Transforming industrial relations in Russia: a case of convergence with industrialised market economies?

Here the authors discuss the ‘old unions’, the ‘new unions’ and the still dominant role of the state. They show how contemporary IR includes changes towards arrangements that are more typical of industrialised market economies (IMEs); nevertheless, there are significant continuities with past patterns, and divergences from IMEs’ arrangements.     

Past absence as a predictor of present absence: the case of a large Danish municipality

This article investigates whether past absence behaviour is a predictor of present absence duration in a large Danish municipality with 17,499 individuals observed from 1996 to 2004. Past absence behaviour is measured in both absence days and absence spells. The article also investigates a number of confounders such as gender, age, seniority, wage, contracted number of work hours and season. The results of the empirical study show that there is a significant positive relationship between employees' absence duration and past absence spells and past absence days, respectively. The study thus confirms that past days and past spells have an equal potential of predicting present absent. Past absence behaviour can thus be used as an early warning for managers. The study also confirms that personal characteristics such as age and seniority also influence absence duration. Moreover, job characteristics such as wage and contracted number of work hours also influence absence duration. Finally, the season of the year seems to influence absence duration.     

Work values preferences of Generation Y: performance relationship insights in the Australian Public Service

Empirical research to date has provided few insights into the values and performance norms of Generation Y in the workplace. Our exploratory qualitative study treats work values preferences as inferred performance behavior in an attempt to shed light on the Generation Y performance relationship in the Australian Public Service (APS). Adopting a person–organization values fit framework, our study draws attention to how Generation Y employees (N = 60) and older managers (N = 20) shape key aspects of performance around their own different values judgments of APS operational procedures (i.e. ‘unnecessary bureaucracy’ vs. ‘legitimate governance’) and merit-based promotion (i.e. ‘it’s just wasting people’s time’ vs. ‘younger employees expect too much, too soon’). Findings suggest areas of work supportive of an efficient Generation Y performance relationship (i.e. Generation Ys’ work ethic), as well as inefficient areas of performance where managers and Generation Y hold different work values preferences (i.e. unrealistic expectations; underperforming colleagues; decision-making processes). Performance implications associated with how managers may respond to the work values preferences of Generation Y are discussed.     

Microelectronics,technological change and industrialised economies: an overview*

This article presents an overview of how microelectronics affects industrialised economies, and specifically the world of work. It discusses first, the effect on organisation and markets; second, its employment consequences; and third, the implications for skills and training.     

Work environment and participation: the case of teachers in Denmark and New Zealand

Employees' participation in decision making at work is often identified as a key element in work environment quality. In this comparative case study, the focus is on teachers' work in Denmark and Zealand. The substantial variations in work environment quality found across four schools are shown to be associated with corresponding differences in participation. In particular, perceived work environment quality is associated with collective and representative forms of participation.     

Judiciaries in corrupt societies

Recent empirical work shows that judicial dependence can explain high levels of corruption. This paper examines how the dependence of judiciaries influences corruption at different levels of the government in a model where the central government, low-level officials, and the judiciary are corrupt. In the model, the central government sells offices to low-level officials and demands ex-post payments enforced by the judiciary. Because an independent judiciary can rule against the central authority and accept bribes from stealing low-level officials, it reduces corruption at the higher level of government but promotes corruption at the lower level. Therefore, even if highly corrupt, an independent judiciary may reduce total corruption.     

Population equilibrium in primitive societies

The aboriginal distribution of population in North America is found not to be positively related to the richness of the natural environment, contrary to the predictions of the Malthusian model, the dominant one in Anthropology. Great abundance of some resources can encourage nomadism or raise the productivity of women, two determinants of the cost of children, which I find are associated with, lower aboriginal population density among a sample of tribes of North American Indians.     

Military expenditure in post-conflict societies

Post-conflict situations face a high risk of reversion to conflict. We investigate the effect of military expenditure by the government during the first decade post-conflict on the risk of reversion. We contrast two theories as to the likely effects. In one, military spending deters conflict by reducing the prospects of rebel success. In the other it acts as a signal to the rebels of government intentions. In the signalling model, low military spending signals that the government intends to adhere to the terms of the peace settlement and so reduces the risk of renewed rebellion. We investigate the effects of post-conflict military spending on the risk of conflict, using our existing models of military expenditure and of conflict risk. We find that, consistent with the signalling model, high military spending post-conflict significantly increases the risk of renewed conflict. This effect of military spending is distinctive to post-conflict period, and becomes progressively more pronounced over the decade. Received: April 2004, Accepted: December 2004, JEL Classification: H56, F35, O10     

Front Line Work In the ‘New Model Service Firm’: Australian and Japanese Comparisons

This article assesses the claims of the management literature regarding two important aspects of front line service work; job content and relations with the immediate supervisor. It does this, firstly, by examining the relevant research literatures and, secondly, by presenting evidence from two firms based in Australia and from one based in Japan. These firms were chosen as approximating to the ideal type of the ‘new model service firm’. Evidence on knowledge, skills and creativity in the three sites suggests important commonalities with, and differences from, the ‘routine worker’ ideal type. the major difference lay in the considerable amount of internal contextual knowledge that was required in the role. Relations with the immediate supervisor were examined by focusing on the social relations of control and learning. the evidence on control and learning, cumulatively, indicated a tendency towards the supervisor adopting less of a direct control role and adopting more of a hierarchical teaching role.     

The ruling bargain: sovereign wealth funds in elite-dominated societies

This paper generates new results on the creation and use of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) as tools for maximizing political power of the ruling class. It models a ruler’s decision to set up a SWF in a society dominated by a powerful elite in order to pacify the elite’s political ambitions by transferring resource rents. Furthermore, it shows under which circumstances the ruler is able to gain the elite’s support using a fund and to overcome the danger of coups d’état. SWFs can serve as appropriate instruments for this purpose because they are long-term oriented and strongly institutionalized.     

The Majoritarian Compromise in large societies

First, we dwell on the definition of the Majoritarian Compromise in the case of an odd number of alternatives. Then, assuming the Impartial Culture hypothesis we calculate the average maximum welfare achievable by the Majoritarian Compromise procedure and show that this social choice rule is asymptotically stable with the proportion of the number of unstable profiles to the total number of profiles being in the order of ,(¹We write in case there is a positive constant C such that for all sufficiently large values of ) where n is the total number of agents. I am grateful to Prof. Semih Koray for his invitation to visit the Center for Economic Design and the Department of Economics of Boğazi?i University in Turkey during the spring semester of 1999. I appreciate the stimulating discussions with Prof. Murat Sertel about the properties of the Majoritarian Compromise which I had during my stay there. I am also grateful to an anonymous referee whose remarks helped to significantly improve the exposition. A partial support from TüBİTAK NATO PC-B Programme is gratefully acknowledged.     

Measuring the technical efficiency of cooperative societies in Kuwait

This study employs bootstrap data envelopment analysis to measure the technical efficiencies of 48 Kuwaiti retail cooperative societies (coops) during the years 2012–2015. Average profit efficiency falls substantially from 84% to 70% after applying a bootstrap correction. The bias is larger for coops originally identified as being on the efficient frontier. The average coop is too small, but both profitability and efficiency are negatively related to the number of direct branches (mini‐marts). Also, coops can increase profitability through greater equity capitalization, whereas better control of labor costs leads to higher profit efficiency.     

A Western Australian Test of Invariant Factorial Structure in the Work Autonomy Scale Between Managerial and Non-Managerial Employee Classifications

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the conceptualisation of work autonomy through an investigation of the factorial structure stability of the Global Work Autonomy Scale at different employee levels. After administering the Global Work Autonomy Scale (Breaugh, 1985) to employees in a public sector organisation, analysis of responses confirmed an a priori three-factor model of work autonomy (method autonomy, scheduling autonomy and criteria autonomy) in a group of non-managerial employees (n = 193). A subsequent multi-sample analysis was conducted to test the invariance of the three-factor model for a group of managerial employees (n = 205). After constraining factor loadings and factor covariances, the hypothesised model continued to provide a reasonable fit to the data, confirming the generalisability of the three-factor model to both employee classifications. The methodological and theoretical implications for research into work autonomy are discussed.     

Social integration and the role of student societies in higher education: an exploratory study in the UK

• This paper reports the research findings of an exploratory study designed to examine the role that planned efforts to establish and cultivate a student society play in the social integration of undergraduate students in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK. It identifies and explores the potential positive and negative benefits and outcomes that the operation of such a society can provide. The study aimed to achieve a better understanding of the role that a student society can play in the social integration of students. A qualitative methodology using 12 in‐depth interviews was employed. Data were analysed in relation to the key theme of the study, that is, student‐peer and student‐staff interactions. In addition, emergent themes were recorded and evaluated. The findings demonstrated that involvement in a student society did contribute to the social integration of students, it was found to be a key factor in reducing student attrition and dropout rates. The findings also demonstrate that a student society can make a meaningful and positive contribution to the management and administration of HEIs in terms of the perceived employability of students and the potential for student recruitment. It would appear that perhaps the value of a student society is currently under‐realised. Student societies could be viewed as a resource that with proper attention and development and could provide real benefits for both students and institutions across the entire HEI environment of the UK. Although there is a danger of student marginality occurring, there are ways to address this potential drawback.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influences on the rise of new organizations: the formation of women's medical societies.

This study examined the organizational context in which medical societies composed of women physicians were formed in the last decade of the nineteenth century in America. The inquiry was centered on the relationship between the number of existing organizations and the formation of a particular category of association. Two explanations for a relationship between the number of organizations and the establishment of women's medical societies were investigated: (1) the opportunities existing organizations allow for individuals to acquire skills they can use to start other organizations; and (2) the importance of social networks built within existing organizations. The results showed more medical societies in the cities where women's medical societies emerged than in a matched set of cities. The results would seem to imply that it is the presence of organizations similar to the focal one that is related to the formation of a particular kind of organization not the overall level of organizational activity.     

Allocating chances of success in finite and infinite societies: The utilitarian criterion

We study a particular collective choice problem, that of allocating chances of success. We argue that many problems of interest have this nature, from small scale problems like medical triage to large scale ones like the allocation of opportunities in society. We consider both finite and infinite societies. We characterise utilitarian-type criteria by means of new properties tailored to the probabilistic structure of the alternatives.