The effect of training for internet use among local trade union leaders

Internet use is increasing among all segments of society, including labour unions. In this article, the authors examine the role that training plays in internet use among union leaders. A survey was conducted among union leaders in a large Midwestern state with an economy widely spread among agricultural, manufacturing, mining, transportation and public sectors. Applying theories of technology acceptance and social learning, the researchers proposed that formal training leads to internet use and that formal training reduces problems encountered by internet users. Formal training was found to have a significant relationship with both the use and reduction of many of the problems associated with internet use.     

Determinants of trade union influence over technological change

Trade unions have generally found it difficult to exercise influence over the process of technological change and its effect on the conditions and content of work. This article seeks to identify the circumstances under which unions may be able to gain access to the decision-making process and in turn shape the organisational outcomes of new technology.     

Competition and telecommunications infrastructure in Ireland: A trade union perspective

The Communication Workers' Union is opposed to competition in telecommunications infrastructure on the grounds that such competition would place the national operator, Telecom Eireann, in an impossible position, having regard to the enormous historic cost of developing the existing network and the requirement to invest a further £800 million over the next five years. It also believes that to duplicate investment in infrastructure would be inefficient in national terms and points to the 900 or more airliners parked in the world's deserts as an example of the type of stranded investment that can arise when competition is taken too far.     

工会工作在企业文化建设中的地位和作用

工会工作是企业管理的重要组成部分。充分认识工会工作在企业文化建设中的地位和作用,有利于促进企业思想政治工作的健康、有序发展。尤其是在新形势下,结合企业党委和行政工作特点,创造性地开展工会工作,对于不断创新企业文化建设的内容和形式,不断加强企业深层次管理,增强企业的凝聚力,起着不可替代的作用。一、全方位、高视角、多层次地认识工会工作在开展企业文化建设中的重要地位企业文化建设内容涵盖了物质文明、精神文明和政治文明的方方面面。在实际工作中,企业文化建设把情感注入管理,使系统的管理和人性化管理融为一体,不仅注重了…     

工会与煤矿企业安全的关系

文章指出,煤矿企业是典型的职工劳动强度高、从业危险性高、事故发生率高的"三高行业",在煤矿企业里安全是人命关天的头等大事。文章认为,要杜绝重大事故,减少零打碎敲事故,只有充分发挥工会在煤矿企业安全中的作用,才能创造宽松安全的环境,从而更好地保证企业的健康稳定。     

求真务实创新工会工作

求真务实创新工会工作,从正反两个方面阐述了工会工作要求真务实,维护职工权益要用求真务实的态度关心群众生活,实现群众需要,要有求真务实的精神才能把工会工作做好,民主管理工作要有求真务实的方法,工作自身建设要有求真务实的作风,反过来创新工会工作必须求真务实,遵循事物发展规律,符合科学发展观,符合工会工作总的客观发展方向,去追求工会工作内在的,本质的必然联系,才能把工会工作做得更加突出、更进步.     

The impact of shopbot use on prices and price dispersion: Evidence from online book retailing

Internet price search tools, notably shopbots, have reduced consumers' search costs for price and product characteristics. While a variety of analytic models predict that increased consumer search will lower price levels among competing retailers, there is no consensus in the literature as to how price dispersion will change with increased consumer search. Moreover, there are no papers that have empirically tested these predictions using direct observation of variation in shopbot use over time.This paper examines the impact of changes in shopbot use over time on pricing behavior in the Internet book market. We do this by combining price and clickstream data collected from August 1999 to July 2001 — a period of rapid expansion in shopbot use. We find that a 1% increase in shopbot use is correlated with a $0.41 decrease in price levels and a 1.1% decrease in price dispersion.     

Standards, trade and competition in the emerging global information infrastructure environment

Decentralized construction of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) is substituting market-driven, ‘de facto’ standards and voluntary agreements on standards for technical compatibility, in place of the engineering decisions once made by public (and quasi-public) telecommunications network operators. Due to strategic economic behaviours on the part of private businesses and national governments, the goal of a fully interoperable GII remains elusive. The Internet does not offer an entirely credible alternative model, as the standards that have facilitated its explosive growth also are contributing to serious congestion problems, and the solutions proposed point to the Internet's re-integration into the public switched telecommunications network. Technical standards will shape the GII's implications for international trade and competition, and thus raise important, but inadequately recognized issues for regulation, competition and trade policy.     

Does bridging the Internet Access Divide contribute to enhancing countries' integration into the global trade in services markets?

This paper examines the impact of countries' distance between their Internet usage and the world' average of the Internet usage intensity on their integration into the world market of trade in commercial services. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of 175 countries over the annual period 2000–2013, the empirical analysis indicates that the narrowing of the Internet-related distance would improve countries' integration into the world trade in commercial services market. Furthermore, it helps those countries that are geographically far from the world market to compensate for the adverse effect of this geographical distance on their integration into the world market of trade in commercial services.     

Economic doctrines and network policy

Disagreements over how to craft Internet policy have become more and more contentious and political. Beyond the technical and engineering aspects are economic questions, and the points of view of various stakeholders and participants on such network policy issues stem from differing economic philosophies. This paper postulates and describes four competing economic doctrines: conservative neoclassical, liberal neoclassical, neo-Keynesian, and innovation economics. It explains how each doctrine leads to different views of appropriate network policy and explores the influence of doctrine on four controversial network policy issues: broadband competition, net neutrality, copyright, and privacy. Understanding this doctrine based source of differences over network policy should help policy makers better understand core issues and make more informed policy decisions.     

Net Neutrality with Competing Internet Platforms

We propose a two‐sided model with two competing Internet platforms, and a continuum of Content Providers (CP's). We study the effect of a net neutrality regulation on capacity investments in the market for Internet access, and on innovation in the market for content. Under the alternative discriminatory regime, platforms charge a priority fee to those CP's which are willing to deliver their content on a fast lane. We find that under discrimination, investments in broadband capacity and content innovation are both higher than under net neutrality. Total welfare increases, though the discriminatory regime is not always beneficial to the platforms as it can intensify competition for subscribers. As platforms have a unilateral incentive to switch to the discriminatory regime, a prisoner's dilemma can arise. We also consider the possibility of sabotage, and show that it can only emerge, with adverse welfare effects, under discrimination.     

Consumer Decision-making at an Internet Shopbot: Brand Still Matters

Internet shopbots compare prices and service levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analysing consumer choice. We analyse 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. The three most heavily branded retailers hold a $1.72 price advantage over more generic retailers in head-to-head price comparisons. In particular, we find that consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability.     

Industrial restructuring, 'globalisation], and the trade union response: A study of MSF in thesouth west of England

This article examines the trade union response to industrial restructuring in two sectors highly exposed to international market competition in the south west of England. The authors have conducted interviews of MSF representatives in the insurance and aerospace industries and supplemented this qualitative data with data collected from a wide questionnaire distribution.     

Managers and union membership

White-collar unions have been growing substantially in the last decade and managerial unionism is forming an important partof the growth. A number of new trade unions designed exclusively for managers and professional workers are expected to have more appeal than traditional unions. The increasing concentration of employment, more favourable attitudes of employers to white-collar unions, changes in labour law, continuing problems with the managementof the economy and the effecton pay differentials and the developmentof defensive managerial unions with a moderate character are seen as the main factors explaining the growth of managerial unionism. By virtue of their avowed moderation and exclusiveness, doubts are expressed about the likely effectiveness of these unions, and as managers and professional workers are joining the unions for instrumental, rather than ideological reasons, lack of results may lead to further developments toward traditional trade unionism.     

占领APP

无论你做着多么传统的生意,一间餐厅、一个连锁超市或是一家银行…不容否认的是,在过去的十年里,互联网实实在在地改变了你所处的商业生态。你建起了网站,购买门户或搜索引擎广告、     

Employing New Business Divisions to Exploit Disruptive Innovations: The Interplay between Characteristics of the Corporation and Those of the Venture Management Team

Established firms often create new business divisions in response to new ways of competing, such as those based on disruptive innovations. Using a sample of daily newspapers and their Internet divisions, this study examines the corporate characteristics of orientation, attention, and control and venture management team characteristics of vision, experience, and collective efficacy and their interactive effects on the overall performance of the new division. Findings demonstrate that vision and collective efficacy are related to venture outcomes, orientation affects the experience and vision to venture performance relationships, attention enhances the vision and collective efficacy to performance relationships, and decision autonomy influences the experience and collective efficacy to venture performance relationships. Overall, the results of this study imply that specific venture management team characteristics and corporate characteristics may be tailored to improve chances of meeting specific performance targets and achieving overall venture success.     

腾讯的系统

开放是腾讯突破瓶颈的必经之路，这需要它重新适应一个平台服务商的角色，其对规则制订的主导欲受到挑战。 对于乐风创想CEO任锋来说，最令他印象深刻的，也许不是在前不久的腾讯开放平台颁奖典礼上的风光无限，而是去年6月的生死之交。 任锋曾经是暴风影音联合创始人和CTO，后来自己创业。     

Geographical gaps in the Portuguese broadband access. Rethinking the role of public funding after years of trade liberalisation

Digital information flows are influencing and interacting with real places in a very complex and dynamic way. The main objective of this article is to present a detailed study concerning Portugal, with the purpose of questioning the effective role of broadband Internet access in decreasing regional disparities or, to the contrary, as an unanticipated contribution to the aggravation of territorial inequalities. To answer this question, the paper will present selected cartographic analyses, showing the spatial extent of the most recent broadband technological solutions available in Portugal (DSL technology, coaxial cable, fibre-optic cable, WiFi access or 3G/UMTS technology). Market failures originating in pro-competitive policies between private operators may lead to a rethink of the role of public funding after years of trade liberalisation.     

Effects of data localization on digital trade: An agent-based modeling approach

Post the Snowden and Cambridge Analytica episodes, concerns have been raised by governments and regulators on protecting consumer data collected and transmitted by various digital firms. Driven by concerns of privacy, national security, surveillance, and cyber terrorism, governments around the world have been erecting barriers in cyberspace through data localization. The extent of data localization varies from free flow of data, to stringent restrictions requiring all data to be stored only within the territorial jurisdiction of the country. Though there are certain legitimate concerns regarding protection of personal data, scholars and liberal economists have long proclaimed that any restrictions on the Internet and associated digital trade will have serious economic consequences. Data localization affects digital trade between consumers and producers of digital services to varying degrees. In this paper, we use agent based modeling to study the properties and behaviours of consumers and producers under varying data localization regimes. An augmented gravity model of trade with iceberg coefficient is incorporated to reflect distance-related costs between producers and consumers. Varying data localization compliance costs are included to reflect the effect of non-tariff barriers of data restrictions. Our extensive simulations indicate that there is often clustering of consumers around local firms in highly restrictive data localization regimes, thus enabling local firms to effectively compete against global multinationals. However, results also indicate that while free cross-border data flow enables intense competition amongst producers, data localization restrictions often limit consumer choice due to its effect on price and quality of services.     

Mobile service innovation: A European failure

The continuing absence of innovation in Europe’s mobile services industry is identified and characterised here, with such examples as mobile Internet and mobile music. Innovation failure is a critical factor leading to a lack of high-income jobs, network effects, and price reductions for data services. Most mobile service innovations have been made in Japan in ‘clubs of operators’ with their suppliers. Apple USA followed the same model of control with its iPhone. Conversely, a lack of this critical type of competition characterises European operators. Revenues per citizen are in some countries similar to those in Japan, but with handsets with less functions. Europe and all other regions face the challenge of competing with Japanese and US innovators. The lessons to be learned are (1) becoming aware of the situation, (2) allocating spectrum that covers a sufficient population size to allow technological competition, and (3) developing a strong customer orientation.