Employer responses to union organising: patterns and effects

This article presents original research on employer responses to trade union organising campaigns in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates that there is no single response, with employers in some cases seeking to block and in others support union activity. These different patterns are strongly path dependent and reflect the prior degree of exposure to trade unionism of workplaces targeted for organising. Another finding is that employer responses co-vary with union approaches to organising, such that when the employer adopts adversarial tactics so does the union. The militancy of both parties, it seems, is mutually reinforcing. Finally, the evidence points to substantial influence of employer responses over the outcomes of organising. When employers are supportive then campaigns tend to be more successful, measured on a range of criteria. When the employer is hostile unions find it difficult to make progress and encounter particular difficulties in securing recognition.     

The impact of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance: the role of CEO position tenure and industry tenure

The relationship between Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and firm performance, despite generating significant scholarly interest, has remained mixed. These results may be attributed, at least in part, to the failure to sufficiently examine the potential impact of top management characteristics. The present study investigates how CEO characteristics (i.e. CEO industry and position tenure), impact the relationship between EO and firm performance within a sample of 579 US banks. As predicted, some support for a positive EO to performance relationship was found. In addition, the results strongly support, as posited, that CEO industry tenure positively moderates, and CEO position tenure negatively moderates, the EO to performance relationship. We also report evidence supporting the effect of EO, configured with CEO position tenure and industry tenure on firm performance. Our study suggests the EO–performance relationship is more complex than previous studies indicate. Implications for future research and practice are provided.     

Qualifications for tenure: The legal definitions

One of the most important norms of the academy is the right, and the unique ability, of faculty members to determine whether or not their colleagues are qualified for promotion or tenure. This right has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court. The national debate about quality in higher education has exacerbated the pressure caused by a limited job market in many academic disciplines to exert substantial pressure on institutions to make careful, appropriate tenure decisions, and on junior faculty to amass a record of performance that will be considered worthy of a positive tenure decision. Judicial responses to discrimination litigation have implications for the way in which promotion/tenure criteria are interpreted and applied by decision makers, the manner in which probationary faculty are nurtured and evaluated, and the faculty member's own strategy for building a record of high-quality performance.     

Mobility and optimal tenure choice

In this paper, we offer a dynamic model of the optimal tenure behavior of an individual who faces the possibility of moving multiple times during his lifetime. We also investigate the lifetime effects of such factors as income tax, property tax, transaction costs, and mortgage rates on the household’s tenure choice. The agents in the model utilize a genetic algorithm, a probabilistic search approach, to determine their optimal lifetime tenure choice path. The agents are forward looking in that they anticipate such possible events as changes in jobs, marital status, household size, or dissatisfaction with current residence. Our results suggest several housing policy implications and explain some of the empirical findings in the literature.     

Household tenure choice and migration

A model of the joint tenure choice and migration decision is estimated. Unlike previous work that has considered each decision separately or examined the premigration tenure status choice jointly with the migration decision, this analysis addresses change in tenure status as well. The empirical findings indicate that variables often thought to affect either or both tenure status of the residence location change decision have offsetting or augmenting effects on their joint probabilities which are masked if the decisions are examined independently.     

奥美：做最佳雇主的美好

1948年的秋天,大卫·奥格威站在宾夕法尼亚州兰开斯特的农场上,心情沮丧。他担心烟草、大白菜跟麦子的钱,他担心洪水——兰开斯特的雨又大又多,他没有干农活的身体,他觉得除草和给烟草掐尖的工作简直乏味之极。看着一望无际的农田,想想别人对他干农活的奚落,大卫·奥格威真的觉     

Aiding and Abetting Employer Discrimination: The Job Applicant's Role

Despite the complex nature of discrimination in employment, antidiscrimination legislation in most countries has placed almost exclusive responsibility on one party, the employer, who may base employment decisions on illegal grounds, by using personal information (such as age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, etc.) provided by job applicants. This study examined 107 real résumés from Australian managerial applicants to determine how much personal information is provided in résumés. It was found that although employers and recruitment consultants are prohibited from seeking personal information from applicants, this information is often either provided directly or indirectly by applicants in their résumés. Thus this paper suggests that job applicants aid and abet employer discrimination in the selection process. Methods to prevent or minimize discrimination in the recruitment and selection phases of the employment process are suggested.     

Housing tenure choice: Evidence from time series

A model of tenure choice is specified and estimated. A simple expression to represent the expected rate of return on equity for a homeowner is developed. Also the influence of the federal housing subsidy programs is analyzed. Both, plus permanent income and the implicit rental price of owner-occupied housing, are important determinants of tenure choice. Other influences are the financing gap with the standard mortgage instrument in an inflationary environment, the number of children less than 18 per family, assets and liabilities, and mortgage credit terms. Finally, the changes in housing tenure choice over the estimation period are analyzed.     

Residential mobility and housing tenure choice

This paper treats housing tenure choice and residential moves as joint decisions. The parameters of a semi-Markov model with two states, renting and owning and continuous time, length of stay, are estimated with data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 1970–1980. Several distributional assumptions for residence spells confirm the basic role played by housing prices, wealth and other characteristics. Higher wealth implies higher likelihood of owning higher mobility for renters and lower for owners. Households with educated hands are more mobile. Housing modal prices may have statistically very significant coefficients, but not always as anticipated.     

Independent director tenure and corporate transparency

We examine the impact of independent director tenure on corporate transparency. Using a sample of 12,423 firm-year observations from 1997 to 2017, we find that corporate transparency increases in independent director tenure. The results are robust to various variable definitions and model specifications, providing strong evidence supporting the Expertise hypothesis that long-tenured independent directors are better monitors and advisors. We conclude that long-tenured directors benefit firms and their investors by enhancing firm transparency and reducing information risk. Capping independent director tenure is not always beneficial.     

When territory matters: Employer associations and changing collective goods strategies

Recent research shows employer associations strategically responding to external challenges, from collective bargaining decentralisation, by altering their offerings of “selective” goods (to directly address threats to membership levels) and of “elective” goods (to revenues). Implicit is that traditional “collective goods” are irrelevant for achieving sustainability. That literature also suggests that territorial associations are more vulnerable than sectoral ones. In this qualitative, longitudinal comparative case study, we explore why and how two territorial associations, the largest each in Italy and Australia, have pursued sustainability by also innovatively enlarging their collective goods activities. This has involved shifting from bargaining leadership to promoting economic dynamism within their territories. Using metaorganisation theory and the resource‐based view, we explain how these associations realised their strategic advantages. Our evidence suggests that innovatively developing new collective goods may be another important way associations can improve their competitive positions.     

Employer responses to disability: Preliminary evidence and a research agenda

Representatives from 50 New Jersey private-sector businesses that had accommodated one or more workers with disabilities were interviewed about their experiences. This purposive sample included large and small businesses from a variety of industries located in every section of the state. Respondents were asked about the nature of the individual’s disability, how the accommodation was determined, what accommodations were considered and implemented, the costs of the accommodations, their success, and the performance level of the accommodated individual. Most respondents reported positive experiences in hiring, accommodating, and evaluating the performance of workers with disabilities. Fifty-four percent of the respondents who made accommodations reported that the accommodations cost nothing; another 16% spent less than $500 on the accommodation. Because so little research exists on the subject of accommodating workers with disabilities, a research agenda is proposed.     

Pragmatism and Compliance: Employer Responses to the Working Time Regulations

Analysis of Working Time Regulations data reveals three patterns of response that help to explain the lack of employers' post‐implementation protest: coincidence with current practice; easy ‘escape’ options; and non‐compliance. Whether this represents a failure of health and safety legislation or a pragmatic response to labour market conditions is discussed.     

Credit impairment and housing tenure status

We revisit the relationship between financing constraints and homeownership rates using the 2004 wave of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The survey respondents are a nationally representative sample of Americans 39–47 years of age as of this wave. As most of the sample had been in their current residence prior to 2004, this study reflects housing tenure status decisions made prior to the recent credit expansion and subsequent crisis. Past research has emphasized wealth constraints, and income constraints as limiting homeownership. The estimation results here point to primary roles for credit impairment and lack of credit history. We also find that excluding controls for the endogeneity of wealth and income may mask the impact of credit factors.     

Employer learning and the returns to schooling

Theoretical models of employer learning suggest that an employee's education is an important signal to the employer initially. Over time, however, the returns to schooling should decrease with labor market experience and increase with initially unobserved ability, since the employer gradually obtains better information on the productivity of an employee. Replicating US studies using a large German panel data set (GSOEP), we find no evidence for the employer learning hypothesis. Differentiating blue-collar and white-collar workers and estimating quantile regressions, however, leads to the conclusion that employer learning takes place for blue-collar workers at the lower end of the wage distribution.     

The downpayment constraint and housing tenure choice : A simplified exposition

This paper uses a two-period model to illustrate the effect_ of the downpayment constraint on housing tenure choice. The key trade-off induced by the constraint (the sacrifice of initial consumption in return for the tax-related benefits of eventual homeownership) is clearly portrayed. In addition to illustrating the basic problem, the analysis derives the impact of parameter changes on the outcome of the tenure decision.     

Housing tenure and labor market impacts: The search goes on

We develop two search-theoretic models emphasizing firm entry to examine the Oswald hypothesis, the idea that homeownership is linked to inferior labor market outcomes, and compare their predictions to three extant theories. The five models have surprisingly different predictions about the labor market at both the aggregate and micro levels. Using a suitable instrumental variable strategy, we estimate both micro and aggregate level regression models of wages and unemployment and compare the estimates to those predictions. We find that while homeowners are less likely to be unemployed, they also have lower wages, all else equal, compared to renters. In addition, higher regional homeownership rates are associated with a greater probability of individual worker unemployment and higher wages. The outcome of a horserace between our new search-theoretic models is mixed—the wage-posting model predicts observed unemployment impacts while a bargaining variant does a better job explaining observed wages and aggregate labor market outcomes. Overall, we conclude that firm behavior is important for understanding the labor market impacts of homeownership. Because this is the case, regional homeownership rates are not good instruments for individual tenure choice in empirical work. And while individual homeowners may have inferior labor market outcomes as compared to renters, from the viewpoint of society, higher homeownership rates may result in greater job creation and overall production, among other benefits.     

Training Strategies In Small Service Sector Firms: Employer and Employee Perspectives

Brian Abbott, who is a Research Assistant in the Small Business Research Centre at Kingston University, examines both employer and employee views towards the level and character of training provision in small service sector firms. He challenges the widely held belief that small firms universally offer inferior levels of training and demonstrates that the level and character of training are largely dependent on the industrial sector in which the firm is located. He goes on to examine the implications of employers’ views on the newly established Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs).     

Shop steward tenure and workplace organisation*

The shop steward theme is continued in this article which is based upon research carried out in six manufacturing plants in Hull. Graham Winch identifies the problem of shop steward turnover and argues that the most important cause lies in the shop steward being deprived of resources necessary for carrying out the job.     

Women on the board and executive tenure

The participation of women in top‐level corporate boards is subject to intense public debate. Countries are considering binding quotas to increase the share of women on boards or have already implemented such rules. Although research on board diversity suggests positive effects on corporate governance and firm performance, the mechanisms through which these benefits materialize remain mostly speculative. This study focuses on boards of directors in a large sample of listed companies in 15 European countries and finds that female representation on nonexecutive boards is associated with reduced turnover, an increase in tenure, and also a higher performance‐turnover sensitivity of executives.