Measuring Trade Union Democracy: The Case of the UK Civil and Public Services Association

The Civil and Public Services Association (CPSA) has experienced a substantial number of organizational changes over the last 25 years, both as a voluntary response to membership concerns and to comply with legislative demands. Have these changes made the CPSA more or less ‘democratic’? An answer to this question must acknowledge that individuals interpret ‘trade union democracy’ in different ways. This paper evaluates the changes in the CPSA’s organizational structure and internal decision‐making procedures according to the emphasis of four models of trade union democracy: liberal pluralism, grass‐roots activism, individual accountability and consumer trade unionism.     

Women, Power and Trade Union Government in the UK

This paper addresses the under-explored relationship between women's structures and union democracy and argues that women's structural progress is mediated by an enduring gendered oligarchy and an associated struggle to access power resources. It provides, first, an analysis over time of women's structures in UK unions, and second, a case-study analysis of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF) trade union. The analysis over time demonstrates women's progress in achieving positional power, but conceals the complexity of the way different resources are used to constrain and enable women trade unionists.     

An Analysis of Workplace Representatives, Union Power and Democracy in Australia

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the views and experiences of workplace representatives in Australia in the context of falling union density, and to analyse factors that are most strongly associated with subjective union power at the workplace level, as perceived by delegates. The analysis relies on a large random survey of workplace delegates in eight significant Australian unions. The article describes the situation broadly facing delegates as shown by the survey and analyses a set of factors associated with the power of workers as perceived by delegates. We find that higher levels of reported activism among delegates are strongly associated with greater subjective union power. We also find that self-reported delegate confidence is also strongly associated with perceptions of higher union power, as is delegate's clarity about their roles. The data also show a strong association between perceptions of democracy within the union and union power. Support for delegates from the union office and organizers is also associated with higher levels of union power at the local level. The analysis provides some support for union renewal strategies associated with the 'organizing model' as applied in Australia and some other Anglo-Saxon countries that aim to increase the activism of workplace delegates through education, the provision of support for workplace delegates and more democratic union structures.     

Social Movement Theory,Collective Action Frames and Union Theory: A Critique and Extension

The publication of John Kelly's Rethinking Industrial Relations in 1998 spawned a growing interest among researchers in exploring how social movement (SM) theory can be used to inform union research, particularly in the context of revitalization/renewal debates. Our starting proposition is that this approach can be extended through an engagement with the larger corpus of SM theory. We focus in particular on the ‘collective action frame’ concept. Drawing on examples used by SM scholars, we illustrate how these concepts can be used to extend and enrich union theory and pose new questions concerning the role of unions.     

Justice and Union Participation: An Extension and Test of Mobilization Theory

Heeding John Kelly's call to reorient the field of industrial relations towards the study of injustice, we employ mobilization, social exchange and organizational justice theories to specify and test a model of union participation. Using individual‐level survey data from public‐sector union members to test our model, we find that differences in worker perceptions of workplace injustice and union justice explain slightly more variation in members’ union participation than more traditional measures of job satisfaction and union instrumentality perceptions. The implications of our analysis for researchers and union practitioners are also discussed.     

A Theory of Trade Union Membership Retention

The retention rate of unemployed members can vary substantially between trade unions and may not particularly reflect the structure of the labour market within which a union operates. This raises the issue of whether retention of these members is due to supply-side factors characterised by individuals or to the policy of trade unions towards their unemployed members.     

浅淡图书馆2.0的理论与实践

论述了国内外图书馆2.0现状,分析了当前研究中的各种概念。认为图书馆2.0是一种以用户为中心、强调用户参与和协作的全新服务理念,提出了图书馆2.0以用户为中心、强调用户参与、全方位的个性化和人性化服务、保持开放性等理念。并介绍了WEB2.0技术在图书馆2.0中的应用实例及国内对于图书馆2.0的实践探索。     

Securing a Union Contract: Impact of the Union Organizer

Unions fail to secure a first contract after winning a representation election in approximately one out of four campaigns. This paper extends the limited research on first-contract determinants by developing and testing a model that incorporates the role of the union organizer. Although union organizers typically do not negotiate first contracts, the empirical results suggest that the organizer's personality and actions during a campaign are important determinants of first contracts.     

发展我国城市废弃物循环经济的理论与实践思考

随着我国经济的发展和城市化进程的加快,我国由城市废弃物产生的环境污染问题越来越严重。而循环经济从根本上反映了节约资源、再生资源的特点。文章运用循环经济的理念,对我国城市废弃物存在的问题进行分析,提出从发展循环经济的角度解决我国城市废弃物问题,以实现我国社会经济的可持续发展。     

Platform-Driven Development of Product Families: Linking Theory with Practice

Firms in many industries increasingly are considering platform-based approaches to reduce complexity and to better leverage investments in new product development, manufacturing, and marketing. However, a clear gap in literature still exists when it comes to discussing the problems and risks related to implementing and managing product families and their underlying platforms. Using a multiple-case approach, we compare three technology-driven companies in their definition of platform-based product families, investigate their reasons for changing to platform-driven development, and analyze how they implemented platform thinking in their development process and which risks they encountered in the process of creating and managing platform-based product families. The field study shows that the companies involved in the study use a homogeneous concept of platform-based product families and that they have similar reasons to turn to platform thinking and to encounter comparable risks. However, the companies analyzed use mainly product architecture as a basis for their platforms (and ignore many of the platform types advocated in literature), while on the other hand they show divergent applications of the platform concept regarding the combinations of product families and market applications. Through this exploratory study, some important white spots in literature became evident as well. In the discussion part of this article these white spots are discussed and directions for future platform research are proposed. The article concludes that given its importance, platform-driven development of product families clearly deserves further research to provide more insight into strategic planning for new products.     

关于企业问题的理论及现实启迪

本文根据笔者自己掌握的资料 ,从现实针对性的原则出发 ,详细介绍成熟市场经济国家的学者关于企业问题的具有代表性的研究和观点 ,并进一步探讨这些研究对中国改革的意义。一、凡勃伦对古典意义上的企业的研究1 .企业的目的凡勃伦认为 ,企业的目的就是为了赚钱。他告诉人们 :“企业的动机是金钱上的利益 ,它的方法实质上是买和卖 ,它的目的和通常的结果是财富的积累”。由于企业的目的不是养人 ,而是财富的积累 ,于是 ,资本的价值就在于其增殖能力、赚钱能力和发展能力。按照这样的目的和逻辑 ,企业的无形资产有时甚至比有形资产的意义更加…     

水资源管理体制的理论与实践

对流域管理问题的研究是促进社会经济可持续发展的重要前提,特别是新水法出台后,结合其所规定的流域管理原则性规定,完善现行流域管理的法律法规及研究流域机构的地位、职责、权限,进一步完善流域管理与区域管理、流域机构与省、自治区、直辖市水行政主管部门的关系,探索建立一个强有力的、综合性的流域管理机构等问题,变得更具紧迫性和重要性。     

Institutional Change and Union Membership: A Longitudinal Analysis of Union Membership Determinants in Israel

We examine the degree to which factors associated with workers' union membership decisions are sensitive to shifts in the institutional environment of unions. Comparative logit analyses of the relationship between potential determinants of membership and actual union membership over time suggestthat the factors associated with membership are elastic and may reflect shifts in the institutional context of unions.     

Negotiating Amalgamations: Territorial and Political Consolidation and Administrative Reform in Public-Sector Service Unions in the UK

Since 1990 there has been a series of union amalgamations among Britain's public-sector unions. This study examines three amalgamations and one aborted amalgamation. Each was initiated by union leaders reacting to government-sponsored reforms of the public sector, and all involved unions with either defensive or consolidatory merger motivations. The complex negotiations are presented as resolving issues of political, democratic and administrative concerns. It is argued that the balance of power on critical constitutional issues lay with the leaders of the consolidatory unions, particularly the dominant activist groups within such unions. As a consequence, success in amalgamation negotiations lay in satisfying such group's interests in sustaining the existing political ethos and democratic system, while securing agreement on the desired administrative reforms.