Blocked and New Frontiers for Trade Unions: Contesting ‘the Meaning of Work’ in the Creative and Caring Sectors

Many jobs feature tensions between workers’ own motivations, and the objectives imposed on them by management or economic imperatives. We call these tensions ‘meaning of work conflicts’. We ask whether trade unions can intervene in them, or whether they are simply too subjective to be a credible campaigning focus. We examine two professional groups in Britain and France, musicians and healthcare staff. Among musicians, workers tend to negotiate meaning of work conflicts themselves, seeing little role for unions in this process. This engenders legitimacy problems that unions have had to find ways around. By contrast, in the hospitals sector, there is more scope for unions to campaign over the meaning of work, thus potentially increasing legitimacy among staff and the public. The difference is explained by the more diffuse and fragmented nature of employer structures in music, and the more chaotic set of motivations found among music workers.     

创意产业链与创意产业集群

创意产业链强调以创意为龙头,以内容为核心,驱动产品的制造,拉动批发和营销。带动后续产品开发,形成上下联动、左右衔接、一次投入、多次产出的链条．其关键战略环节包括内容、渠道、媒体、需求;创意产业集群指创意产业在地域上的集中,它使创意产品的创造、生产、分销和利用得到最优化,并能够显著提升创意产业的竞争力。     

Creative Thinking Ability, Cognitive Type and R&D Performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate the contributions of creative thinking ability and cognitive type to research and development (R&D) performance. One hundred and six researchers in an R&D institute of a petroleum company in Taiwan were given the Circle Test of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator . Their R&D performance was measured in terms of assigned technical reports, completed service projects, published papers, and a supervisor's performance rating. Results showed that there was a low but positive correlation between creativity and the first-authored paper and the technical report. The cognitive type was on the other hand associated with the performance rating and the first-authored service project assignment. Implications for R&D management are discussed.     

‘When the Going Gets Tough’ . . . : Recession and the Resilience of Workplace Partnership

Drawing on longitudinal research in an engineering multinational corporation, this article considers the resilience of workplace partnership under conditions of retrenchment. In line with extant literature, the twin influences of trade union power and competitive strategy are seen to significantly shape the durability of partnership. Beyond these determinants, trust and managerial skill and political sensitivity are deemed important moderators. The findings nonetheless suggest that the favourable alignment of these factors may not represent a sufficient bulwark in those situations where the axis of partnership is local, within the context of otherwise centrally coordinated industrial relations.     

商务也跨界：极具创意的玩具投影机

在商务市场，微投产品由于性能不高，一直无法打动那些真正有需求的消费者。然而，Oculon公司将微投技术应用于玩具之中，显然要比之前那些追求投影性能的厂商聪明了许多。据悉，Oculon玩具投影机第一代功能相对简单，只能投影DVD内容：第二代在此基础上增加了教育功能；而最新推出的第三代产品增加游戏功能，实现了教育、娱乐多重应用。     

The economic modeling of strategy process: ‘clean models’ and ‘dirty hands’

We argue that our model of learning in alliances ( Khanna, Gulati and Nohria, 1998 ) is an economic model of strategy process. We discuss implications of this view for the strategy process vs. content debate, for the appropriate testing of models of strategy process, and for the role of economics in helping understand strategy process. We propose that the ‘clean models’ from economics and ‘dirty hands’ of traditional process inquiries offer research designs that are complementary rather than incompatible ( Hirsch, Michaels and Friedman, 1987 ). Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘The Magnificent 7[am]?’ Work‐life articulation beyond the 9[am] to 5[pm] ‘norm’

This article focuses on the work‐life ‘balance’ challenges of those who work in organisations that operate beyond standard hours. The concept of work‐life articulation is utilised to examine the experiences and practicalities of attempting to reconcile the, often competing, demands of employment and family life. Qualitative research was conducted in two private sector businesses and one‐third sector organisation in the UK during the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. The findings reveal increasing competitive pressures, efficiency drives and work intensification. ‘Business needs’ are prioritised over care responsibilities, and in the private sector organisations there is declining flexible working with a reassertion of the management prerogative. This article contributes to current debates over work‐life ‘balance’ and highlights variable, changeable and unpredictable working time arrangements that permeate non‐standard hours, which creates additional complexities and challenges for family time schedules and routines.     

Shared knowledge, “glitches,” and product development performance

Much recent thought in strategy has stressed the importance of organizational integration for competitive advantage. Empirical studies of product development have supported this emphasis by correlating integrating practices and superior performance. We propose, from a resource‐based or capability view, that this correlation results from integration leading to patterns of shared knowledge among firm members, with the shared knowledge constituting a resource underlying product development capability. To explore this connection, we examine the product development efforts of a scientific software company. We define the ‘glitch’ as a costly error possible only because knowledge was not shared, and measure the influence of glitches on firm performance. At this company, gaps in shared knowledge did cause the company to incur significant excess costs. We also identify a set of ‘syndromes’ that can lead to glitches, and measure the relative importance of these syndromes. The glitch concept may offer a general tool for practical measurement of the marginal benefits of shared knowledge. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Am I Getting It or Not?” The Practices Involved in “Trying to Consume” a New Technology

In recent years, high rates of failure of technology‐based products have spurred interest in understanding the psychological and sociological barriers to consumer learning of technological innovations. The main focus of this research was to examine the learning process and consumers’ coping mechanisms when they encounter technological innovations. A study was designed to understand the learning process in real time as consumers engaged in a set of activities associated with the novel interface. The goal was to investigate how consumers cope with high levels of complexity during their initial interactions with a technology‐based product and how their coping strategies may hinder the learning process. Verbal protocol measures were used in order to understand the consumer's learning process as he or she interacts with a technology‐based product in real time. They were told that they would have to think aloud while performing certain tasks and that their thoughts would be recorded for further analysis. The personal digital assistant (PDA) with handwriting recognition as its interface was chosen for this study. The main task for the participants was to learn how to use Graffiti writing—i.e., the product's handwriting recognition software. We proceeded to a thematic analysis in which interpretations were generated by the researchers going back and forth between the transcribed texts, the developing interpretation, the new interface itself, and also the relevant literature. The results suggest that the new product's interface serves to structure the consumer's learning process even as he or she responds in relatively unstructured ways. The findings identify three basic factors that interfere with the learning process during consumers’ initial interactions with a technological innovation: interface and functionality practices, social influence, and causal attributions. Specifically, the results suggest that in designing technology‐based products there is a gap between the levels of know‐how between the manufacturer and the user. The challenge for manufacturers is to understand the consumer's learning experience and coping strategies and provide mechanisms that would make the transition easy and intuitive. This could be achieved by incorporating into the new interface some degree of flexibility that will allow consumers to modify tasks based on their preferences, or by including indicators that will provide feedback to the user. Furthermore, in the context of communication strategies, in order to minimize the negative impact that prior knowledge and social influence may have on learning, marketers could communicate specific steps describing how to use the new interface.