Collective Bargaining and Wage Dispersion in Europe

The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only ‘multi‐employer’, and a second in which it is ‘multi‐level’, in the sense that workers can be covered by both a ‘multi‐employer’ and a ‘single‐employer’ contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer–employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a ‘multi‐employer’ contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both ‘multi‐employer’ and ‘single‐employer’ contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single‐employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers.     

Erratum: The effects of procedural and informational justice in the integration of related acquisitions

The above article (DOI: 10.1000/smj728) was published online on 20 November 2008 in Wiley Interscience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). Printing errors were subsequently identified in the article: Page 14. Table 1: row 13 should be labelled ‘Post‐integration financial return’. Page 14. Table 1: row 14 should be labelled ‘Post‐integration market position’. Page 17. lines 48‐50: ‘Improving financial return requires removal of critical organizational elements with which organization members feel tightly connected.’ should read ‘Improving financial return requires removal of critical organizational elements such as company names, departments, products, and people with which organization members feel tightly connected.’     

Three generations of Telework: New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office

‘New ICTs’, such as smartphones and tablet computers, have revolutionised work and life in the 21st Century. Crucial to this development is the detachment of work from traditional office spaces. Today's office work is often supported by Internet connections, and thus can be done from anywhere at any time. Research on detachment of work from the employer's premises actually dates back to the previous century. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jack Nilles and Allan Toffler predicted that work of the future would be relocated into or nearby employees’ homes with the help of technology, called ‘Telework’. Analysing technological advancements—the enabling forces of change in this context—over four decades sheds new light on this term: they have fostered the evolution of Telework in distinct stages or ‘generations’. Today's various location‐independent, technology‐enabled new ways of working are all part of the same revolution in the inter‐relationship between paid work and personal life.     

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.     

Barriers to Entry and Competitive Behavior: Evidence from Reforms of Cable Franchising Regulations

Between 2005 and 2008, nineteen of the fifty states of the U.S. reformed the franchising process for cable television, significantly easing entry into local markets. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach that exploits the staggered introduction of reforms, we find that prices for ‘Basic’ service declined systematically by about 5.5 to 6.8 per cent following the reforms, but we find no statistically significant effect on average price for the more popular ‘Expanded Basic’ service. We also find that the reforms led to increased actual entry in reformed states, by about 11.6% relative to non‐reformed states. Our analysis shows that the decline in price for ‘Basic’ service holds for markets that did not experience actual entry, consistent with limit pricing by incumbents. To control for potential state‐level shocks correlated with the reforms, we undertake a sample‐split test that finds larger declines in prices for both ‘Basic’ and ‘Expanded Basic’ services in local markets which faced a greater threat of entry (because they were close to a prominent second entrant). Our results are consistent with limit pricing models that predict incumbents respond to increased threat of entry, and suggest that the reforms facilitated entry and modestly benefited consumers in reformed states.     

Discretionary technology bootlegging tensions in institutional healthcare work

We explore individuals who take some of their technology use ‘underground’, described as ‘bootlegging’, to enhance healthcare work. We find that healthcare professionals’ informal use of mobile applications in healthcare work sometimes ‘sticks out’ and this produces professional identity tensions: (1) conflict with perceptions of professional behaviour, and (2) defilement of expert judgment. Our analysis, moreover, reveals that identity work (i.e. ‘accepting’ and ‘sensemaking’) provides a coping mechanism to deal with these unresolved professional identity tensions. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the constitutive entanglements and two‐way interactions of discretionary technology bootlegging, professional identity and autonomy in institutional healthcare work.     

Is performance driven by industry‐ or firm‐specific factors? A response to Hawawini,Subramanian, and Verdin

Hawawini, Subramanian, and Verdin (2003) examined the relative impact of industry‐ vs. firm‐level factors shaping firm performance. They demonstrated that variance in firm performance attributable to industry‐level factors increases, while variance attributable t to firm‐level factors decreases when ‘exceptionally’ higher‐ and lower‐performing ‘outlier’ firms in each industry are excluded. They concluded that previous research underestimated the relative impact of industry‐level factors for ‘average’ firms that make up the bulk of an industry. We take issue with their methods used to identify and exclude outliers as well as their conclusions drawn from such analyses. Rather than excluding true ‘outlier’ firms, we argue that they incorporated an artificial restriction of within‐industry sample variance that almost deterministically led to lower firm and higher industry variance component estimates. We demonstrate this point with a comparable sample of data to which we apply progressively greater restrictions on within‐industry sample variance leading to similar results. Finally, we show that exclusion of firms from a data sample based on commonly understood standards of outlier identification leads to little change in industry and firm variance component estimates compared to full‐sample estimates. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Fair Work’ and the Modernization of Australian Labour Standards: A Case of Institutional Plasticity Entrenching Deepening Wage Inequality

Australia was long recognized for its relatively compressed wage structure. From the 1940s to the 1970s this was associated with a comprehensive regime of ‘award‐based’ minimum wages. Since the 1980s, this has been subjected to comprehensive ‘modernization’. After three decades of reform and in the most supportive economic environment in the OECD, Australian wage inequality has deepened. Although multiple political‐economic forces have been at play, the evolution of Australia's labour standards regime is an example of ‘institutional plasticity’ whereby the purpose and operations of wage‐setting institutions not only evolves but can actually be inverted over time.     

Customer‐led and market‐oriented: a matter of balance

This article is prompted by Slater and Narver’s (1998) SMJ article entitled ‘Customer‐led and market‐oriented: Let’s not confuse the two’. It is suggested here that Slater and Narver’s contention that strategic success is a function of market‐led orientation rather than customer‐led orientation is too reductionist a proposition which gives inadequate weight to the resource endowment and scale differences between companies. The argument is offered that success through time for the bulk of businesses will be directly related to close relationships with existing customers, particularly for smaller companies, which are the vast majority. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Thinking strategically about thinking strategically: the computational structure and dynamics of managerial problem selection and formulation

A new model of managerial problem formulation is introduced and developed to answer the question: ‘What kinds of problems do strategic managers engage in solving and why?’ The article proposes that a key decision metric for choosing among alternative problem statements is the computational complexity of the solution algorithm of alternative statements. Managerial problem statements are grouped into two classes on the basis of their computational complexity: P‐type problems (canonically easy ones) and NP‐type problems (hard ones). The new model of managerial cognitive choice posits that managers prefer to engage with and solve P‐type problems over solving NP‐type problems. The model explains common patterns of managerial reasoning and decision making, including many documented ‘biases’ and simplifying heuristics, and points the way to new effects and novel empirical investigations of problem solving‐oriented thinking in strategic management and types of generic strategies, driven by predictions about the kinds of market‐ and industry‐level changes that managers will or will not respond to. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influences on strategic decision effectiveness: Development and test of an integrative model

This paper draws upon three broad perspectives on the strategic decision‐making process in order to develop a more completely specified model of strategic decision effectiveness in a different context, namely Egypt. The key variables in this model consist of three strategic decision‐making process dimensions (rationality, intuition, and political behavior); seven moderating variables concerning decision‐specific, environmental, and organizational factors; and strategic decision effectiveness as an outcome variable. A two‐stage study was conducted in which the first stage provided exploratory insights and the second stage investigated hypotheses on the impact of strategic decision‐making process dimensions on strategic decision effectiveness and the moderating role of broader contextual variables. The second‐stage study produced three major findings: (1) both rational and political processes appear to have more influence on strategic decision effectiveness than does intuition; (2) strategic decision effectiveness is both process‐ and context‐specific; and (3) certain results support the ‘culture‐free’ argument, while others support the ‘culture‐specific’ argument. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Ronaldo Munck. Globalisation and Labour: The New ‘Great Transformation’ Gerda van Roozendaal. Trade Unions and Global Governance: The Debate on a Social Clause Edited by Jeffrey Harrod and Robert O’Brien. Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy Louise Amoore. Globalisation Contested: An International Political Economy of Work Edited by Christopher Candland and Rudra Sil. The Politics of Labor in a Global Age: Continuity and Change in Late‐industrializing and Post‐socialist Economies Edited by Jürgen Hoffmann. The Solidarity Dilemma: Globalisation, Europeanisation and the Trade Unions Edited by Alan B. Krueger and Robert Solow. The Roaring Nineties: Can Full Employment Be Sustained? David I. Levine, Dale Belman, Gary Charness, Erica L. Groshen and K. C. O’Shaughnessy. W. E. How New is the ‘New Employment Contract’? Evidence from North American Pay Practices Christopher K. Ansell. Schism and Solidarity in Social Movements: The Politics of Labour in the French Third Republic Jean‐Pierre Durand and Nicolas Hatzfeld, translated by Dafydd Roberts. Living Labour: Life on the Line at Peugeot France Jennifer Lynn Roney. Webs of Resistance in a Newly Privatized Polish Firm: Workers React to Organizational Transformation     

The Bases of Compromise in the Workplace: A Theoretical Framework

Schemes for workplace participation have long been promoted and vilified. Such conflicting views have been brought into sharp focus by the highly variable results of such practices as teamwork. Yet a theoretical framework to grasp workplace co‐operation is lacking. This paper develops a framework on the basis of theory and a review of a wide range of empirical studies. Capital and labour each have two sets of ‘concerns’: over ‘control’ of the workplace and the longer term ‘development’ of the productive forces. Cross‐classifying these concerns produces a matrix of patterns of workplace relations. Each cell of the matrix represents a different combination of the interests of capital and labour. The matrix can be used to map participation schemes so as to capture their varying features. The next task, pursued elsewhere, is to identify the conditions leading to locations in different cells of the matrix.     

The influence of material resources on innovation projects: the role of resource elasticity

More (rather than fewer) material resources are thought to be the key driver in innovation project performance. Recent empirical evidence, however, suggests that the influence of material resource availability on innovation projects is not as simple and straightforwardly positive as it may seem. We build on the concept of an innovation project team's resource elasticity to disentangle the material resource–innovation output conundrum. This concept is analogous to the marketing concept of price elasticity and points to four types of innovation project teams based on their resource elasticity: In resource‐elastic teams, the relationship between material resources and innovation outcomes is positive (hence, they are ‘resource driven’ when able to dispose of adequate material resources or ‘resource victims’ when lacking these material resources). In contrast, and as a significant departure from previous work, resource‐inelastic teams show no or even a negative relationship between material resource adequacy and team performance (thus, the teams are ‘resourceful’ if they can perform with limited material resources or ‘resource burners’ if they show low success with adequate material resources). Because neither adequate nor inadequate material resources seem to be a reliable predictor of success, we synthesize empirical research efforts that point to each team type's key characteristics to derive novel implications for managing innovation projects.     

The Political Economy of Occupational Family Policies: Comparing Workplaces in Britain and Germany

With a shift in the political debate to more market‐driven social policy approaches during the past decade, politicians in a number of European countries have argued that employers should take on greater responsibilities in the provision of social policy. But why should employers get involved? After reviewing the relevant literature on firm‐level social policy, we analyse the conditions and causal pathways that lead to their provision. Our findings show that (i) the skill structure and level of the workforce are important conditions for firm‐level engagement; (ii) employers have usually been the ‘protagonists’; (iii) the role of unions has been more limited — in Germany they can largely be characterized as ‘consenters’, whereas in Britain, their impact is negligible; (iv) in accordance with the specific systems of industrial relations, the design in Germany very much follows the concept of social partnership; in Britain the design is usually based on unilateral management decisions; and (v) based on these conditions and causal pathways, ‘enclave social policy’ is the likely result of the expansionary policy development, although in Germany, these policies have the potential of becoming an element of ‘industrial citizenship’.     

Managerial challenges of outbound open innovation: a study of a spinout initiative in AstraZeneca

While the research on open innovation is flourishing, less attention has so far been given to ‘outbound’ processes in comparison to ‘inbound’ and ‘coupled’ open innovation. In this paper we analyze a qualitative case study of the global bio‐pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and their attempt to establish a spinout initiative where internal projects are transferred to entrepreneurial startups funded by external venture capital. We explain the enactment work of this initiative and identify three emerged managerial challenges, linked to (1) internal decision‐making, (2) the cultural and psychological barriers of what we phrase as the ‘not‐invented‐elsewhere’ (NIE) syndrome, and (3) the ability to translate and communicate internal projects as attractive external proposals. Theoretical and managerial implications in relation to these challenges are outlined and discussed.     

Conceptualizing Work,Family and Community: A Socio‐Ecological Systems Model,Taking Account of Power,Time, Space and Life Stage

A large body of empirical research now exists about ‘work and family’, much of it in agreement on critical issues. However, it is under‐conceptualized, it over‐researches professional and managerial workers and it under‐attends the larger terrain of work, family and community. This contribution argues the case for a stronger analytical framework around work, family and community and the ways in which they intersect, drawing on concepts commonly used in the field of employment relations. The article utilizes a body of empirical research about work, family and community in Australia to develop Voydanoff's ecological systems model of work, home and community, arguing that it is vital to unpack the ‘black box’ of ‘work’ in a multi‐layered way, to give appropriate weight to various sources of power, and to avoid an individualistic approach to the reconciliation of work, home and community life by locating analysis in a larger social and political context. The contribution proposes a ‘socio‐ecological systems’ model of work, home and community that delineates the four issues of power, time, space and life stage.     

Beyond the Union‐Centred Approach: A Critical Evaluation of Recent Trade Union Elections in China

Many Western scholars have regarded union democracy and elections as affairs that are internal to trade unions and unconnected with outside forces. Going beyond the mainstream union‐centred approach, this study critically assesses one significant type of union election that has been emerging in China since 2010 and that has been driven by different forces from previous elections. Previous workplace union elections had been ‘top‐down’ — initiated by the party‐state or its apparatuses, or else transnational corporation‐induced — but this newer type of election has been driven by workers' strikes. This study illustrates how the dynamics among the quadripartite actors — party‐state, higher‐level trade unions, capital and labour — have shaped these strike‐driven elections. Contrary to the claim that these elections have been ‘direct’ and ‘democratic’, our case studies show that they have been indirect and quasi‐democratic in nature.     

From Coping Strategies to Tactics: London's Low‐Pay Economy and Migrant Labour

This article examines the means by which low‐paid migrant workers survive in a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers face in the London labour market reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. Instead, workers adopt a range of ‘tactics’ that enable them to ‘get by’, if only just, on a day‐to‐day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the connections between different workers’ experiences of the workplace, home and community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of the London labour market and of the city more widely.