The state: Agent or proprietor?

This paper addresses the following question: Does characterizing the state to be an agent of its citizens provide a useful "as if" framework for positive analysis of economic policy? Or, can we understand economic policy only by explicitly characterizing the state as proprietary, the instrument of the ruling elite?     

UK universities and the state: A Faustian bargain?

The universities are now 'one of the last semi-nationalised sectors of the British economy, ' used by government as an instrument of social policy. This situation represents a 'Faustian bargain ' which threatens both the quality and the prosperity of universities. One solution would be privatisation of some universities through public flotation. These universities could then contract with government to take state-funded students. Two objections are that the scheme would promote elitism and that it would encourage greater inequality between universities, but the relevant question is whether it would offer an improvement on the present regime.     

Part‐time work for women: Does it really help balance work and family?

Results of this study suggest that the differential response of women to part‐time work as opposed to a career may be a function of motivational and work‐context differences between career and non‐career women. Part‐time work was associated with lower work‐to‐family interference, better time management ability, and greater life satisfaction for women in both career and earner‐type positions. Role overload, family‐to‐work interference, and family time management, however, were dependent on job type with beneficial effects for earners but not for career women. Job type also played a role: Career women reported higher life satisfaction and lower depressed mood than did women in earner positions. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Acquisitions of family owned firms: boon or bust?

Using a hand-collected dataset, we examine the acquisitions of 307 family owned targets for the period 1984–2000 to study the conflicting roles of entrenchment and alignment of interests in these firms. We find that bidders experience the strongest announcement market reaction at the medium levels of family ownership. However, bidder returns are negatively impacted when acquiring a public target family firm, even controlling for the percent owned by the family. We also find that overall firms that acquire family owned targets experience significant large negative returns in the long run. However, the long run results are also sensitive to the ownership structure of the family firm target with medium levels resulting in insignificant returns in the long run.     

Economic fundamentals and Eurozone sovereign spreads: will the good news continue?

Spreads between government bond yields in the Eurozone periphery and Germany have fallen to the lowest levels in 3 to 4 years. There are two major factors behind this. The first is the speech by ECB President Mario Draghi on 26 July 2012 promising ‘to do – within its mandate – whatever it takes’ and the ECB's Outright Monetary Transactions initiative of summer 2012. This has been successful in eliminating fears of an imminent Eurozone break‐up. The second factor is the improvement in economic fundamentals in the periphery countries, particularly in Ireland, Spain and Greece. Previous econometric work on the role of economic fundamentals at the country level has focused almost entirely on government debt and government deficit to GDP ratios. The true fundamentals have been obscured by market panics and by the fact that markets really only took full account of these fundamentals from the end of 2010. Before the middle of 2007, markets ignored the build‐up of stresses between Eurozone countries. Once amplification of perceived risks by market panics and the shift from inattention to full market attention are taken into account, a far more nuanced picture emerges of what country fundamentals really matter for sovereign spreads. In addition to excessive government debt, deteriorating competitiveness, excessive private debt, and housing market crises spilling into banking systems, have been especially prominent in the countries at the periphery. In Ireland and Spain, declining relative unit labour costs and the fading of the housing crisis have recently been important in narrowing spreads against Germany. The econometric model also suggests that good news on relative growth and inflation help narrow spreads. Prospects for further narrowing of spreads for Greece and especially for Spain look good. Once the current bout of falling spreads is over, the underlying picture suggested by the estimated model is less good for Ireland, Italy and Portugal and for the euro area core economy, France. In all four cases, the government debt to GDP ratio has been deteriorating, and for France and Italy, competitiveness has not improved significantly. For France, another factor is the rising level of the private debt to GDP ratio. For Ireland, scope is limited for the effect on the spread of further improvements in competitiveness and housing market recovery.     

Employee involvement and the middle manager: saboteur or scapegoat?

This article reports on the results of a study of managers' attitudes to employee involvement. Contrary to a number of existing studies, this research found middle managers' attitudes to be no more negative than those of senior managers. As hypothesised, managers' intentions to support employee involvement were found to be inversely related to recent managerial job loss and positively related to managers' experience of employee involvement. Contrary to expectations, the study revealed a positive relationship between recent delayering and intentions to support the involvement of employees. The study also reveals a complex curvilinear relationship between managers' perceptions of their own empowerment and their attitudes to employee involvement. The article draws out a number of implications for practice.     

Depletion or expansion? Understanding the effects of support policy use on employee work and family outcomes

Past research on the effects of employees' use of work–family support policies tends to draw on a depletion perspective suggesting that using these policies may reduce work–family conflict. The emphasis on depletion fails to consider the expansion perspective that assumes that using work resources may enrich family functioning. Using a sample of 113 matched employee–supervisor pairs and a 1‐month separation between predictor and criterion measurement, we found support for the expansion rather than the depletion perspective. Specifically, the relationships between support policy use and employee job satisfaction and family efficacy (but not organisational citizenship behaviour) were mediated by work‐to‐family enrichment; these effects were realised only for employees with high levels of family identity. In contrast, no support was found for family‐to‐work conflict as a mediator of the model.     

Appearance-based Sex Discrimination and Stereotyping in the Workplace: Whose Conduct Should We Regulate?

Court treatment of sex discrimination and harassment claims based on appearance and gender stereotyping has been inconsistent, particularly where the facts involve reference to sexual orientation. Ironically, court willingness to allow such claims may turn on the choice of verbal or physical conduct by, or the sex or sexual orientation of, the alleged offenders. Because plaintiffs in such situations may assert retaliation claims to increase their chances of prevailing, employers should focus less on regulating aspects of personal appearance unrelated to job performance and more on problematic reactions by co-workers. Workplace civility policies may hold promise for limiting both legal liability and practical consequences in the absence of a legislative response.

Innovative work behaviour and performance-related pay: rewarding the individual or the collective?

In order to change employee behaviour, companies frequently turn to forms of performance-related pay (PRP). At the same time, there is a clear imperative to encourage employee innovation. In this study we focus on the relation between PRP, organizational and job-level task resources and innovative work behaviour (IWB). In doing so, we distinguish between individual and collective PRP and build on insights from high-performance work systems and employee creativity literature. Using survey data of 927 employees from five Belgian industries, we find that individual PRP weakens the important positive relation of task-level job resources like learning opportunities on IWB. The combination of both individual and collective PRP, on the contrary, strengthens the positive relationship between organizational resources like upward communication and IWB.     

Workplace mediation and the empowerment of disputants: rhetoric or reality?

There has been a growing interest in the field of employee relations in the use of mediation in seeking to resolve disputes in the workplace. Mediation is a model of dispute resolution, it is argued, that lends itself particularly well to situations where the parties have become entrenched in their positions. The study's timeliness is evident in the Government's recent strategic focus on workplace conflict, specifically its current initiative to pilot mediation networks within the small and medium enterprises sector. The research was carried out over a nine‐month period ending in March 2012. It is based on the views and experiences of 60 respondents from over 40 cross‐sectoral organisations in the North of England. Findings revealed that the main reasons for the disputes referred for mediation were relationship problems, poor communication and poorly perceived management style and practice. Significantly, differences in sector or occupation could also impact on whether cases went to mediation.     

Managed migration? Nurse recruitment and the consequences of state policy

This article analyses the main trends in nurse migration to the UK and highlights the importance of state policy as a major influence shaping employer utilisation of migrant nurses. The introduction of the points‐based immigration system is considered, and the consequences for migrant nurses, employers and trade unions are examined.     

Who will guard over the guardians?

Human rights have been weaponized and transformed into geopolitical tools to target certain states and not others. The rhetoric of human rights has been distorted by politicians, media, think tanks and the emerging “human rights industry” that serves hegemonic powers and not humanity. This constitutes an affront against human dignity.     

Productivity or Discrimination? Beauty and the Exams*

Do good looks make people more productive? An impact of looks on earnings has been found in the empirical literature: plain people earn less than average‐looking people who in turn earn less than good‐looking people. However, an important question remains unanswered: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or productivity? We provide evidence against the hypothesis of Becker‐type discrimination stemming from tastes and in favour of productivity‐related discrimination.     

Shrinking the state or the Big Society? Public service employment relations in an era of austerity

The Big Society is an integral part of the coalition's plans for public service retrenchment, but it is premature to dismiss it as exclusively concerned with expenditure cuts and privatisation. The Big Society signals the government's ambition to transform public services and it is the rubric that is being used to shrink the state and undermine long‐standing systems of public service employment relations. This article considers the origins and meaning of the Big Society and then assesses its consequences for public service provision and the workforce. The Big Society is integrally connected to deficit reduction with the voluntary sector and an increased emphasis on volunteering promoted as a more user‐centred and cost‐effective way of delivering public services in tough times. For the workforce, more competition between diverse providers in conjunction with budget cuts is placing downward pressure on terms and conditions and encouraging employers to question the continuation of national pay determination in many parts of the public sector.     

“When I go my family will see my life in programmes”: Legacy giving and identity at the Royal Opera House

With £5.5 trillion due to be transferred between generations over forthcoming decades in the UK alone, non-profits stand to increase their income from legacy giving significantly, if they can make lasting and meaningful connections with donors. Extant research suggests that autobiographical memory may play a key role in this process. In this article, we go beyond considering autobiographical memory in general to examining how connection with a particular non-profit, and the memories that are generated can shape individual identity. We report the results of twenty life-history interviews with people who plan to leave a legacy to the Royal Opera House, and discuss how identity is created through a connection with opera and/or ballet in general and the Royal Opera House in particular. We then go on to explore how the strength of that connection and development of a shared identity can create a sense of symbolic immortality and influence the legacy giving decision, drawing on peak memorable experiences and nostalgia as a social emotion that connects people to what they love. We conclude by reflecting on how other non-profits might create or stimulate such identities.     

Crowdworking: working with or against the crowd?

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - Our current labour market is affected by massive changes like digitalization, automation and globalization, which gives rise to completely new...     

Predictors and processes of satisfaction with work–family balance: Examining the role of personal,work, and family resources and conflict and enrichment

Drawing from resource-based theories, we conduct two studies to investigate the unique and relative importance of personal (e.g., resilience, proactive health behaviors), work, and family resources (i.e., enriched job and family roles, work and family support) to balance satisfaction, and the mediating roles of conflict and enrichment. We test our hypotheses in Study 1 using a cross-sectional survey of 216 employees and in Study 2 using a time-lagged survey over 3 months with 220 employees. Across both studies, work and family resources (e.g., enriched job and family characteristics, work and family support) were positively related to balance satisfaction. In general, work resources were more relevant to balance satisfaction than were personal or family resources. In terms of processes, work resources relate to less work-to-family conflict and greater work-to-family enrichment which in turn, relate to greater balance. In contrast, the family-to-work directions of conflict and enrichment were just weakly related to balance. Across the two studies, findings regarding the role of personal resources were mixed. We discuss how these findings expand our understanding of work–family balance and the practical implications for human resource practitioners.     

Interactions between work and identities: Thriving,withering, or redefining the self?

Interactions between work and identities are an important topic as a result of their influence on both employees' well-being and organizational performance. However, there is a lack of theorizing that comprehensively charts the processes and outcomes of work and identity interactions. In this paper, we formulate an integrated conceptual model of interactions between work and identities, employee reactions to them, and subsequent outcomes. In our model, we bring together well-known and under-examined aspects of work and identity interactions. The model explains how such varied outcomes as employee thriving and withering, and both subjugated and empowered identities derive from encounters between work and identities. The model makes it possible to assess the possible benefits and side-effects of human resource management practices that seek to align work with the worker, and supports human resource managers in distinguishing the positive potential in situations where employees find their work misaligning with their identities.