What is Alive and What is Dead in the Theory of Corporatism

The term ‘corporatism’ simultaneously designates a particular interest group structure, characterized by monopolistic, centralized and internally non‐democratic associations, and a particular policy‐making process, also known as ‘concertation’ or ‘social partnership’. This paper argues that structure and process may no longer be closely associated. By focusing on the Irish and Italian cases, it shows that concertation is perfectly compatible with a non‐corporatist structure of the interest representation system. Inter‐ and intra‐organizational co‐ordination remains important for the viability of concertation. However, it can be achieved, even in relatively fragmented systems like the Irish and the Italian, through alternative mechanisms relying on democracy and discussion.     

Why has Irish Social Partnership Survived?

The present system of social partnership in Ireland is in its twentieth year. A range of explanations have been put forward to explain why social partnership has been so durable even though it does not possess the institutional endowments often considered necessary to sustain tripartite industrial relations arrangements. Although these accounts are considered to have merits, this article suggests that they also suffer from a range of weaknesses. The article suggests that the longevity of the social partnership regime is a result of it being part of an unorthodox system of institutional complementarities that triggered a spectacular period of economic and employment growth.     

Social Partnership in Ireland and New Social Pacts

Social partnership in Ireland has attracted considerable international attention. This paper examines the origins, focus, and institutional architecture of the Irish social partnership model. The paper also examines social partnership in the context of the theory of social pacts and suggests that the institutionalization of social partnership can be attributed to the continuing significance of compensatory political exchange, the influences of partnership networks, and the effects of new mechanisms for conflict resolution.     

Social Partnership Agreements in Britain: Labor Cooperation and Compliance

This article reviews evidence on the outcomes of British social partnership agreements using matched comparisons. It concludes that in industries marked by employment decline, partnership firms often have shed jobs at a faster rate than nonpartnership firms. However, in expanding sectors, partnership firms have created jobs at a faster rate than nonpartnership rivals. There is no discernible impact of partnership on either wage settlements or union density. It is argued that we need evidence on information sharing, trust, and power and suggested that partnership agreements are unlikely to contribute significantly to union revitalization.     

Do Unions Benefit from Working in Partnership with Employers? Evidence from Ireland

Advocates and critics of voluntary workplace partnership have presented a series of theoretical arguments as to the potential consequences for unions working under partnership arrangements. A survey of Irish employees’ views is used to assess these competing claims. The study is timely on two counts: first, empirical investigations of the effects of partnership on union influence and members’ commitment to unions are rare; and, second, it is 11 years since employers, unions, and government in Ireland first signed a national framework agreement to promote the diffusion of partnership as a means for the handling of workplace change. The evidence provides support for the arguments as advanced by advocates.     

Bargained Equality: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Workplace Gender Equality Agreements and Plans in France

‘Bargained equality’ reflects wider characteristics of French employment relations whereby state‐driven collective bargaining is a major mode of regulation but is based on weak workplace bargaining cultures outside the largest firms. This article focuses on duties on French employers to bargain on gender equality. It presents findings of a project evaluating workplace agreements and plans on gender equality, based on a sample of 186 agreements submitted in 2014–2015, in 10 sectors, and in‐depth interviews in 20 companies. Despite a rise in formal compliance due to stronger enforcement since 2012, our analysis shows that most companies submitting plans or agreements do not systematically address quantitative measurement of pay or other gender gaps. As well as sectoral differences, the analysis also identifies ‘generational effects’: processes of change which occur as collective agreements expire and are replaced are dependent on local dynamics of bargaining. Based on this analysis, we argue that attention should be paid to the resources available to local bargaining actors, in order to promote an equality agenda.     

Advocates, Critics and Union Involvement in Workplace Partnership: Irish Airports

The Irish Airports Authority and its unions have developed a radical partnership initiative which seeks to involve staff and unions in operational and strategic decision–making. The initiative allows for an empirical assessment of arguments regarding the effects of partnership on union organization and strength, and on members' commitment to unions. Drawing on research conducted over a four–year period, we argue that partnership was of considerable benefit to workers and unions, but that new tensions and challenges have arisen. On balance, the evidence provides modest support for the theoretical arguments of advocates of partnership.     

Can Voluntary Workplace Partnership Deliver Sustainable Mutual Gains?

This article draws on two Irish case studies to examine the nature and outcomes of voluntary workplace partnership (WP), and the conditions affecting its durability. We found that WP delivered mutual gains for all stakeholders at Aughinish Alumina (AAL), which were quite equally divided. While WP delivered most gains for management at Waterford Crystal (WC), and some for the union, worker gains were less. The WC partnership broke down after 10 years, but the AAL partnership continues. Voluntarist mutual gains partnership is feasible, but success and durability depends on specific clusters of contextual conditions, notably management support, a quality‐focused competitive strategy, insulation from market pressures, union postures, vertically aligned bundles of mutual gains practices, institutional supports, emphasis on fairness, all party commitment to performance enhancement and capital‐intensive technology. Conditions supporting WP were stronger at AAL than WC. More generally, as supports for WP in Ireland are weaker than retardants, we conclude that few mutual gains partnerships will take root, and even fewer will endure.     

The business case of a network that serves both public safety and commercial subscribers

Deploying a single nationwide broadband wireless network to serve all public safety users would have great advantages over the existing fragmented public safety systems. A nationwide system could be created to serve both public safety and commercial subscribers, which would allow a provider to exploit important economies but force it to meet the more costly requirements of public safety. This paper analyzes the viability of a public-private partnership that serves public safety and commercial subscribers from a for-profit provider's perspective. A model is presented that estimates the net present value (NPV) of a wireless network by calculating costs based on the number of cell sites required and revenue based on the projected number of subscribers acquired. The model is applied to both a network that serves only commercial subscribers on 10 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum and a public-private partnership that serves commercial subscribers and public safety personnel on 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum. It is found that NPV is greater for the public-private partnership than for the commercial-only network for any population density, which shows that the value of 10 MHz of spectrum exceeds the cost of meeting public safety requirements. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that NPV/cell increases with population density, so urban areas are profitable and rural areas are unprofitable. The paper demonstrates that a partnership covering 94% of the US population breaks even because the most urban 56% of population subsidizes coverage for the next 38%. If initial deployment is subsidized, a financially sustainable public-private partnership can serve much more than 94%. Additionally, it is shown that allowing urban municipalities to opt-out of the partnership can significantly increase the subsidies required.     

The Impact of Collective Agreements on Working Time in Denmark

This article examines the impact of collective agreements on the working time patterns of private-sector employees in Denmark. The expected effect would be a reduction in working hours and overtime and an increase in overtime compensation. On the basis of an individual-level survey of 1720 employees, it is shown that there is a clear union impact on working time behaviour, but that it varies by subject area. While in some areas there is a near total spillover of rules from collective agreements (the collective agreement has become a social norm), in others there is a clear 'union mark-down', and in still others collective agreements seem to make no impact at all.     

Educating in the design and construction of built environments accessible to disabled people: the Leonardo da Vinci AWARD project

An interdisciplinary partnership within an European Leonardo da Vinci project has developed a new approach aimed at educating secondary school students in the creation of built environments accessible to disabled people and at sensitizing them towards the inclusion of people with disabilities in all realms of social life. The AWARD (Accessible World for All Respecting Differences) project is based on the need for education professionals to contribute to the introduction of the principles of Universal Design in the curricula and on the fact that courses should be set up and teaching materials produced that conform to the principles of Universal Design. The project saw the development of an innovative e-learning tool applicable to traditional, distance and individual forms of learning. The software produced, called AWARD, is structured in teaching modules covering the different functional areas and elements that characterise the indoor and outdoor built environments and is organised in such a way as to cover the wide range of different professional skills involved in the design, construction and management of such environments.     

Consolidation of public safety wireless networks: An options-based economic analysis of numerous scenarios

The Korean National Emergency Management Agency proposed to replace existing public safety wireless networks of 46 agencies with a nation-wide consolidated network. This study compares the public-private partnership alternative of sharing a network with the conventional alternative of building a government autonomous network. Using exploratory modeling and real option analysis which compute path-dependent values (including network effects and switching costs) of all the plausible sequential incremental investments against a wide range of future states, this study has designed adaptive investment strategies (“start robust, then adapt”) which start in the highest pay-off area, and then make investment decisions about whether to expand or switch to lower pay-off areas, based on an updated information of technology prospects and the previous-stage performances of inter-agency operational effectiveness and public-private partnership. This case study has demonstrated that well-designed adaptive investments will enhance long-term values and reduce downfalls arising from public-private partnership.     

A Strategy for Labor

Labor's decline is advanced, disastrous for democracy, and unlikely to be relieved by labor law reform at the national level. Unions need a strategy for revival that does not premise such relief, and that takes account of the deeper changes in social and economic organization that have undermined their strength. Such a strategy is available, but it requires a sharp break with the uncoordinated, firm-centered, and politically non-independent “service model” unionism, exclusively preoccupied with units where majority status has been achieved, still generally practiced today.     

Strategic assessment of international partnership in ASEAN countries

Partnership under the form of joint-ventures and licensing agreements between a multinational company and a local entrepreneur has become a predominant mode of entry into growing markets of the developing world. This paper illustrates three major issues in the process of building partnerships in the international setting, namely, the strategic perspective of both parties, the selection of partners, and the negotiation of the partnership. Data for this study was drawn from an earlier investigation at the Euro-Asia Center of INSEAD.     

International Framework Agreements: A New Model for Securing Workers Rights?

A rapidly growing number of international unions are signing international framework agreements with multinational enterprises (MNEs), securing their commitment to respect fundamental workers' rights. This article explores the agreement between the global banana giant Chiquita and the Latin-American Coordination of Banana Workers Unions (COLSIBA) signed in 2001. The study shows how the banana unions employed innovative tactics of regional coordination and of alliances with nongovernmental organizations in the major consumer markets. Fieldwork on the implementation of the agreement further reveals an overall poor use of the agreement potential but also how the agreement was used as leverage for local organizing activities. This article argues that such international agreements show a promising way to defend and advance workers rights within MNEs, creating space for union organizing, collective bargaining, and social dialogue.     

Social capital and creativity in R&D project teams

The existing research contributes to our understanding about the value of social capital in a wide range of social science disciplines; however, it does not well address the role of social capital in creativity for research and development (R&D) project teams in a given context. Using a sample of 54 R&D project teams in high-technology firms of Taiwan, we examined the impacts of social capital on creativity of R&D project teams from an intra-team perspective. Results of factor analysis revealed four factors extracted from the concept of social capital, namely social interaction, network ties, mutual trust, and shared goals. Findings suggested that social interaction and network ties had significant and positive impacts on creativity of R&D project teams, but mutual trust and shared goals did not. Managerial implications for managing social capital in R&D project teams are discussed.     

Actors, resources, activities and commitments

A new concept, commitments, is introduced and defined as “agreements between two or more social actors to carry out future actions” and its incorporation into, and articulation of, the actors-resources-activities model described. Commitments are distinguished from the concept of commitment as traditionally used in inter-organisational relationships. The latter is mainly an affective measure at the level of an individual concerning the general relationship between buying and selling organisations. By contrast commitments are agreements made between actors and range from the specific and everyday to the general and strategic.The theoretical background and nature of commitments are described and how commitments relate to and enrich each of the elements of the ARA model demonstrated. The application of the concept to B2B relationships at the level of individual, group, organisational and net actors is set out and implications of the use of the commitments concept for researchers and managers are suggested.     

An inventory reservation problem with nesting and fill rate-based performance measures

In many inventory settings companies wish to provide customer-differentiated service levels. These may, for example, be motivated by differences in the perceived customer lifetime value or by specific contractual agreements. One approach to provide differentiated service levels is to reserve some portion of the available inventory exclusively for specific customer classes. Existing approaches to inventory reservation are typically based on the assumption that a company can assign a customer specific revenue or penalty cost to any order or unit of demand filled or unfulfilled. In practice, however, it is usually extremely difficult to accurately estimate (especially long term) monetary implications of meeting or not meeting customer demand and corresponding service level requirements. The research presented in this paper addresses the problem of setting appropriate inventory reservations for different customer classes based on fill rate-based performance measures. We model a single period inventory reservation problem with two customer classes and nesting. We develop exact expressions for two conflicting performance measures: (1) the expected fill rate of high priority customers and (2) the expected loss in the system fill rate induced by inventory reservation. With these expressions a decision maker can analyze the tradeoff between the loss in overall system performance and the higher expected fill rates for prioritized customers. We provide analytical insights into the effects of nesting and the impact of relevant problem parameters on these two performance measures. The analytical insights are illustrated and highlighted through a set of numerical examples. Although we limit our analysis to a single period inventory reservation problem, we expect that our results can be utilized in a wide range of problem settings in which a decision maker has to ration a perishable resource among different classes of customers.     

International Framework Agreements and Industrial Relations Governance: Global Rhetoric versus Local Realities

The article discusses the local impact of international framework agreements (IFAs). It presents findings from empirical research carried out in two Spanish MNCs, and it examines how the commitments stipulated by the texts of the IFAs translate in local practice in different subsidiaries in Central and South America. The article follows the policy cycle of both agreements, and it further evaluates them as emerging private institutions of global industrial relations governance. The main findings reveal a paradox. The generic character of IFAs encourages corporate consent for their adoption, but, in practice, it gives precedence to local laws and hence renders the enforcement of compliance difficult, and, in some cases, unfeasible. And where local laws contravene or lack compatibility with International Labour Organization conventions, the central premise of IFAs as instruments of global governance is largely undermined.     

Governance by targets and the performance of cross-sector partnerships: Do partner diversity and partnership capabilities matter?

Research Summary: This study examines the effectiveness of targets as a tool for the contractual governance of cross-sector partnerships. Applying a difference-in-differences methodology, we find that the use of explicit targets within performance contracts is an effective means for improving partnership outcomes, especially where partner diversity and partnership capabilities are high. Furthermore, we find evidence that target intensity is associated with stronger partnership performance. These findings suggest that contractual forms with explicit targets may be a particularly successful approach for enhancing the public value created by cross-sector partnerships. A downward turn in performance following the removal of targets lends further support to this conclusion. Managerial Summary: Cross-sector partnerships have become a vital means for creating value in pursuit of the public interest. In particular, the effective management of these partnerships is thought to hold the key to addressing the strategic and organizational challenges posed by major social and environmental issues, such as big data and climate change. In this article, we combine data on waste recycling from 2003 to 2014 with information on performance contracts between local cross-sector partnerships and higher levels of government in England to quantify the impact of governance by targets on the performance of those partnerships. The benefits of target-setting for partnership performance that we identify are even stronger when partner diversity is high and partnership capabilities are strong. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of our findings.