'High-performance' Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance

The effects of selected high‐performance practices and working hours on work–life balance are analysed with data from national surveys of British employees in 1992 and 2000. Alongside long hours, which are a constant source of negative job‐to‐home spillover, certain ‘high‐performance’ practices have become more strongly related to negative spillover during this period. Surprisingly, dual‐earner couples are not especially liable to spillover — if anything, less so than single‐earner couples. Additionally, the presence of young children has become less important over time. Overall, the results suggest a conflict between high‐performance practices and work‐life balance policies.     

Work–Life Balance and the Demand for Reduction in Working Hours: Evidence from the British Social Attitudes Survey 2002

Work–life balance policies aimed at reducing working hours are often assumed to be of particular interest to workers with family responsibilities such as young children. Although workers in Britain report the kind of time‐stress envisaged by the debate over a ‘long‐hours culture’, there is little relationship between workers’ family situation and preferences for working fewer hours. Women workers’ hours already reflect family commitments to some extent, while families with young children may need the income levels that only substantial working hours bring. Conversely workers without family commitments may have more capacity to swap income or career progression for increased leisure time.     

False Self‐Employment,Autonomy and Regulating for Decent Work: Improving Working Conditions in the UK Stripping Industry

A large‐scale study of working conditions in UK‐based strip dancing clubs reveals that dancers are against de facto self‐employment as it is defined and practised by management, but in favour of de jure self‐employment that ensures sufficient levels of autonomy and control in the workplace. While dancers could potentially seek ‘worker’ or ‘employee’ status within the existing legal framework, their strong identification with the label ‘self‐employed’ and their desire for autonomy will likely inhibit these labour rights claims. We propose an alternative avenue for improving dancers’ working conditions, whereby self‐employed dancers articulate their grievances as a demand for decent work, pursued through licensing agreements between clubs and local authorities and facilitated by collective organization.     

Managerial ties,absorptive capacity,and innovation

Managerial ties—the boundary-spanning ties and interpersonal connections of top managers—contribute to a corporation’s innovativeness in emerging economies because of the absence of market supporting institutions, transparent laws, and clear regulations. Moreover, managerial ties are apt to interact with absorptive capacity to facilitate knowledge sharing and innovation. This paper examines the joint influence of managerial ties and absorptive capacity in two communities in China, one characterized by a high level of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the other consisting mainly of local corporations. We find that absorptive capacity moderates the effect of managerial ties on a corporation’s innovativeness. Furthermore, when examining the two communities separately, we find that business ties and university ties have opposite effects.

The Relative Effects of Unionism on the Earnings Distributions of Women and Men

This study examines the differential effects of union density on the degree of earnings inequality among women and among men. Our results suggest an equalizing impact of union density for all men and for both men and women who work year-round and full time. Union density does not appear to equalize and may even contribute to a disequalization of the earnings distribution for all women.     

Working Hours in Supply Chain Chinese and Thai Factories: Evidence from the Fair Labor Association's ‘Soccer Project’

This article examines the determinants of working excessive hours, defined as working in excess of 60 hours per week or for more than six consecutive days, in Chinese and Thai supply chain factories. We use a matched employer–employee dataset collected from 15 Chinese and Thai footwear and sporting apparel supply chain factories, which supply international brands. Matched employer–employee data allow us to examine the effect of worker and firm characteristics on hours worked. We find that in addition to the demographic and human capital characteristics of workers, firm‐level characteristics and worker awareness of how to refuse overtime are important in explaining variation in hours worked.     

Managerial and Engineering Economics,by Arnold Reisman

In his recent paper (“Interest Rate Independent Present Value Ranking,” The Engineering Economist, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1989), W. H. Jean discusses the concept of the “time dominance,” developed for the interest rate independent ranking of mutually exclusive projects. He derives a set of conditions identifying the time dominance for the continuous model of time and value representation, and applies these conditions to cash flow series defined in terms of the discrete model. In the current contribution, the genuine time dominance conditions for the discrete model of time and value representation are derived, and it is shown that they are not only much more simple to handle than those presented by Jean, but are also a part of an already existing approach published earlier in this journal. Since Jean's conditions are valid only for the positive values of the interest rate, complementary conditions applicable for the negative interest rates, for both the discrete and continuous models, are also derived.     

Work Systems, Quality of Working Life and Attitudes of Workers: An Empirical Study Towards the Effects of Team and Non-Teamwork

The paper distinguishes between four categories of work systems: the traditional Tayloristic system, 'lean' team work, 'sociotechnical' teamwork and the professional work system. Using a Telepanel survey of over 800 Dutch workers, the association of work system with several employee outcome variables is analysed, including quality of working life, well-being and worker attitudes.     

Corporate Governance and Firm Capabilities: A Comparison of Managerial, Alliance, and Personal Capitalisms

Incentive structures embodied in different systems of corporate governance produce firms with inclinations towards the development of particular capabilities and strategic assets and disinclinations towards the development of others. To the extent that there is an excessive dependence upon any particular type of governance, an economy as a whole will be endowed with both its benefits and costs. As such, governance reform in East Asian economies may be better aimed at cultivating alternative governance institutions alongside existing relational institutions, rather than in converting these governance systems into facsimiles of the so-called Anglo-American model.     

Managerial Values Across Cultures: Australia, Hong Kong and the United States

The relationship between personal managerial values and a range of important organisational variables has increasingly been recognised. Personal values are shaped by the wider cultural milieu in which the individual is socialised. Managers from different cultural contexts may therefore be expected to possess different work and business-related values. However, exposure to a more universalistic managerial ethos may also generate a degree of similarity in managerial values across cultural contexts. In order to examine these issues, the values and expectations of managers in Hong Kong (N = 653), Australia (N = 505) and the United States (N = 1,060) were compared. Both differences and similarities were revealed, leading to speculations about the relative impact of culture versus roles on managerial values.