Labour reform in a neo-liberal ‘protected’ democracy: Chile 1990–2001

This paper analyses the direction and degree of labour reform in Chile since the restoration of democracy in 1990 after seventeen years of military dictatorship. The regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–90) adopted a highly repressive political character and implemented neo-liberal economic policies, which, together with the institutional restructuring that accompanied them, transformed vast sectors of Chilean society. The 1979 Labour Plan significantly changed the character of industrial relations legislation and the roles and balance of power among social actors, transforming the way in which industrial relations had been conducted since the 1920s. We argue that, despite more than a decade since the restoration of democracy, and after several rounds of reform, the current legislation presents remarkable continuity with the one enacted under authoritarianism, contradicting claims that profound change has been achieved. In attempting to explain the direction and degree of the so-called Transition's Labour Reforms, we emphasize the importance of political-economy approaches. We explore the conservative nature of the Chilean transition to democracy, the continuity of the neo-liberal economic model and the increasing imbalance of power between capital and labour, in an effort to account for the persistence of the authoritarian legacy in today's Chilean industrial relations.     

Breaking down social stereotypes: the case of the Fundación Secretariado Gitano in Spain

Over the last few years the Fundación Secretariado Gitano has organised several awareness campaigns aimed at improving the public image of the gypsy community, breaking down the stereotypes and providing a more credible concept of the Spanish gypsy community. These campaigns are intended to guarantee equal treatment and opportunities for this group. One of its first activities was a mass publicity campaign aimed at making the general public aware of how unfair it is to generalize. In this way the origins of the social image problem suffered by gypsies was tackled. The campaign titled ‘Get to know them before you judge them’ is the objective study of this case in which elements are analysed and decision-making steps are followed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Managing successful change in the public sector’: a view from the consultants’ world

Our paper presents the results of a survey on the perceptions of 680 Italian public-sector consultants on the drivers of successful organizational change according to Fernandez and Rainey’s model. The results show that the consultants mostly confirm the model, though recognizing that the various drivers have different degrees of relevance. A clear vision and plan for change and the top management’s commitment are seen as central in change processes, whereas interestingly, resource availability and a comprehensive approach to change appear to play a less relevant role.     

Defining the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Entrepreneurship’: Altruism and Entrepreneurship

What is social entrepreneurship? In, particular, what’s so social about it? Understanding what social entrepreneurship is enables researchers to study the phenomenon and policy-makers to design measures to encourage it. However, such an understanding is lacking partly because there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship as yet. In this paper, we suggest a definition of social entrepreneurship that intuitively accords with what is generally accepted as entrepreneurship and that captures the way in which entrepreneurship may be altruistic. Based on this we provide a taxonomy of social entrepreneurship and identify a number of real cases from Asia illustrating the different forms it could take.     

Variations in adoption of workplace work–family arrangements in Europe: the influence of welfare-state regime and organizational characteristics

Using a unique data set of more than 2800 organizations in 19 countries, this article investigated the variations in adoption of workplace work–family arrangements and whether this variation can be explained either by differences in welfare-state contexts or by organization-related factors. Although the welfare-state context contributed significantly to the explanation of workplace work–family arrangements, the adoption of workplace arrangements was more strongly related to organizational conditions and characteristics. However, the results also show that when the development of work–family arrangements is mainly left to the market, as in the liberal context, employers do not fully make up for the absence of public provisions. The findings support the institutional argument that public provisions help to create a normative climate that gives rise to new social expectations and ‘a sense of entitlement’ regarding work–family support. The study supports the rational choice perspective where both employers' institutional environments and organizational factors are viewed as resources and constraints influencing employers' decision to adopt work–family arrangements.     

Public servants’ workplace learning: a reflection on the concept of communities of practice

Workplace learning is not only for the purpose of improving work skills, but also of establishing linkages between different social resources. Scholars such as Lave and Wenger (Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, 1991) suggest that a community of practice (CoP) is formed by members’ common interests with a friendly informal atmosphere, within which the participants may feel free, to sharpen their skills and broaden their horizons. The concept of CoPs actually highlights the importance of using social resources to optimize the knowledge within the context of organization. However, because the learning situation is very informal, some scholars suggested that learning within a CoP may be too scattered to manage it well. For this study, the researchers use the concept of CoPs to examine public servants’ workplace learning and lay the focus on shared practices in the public sector in order to reflect on the concept of CoPs. The semi-structured interview method was employed, and most of viewpoints in this study were derived from 10 personnel departments in the public sector in Taiwan including 22 interviewees. The research supports the view that shared practices which are derived from the public servants’ daily official tasks are an important key to members’ informal learning. The concept of official tasks implies a compulsory atmosphere which enables related interactions to be compelled to happen. This will hopefully provide a solution for the loose discipline learning in CoPs.     

Are the ‘Big Six’ ‘big’ in Belgium?

Studies in the United States, Europe and Australia have shown that the market for audit services is highly concentrated and largely dominated by the same ‘Big Six’ international audit firms. This paper measures the degree of concentration in the Belgian audit market through an empirical study of the number of professionally qualified auditors employed by each audit firm and some characteristics of their clients. Our calculations show that the concentration ratios, however measured, are low when compared with other countries, possibly due to the low value attached to the certification of financial statements by a professionally qualified auditor. This lack of importance can be explained by characteristics of the Belgian environment (e.g. a relatively passive capital market, dominated by a few large holding companies) which may induce companies to chose cheaper (domestic) audit firms. We also calculate Spearman rank correlations between the rankings of the audit firms based upon the different audit firm revenue proxies. All the correlations show it is of no importance which measure is used to rank audit firms.     

Cross-cultural competence in the context of NGOs: bridging the gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’

Abstract

International human resource management research in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is scarce and it predominantly focuses on the recruitment and retention of volunteers. The context of NGOs is different from conventional for-profit international business settings with different kinds of challenges, especially in terms of providing appropriate training on managing multi-cultural teams and working with local project partners and communities. The literature also tends to focus on expatriate perspective and not on a host country perspective. We address this gap by examining how project managers and hosts experience cross-cultural issues on overseas assignments. We study volunteer project managers leading international and local youth volunteers during the Raleigh International programme in Malaysia. We use a qualitative methodology and data collected at 3 case locations via participant observation during 120 days contact with the respondents as well as interviews and surveys. We propose the CPACE (Curiosity, Passion, Adaptability, Communication and Empathy) framework describing competences needed in cross-cultural encounters and based on respondents’ actions as well as their words and it is relevant to a NGO context. The framework is intended to lay the foundation for future research and in particular to demonstrate the need for cross-cultural competence to be more grounded in particular contexts.     

‘‘Peace’’ perceptions of Special Education Students in North Cyprus: a metaphorical approach

Recently, the peace education as a field has received world-wide attention from scholars, educators and policymakers. In Europe, awareness-raising activities supported by individuals and organizations has paid off and led to successful implementation of peace curriculum into education. Considerable amount of studies reveals that the peace education activities in schools contributed to the realisation of the importance of peaceful and sustainable future. However, peace education is a long neglected subject among the scholars in North Cyprus. Unfortunately, there is no single study focussing on peace education and its necessity in North Cyprus. In this regard, the aim of this study is to investigate how Special Education Students in North Cyprus perceive the concept of ‘‘peace’’. Also, the possible ways of implementing ‘peace education’ into curriculum are scrutinized. In order to fulfil the research aim, qualitative data collected from 158 Special Education teacher candidates. The findings reveal that majority of the participants believes that ‘peace education’ should be taught in schools. At this point, collected data also indicate that governmental initiatives need to be taken in order to raise awareness among students and teachers about ‘peace education’.

     

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.     

Trust in the supervisor and the development of employees’ social capital during organizational entry: a conservation of resources approach

Abstract

This article aims to understand how trust in the supervisor contributes to the development of employees’ social capital using Conservation of Resources theory as a theoretical framework and networking ability as an indicator of social capital development. We hypothesize that the relationship between newcomers’ trust in the supervisor and networking ability will be mediated by feedback seeking from the supervisor and moderated by emotional exhaustion. Based on a three-wave time-lagged study of newcomers (N = 224), we found trust in the supervisor to be indirectly and positively related to networking ability through the mediating influence of feedback seeking from the supervisor. In addition, feedback seeking interacted with emotional exhaustion in predicting networking ability such that it was more positively related to it at high levels of emotional exhaustion. The indirect relationship of trust to networking ability as mediated by feedback seeking was also stronger at high levels of emotional exhaustion. We discuss this study’s implications for our understanding of supervisors’ role and newcomers’ experience during entry, as well as for social capital research.     

‘Intended’ and ‘implemented’ HRM: the missing linchpin in strategic human resource management research

We argue that inconclusive findings in the SHRM literature regarding the relationship between HRM systems and organizational performance may result primarily from methodological weaknesses and a failure of researchers to distinguish between HR practices intended by the organizations and those actually implemented. Rather than relying upon a single respondent per organization as is the norm, we contrast reports of both managers and non-managers from inside and outside HR departments to highlight differences between intended and implemented HRM. The findings, arrived at with the help of 195 interviews, 508 questionnaire responses and several company documents, support our expectation: implemented HRM may be substantially different from intended HRM; consistent implementation increases employee satisfaction with HRM, which is positively related to organizational performance. The current study thus highlights new factors that require attention in developing HR–performance analyses and also suggests that a mere imitation of HRM in the hopes of improving organizational performance creates no value. It is crucial that HR departments and managers remain committed and supportive to the development of effective HRM systems by focusing upon actual ‘implementation’ within their organizations.     

Historicizing the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship: The case of the ethnic Chinese in Bangkok

This paper aims to come to a better understanding of the meaning of ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship for second- and third-generation ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Bangkok, Thailand. Research on ethnic Chinese entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia typically investigates the dominance, attributed to specific ‘Chinese’ cultural values and strong intra-ethnic networks, of the ethnic Chinese in business and entrepreneurship. Our research among second- and third-generations shows an inclination of the interviewees to emphasize the irrelevance of their ‘ethnic’ Chinese background in entrepreneurship. To understand the meanings of the expressed irrelevance, we argue that it is constructive to incorporate a historical/generational approach of the ethnic group (migration history, nationalism) and of the business (social organization) into the study of ethnic entrepreneurship. The contribution to ethnic entrepreneurship research is threefold. Firstly, we show how a generational lens provides a more nuanced understanding of the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship. Secondly, we show how incorporating the historical context helps to position business conduct in the social/societal experiences of entrepreneurs. Finally, our case study of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand brings an Asian perspective to ethnic entrepreneurship debates that generally concern European and North American research studies and thus hopes to inspire future comparative research.     

Entrepreneurial action and the Euro-American social science tradition: pragmatism,realism and looking beyond ‘the entrepreneur’

Entrepreneurship studies are dominated by the disciplines of economics and psychology and work within a limiting methodological frame of reference; a ‘scientistic’ and individualistic framework that dominates the US-led mainstream of research. To achieve a more balanced scholarship, it is helpful to look at an alternative style of research and analysis which has deep and intertwined European and American roots. This looks to other social sciences such as sociology, as well as to history and the philosophy of science. Its adoption would encourage to shift the focus away from ‘entrepreneurs’ and onto the much broader phenomenon of entrepreneurial action or ‘entrepreneuring’ in its societal and institutional contexts. Such a shift would open up a greatly expanded range of research questions and enable a better balance to be achieved between attention to individual entrepreneurial actors and their organizational, societal and institutional contexts. A pragmatist and realist frame of reference, which recognizes both the importance of processes of social construction and the existence of a ‘real world’, has considerable potential to enrich and expand the scope of entrepreneurship scholarship.     

Introducing the impact of technology: a ‘neo-contingency’ HRM Anglo-French comparison

The paper analyses the impact of technological and national-culture factors on certain HRM policies and practices in Britain and France. This perspective supports the neo-contingency approach, which does not claim primacy for either the technological or the national-cultural factors shaping HRM policies and practices. HR managers in each country in high-, mid- and low-tech firms were surveyed. The relevance in the diffusion of certain patterns of HRM policies and practices advocates that employees working in intensive technology firms need a creative and adaptive HR management approach. The differences found in the application of the HRM practices studied between the two countries are illustrated through the educational system, which is different in France and Britain.     

‘Recession push’ and ‘prosperity pull’ entrepreneurship in a rural developing context

In this paper, the ‘recession push’ and the ‘prosperity pull’ hypotheses are used to analyse the effect of growing non-farm wage employment on entrepreneurship in a rural developing context. Data are collected in a rural household survey in 110 communes in central Vietnam which includes subjective owner assessments of reasons for starting non-farm businesses. This way it is possible to separately test the two hypotheses by distinguishing opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs. We use clustered probit regression analyses and control for possible endogeneity in order to predict participation in entrepreneurship. The results show that better access to non-farm wage employment increases the likelihood of becoming an opportunity entrepreneur but has no effect on necessity entrepreneurship. This, therefore, supports the ‘prosperity pull’ hypothesis but not the ‘recession push’ hypothesis. The growing non-farm economy is likely to accelerate the emergence of opportunity entrepreneurship in rural areas. However, necessity entrepreneurs are suffering from a lack of individual and household assets which pushes them into entrepreneurship regardless of non-farm job opportunities in the surrounding area.     

Women victims of self-immolation: a ‘Grounded Theory’ study in Iran

This study aims to examine the sociological aspects of the phenomenon of women self-immolation in Lorestan, Iran. The methodology of ‘Grounded Theory’ was used to analyze data gathered from 11 women who had attempted self-immolation. Data analysis yielded ten categories including patriarchy, divorce as a stigma, family maladjustment, economic frustration, access to fire, prevalence of self-immolation, self-immolation for emancipation, self-immolation as a threat, reorganization of social relations, and remorsefulness. Generally, in societies where patriarchy is dominant, divorce is considered a stigma, and life style pattern is pastoral or rural, when family maladjustment and economic frustration emerge as well, the occurrence of the phenomenon of women self-immolation becomes more likely.