Decision support systems for human resource training and development

Human resource training and development methods and techniques have different qualitative characteristics that require a multicriteria and multiscenario framework for their assessment. This study incorporates the AHP to assess the nine most important human resource training and development methods and techniques, under five criteria and six scenarios. The methods considered are ‘on-the-job training’, ‘mentorship’, ‘apprenticeship’, ‘vestibule training/simulators’, ‘web-based learning’, ‘instructor-led classroom training’, ‘programmed self-instruction’, ‘case studies/role playing’ and ‘systematic job rotations and transfers’. ‘Vestibule training/simulators’ and ‘mentorship’ have the average best scores, and they should be among the first priorities especially when efficiency, the motivation of employees and minimization of the duration of training time are the most important factors. ‘Web-based learning’ is ideal for minimizing training costs or when ease of application is the first priority. ‘On-the-job training’ is a very good alternative when the cost of training should be reduced while the motivation of employees should be increased.     

Negotiating European Works Councils: contours of constrained choice

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the factors influencing the nature of the ‘constrained choices’ being made by management and employee representatives in concluding agreements establishing EWCs. Four influences—a ‘statutory model effect’; a ‘learning effect’; a ‘country effect’; and a ‘sector effect’—are found to be at work.     

“I have to go the extra mile”. How fat female employees manage their stigmatized identity at work

This study explores how fat female employees engage in identity work to manage stigmatizing expectations grounded in healthism and obesity discourse that construct fat people as unhealthy, stupid, unprofessional, and lazy. We interviewed 22 women who self-identified as fat, full-figured or obese. Our analysis reveals how our participants engaged in identity work strategies in order to project a professional appearance and highlight their work performances. Many strategies reproduced dominant notions about fatness such as ‘smartening up’, ‘distracting’, ‘hiding’, ‘concealing’, ‘humour’, ‘compensating’, ‘explaining’ and ‘defensive Othering’. Yet at times some participants also used strategies that challenged dominant discourses about size, such as ‘flaunting’, ‘irony’ and ‘self-acceptance’. The identity work strategies our participants engaged in were not just narrative; many involved what they did with their bodies. We therefore argue the need for further theorizing embodied identity work, specifically with regards to how size matters in the context of employment.     

Spaces of Difference: Reflections from Toronto on Multiculturalism,Bourgeois Urbanism and the Possibility of Radical Urban Politics

What explains the lack of what Mike Davis famously called ‘magical urbanism’— referring to the increasingly influential and potentially radical role played by Latino immigrants in US politics — in such diverse Canadian cities as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver? This article points out how the Canadian legacy of multiculturalism constitutes one key cause of the failure of left urban politics in Canada to produce yet anything approaching the promise of ‘magical urbanism’ south of the border, especially by underlining how this bulwark of liberal ideology lends itself so readily to some resilient variations of bourgeois urbanism — including the commodification of difference, most recently under the auspices of Richard Florida's ‘creative class’. Against the pluralism of the food court and the shopping mall, both in its official multicultural and seemingly oppositional ‘hybrid’ forms, are radical approaches to difference in the city still possible — in Canada or elsewhere? The authors argue that the concepts of ‘maximal’ and ‘produced’ (vis‐à‐vis ‘minimal’ and ‘induced’) difference and the politics of ‘the right to the city’ elaborated by Henri Lefebvre — in conjunction with the reflections on subaltern experiences of difference by critics such as Himani Bannerji and Ambalavanar Sivanandan — indeed provide a starting point for radical urban politics. Comment expliquer, dans des villes canadiennes aussi différentes que Toronto, Montréal ou Vancouver, l’absence de ce que Mike Davis a appelé‘l’urbanisme magique’ en parlant du rôle de plus en plus influent, voire radical, des immigrants latinoaméricain dans la politique des États‐unis? L’héritage canadien du multiculturalisme explique d’abord pourquoi la politique urbaine de gauche n’a encore rien pu produire au Canada qui s’approcherait de la promesse d’un ‘urbanisme magique’ comme au sud de la frontière. L’article souligne notamment comment ce rempart d’idéologie libérale se prête si facilement à quelques variantes résistantes d’urbanisme bourgeois, dont la banalisation de la différence, tout récemment sous les auspices de la ‘classe créative’ de Richard Florida. Face au pluralisme de l’aire de restauration et du centre commercial, tous deux sous des formes ‘hybrides’ multiculturelles et aparemment contradictoires, des approches radicales de la différence dans la ville sont‐elles encore possibles, au Canada ou ailleurs? Les concepts de différence ‘maximale’ et ‘produite’ (par opposition à‘minimale’ et ‘induite’) et la politique du ‘droit à la ville’ conçue par Henri Lefebvre — alliés aux réflexions sur des expériences de différence subalternes émanant de critiques tels que Himani Bannerji et Ambalavanar Sivanandan — offrent indubitablement un point de départ pour une politique urbaine radicale.     

A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE TOP FIVE ECONOMICS JOURNALS DURING 2012–2016

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the top five economics journals during the period 2012–2016 and provides helpful insights into the document types, the distribution of country/territories, the distribution of institutions, the geographical distribution of authors, the most active authors and their research interests or fields, the co‐authorship network, and global/local cooperation. This paper also provides valuable information about the core historical references and the hottest new papers through co‐citation analysis and citation analysis. A co‐word analysis based on the keywords and thematic noun‐phrases in the titles and abstracts of the sample papers was used to explore the hot research topics in the top five journals (e.g. ‘price’, ‘game’, ‘consumption’, ‘income’, ‘international trade’, ‘employment’, ‘monetary policy’, ‘welfare effects’ and ‘developing countries’). In addition, a comparative keyword analysis was used to explore the differences in the directions and characteristics of each journal and the changes in research focuses between ‘new’ and ‘old’ studies. The analytical methods of this study differ from those of reviews or previous studies, and the results fill the gaps not covered by those works.     

POSTMODERN ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS: TOWARD A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

This article discusses a new approach to organizational analysis — postmodernism. We contrast modern and postmodern forms of explanation and explore a family of terms derived from these two concepts. In so doing, we discuss whether postmodernism is best described as an ‘epoch’or an ‘epistemology’, a distinction which underpins current debates. Through reference to the works of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard, we produce an inventory of key concepts for postmodern organizational analysis —‘representation’, ‘reflexivity’, ‘writing’, ‘differance’ and ‘de-centring the subject’. By explicating the main arguments associated with these concepts — and by developing the middle ground between the epoch and epistemology positions — we lay conceptual foundations for a nascent postmodern approach to organization studies.     

Cities and the ‘War on Terror’

Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. These tend to be characterized by stark binaries of place attachment. This article argues that the discursive construction of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ since September 11th 2001 has been deeply marked by attempts to rework imaginative geographies separating the urban places of the US ‘homeland’ and those Arab cities purported to be the sources of ‘terrorist’ threats against US national interests. On the one hand, imaginative geographies of US cities have been reworked to construct them as ‘homeland’ spaces which must be re‐engineered to address supposed imperatives of ‘national security’. On the other, Arab cities have been imaginatively constructed as little more than ‘terrorist nest’ targets to soak up US military firepower. Meanwhile, the article shows how both ‘homeland’ and ‘target’ cities are increasingly being treated together as a single, integrated ‘battlespace’ within post 9/11 US military doctrine and techno‐science. The article concludes with a discussion of the central roles of urban imaginative geographies, overlaid by transnational architectures of US military technology, in sustaining the colonial territorial configurations of a hyper‐militarized US Empire.     

Arbitrage and equilibrium in economies with infinitely many commodities

An ‘arbitrage opportunity’ for a class of agents is a commodity bundle that will increase the utility of any of the agents and that has non-positive price. The non-existence of ‘arbitrage opportunities’ is necessary and sufficient for the existence of an economic equilibrium. A bundle is ‘priced by arbitrage’ if there is a unique price that it can command without causing an ‘arbitrage opportunity’ to exist. For economies that have infinitely many commodities, appropriate notions of ‘arbitrage opportunities’ and ‘bundles priced by arbitrage’ depend on the continuity of agents’ preferences. This paper develops these notions, thereby providing a foundation for recent work in financial theory concerning arbitrage in continuous-time models of securities markets.     

‘A Land of Milk and Honey’? Reengineering the ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ in a Call Centre*

ABSTRACT This article explores how managers, in the Call Centre of a Bank, (re)defined, and drew boundaries around ‘past’ cultural conditions, in relation to the introduction of a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) regime. Managers represented the ‘past’ negatively, in terms of conflict and coercion, whilst the ‘present’ was largely described as a Shangri‐La of teams and consensus. This eschewing of the ‘past’ and sublimation of the ‘present’ stood in opposition to the representations of the staff. Both the ‘staff’ and ‘managers’ seemed to reject or embrace discourses that challenged or coincided with their understanding of how things are or should be. In view of this, their understanding of the past/present is inseparable from a consideration of power and identity. The article examines the interplay between discourses and individuals, arguing that it is bound up with fear and anxiety, hope and aspiration, memory and nostalgia, among other, everyday life experiences.     

Employment equity policy frames in the literature: ‘good practice’ versus ‘bad idea’

Work organisations considering policies against racial or ethnic discrimination and for recognising diversity can find many different and often conflicting recommendations in the literature, in particular regarding the aim of proportional representation of different ethnic groups. To better understand this controversy, this paper rigorously examines three key theories from a frame-critical and business ethics perspective. It introduces a fundamental threefold conceptualisation of ‘employment equity policy’ (EEP) as a catch-all term for related concepts such as ‘affirmative action’, ‘equal opportunities policy’ and ‘diversity management’, distinguishing between three different organisational goals: equal treatment, equal results and individual recognition. The analysis suggests that different authors emphasise some ‘facts’ rather than others and strategically interpret the limited available empirical research to support their policy positions, mixing both classical and newer ethical reasoning. In the ‘good practice’ frame, human resource management practitioners are urged to take ‘positive action’, to monitor the ethnic composition of the workforce and to formulate target figures to increase the representation of discriminated groups. In the opposing ‘bad idea’ frame, organisations are seriously advised against EEPs with ‘hard’ numerical goals: these policies supposedly are unnecessary and ineffective and have negative unintended consequences. The article draws implications from these findings for future research and practice in the field of EEPs.     

Are we ‘sharing’ or ‘gig-ing’? A classification system for online platforms

There is a growing debate about the nature and extent of platform control over workers. Companies claim they are merely ‘matchmakers’ while labour advocates argue that these organisations exercise granular control over workers. Blending the fields of information science and labour relations, this article develops a classification system of sequential control to delineate between ‘high control’ and ‘low control’ platforms. In doing so, this article provides a theoretical method to distinguish ‘sharing’ versus ‘gig’ platforms and argues that worker autonomy—how platforms foreclose worker choice—can be used to understand platform control.     

The Meanings of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. An Explanation for the Forbid/Allow Asymmetry

Survey questions worded with the verb ‘forbid’ prove not to elicit opposite answers to equivalent questions worded with the verb ‘allow’ (Rugg 1941). Although ‘forbid’ and ‘allow’ are generally considered each other’s counterparts, respondents rather answer ‘no, not forbid’ than ‘yes, allow’. In order to find out which question is a more valid measure of the underlying attitude, this asymmetry in the answers has to be explained. Experiments show that the asymmetry arises because respondents translate similar attitudes differently into the answering options to forbid/allow questions are equally valid, but the way the attitudes are expressed on the answering scale differs due to the use of ‘forbid’ or ‘allow’. How does this translation process work? The leading hypothesis in forbid/allow research predicts that respondents holding moderate opinions feel that ‘yes forbid’ and ‘yes allow’ are very extreme, causing moderate respondents to prefer answering ‘not forbid’, or ‘not allow’. This article presents the results of 10 experiments investigating the meanings of the answering options to forbid/allow questions. Extreme connotations are shown to only provide part of the explanation for the occurrence of the forbid/allow asymmetry. In order to describe the answering process for forbid/allow questions, well-definedness of meanings proves to be an important additional factor. The meanings of answering options to allow questions are ill-defined compared of those to forbid questions, which causes allow questions to be less homogeneous measures of the underlying attitude than forbid questions.     

Sport as a cultural system: sports policies and (new) ethnicities in Lyon and Birmingham

‘Sport promotes integration’: this idea seems to be commonly accepted both in France and in the UK, even though the authorities in each country see the issue of ‘ethnic minorities’ very differently. This article draws on research based on interviews with the main actors of ‘socio–sports’ policies in the cities of Lyon and Birmingham and on analysis of consultation procedures and official documents, to show that sport provides a set of symbolic markers that helps the authorities, professionals and ‘ethnic minorities’ to get their bearings in an uncertain multicultural situation. Although ‘ethnic minorities’ try to control the direction of sports policies in pursuit of their own objectives, their strategies tend to be ‘routinized’ around markers legitimized by the authorities in response to the success of certain sporting practices. Sports policies, therefore, promote ‘security’ of identity for these ‘minorities’ by ‘mapping’ their environment using the values and principles of sport. ‘Le sport favorise l’int´gration’: cette idée semble communément admise en France et en Grande–Bretagne alors même que leurs autorités respectives envisagent de manière très différente la question des ‘minorités ethniques’. À partir d’une recherche fondée sur des entretiens avec les principaux acteurs des politiques ‘socio–sportives‘ des villes de Lyon et de Birmingham, et sur l’analyse des procédures de concertation et des documents officiels, l’analyse montre que le sport trace des repères symboliques qui permettent aux pouvoirs publics, aux professionnels et aux ‘minorités ethniques’ de s’orienter dans une réalité multiculturelle incertaine. Mais si ces dernières tentent de contrôler l’orientation des politiques sportives de manière à poursuivre leurs propres objectifs, leurs stratégies tendent également à se ‘routiniser’ autour des repères que les pouvoirs publics ont légitimé pour répondre au succès des pratiques sportives. Les politiques sportives favorisent dès lors la ‘sécurisation’ identitaire de ces ‘minorités’ en ‘cartographiant’ leur environnement à l’aide des valeurs et des principes du sport.     

Dubai in the ‘Middle’

In the early 2000s, Dubai seemed the apotheosis of the global city model. Lauded as an embodiment of globalist ideals, or harshly criticized as a representation of the dangers of contemporary urbanism, it was clearly under the spotlight. Then, like the concept of the ‘global city’ itself, it disappeared from the headlines, to be subject only to sporadic and cynical attention. Today some are heralding a ‘return’ of Dubai from the anonymity of the middle ground of global city hierarchies and rankings. What is often forgotten, however, is that urbanism in Dubai did not stop. On the contrary, Dubai's continuous ‘worlding’ offers a productive opportunity for the encounter of ‘global’ and ‘ordinary’ modes of urban analysis. By unpacking the construction of a global Dubai, this article advocates greater sensitivity to the multiscalar politics that shape its continuity. Stepping beyond rumours of crisis and decline, it aims to connect the global fortunes and everyday processes that jointly characterize the development of global cities. ‘Global’ and ‘ordinary’ urbanism, it argues, are but two registers of how we could, in Warren Magnusson's words, ‘see like a city’.     

Stage models of corporate ‘greening’: a critical evaluation

Corporate ‘greening’, i.e. the process by which companies can become more environmentally responsible in their operations, has attracted considerable interest lately. Largely born out of hands-on consultancy experience, various models have been proposed which describe a series of ‘stages’ by which companies become progressively more environmentally conscious and reduce their impact on the natural environment. The present article critically analyses some of these ‘stage’ models of corporate ‘greening’ from both an empirical and a management theoretical point of view. The empirical analysis is based on four case studies of the ‘greening’ efforts of companies in the UK water and electricity industries. Environmental strategy and management in these companies is found to fit poorly into the stage models of corporate ‘greening’. The article concludes that more comprehensive and interpretative explanations of organizational ‘greening’ are needed, including contextual and process oriented analysis. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Density Nowcasts and Model Combination: Nowcasting Euro‐Area GDP Growth over the 2008–09 Recession*

Combined density nowcasts for quarterly Euro‐area GDP growth are produced based on the real‐time performance of component models. Components are distinguished by their use of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, aggregate and disaggregate, indicators. We consider the accuracy of the density nowcasts as within‐quarter indicator data accumulate. We find that the relative utility of ‘soft’ indicators surged during the recession. But as this instability was hard to detect in real‐time it helps, when producing density nowcasts unknowing any within‐quarter ‘hard’ data, to weight the different indicators equally. On receipt of ‘hard’ data for the second month in the quarter better calibrated densities are obtained by giving a higher weight in the combination to ‘hard’ indicators.     

Everyday Urbanization: The Social Dynamics of Development in Manila’s Extended Metropolitan Region

Attempts at understanding the urbanization process in Southeast Asia have, in recent years, focused on the emergence of extended metropolitan regions around primate cities. Many have argued that with a landscape of intensively mixed ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ activities, such regions represent a distinctive Asian form of urbanization and a challenge to the conventional urban-rural dualism. The implication, both in theoretical and policy terms, is that such regions of mixed land use form new ‘urban’ landscapes that will persist into the future on the basis of balanced ‘agro-industrial’ development. Drawing on fieldwork in a town on Manila’s agricultural periphery, this paper argues that such understandings present a static view of these regions, limited by macro-level data and analysis. A more ethnographic understanding of the social processes of ‘everyday urbanization’ at the interface of the ‘urban’ and the ‘rural’ dispels any sense of a stable rural-urban landscape or balanced development. The evidence points to an incompatibility of functions leading to the gradual ‘squeezing out’ of agriculture due to a changing economic calculus in agricultural households brought on by labour market shifts; environmental conflicts between agricultural and urban-industrial activities; social and cultural transformations in rural society; a political framework of bureaucratic corruption in the regulation of urbanization; and the influence of personalized power relations in agrarian society. — Ces dernières années, les efforts pour comprendre le processus d’urbanisation en Asie du sud-est se sont concentrés sur la naissance des régions métropolitaines étendues autour des cités centrales. Beaucoup soutiennent que ces régions, avec leurs paysages d’activités ‘rurales’ et ‘urbaines’ intensivement mélangées, représentent une forme d’urbanisation typiquement asiatique et mettent la dualité traditionnelle urbain-rural en question. L’implication, théoriquement et politiquement, est que de telles régions, avec leur utilisation mixte du terrain, forment de nouveaux paysages ‘urbains’ qui persisteront dans l’avenir sur une base de développement ‘agro-industriel’. Basé sur un travail de terrain dans une ville de la périphérie agricole de Manille, cet article soutient que de telles approches présentent une vue statique de ces régions, limitée par des données et une analyse de niveau macroscopique. Une approche plus ethnographique des processus sociaux de ‘l’urbanisation de tous les jours’ au point de rencontre du ‘rural’ et de l’urbain’ dissipe toute impression d’un paysage rural-urbain stable ou d’un développement équilibré. Les données font ressortir une incompatibilité de fonction causant un ‘écrasement’ graduel de l’agriculture dûà un calcul économique changeant dans les ménages agricoles occasionné par les changements du marché du travail; des conflits de l’environnement entre les activités agricoles et les activités urbaines-industrielles; des transformations sociales et culturelles dans la société rurale; une structure politique de corruption bureaucratique de la réglementation de l’urbanisation; et l’influence des relations personnelles de pouvoir dans la société agraire     

The impact on the cultural diversity to employees' job satisfaction between mainland China and Taiwan: a comparison of Taiwanese invested companies

This study explores how the Chinese values (Integrations, Confucian Work Dynamism, Human-heartedness and Moral Discipline) impact employees' satisfaction (ES). Employees who work in mainland China for companies whose parent companies are based in Taiwan were surveyed. The results can be summarized as the following: ‘Integration’, ‘Confucian Work Dynamism’ and ‘Human-heartedness’ are significantly different between Taiwanese and Chinese employees, while ‘Moral discipline’ is not; Taiwanese employees have higher ES than Chinese employees; Taiwanese employees view ‘career planning’ is the most important, while Chinese employees think ‘management system’ is most important; For Taiwanese employees, ‘Salary and benefit’, ‘Working load’ and ‘Management system’ have effects on ES; Age and Education have effects on Chinese employees.     

True and fair in the Czech Republic: a note on local perceptions

With the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia’, and the subsequent desire of Czechoslovakia to join the European Union, in common with other countries in Central Europe, Czechoslovakia utilized the Fourth Directive as a ‘toolkit’ in designing part of its new accounting legislation. In incorporating the Fourth Directive, it has also included the requirement for financial statements to show a ‘true and fair’ view. Given the confusion over the exact meaning of ‘true and fair’ it is interesting to study how ‘true and fair’ has been introduced into the Czech Republic, and what it seems to signify for those who implemented it and for those who are preparing and using financial statements. Our initial findings indicate that ‘true and fair’ varies in its significance for the groups of individuals involved in preparing and using financial statements and that it may have particular significance for some groups of accountants who wish to secure specific advantage within the Czech economy.With the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia’, and the subsequent desire of Czechoslovakia to join the European Union, in common with other countries in Central Europe, Czechoslovakia utilized the Fourth Directive as a ‘toolkit’ in designing part of its new accounting legislation. In incorporating the Fourth Directive, it has also included the requirement for financial statements to show a ‘true and fair’ view. Given the confusion over the exact meaning of ‘true and fair’ it is interesting to study how ‘true and fair’ has been introduced into the Czech Republic, and what it seems to signify for those who implemented it and for those who are preparing and using financial statements. Our initial findings indicate that ‘true and fair’ varies in its significance for the groups of individuals involved in preparing and using financial statements and that it may have particular significance for some groups of accountants who wish to secure specific advantage within the Czech economy.With the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia’, and the subsequent desire of Czechoslovakia to join the European Union, in common with other countries in Central Europe, Czechoslovakia utilized the Fourth Directive as a ‘toolkit’ in designing part of its new accounting legislation. In incorporating the Fourth Directive, it has also included the requirement for financial statements to show a ‘true and fair’ view. Given the confusion over the exact meaning of ‘true and fair’ it is interesting to study how ‘true and fair’ has been introduced into the Czech Republic, and what it seems to signify for those who implemented it and for those who are preparing and using financial statements. Our initial findings indicate that ‘true and fair’ varies in its significance for the groups of individuals involved in preparing and using financial statements and that it may have particular significance for some groups of accountants who wish to secure specific advantage within the Czech economy.With the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia’, and the subsequent desire of Czechoslovakia to join the European Union, in common with other countries in Central Europe, Czechoslovakia utilized the Fourth Directive as a ‘toolkit’ in designing part of its new accounting legislation. In incorporating the Fourth Directive, it has also included the requirement for financial statements to show a ‘true and fair’ view. Given the confusion over the exact meaning of ‘true and fair’ it is interesting to study how ‘true and fair’ has been introduced into the Czech Republic, and what it seems to signify for those who implemented it and for those who are preparing and using financial statements. Our initial findings indicate that ‘true and fair’ varies in its significance for the groups of individuals involved in preparing and using financial statements and that it may have particular significance for some groups of accountants who wish to secure specific advantage within the Czech economy.     

Strategic Practice Drift: How Open Strategy Infiltrates the Strategy Process

This paper builds theory on the process of open-strategy infiltration through an ethnographic study investigating how open strategy entered a financial services firm's strategy process behind the backs of top managers. Based on our analysis, we show how open strategy infiltrates the strategy process through a ‘strategic practice drift’, i.e., a gradual and partly unnoticed shift towards open strategy that occurs through ‘accommodating’ and ‘legitimizing’ the performance of transparency and inclusion in the strategy process. We show how the ‘goal-based ambiguity’ and ‘procedural certainty’ of initiatives that latently imply the performance of transparency and inclusion in the strategy process enable open-strategy infiltration. Furthermore, we show how top managers' ‘goal-based rationalization’ and ‘procedural renegotiation’ of practising transparency and inclusion contribute to the eventual reproduction of open strategy in the strategy process. Our model generates an understanding of how and why open strategy can enter the strategy process behind the backs of top managers and adds nuance to extant understandings of the role of top managers in this process. In addition, our findings contribute to research on strategy as practice by theorizing ‘strategic practice drifts’ and extending our understanding of the role of ambiguity therein.