Research Note: Injunctions as a Legal Weapon in Industrial Disputes in Britain, 1995–2005

This research note examines the frequency, nature and context of employers seeking legal injunctions in collective industrial disputes between 1995 and 2005. The number of actual and threatened applications continues to be relatively frequent compared with much of the period from 1980 to 1995, with employers overwhelmingly gaining successful outcomes. However, usage is increasingly concentrated in a small number of industrial sectors such as parts of the public sector and semi‐state industries.     

E-mail as a Weapon in an Industrial Dispute

The case study on which this article is based describes a two-and-a-half month long strike of Israeli academic staff members. During the strike, e-mail was used as the major means of communication between the strikers. Analysis of the e-mail messages demonstrates that e-mail served as a secret weapon, enabling the strikers to succeed in what was presumed to be a hopeless battle.     

Segmenting a market in the making: Industrial market segmentation as construction

This paper takes an empirical starting point in a claim that Biacore, a pioneering Swedish producer of affinity biosensors, was “in the enviable position of creating its own market” (Abelin, 1997). An in-depth case study traces how Biacore undertook segmentation activities while shaping the market for its new product technology, affinity biosensors. This involved stabilising the modes of exchange with customers, the product and the identity of the company. The efforts of Biacore highlight a constructive dimension of market segmentation that hitherto has received little attention. Rather than a process of describing, deciding and taking action, Biacore engaged in the gradual construction of market segments through an interactive and iterative process involving close collaboration with early users. Simultaneously, the market for the new technology gained shaped. Thus, the paper reports a ‘markets from networks’ story illustrating how the practice of segmenting a market may have consequences for that market.     

Research Note: Identifying the Invisible Colleges of the British Journal of Industrial Relations: A Bibliometric and Social Network Approach

The academic field of industrial relations has gone through much change in the last 20 years. On account of the rapid decline in union membership in the USA and the UK, industrial relations, which historically has focused on the employment relationship, has been searching for a new intellectual base. By conducting a bibliometric analysis of the journal British Journal of Industrial Relations (BJIR), we uncover the intellectual bases for that publication outlet for two time periods, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005. From the late 1980s to the mid‐1990s, BJIR's articles relied on the economics literature, while in the later period, it moved to the human resource and management journals, authors and articles. The possible explanations and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Gender Discrimination in Training: a Note

Existing research evidence generally leads to the conclusion that females are disadvantaged in terms of access to job-related training. This paper reconsiders the evidence for Australia using data collected as part of the 1993 Survey of Training and Education. The findings indicate that, while men could be expected to receive more training as a result of their labour market endowments, this is more than compensated for by a gender effect in favour of women. Comparison with results from an analysis of similar data for 1989 suggests a marked change in the pattern of training in favour of women.     

Changing Administrative Practices in American Unions: A Research Note

This note presents findings from the first longitudinal study of the administrative practices of American unions. Our surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2000, gathered information on the hiring, human resource, and financial/strategic planning practices of U.S.-based national and international unions. The results indicate that American unions are changing their criteria for hiring staff and moving toward more formal human resource policies and systematic financial and strategic planning practices.     

产业融合:横向产业研究

现代产业横向上的相互交融，使得我们很难判断一小企业在传统产业结构里的具体位置．同样，发展什么产业是推动经济增长的主要动力，也变得模糊下清了。现代经济以知识为主的高级生产要素逐步取代了传统的有形低级生产要素，这是一个重要的历史趋势。在这个条件下，本文将传统产业结构纵向糅合并横向切断，分析商品的形成过程及相应的企业组织形式，并归纳出包括研发设计、生产制造和营销服务三个核心元素的横向产业模式。警示企业或区域寻找其具有核心竞争力的横向产业，是更切合现代产业和区域经济持续发展的方向．     

中国产业组织若干问题研究的新进展

本文运用重点杂志分析与专家讨论、国内产业组织研究机构和相关学者追 踪相结合的方法,对中国产业组织若干问题研究在2003年的进展进行了综述,并在此基 础上提出了一些值得进一步研究的问题和值得关注的研究动向。     

The Duration of Union Membership in Italy: A Research Note

Thanks to direct access to union databases, this note can answer two new questions in industrial relations: how long union membership lasts and what are the determinants of its duration within an open‐shop context. This also allows for conceptualizing union membership as a much more dynamic phenomenon than in previous studies, where it was considered a static condition whose causes or effects were to be investigated. Regression analysis applied to a sample of 29,035 Italian workers highlights that union membership duration is a positive but declining function of age. Furthermore, women, flexible workers, foreign ones, and those working in cities tend to show less attachment to union membership than the other workers.     

Industrial Conflict: Themes and Issues in Recent Research

Industrial conflict went out of fashion as an explicit research focus during the 1980s. Yet a review of the relevant literature suggests its continued importance. The review embraces: studies of collective protest at the level of the world economy and nation-states; recent economists' theories of negotiations; assessments of the impact of Thatcherism on the level and nature of conflict in Britain; case studies of the place of conflict in new forms of workplace regulation; and analyses of the processes of strike organization. Conflict remained a central element of work organizations, though its form changed. The need to consider its place in emerging systems of labour control is as great as ever.     

IETM技术在武器装备维修信息化中的应用研究

针对现代武器装备的发展趋势及维修管理要求，提出了采用交互式电子技术手册（IETM）来提高装备维修水平和效率。介绍了IETM技术的特点和分级标准，分析了IETM的设计流程，利用网络技术，结合便携式辅助维修装置（PMA）、智能故障诊断技术和专家系统知识，针对不同的应用场合，分别开发了网络化和单机模式的IETM装备维修系统。     

区域产业集群发展关联网络的建模与实证分析——以汽车行业和石化行业为例

本文首先根据投入产出直接消耗系数表,结合复杂网络理论的建模思想构建了一类有向加权网络——区域产业结构网络,然后运用2007年全国投入产出数据研究了该网络的一系列特征值。在研究网络的路径问题时,考虑到网络边权是一种相似权,进而转向研究网络的最长路径及其蕴含的产业经济意义。以此为基础,论文又构建了产业间最强关联网络和产业集群发展关联网络,一方面梳理出区域产业规划过程中的关键产业部门,另一方面通过与发达国家和地区进行比较,识别出产业集群化过程中存在的问题。最后选取了汽车行业和石化行业进行了产业集群发展可行性方面的实证分析。     

A Research Note on Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

This paper examines the hypothesis that mortgage lenders rank applications from better to worst and encourage the better ones to apply. A second ranking occurs when the application is ranked by the loan committee and funds are approved from the top of the list until exhausted. A theoretically correct procedure for analyzing the resulting multivariate ordinal data is the little known rank multiple discriminant analysis. Preliminary results have revealed that this technique produces a "best" model with fewer variables and a higher classification rate than the commonly known multiple discriminant analysis, logit, or probit.