Health care's future? Look to the past

Although health care is changing, and probably always will be subject to change, there are certain basic themes present at the founding of the U.S. health care system that remain important today. Although these themes could be seen as working against each other, proper attention to both might lead to a "marriage" that could optimize the system and provide, if not a solution, at least a workable system for health care.     

Scarred from the past or afraid of the future? Unemployment and job satisfaction across European labour markets

Previous research has shown that both past unemployment and anticipated future unemployment have a detrimental impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours, which may affect organisational performance. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the relative impact of past unemployment compared with current job insecurity. Although it is possible that both effects operate simultaneously, this paper – focused on employees' job satisfaction and utilising a set of cross-sectional data derived from the European Social Survey 2006–2007 – reports on a strongly pronounced insecurity effect: anticipated unemployment substantially reduces employees' job satisfaction. Interestingly, inclusion of the perceived risk of future unemployment as a separate predictor variable in ordered probit regressions relegates the experience of past unemployment to a statistically insignificant coefficient and thus weakens the ‘scarring’ hypothesis. These results hold true even when several socio-demographic characteristics and proxies for individual personality traits are controlled. Implications for organisations and human resource practitioners and scope for future research endeavours conclude the analysis of the paper.     

Surviving the EU? The future for national employment models in Europe

The claim by the European Union (EU) to be both the moderniser and the effective saviour of distinctive European ways of doing things is challenged by this review of the multi‐tiered influence of the EU on change in national models. Competition and macroeconomic policy is argued to be more significant than soft law in reshaping national models and in constraining innovation and change to meet new conditions. Lip service is paid by the EU to different paths of development, but the contradictions and synergies across institutional and policy approaches that underpin the notion of varieties of capitalism go unrecognised. European employment models are seen as primarily contributing to social protection, but the potential role for distinctive models to promote comparative advantage, as under varieties of capitalism analysis, is not on the policy agenda.     

Is EDI dead? The future of the Internet in supply chain management

I have been involved in materials management for about 30 years (that is not something many of us really want to admit--it says we are getting old), and over that time I have seen many methods of communication come and go. In the 1960s, we used seven-part carbon forms to generate orders. We also used the keypunch card or IBM card to send our request for materials to our supplier. The supplier would acknowledge our order and provide us with a promise date. This could be done by mail using these cards or by forwarding the information to us electronically for conversion to cards. I could trace the history of communication in painful detail, but that is not important. What is important is that the only thing that has remained constant in those past 30 years has been change. We have all heard that before, but we seem to forget it. This presentation will look at the future of EDI and the Internet in supply chain management.     

The future of the CAP? Problems and Proposals

The CAP has been both a corner-stone and stumbling-block for the European Union. Agenda 2000 is proclaimed by the European Commission as a radical change in the policy to meet the challenges of the new millennium. However, this Agenda still does not resolve the fundamental problems facing the policy. It is time for some genuine leadership to be displayed through the development of a serious and relevant strategy of reform for one of the founding policies of the Union.     

Joint governance in North American workplaces: a glimpse of the future or the end of an era?

North American innovations in joint governance (such as Saturn, NUMMI, Xerox, and Shell Sarnia), though limited in number, have drawn world-wide attention from line and staff practitioners, as well as policy makers. These voluntary initiatives in unionized North American settings stand as an important counterpoint to two alternative forms of innovation – legislated forms of joint governance such as European works councils and non-union high-commitment systems that are most common in North America. Current debates on workplace governance in North America are implicitly and sometimes explicitly choosing among these three innovative arrangements as alternative ‘ideal types’. This article begins with nine hypotheses on joint governance, which are derived from case-study analysis. The hypotheses focus on the antecedents, dynamics and consequences of joint governance. Together, they can help guide practitioners seeking diffusion of joint governance concepts. The hypotheses can also help guide the construction of public policy on workplace governance. Ultimately, the question remains – are these initiatives a glimpse of the future or do they mark the end of an era?     

State competition in higher education: A race to the top,or a race to the bottom?

How does competition affect higher education? This paper explores this question for public and private universities. Theory indicates that competition can push higher education policy in one of two different directions. On the one hand, competition may increase spending. For states, this would occur if states treat higher education as developmental; for private universities this would occur if they view spending as a means to attract students and prestige. On the other hand, competition may decrease spending if states treat higher education spending as redistributive, and competition may decrease spending by private schools if lower spending enhances their ability to attract students with low tuition. To determine which of these perspectives is most valid, we examine higher education policy choices in the 1980s and 1990s. We find that states appear to act as if higher education funding is redistributive while private schools appear to compete more on the basis of tuition than spending. These results demonstrate the important effects competition and governance structure have on higher education.Received: August 2001, Accepted: May 2002, JEL Classification: I2, I22, H72, I3     

Who will be a good employee in the future?

This article examines the attributes necessary for the successful employee in the future. Many of these are already familiar to the manager: flexibility and adaptability, a team approach, and the ability to see the bigger picture. Implications for the educational process and its development of successful employees are also presented.     

Does studying the past help us understand the future? an examination of the expectations of Gen X knowledge workers

Abstract

Three demographic realities (large baby boom cohort, increasing longevity, declining birthrates) are driving unprecedented global shifts in population age distribution and require organizations wishing to attract, retain and engage mid-career, potentially disenfranchised talent in the 35 to 45-year-old age bracket (i.e. ‘Gen X’) to rethink management practices. This situation motivated the present research – a multi-method case study of Gen X knowledge workers that theoretically develops and uses objectivist grounded theory data analysis methodology to empirically test a typology describing possible subgroups within this cohort of employees who differ in terms of their formative experiences in the labor market. Analysis of data identified four subgroups within our sample of Gen X knowledge workers which share various similarities but also differ dramatically concerning what they expect from and how they view their current employer. Findings support the idea that different formative labor market experiences can result in generational sub-cohorts who want different things from employers and perceive the world differently. These findings can be used by researchers to launch further study of other potential subgroups in Gen X and other generational cohorts, and to organizations and practitioners in developing more effective recruitment and retention strategies for Gen X knowledge workers.     

Family or Money? The False Dilemma in Property Dispossession in Shanghai

This article examines the lived experiences of property dispossession caused by the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Specifically, it examines the category of the family, which is overlooked in the existing literature, and probes into the political production of family conflicts and breakdowns. It characterizes the prevailing regime of dispossession in contemporary China as decentralized legal authoritarianism and argues that the organization of the Expo‐induced dispossession deviated from this because of the distinctive state structures involved. For this reason, tensions within the state apparatus were temporarily suspended, leading to reduced opportunity for resistance. The state's monopoly of symbolic production rendered contesting claims to property ownership illegitimate and made monetary compensation the only option. This turned confrontation with the state into domestic disputes. Organized as a state‐led project, dispossession also exploited displacees' past experiences of a ‘caring' state or state terror, giving rise to different attitudes towards displacement and thus causing more family disputes. Moreover, mobilization of the entire state apparatus also permitted the use of coercive and violent means without legal and moral concerns. Tactics that manipulated, and in some cases completely severed, relations within and beyond the displaced families are explored in depth. The article concludes with a call to change the ways that dispossession has been conceived and conducted in practice.     

The New Competition in Broadcasting: Trick or Treat?

The broadcasting reforms of the 1990s attempted to combine increased competition with the preservation of the public service ideal. The reforms were called into question when it became clear that the production quality was being undermined by poor information flows and excessive transaction costs. For competition in broadcasting to flourish, closer attention needs to be paid tothe institutional preconditions of effective contracting.     

After retrotopia? The future of organizing and the thought of Zygmunt Bauman

The main body of work of Zygmunt Bauman concerns his home discipline of sociology, but his insights have been influential also in the field of organization studies. In this text, we provide an overview of the extent of this influence, providing some additional context for positioning the other contributions to this special section. Afterwards, we explore in more detail two notions central for Bauman’s late thought: that of liquidity and retrotopia. The former constitutes the root metaphor for theorizing the current global predicament. In this text, we analyse how two modes of interpreting it, using the assumptions behind Kurt Lewin’s CATS model and the alchemical tradition underpinning Carl Gustav Jung’s conception of archetypes respectively, can help us theorize the alternative modes of organizing and managing encountered in a study of contemporary alternative organizations.These insights form the starting point for our second goal: to explore Bauman’s notion of retrotopia as a potentially fruitful starting point for discussing both the deficiencies of current visions of our future society, and the possibilities and vicissitudes of developing new forms of organizing and managing. Such new forms, both as practice and as theoretical constructs, are urgently needed if we are to face the numerous, and potentially catastrophic global challenges facing our society today.     

Share the Fame or Share the Blame? The Reputational Implications of Partnerships

We use an adverse selection model to study the dynamics of firms' reputations when firms implement joint projects. We show that in the case of joint projects a firm's reputation does not necessarily increase following a success and does not necessarily decrease following a failure. We also study how reputation considerations affect firms' decisions to participate in joint projects. We show that a high‐reputation partner is not necessarily preferable to a low‐reputation partner and, when implementation of the joint project by a single firm is possible, a high‐quality partner may not be preferable to a low‐quality partner.     

Shooting the past? The modernisation of Conservative Party employment relations policy under David Cameron

Drawing on secondary data sources, the Conservative Party's efforts to modernise its approach to employment relations matters are discussed and critically scrutinised. Policy innovations are likely to be undermined by their mutual inconsistency with pervasive neoliberal, Eurosceptic and anti‐union values, indicating that on balance, any modernisation will be limited.     

Follow the Crowd or Follow the Trailblazer? The Differential Role of Firm Experience in Product Entry Decisions in the US Video Game Industry

Firms take cues from their external environment under uncertainty and imitate the actions of others. However, a firm’s own experience may either substitute for these external clues because the firm can evaluate uncertain situations more accurately, or it may complement them because the firm can act more successfully on the external cues. We argue that the type of external cues determines which of the two holds in the context of product entry decisions into market niches. If firms observe a large wave of entrants, own experience conveys more information than the imprecise signal of a mass of other firms. Conversely, if firms observe trailblazers, i.e., highly successful and influential products in a niche, own experience can help firms develop a strategy as a fast follower in a growing niche. We expect the supporting role of own experience in following trailblazers to be especially pronounced in niches that have not been discovered by a large mass of other firms. We study and test our hypotheses in the context of the US PC video game industry between 1991 and 2010 and find support for both the substitutive relationship between own experience and niche popularity and the complementary relationship of own experience and niche trailblazers. However, support for the complementary relationship is limited to less populated niches.     

A question of top talent? The effects of lateral hiring in two emerging economies

On the basis of a qualitative study in two emerging economies, we advance the literature on lateral hiring by developing an integrated phase model to explain how the effects of lateral hiring unfold to affect the originating firm and its employees. Our work uncovered two types of effects on the originating firm, i.e. first-order and second-order effects. Our stage model elucidates how the psychological and emotional effects are manifest to affect the existing employees. Personnel poaching appear to have triggered the quest for meaning and attempts by the existing employees to enhance their visibility, career adaptability and marketability. We discuss implications for practice, theory and research on lateral hiring.     

The future of the dollar–euro exchange rate

Monetary unification in Europe is expected to produce a major new international currency, which may compete with the U.S. dollar as the currency of choice in foreign exchange transactions, financial asset markets and central bank reserves. This study considers two important issues regarding the euro: its global role as medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value and its position relative to the U.S. dollar. Among the main considerations are differences in cyclical behavior, inflation differentials, trade patterns and capital flows, and risk-return assessments. External diversification of private portfolios and of central banks’ reserve holdings will play a key role in determining the euro’s exchange rate. Overall, despite its rough start, we argue that the euro may emerge as a challenger to the U.S. dollar.