Generating Equality? Equal Pay,Decentralization and the Electricity Supply Industry

Despite the existence of effective equal pay legislation in the UK since 1975 aimed at eradicating pay discrimination, women are still in receipt of only 79.5 per cent of the hourly earnings received by men (EOR 1994b). Whitehouse (1992) claims that a centralized collective bargaining model is more likely to lead to equality for women in the labour market than a liberalized individualistic model. The model was tested at an aggregated level for 13 OECD countries. This article provides a case study which charts a trade union claim for equal pay over a period often years (1984–94), which may be seen as an examination of the Whitehouse proposition at a disaggregated level. The paper highlights the barriers to equality bargaining and analyses the case study to identify the criteria necessary for achieving equality.     

Discontinuity in transition: Pupils' experience of technology in year 6 and year 7

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - This paper refers to current work at Goldsmiths University of London (‘Understanding Technological Approaches’, a project...     

Pharmaceutical Policy in the UK

For many years drug price regulation posed few public management problems. However, the overall NHS drugs budget has been increasing by almost 9% per annum over the past decade. Governments in the 1990s tried to control this growth by introducing new pharmaceutical policy instruments. This has led to an element of instability in the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, which is affecting NHS financial programming, as well as R&D investment decisions by companies. This article recommends the creation of an office for drug regulation (an 'OFDRUG') to reintroduce stability into pharmaceutical policy.     

Substitution elasticities between durable and nondurable goods in the United States: New evidence from the dynamic Laurent system

This paper uses the dynamic Laurent demand system to jointly estimate the service flows from durable and nondurable goods. The parameter estimates are used to obtain the Morishima elasticity of substitution between goods for the United States from 1960:1 to 1991:4. One of the significant results of this study is that the Morishima elasticities of substitution vary over time instead of being constant. This result implies that the use of the CES functional form gives a poor approximation of the demand system for the data used in this paper. Another important result is that consumers adjust to their long-run equilibrium holding of consumption goods slowly rather than quickly.     

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

Adrian Wilkinson and his colleagues discuss the growing importance of quality management in the UK, outline the basic principles of TQM, and examine its implications for employee involvement. They suggest that there are contradictions between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sides of TQM. This can be exemplified in the relationship between TQM and employee involvement which has not been fully explored. Drawing on a major programme of research on employee involvement, three cases are analysed. They argue that the links between TQM and employee involvement are more complex than the TQM literature would have us believe and there are tensions between employee involvement and TQM. Finally, there is a wider discussion of the subject which analyses a number of constraints on the implementation of TQM in the UK. Adrian Wilkinson, Mick Marchington and John Goodman are respectively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Professor in the School of Management at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Peter Ackers is a Lecturer at Loughborough University Business School.     

Banks and the world’s major banking centers, 2000

We update earlier articles on the determinants of interpenetration of financial centers by banks and analyze the substantial changes that have occurred between 1990 and 2000. First, the number of banks and the number of offices in other centers has fallen by over 20 percent since 1990. Second, aggregate interconnectedness has held steady between 1990 and 2000, though there is an increasing asymmetry. Third, Tokyo has lost rank as a center, while Hong Kong and Singapore have continued to gain importance. Fourth, Frankfurt, rather than gaining importance with the advent of the euro, has apparently lost importance. Lastly, some explicit or implicit agreements between banks from different countries not to compete in each other's markets have continued to wane, though intra-European interpenetration remains relatively low. JEL no. F30, G15, G21     

Market segmentation - are UK charities making the most of the potential?

This paper discusses the findings of research carried out into the application of market segmentation in the charity sector. Four hundred and ten of the top performing charities (as ranked by income from voluntary donations) were surveyed to determine what techniques of segmentation they apply to their database. They were also asked to indicate how this information is used to inform and determine appropriate fundraising strategies. The findings show that with the exception of a few large organisations, the concept of market segmentation is as yet not utilised to its full potential in the development of successful fundraising strategy.