Protecting employee safety rights: OSHA or arbitration?

This paper analyzes the protection of employees against employer retatliation for seeking a safe and healthy workplace. It discusses the exercise of rights guaranteed by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970 and compares the legal protection of Section 11(c) of that Act with the grievance arbitration mechanism found in most union contracts. It also considers the importance of union representation in the ability and protection of employees seeking to exercise their OSHA rights. Administrative and legislative recommendations are made to improve the OSHA procedures, and questions are raised regarding adapting arbitration procedures to the OSHA mechanism.     

Impact of gentrification on environmental pressure in service micro‐enterprises

The study investigates whether local service micro‐enterprises (MEPs) in gentrifying neighborhoods face increasing complaints triggering inspections and regulatory pressure. Environmental records from 1992 to 2000 were reviewed for 383 filling stations, motor vehicle repair firms and dry cleaners in five Chicago neighborhoods. Significant differences in the number of complaints and inspections were found between gentrifying and gentrified neighborhoods, especially in the higher‐income gentrified neighborhood. No significant difference was found in enforcement. Regulatory pressure from environmental agencies adds to the financial, social and other regulatory pressures facing service MEPs that drove away or closed manufacturing firms in the past. Alternatively, new market opportunities with regulatory and social pressure could provide incentives to improve environmental behavior. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

大型商场的服装鞋帽商品投诉现状调查与解决方法分析

以鞍山市部分大型商场为研究对象,运用解决投诉、个案访谈、数理统计等方法,对大型商场的商品投诉现状与影响因素分析,得出大型商场商品投诉多是因为商品质量本身缺陷,消费者要求日益提高,消费者维权意识提高,网络购物商品质量的影响,导购员经验不足的结论。提出加强服务意识、丰富商品常识和加强自我保护意识的有效解决方法。     

依法、理性是信访维权的要件——信访实例研究分析

信访是公民在工作、生活中遇到困难问题,向党和政府反映,以得到帮助的有效渠道。信访必须依法理性进行,才能有效。本文通过两则信访实例分析提出成功信访要件,以期对公民维权有所裨益。     

National versus supranational bank regulation: Gains and losses of joining a banking union

We ask how the structure of international banking affects the decision of a national regulator to join a banking union and to transfer regulatory powers to the supranational level. The focus is on bank supervision and bank resolution. A national regulator ignores possible gains or losses, which accrue to other jurisdictions if banks are internationally active. A supranational regulator takes these regulatory external effects into account. While supranational regulation improves total welfare, this is not necessarily the case for welfare in single countries. By analyzing the size and determinants of spillover effects we show how they constrain a country’s willingness to participate in a banking union. Our results may explain why some member states of the European Union currently hesitate to join the European Banking Union.     

新形势下国有企业信访工作问题研究

在国有企业发展的过程中存在职工信访问题,这会对企业的正常发展产生一定影响。信访工作是连接群众与国企之间的桥梁,充分发挥信访工作的作用,可以确保社会的稳定发展。信访工作的使命是为中心工作提供稳定保障,是群众工作更是政治工作,其核心任务是确保政治大局和谐稳定,主要职责是保障职工群众的合法权益。论文以国有企业为例,对职工信访问题进行分析,在此基础上明确国有企业职工信访问题的解决措施。     

User voice and complaints as drivers of innovation in public services

User voice and complaints can serve as important inputs to innovation in public services. User knowledge can be harnessed to provide insights and ideas that prompt more effective service responses and add value to service delivery. However, the mechanisms for harnessing user voice and complaints are often not fully understood, and their potential is often underdeveloped. This paper elaborates a conceptual framework which maps the processes by which user voice and complaints might prompt effective public service innovation. Six practical real-world examples are then presented and analysed to illuminate discussion of some critical success factors for consumer-knowledge-enabled innovation.     

Informal conflict intervention: Advice and dissent

A disparity appears to exist between how managers are advised to handle conflict and the intervention methods that they utilize in actual practice. Normative advice tends to agree that managers should adopt a facilitative, mediatorlike role (e.g., Walton, 1987; Tjosvold, 1990), while the empirical research suggests that managers are much more controlling, often deciding how to resolve the problem on their own (e.g., Kolb, 1986; Sheppard, 1983). The present study focuses on two potential reasons as to why managers utilize the methods they do: (1) They treat choices instrumentally to achieve key goals and (2) they interpret or frame conflicts in a form that suggests directive action. One hundred and eighty managers were interviewed about a recent effort to intervene in a dispute at work. The results confirm that managers are very controlling when intervening in disputes and relates this to both interpretive frame and, to a lesser extent, managerial goals. A canonical analysis appears to emphasize the pivotal role that frame plays in influencing whether or not managers choose the solution. Implications of these results for managerial action are discussed.     

Firm resources and joint ventures: what determines zero‐sum versus positive‐sum outcomes?

In this study, we are concerned with the resources that are brought to joint ventures, and whether or not the way in which those resources are combined can improve parent‐firm performance. We are also interested in whether or not the exposure of valuable resources through the permeable membrane of the joint venture can have an adverse effect on performance. These questions are explored using a sample of 74 domestic, dyadic joint ventures, and our findings suggest that the strategy can have zero‐sum and positive‐sum outcomes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

论维修换用车在汽车售后维修的重要性

文章通过引入沈阳市奥迪4S店售后服务案例,对汽车售后服务过程中与用户产生的一些矛盾进行了分析,提出了一种汽车售后服务新概念——维修换用车。通过对启用维修换用车项爵的必要性及重要性进行描述,制定了可实施的活动方案,并对实施活动中存在的问题进行了说明。     

Mediation in professional relationships in France: tactics and outcomes

This study has two goals. First, it attempts to update the various tactics used by mediators in the context of professional relationships in France. Second, the study analyses the outcomes of the different aspects of mediator action. Tying together semi‐structured interviews with mediators and social negotiators involved in mediation and non‐participatory observation, the results show the existence of a range of diversified tactics that a mediator can mobilise based on his or her perception of the existence of dynamics for agreement. In contrast to existing Anglo‐Saxon research, the mediator in the French context feels entitled to become a genuine third party and have an impact on key issues during debates. Highlighting three contingent variables (level of conflictuality, mediator's mediating experience, negotiators' mediating experience) puts the mediator's intrusion into perspective.     

Hysteresis versus NAIRU and convergence versus divergence: The behavior of regional unemployment rates in Brazil

The aim of this work is to analyze the regional unemployment rate behavior in Brazil. Firstly, unit root tests with structural breaks were used to determine which theoretical framework – hysteresis or NAIRU – is more appropriate to explain the unemployment dynamics not only in six Brazilian metropolitan areas – São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Salvador and Recife – but also at national level. Hysteresis is found to be the best choice in five, but Rio de Janeiro. This indicates a high persistence in the Brazilian regional unemployment rate. Secondly, we investigated whether these five metropolitan regions, characterized by the hysteresis effect, show a stochastic convergence. The latter was found in every case, but Porto Alegre.     

Assessing multi-dimensional performance: environmental and economic outcomes

This study examines economic performance, environmental performance, and regulatory activity for plants in three industries: pulp and paper, oil, and steel. Stochastic frontier production function models show significant deviations from production efficiency. Older plants are less efficient in production, but perform no worse on emissions. Plants spending more on pollution abatement tend to do worse on both production efficiency and emissions. Stricter local regulatory pressure is associated with somewhat lower emissions, but has mixed effects on production efficiency. Positive correlations between SUR residuals for emissions and production efficiency suggest unmeasured plant-level characteristics that drive both economic and environmental performance.

New ventures in Cleantech: Opportunities,capabilities and innovation outcomes

Facing the challenge of climate change, innovations that imply environmental benefits create business opportunities for entrepreneurs. This paper analyzes innovation capabilities of startups in Cleantech and how the innovation outcomes of those startups develop over time. Based on the Mannheim Foundation Panel and applying propensity score matching, a cohort of 567 Cleantech startups is analyzed and compared with a control cohort of non‐Cleantech startups. We find that startups in Cleantech have, on average, higher technological capabilities compared with all other startups. Our econometric evidence shows that Cleantech startups are more likely to combine existing technology in a novel way. Finally, we find that Cleantech startups develop more market novelties in subsequent years when compared with their control group peers.     

Dispute resolution and litigation in the construction industry. Evidence on conflicts and conflict resolution in The Netherlands and Germany

The construction industry is regarded to be a tough and competitive business characterized by short-term and opportunistic relations rather than being based on cooperative partnerships. In particular, conflicts and litigation have been claimed to proliferate in the construction industry. Upon closer inspection of the literature, it seems that the empirical basis of these claims is largely circumstantial. Using data on contractor–subcontractor relations in the construction industry in The Netherlands, we consider the extent to which litigation in construction is common. Then we compare the results to similar data sets on IT-purchasing both in The Netherlands and Germany, and to a data set with more general business-to-business transactions of larger Dutch and German firms. We find some evidence that the construction industry has higher percentages of transactions leading to either arbitration, suspension of the relation, or legal steps (1.6% versus 1.2, 0.4 and 0.6). The differences are however not as extreme as one might conclude based on superficial reading of the popular and scientific literature, and certainly not bigger than the differences between the other data sets.     

Food-For-Work versus Cash-For-Work: Emergency Assistance in Palestine

In this paper we analyse the provision of emergency assistance (food assistance, cash transfers, employment programmes, etc) to a country whose economy has been decimated since the start of the second intifada. We try to simulate the different potential effects brought about by these different policies and, in particular, to draw some policy implications concerning the Food-for-Work versus Cash-for-Work debate. To that end we have constructed a general equilibrium model of the Palestinian economy that we calibrate on the (pre-intifada) Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of 1998. We give a so-called 'intifada-shock' to construct a counterfactual 'post-intifada' SAM which serves as basis for our policy simulations. We show that monetary aid from abroad is to be preferred to food aid from abroad. We argue that a labour-oriented approach (subsidizing the most labour-intensive sectors) is to be preferred to a welfare-oriented approach where the subsidized sectors produce those goods that dominate the consumption basket.     

Antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery: cross-country evidence in Higher Education

This paper contributes to our understanding of personal mastery by providing fresh insights from a cross-national study in Higher Education (HE). It presents findings from a rich sample of informants in two well-established universities in the UK and Vietnam, and develops a framework that illustrates the antecedents and outcomes of personal mastery in the two cultures. The multi-level analysis performed provides valuable insights that extend our current understanding of personal mastery beyond the individual level as it is traditionally theorized. Instead, we are able to show that a number of contextual conditions at the organizational, industry and the national culture that may also have a bearing on the way personal mastery is cultivated. By contributing a richer account of the multifaceted nature of personal mastery, the paper draws attention to a range of implications for both future research and practice. In particular, it invites practitioners in HE to apply the theories they develop in practice.     

Translating management ideas: Imitation modes and translation outcomes

This paper examines the translation of Leadership Pipeline in a Danish fire department. On the basis of a distinction between faithful and unfaithful imitation, we contribute to a better understanding of imitation as a driving force in translation processes. Rather than equating imitation with unfaithfulness, we show that translation can be guided by different and successive imitation modes over time and involve different degrees and combinations of ideational and organizational change. We connect different imitation modes with two translation outcomes; disalignment and reproduction, that have received little attention in previous research.     

Best practice interventions: Short-term impact and long-term outcomes

This paper uses empirical field research to examine whether short-term best practice interventions (BPIs) can lead to improvements that are sustained in the long term. In addition, this research investigates the implied conflict between striving for short-term results and achieving long-term development of capabilities. It also examines the tension between the lack of resources of the typical small and medium sized enterprise (SME) users of BPIs and the time required to develop a critical mass of capability. A longitudinal case-based study of eight SME contexts examined BPI outcomes and factors leading to short- and long-term success and sustaining best practices. The research identifies factors related to the intervention context, implementation and change-agent approach. The data indicate that in resource-limited SMEs BPIs are limited in their ability to develop adequate capability for long-term change.