The Impact of Training on Labour Mobility: Individual and Firm‐level Evidence from Britain

We investigate the impact of different types of training on the mobility expectations of workers, using three surveys. Most training episodes produce some transferable skills, and most transferable training is paid for by employers. Overall, training has no impact on mobility in three out of every five cases; the remaining cases are split equally between those where training increases and those where it decreases mobility. We find that training is more likely to lead to lower mobility when it is less transferable to other firms, is sponsored by firms, and where its objectives include increasing the identification of employees with corporate objectives.     

Flexible and Family‐Friendly Working Arrangements in UK‐Based SMEs: Business Cases

Interest in researching flexible working arrangements has been growing as such practices have been heralded as the way to reconcile or balance the increased pressures of work and family life. Relatively little attention has been paid to the experiences of flexible working arrangements in small and medium sized enterprises. We report the findings of empirical work on ten small and medium‐sized enterprises and four larger organizations. The reasons for introducing particular flexible working arrangements in SMEs were explored. Our findings show that business case reasons were used when introducing flexible working arrangements in both SMEs and larger organizations, although in different ways.     

Have British Workers Been Working Harder in Thatcher's Britain? A Re-Consideration of the Concept of Effort

Increased intensity of work has been frequently cited as part of the explanation for the productivity gains in British manufacturing industry during the 1980s. One of the main sources for this claim has been the PUL (Percentage Utilization of Labour) index, a measure of throughput at the point of production. Analysis of the underlying rationale for this measure leads to the conclusion that it is not a sound basis on which to assess workers' effort. This article examines the concept of effort in some detail and considers the validity of psychological and psychophysiological measures. Whichever measure is used, the evidence provides little support for the contention that workers' effort has been a significant factor in productivity increases.     

Assessment of hidden and future customer needs in Finnish business‐to‐business companies

The development of new products should be based on the needs expected to exist even several years ahead – at the moment of market introduction and during the whole lifecycle of the product. To develop successful new products in the toughening business environment, companies should be able to surpass customers' expectations and to assess emerging customer needs proactively. Early, thorough understanding of the customer's real needs, including the assessment of hidden and future customer needs and requirements, plays a very important role in the successful development of new products.
The purpose of our paper is to study the assessment of new (hidden and future) customer needs for product development in Finnish business‐to‐business companies. We have carried out a survey in 93 Finnish business‐to‐business companies and SBUs to study their common problems in the assessment of unrecognized customer needs and potentially effective ways in clarifying new customer needs and dealing with important problems. On the basis of the results, we propose several possible ways to facilitate the assessment of unrecognized customer needs.     

Understanding What Has Been Happening to the Public-Sector Pay Premium in Great Britain: A Distributional Approach Based on the Labour Force Survey

This article investigates what has been happening to the public-sector wage differential in Great Britain over the period 1994–2017. The evidence indicates that apart from men in the lower part of the pay distribution, the public-sector pay premium has declined for all public-sector workers. This decline has coincided with a decline in the overall pay gap, which is associated with changes in the composition of public- and private-sector workforces. As the relative pay disadvantage experienced by public-sector workers at the top of the pay distribution has worsened over time this must raise serious concerns about the ability of the public sector to recruit and retain the staff it needs to deliver public services.     

The Declining Volume of Workers’ Training in Britain

The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, in official statistics and research has obscured a radical transformation in workers’ training in Britain. To obtain a picture of the trend in training volume, we synthesize a narrative through a new analysis of multiple surveys. The duration of training fell sharply with the result that the training volume per worker declined by about a half between 1997 and 2012. This fall is hard to reconcile with optimistic rhetoric surrounding the knowledge economy. Potential explanations are discussed. We conclude with recommendations to improve the collection of training statistics.     

Liberalization and the growth of business‐led R&D: the case of India

Firms and organizations in India have responded to market reforms, liberalization and globalization by improving efficiency, importing technology and by increasing in‐house R&D. This paper highlights some of the evolutionary changes that have occurred since India undertook sweeping reforms in July 1991 to open its economy to foreign participation and competition. Although some authors, such as Forbes (1999), have looked at the impact of the liberalization on India's R&D and innovation, they missed a number of dimensions that have far‐reaching implications for the process of technological capability development in India. Using the concept of technological capability, this paper makes a contribution to the discourse on the changing R&D and innovation scenario in the face of on‐going liberalization in India. It concludes with three case studies, which illustrate some of the recent changes made by industrial organisations.     

Evolving headquarters‐subsidiary dynamics in international R&D: the case of Japanese multinationals

The paper identifies the evolving nature of headquarters‐subsidiary relations during the whole process of R&D internationalization. In‐depth data on five Japanese multinationals revealed that the role of overseas laboratories actually evolved over time, from the 'starter' to the 'innovator' and then to the 'contributor'. Such a shift in role of overseas laboratories affected the nature of headquarters‐subsidiary relationship accordingly. 'Semi‐connected freedom' was identified as an optimal condition for the overseas laboratories to reconcile the two competing pressures: need for local autonomy and need for internal information connectivity. Various managerial steps were suggested for the laboratories to reach that state: increase in process linkage, active broker's role, short‐term socialization, and project‐level socialization. Some practical and theoretical implications were drawn from this research, and future research direction was suggested.     

Exploitation and diffusion of public research: the case of academic spin‐off companies in Italy

Scientific and technological knowledge is considered the most important raw material for economic growth. The attention on the exploitation of public research, undoubtedly one of the main sources of new scientific and technological knowledge, has increased in recent years. After reviewing some concepts regarding the exploitation of public research results, the paper focuses on the analysis of academic spin‐off companies as one of the most promising ways to transfer research results to the market place. The phenomenon of academic spin‐off companies is described using both international evidence and a recent survey regarding 48 Italian spin‐off companies.     

The nature of NPD and role flexibility of R&D/marketing in a fast growing high‐tech setting

This study investigated the mutual learning process between marketing and R&D in the context of the information and communications technology industry. The relationship between product newness and role flexibility of R&D/marketing was examined via correlation analysis and multiple regression against a stratified sample of 171 new products. The results showed that different aspects of product newness are associated in a different way to role flexibility of R&D/marketing. Management should therefore be aware of such differences when planning their product development portfolio so that effective integration between R&D and marketing can be achieved.     

The New Unionism and the New Bargaining Agenda: UNISON–Employer Partnerships on Workplace Learning in Britain

A model of new unionism has been developed which is characterized by features such as the servicing of members as customers and a shift to co‐operative industrial relations. The UNISON–employer partnerships in workplace learning in the UK initially appear to fit such a model. This paper outlines the model of new unionism and cautions against interpreting these partnerships as evidence of its development. The paper concludes that this initiative is organized within a collective framework and may provide a basis for the development of workplace trade union activism rather than being indicative of its decline.     

The Gender Pay Gap for Private‐Sector Employees in Canada and Britain

The gender earnings differentials for private‐sector employees in Britain and Canada are similar, substantial and significant. Using linked employer–employee data, we show that women are more likely to be employed in low‐wage workplaces than men in both counties. After accounting for the workplace, women continue to earn less than comparable men. Although men and women face a more equal pay structure within their workplace than they do across workplaces, a substantial portion of the gender pay gap in both countries remains unexplained by the individual characteristics or workplace effects considered in this study.     

Institutional Aspects of Youth Employment and Training Policy in Britain: A Comment

This paper compares the merits of occupational and internal labour markets focusing on the issues of skills shortages, human capital theory, wage efficiency and youth training policy in the UK.     

Agriculture in a mature industrial society : The case of Britain

In a period of transition to post-industrialism the authors suggest that the conventional wisdom about agriculture is inadequate. They use Britain as a case study to discuss a rich nation dual economy and propose an alternative strategy for agriculture. This strategy would have four major objectives: greater first and second order self-sufficiency; a regional re-integration; the use of less energy and better husbandry in agriculture; and improved nutrition. In raising a number of far reaching questions in the article the authors hope to stimulate some broadly based discussion of agricultural change in the rich countries.     

Managing integration and coordination in cross‐functional teams: an international study of Concurrent Engineering product development

This study is about the influence of integration and coordination of organisational mechanisms on the effectiveness of the process of product development by cross-functional teams. The sample consists of 50 cross-national Concurrent Engineering (CE) project teams, from companies in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, UK, and USA, in the technology intensive industries of aerospace, automobile, chemical, computer, electronics, shipbuilding, and telecommunications. The study offers a diagnostic tool which measures the effectiveness of the Concurrent Engineering team's process in terms of the behaviours and attitudes of the engineering/R&D and manufacturing representatives on the product development team: (a) two-way communication, (b) overlapping problems-solving, (c) readiness to use uncertain and ambiguous information released by team counterparts for decision-making, and (d) readiness to release uncertain and ambiguous information to team counterparts. The findings of the study are that integration mechanisms, such as team-based rewards and job rotation, and coordination mechanisms, such as project structure and information technology, and project leader's management style, support an effective team process, and overcome the negative effect of geographic distance and time-difference in cross-national teams. In addition, there are interesting implications for organisational learning in the practice of Concurrent Engineering for product development, and of the implications of these findings for practice and future research.     

Technology management and collaboration profile: virtual companies and industrial platforms in the high‐tech biotechnology industries

In this paper we discuss collaboration in the area of technology management. We propose the concept of collaboration profile to describe various forms of networks along key differentiating characteristics. The collaboration profile is then applied using two examples to illustrate different forms of collaboration in the biotechnology industries, the ‘virtual company’ and the ‘industrial platform’. Based on interviews with members of a virtual company as well as members of industrial platforms and drawing conclusions from theoretical insights, the advantages and disadvantages of these forms and their suitability for different stages of the technology life cycle will be discussed. Specifically, we address the following questions: What kind of collaboration profile applies to virtual companies and industrial platforms? How does the suitability of collaboration forms vary with the stage of technology development? Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of the collaboration profile for analysing features and potential problems of collaborations by describing two examples. Focusing on the key characteristics of a collaboration helps to check the appropriateness of the collaboration form and to identify and manage respective problems.