Mobility and loyalty in labour relations: an Israeli case

Employee mobility is a phenomenon that challenges workplace ethics. This paper argues that despite on-going attempts by management and consultants to build and install employee loyalty, and despite the complexity of relationships between employees and their organization, employee mobility remains a common phenomenon in today's market. Courts, at least Israeli courts, perceive the employee–employer relationship as almost purely contractual and thus strive to protect workers first, often ignoring deeper commitments such as loyalty. This results in a certain dissonance in the relationships between employees and employers.     

Seeding the clouds for industrial relations climate change in emerging economies

As manufacturing businesses increasingly move labor‐intensive production to emerging economies, it is important for international managers to understand the sociopolitical factors that shape the climate in which management and labor interact. We present a conceptual “weather map” of industrial relations climates and use indices to plot the climates of 33 emerging, 11 transition, and 21 developed economies. As hypothesized, emerging economies, compared with transition and developed economies, are characterized by a relatively adversarial industrial relations climate and a high incidence of industrial action. Implications for international managers and future research directions are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Human rights and positive corporate duties: the importance of corporate–state interaction

While it is commonly accepted that corporations have negative duties to respect human rights, the question of whether rights also imply positive duties for corporations is contentious. The recent reports of the United Nations special representative on business and human rights contend that corporations do not have positive duties, but the arguments this is based on are flawed from an ethical point of view. In particular, the reports fail to consider the implications of interactions between corporations and states. For rights to be secured, corporations may face duties to use their power to pressure governments into performing their assigned duties, and duties not to undermine the role of the government. The interaction of corporations and governments also has implications for choosing effective instruments to advance human rights. International initiatives that do not take this interaction into account will be ineffective or, at worst, counterproductive.     

Business and the limited reconstruction of industrial relations in the UK in the 1970s

Industrial relations were reconstructed in the UK in the 1970s, but only in a limited way. This article examines how business preserved ultimate managerial prerogative in the organisation of the firm and the workplace by constraining the process of reconstruction. The analysis contributes to understanding of business in the 1970s and varieties of capitalism literature on comparative political economy by suggesting that changes in industrial relations were accepted by business only where congruent with corporate strategy. Evidence comes from industrial relations surveys and the Bullock Inquiry on board-level worker participation.     

The problem-solving approach to negotiations in industrial marketing

Problem-solving-oriented bargaining strategies are shown to positively influence sources' profits and targets' satisfaction in a negotiation experiment involving 98 businesspeople. A causal modeling approach is used to analyze the results of the experiment.     

The Information Society – the EU Framework

On January 1 1998, the crucial European Commission Directive concerning full competition in telecommunications markets comes into force. In this abridged version of the last of the 1997 Stockton Lectures, the Member of the Commission who was responsible for it outlines the route to its implementation. This story is part of the broader issue of the way the European Union (EU) has approached the questions raised by the evolving information society. Starting with the establishment of the internal single European market in 1992, the author traces the elimination of public monopolies in telecommunications, the Commission's changing approach to regulation and the way that public fears have been allayed by use of pilot projects. He then examines the significance of technological convergence and globalisation for economics, politics and culture.     

Quid pro quo and the enforcement of intellectual property rights protection: A bargaining approach

This article models a North–South negotiation where the North provides a quid pro quo in exchange for the strengthening of the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the South. We show that when Northern and Southern firms compete on quantity in the Southern market, the South's optimal choice is either complete protection or complete violation, irrespective of different levels of IPR protection being available. We show this to depend on the Southern government's valuation of the quid pro quo and the Northern firm's level of technology.     

Characteristics and Trends in the Israeli Service Economy

Long-term and short-term characteristics of the Israeli service economy are described and analysed. The percentages of service employment in Israel are similar to current ones in developed countries, but a variety of factors make the Israeli case unique. The roots of the Israeli service economy lie in the 1920s when the British established a civil service, while the Jewish population developed the Histadrut, the Jewish Agency, party and municipal services. Meanwhile, the geographical separation between the capital city (Jerusalem), and the largest city (Tel A viv), which became a primate city, encouraged the evolution of services. The constant and very large import of capital, the supply of service-oriented immigrants and the demand for improved health and education services are additional factors. The politicisation of services and bureaucratic activism have a strong impact from a political viewpoint. Altogether, the Israeli service economy has been uniquely structured in an immigration society driven by political rather than economic forces. During the last decade pressures for change have surfaced, due to the development of modern agriculture, manufacturing and domestic consumption. These have increased the finances, insurance and real estate sector, and decreased the dominance of Tel Aviv. The current economic crisis in Israel is interpreted as a crisis of the services.     

On distributor commitment in industrial channels of distribution: A multicomponent approach

Despite a recent surge of interest in commitment, its conceptual scope and components in channel relationships remain equivocal. The authors suggest continuance, behavior, and affect as three essential components of distributor commitment and hypothesize that each component of commitment has a different set of driving forces. A proposed model was tested with data collected in a national survey of industrial distributors. Estimation results indicate that (a) three suggested components are interrelated, yet distinctive, elements of distributor commitment, and (b) each component of distributor commitment is driven by a different set of driving forces. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The North’s intellectual property rights standard for the South?

We build a multi-sectoral North-South trade model to analyze international intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. By comparing the Nash equilibrium IPR protection standard of the South (the developing countries) with that of the North (the developed countries), we find that the former is naturally weaker than the latter. Moreover, we show that both regions can gain from an agreement that requires the South to harmonize its IPR standards with those of the North, and the North to liberalize its traditional goods market. This demonstrates the merits of multi-sectoral negotiations in the GATT/WTO.     

Shareholders’ rights in the European Union

In the European Union there has been increased mobility of capital and transnational ownership with the completion of the internal market. However, the harmonisation of standards, which would give shareholders equivalent rights throughout the Community, has not kept pace. This article examines the reasons for this and discusses new issues that the global integration of capital markets has brought to the forefront of the debate on shareholder protection.     

Addressing privacy predicaments in the digital marketplace: A power‐relations perspective

The utilization and governance of the internet and adjacent disruptive technologies have created numerous challenges to ensuring consumer online privacy. This study employs the power–responsibility equilibrium theory to explore emerging online privacy issues in the data‐driven marketplace. This exploratory study, based on semi‐structured interviews, explains why online shopping consumers are increasingly worried about their privacy and why they behave in a manner that could be detrimental to the consumer–vendor relationship. The findings suggest that deficiencies of corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory protection have deprived consumers of privacy empowerment. These deficiencies have also accentuated perceived privacy contract violations to trigger privacy concerns and subsequent defensive responses. We identify enhancement of consumer privacy empowerment and assuagement of privacy contract violations as two separate mechanisms of addressing online privacy issues. We also highlight the importance of addressing power and responsibility dynamics for maintaining a healthy information‐exchange environment.     

Death of the “organization man”: Temporal relations in strategic alliances

Environment is shifting the power balance between the organization and its members, providing the individual with the power to bargain with the organization. The present article explores the sources and consequences of this change for the individuals who are members of strategic alliances as well as for the organizations they are affiliated with. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Playing the regulation game – the rise and demise of British Caledonian

Privatisation means that an increasing number of UK companies have to "play the regulation game". Business success will be determined not just by conventional strategy choices but also by regulatory strategy. British Caledonian is a striking example of one such company. Its financial fortunes ebbed and flowed with shifts in regulatory policy. BCal's chosen strategy – rapid expansion to build an alternative network to compete with British Airways – was always likely to be highly risky. But the risks were increased by regulatory controls which denied B Cal access to the UK's major airport at London Heathrow. In these regulatory conditions BCal's chosen strategy was almost certainly mis-conceived. It should have changed its regulatory strategy or – failing success – changed its business strategy. Changing neither was a recipe for the airline's eventual demise.     

Property rights,R&D spillovers,and corporate accounting transparency in China

We explore how property rights protections across different regions in China affect the flow of proprietary information and managers' incentives to disclose details of financial and operating performance. Our focus on research and development spillovers as a proxy for information leakages to competitors allows an examination of whether or not opacity (low transparency) is employed as a mechanism to attenuate such leakages. We find that when the threat of proprietary information leakage is high, information reported by firms is opaque. This relation appears in regions suffering from weak intellectual property rights protections, but not in those with stronger property rights protections. After taking into account the incentive to protect sensitive information, we also document that firm value is no longer related to accounting transparency. Our focus on accounting opacity to protect proprietary information differs from the agency cost explanation of most prior work. Thus we provide evidence of a cost of enhanced disclosure along with new insights on specific channels through which institutional factors influence the costs and benefits of firm disclosure policies.