong. Moreover, we show that a conflict of interest between the parties may emerge when unions are sufficiently employment oriented as well as sufficiently wage aggressive and not too strong or too weak in bargaining. Second, we analyse the endogenous choice of the bargaining agenda. We show that a rich plethora of equilibria may occur and new situations of conflict/agreement of interests between the bargaining parties arise in particular when unions are sufficiently wage‐aggressive.     

On labour mobility and the neutrality of money in unionised economies

A recent literature suggests that when wage setters are non-atomistic, strategic interaction between trade unions and the central bank may cause the monetary regime to matter for the labour market outcome, see Cukierman and Lippi (1999), Soskice and Iversen (2000), Vartiainen (2002), Holden (2003), Lippi (2003), Corricelli et al. (2006), Gnocchi (2006) and references therein. I show that when perfect labour mobility is introduced in a game between large wage setters and the central bank in a small open economy, the monetary regime is of no importance for real wages, employment or profits. The result suggests that if labour mobility is sufficiently high, worker migration is likely to mitigate the labour market effects of monetary regimes over time.     

Absenteeism,Efficiency Wages,and Marginal Taxes

In this paper, I test the argument that increased taxes on earnings correspond to increased incentives to shirk, thus causing an increase in the rate of worker absenteeism. After fixed job effects are taken into account, panel register data on prime‐age Norwegian males who work full‐time show that a higher marginal net‐of‐earnings‐tax rate reduces the rate of absenteeism. When the net‐of‐tax rate is increased by 1.0 percent, absenteeism decreases by 0.3?0.5 percent. Injury‐related absences are less affected by tax changes than other absences. Absenteeism becomes more sensitive to tax changes as the occupational unemployment rate increases.     

Depository institution competition in the deregulated environment: the case of the large credit union

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of deregulation and enhanced competition on the costs and performance of large credit unions. Using a sample of large credit unions over the period 1979 through to 1985, we find no evidence that credit unions' average costs have risen, nor do we find evidence that credit unions have suffered adverse changes in operating margins. Large credit unions not only compete with other depository institutions, but appear to have responded well in the newly competitive environment.     

The Extent of Collective Bargaining and Workplace Representation: Transitions between States and their Determinants. A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Great Britain

The institutions of collective bargaining and worker representation are eroding in many nations, not least in Germany and Britain. This is the first article to explore transitions into and out of these arrangements. Using successive waves of the German IAB Establishment Panel and both cross‐sectional and panel components of the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey for the period 1998–2004, we find industrial relations are in flux, with many workplaces switching into and out of collective bargaining and other agencies of worker representation, respectively, works councils in Germany and joint consultative committees in Britain. Yet although there are some commonalities in behaviour, the driving forces behind the decline in collective bargaining differ markedly in the two countries.