Does partnership at work increase trust? An analysis based on the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey

In the late 1990s, partnership at work was embraced with some enthusiasm by a number of stakeholders in employment relations and incorporated in the 1999 Employment Relations Act. The implementation of the Information and Consultation Regulations has also been extensively signalled. We might therefore expect to see some evidence of partnership‐related practices in Britain. The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004) provides an opportunity to explore the extent of partnership practice, and also, for the first time, to explore its link to trust relations. This article reports evidence from WERS 2004 suggesting that partnership practice remains relatively undeveloped and that it is only weakly related to trust between management and employee representatives and to employees’ trust in management. Direct forms of participation generally have a more positive association with trust than representative forms. There is also modest evidence that trust may be associated with certain workplace outcomes. The case for partnership and more particularly representative partnership as a basis for mutuality and trust is not supported by this evidence.     

Priority-driven behaviors under the Boston mechanism

We study school choice markets where the non-strategy-proof Boston mechanism is used to assign students to schools. Inspired by previous field and experimental evidence, we analyze a type of behavior called priority-driven: students have a common ranking over the schools and then give a bonus in their submitted preferences to those schools for which they have high priority. We first prove that under this behavior, there is a unique stable and efficient matching, which is the outcome of the Boston mechanism. Second, we show that the three most prominent mechanisms on school choice (Boston, deferred acceptance, and top trading cycles) coincide when students’ submitted preferences are priority-driven. Finally, we run some computational simulations to show that the assumption of priority-driven preferences can be relaxed by introducing an idiosyncratic preference component, and our qualitative results carry over to a more general model of preferences.     

Substantive or Symbolic Environmental Strategies? Effects of External and Internal Normative Stakeholder Pressures

Different forms of stakeholder pressures drive different environmental strategies in organizations. This article differentiates between internal and external normative stakeholder pressures to test their potentially unique effects on environmental strategies. The findings suggest that internal, normative stakeholder pressures primarily drive substantive commitments to environmental practices, reflecting an internalized, voluntary commitment to the natural environment and dedication to environmental leadership by the firm. External, normative pressures instead primarily drive symbolic commitments to environmental practices, aimed at managing the image of the organization to establish and reinforce an appearance of commitment to the natural environment. This novel perspective accounts for the institutionally plural contexts of organizations and their environments, in which internal pressures directly drive substantive environmental commitments and external pressures drive symbolic responses. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Understanding Employees’ Perceptions of Human Resource Practices: Effects of Demographic Dissimilarity to Managers and Coworkers

Strategic HRM researchers have increasingly adopted an employee perspective to understand the influence of HR practices on employee outcomes and have called for studies to explain variability in employees’ perceptions of HR practices. To address this research need, we used the social information processing perspective to examine the contextual influence of managers and coworkers on employees’ perceptions of HR practices and explore demographic dissimilarities as boundary conditions of the contextual influence. Conducting research in two organizational settings, we found that both manager‐perceived and coworker‐perceived HR practices were positively related to employees’ perceptions of HR practices. The results also revealed that employee demographic dissimilarity to coworkers in terms of age and organizational tenure weakened the positive relationship between coworker‐perceived and employee‐perceived HR practices. However, the relationship between manager‐perceived and employee‐perceived HR practices was not influenced by demographic dissimilarities. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Acquisitions in the biopharmaceutical IPO market: Collaboration,competition and co‐opetition

The present paper explores the little studied area concerning the acquisition of recent biopharmaceutical initial public offering firms. We examine the nature of the relationship between the acquiring firm and the acquired initial public offering firm prior to the acquisition and from the perspective of the resource‐based view. We find to some extent that firm specific‐resources affect the prospect that the firm will be acquired. Furthermore, our findings show that firms with more of these types of resources are likely to be acquired by firms engaged in co‐opetition rather than by firms engaged solely in collaboration, competition, or (to a limited extent) with no prior relationship.     

The Mendacity of Reconciliation in an Age of Resentment

The political ideal of reconciliation has gained increased prominence in recent decades, in part due to political experiments such as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and other formal or informal truth or reconciliation processes. Here, I argue that there is a fundamental mendacity to reconciliation, given stubborn asymmetries of social power and disrespect. Reconciliation as an ideal carries an impetus towards resolution that covers over the necessary role that conflict plays in political struggles—including the role that conflict plays within struggles for reconciliation. Nevertheless, despite the mendacity of reconciliation, its meaning still holds political value. Reconciliation implies an orientation towards social repair, which even the strongest critics of reconciliation cannot bring themselves to reject. Some lies are worse than others, and some lies might be noble or necessary. Reconciliation is the latter—a fiction that is less pernicious than its absence. In this light, the task is to locate means of political reconciliation that do not obscure the conflicts and asymmetries of social life but enable social actors to face up to these conflicts and to discover novel ways to repair the damage that they can do.     

Pricing Political Rallies

Why are political rallies free to attend? Fundraising is a central campaign activity and a perennial correlate of political victory. We argue that politicians set a zero price for rallies in order to reap a non‐pecuniary benefit: political support. An ‘allocation by waiting’ scheme selects those attendees with a lower opportunity cost of time relative to a standard ‘allocation by price’ scheme. Transactions costs mitigate Coasean bargaining by removing the secondary market, thereby altering the composition of the average rally crowd. This mechanism allows politicians to facilitate exchange with ‘general interests’: citizens who do not engage in rent seeking due to collective action costs but still stand to gain from redistributive policies.     

Innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic setting: a systematic literature review

In the knowledge society, universities have assumed new missions and relations in order to contribute to economic and social development, while preserving their own sustainability. This article aims to explore scientific literature on innovation and entrepreneurship in the academic setting, describing how the field is organized, main terms and definitions, theoretical frameworks, and empirical models, in order to direct future research. A systematic literature review was conducted, in which articles indexed at Web of Science were initially submitted to a bibliometric analysis. Then, the content of a set of articles best fitting the objectives of the study was analyzed. Bibliometric analysis shows an increasing literature, with publications over more than 40 years. There are studies from many disciplines, with those in business and economics prevailing, mainly related to management and originating from the USA and Europe. Content analysis shows a fragmented literature, with definitions not showing a clear relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, or their use within universities in coherence with their traditional definitions. Both theoretical frameworks and empirical models are very heterogeneous, but four groups of studies were identified based on their theoretical frameworks, and also based on their empirical models. With only a few exceptions, empirical models do not share many components and variables, and there are no clear boundaries between the different models. Despite the increasing literature, it is still fragmented and undertheorized, requiring more systematic and holistic studies, considering both the economic and the social aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities.     

From a System of National Accounts to a Process of National Wellbeing Accounting

There are repeated calls to go ‘Beyond GDP’, for measures of wellbeing and progress in addition to those that the System of National Accounts (SNA) is designed to provide. We identify key issues that can help build on the rigour of SNA whilst fitting the measurement of economic performance within a broader assessment of national wellbeing and progress. Such drivers are already leading to a proliferation of indicators and accounts, for example in the development of non‐monetary measures of natural resources, but there are significant measurement challenges, not least the question of whether a single, overall measure or index of wellbeing is valid. But the challenge of measurement, per se, is one thing: in our view, a more critical issue is whether the measures will actually be used. We propose a dynamic and multi‐staged approach for developing SNA, embracing the production and use of measures. This would start by identifying user requirements for wider measures, to provide the basis for national and cross‐national developments in well‐being accounting. We envisage greater branding and marketing of national well‐being concepts to promote measures and support their use. We call for outreach by producers, so that there is dialogue about the development and use of measures.     

“I Am My Body”. Physical Selves of Police Officers in a Changing Institution

Most studies on identity work have overlooked the corporeal quality of occupational life. Despite calls to attempt such engagement, little is known about the role of the body in occupations for which corporeal elements are central in the affirmation of identity. This study aims to answer such calls by providing a detailed ethnography of police work. Focusing on four bodily practices, we demonstrate how fitness, intimidation, cleanliness, and toughness are central elements to the officers’ construction of self. We thereby highlight the notion of physical selfhood as a way to understand the body/identity nexus among police officers and their capacity to resist new work requirements. We view bodies through a lens of resistance, rather than docility and compliance as much previous research has done. We aim to contribute to scholarship on identity work by portraying the politicization of bodies as a powerful component, thereby helping professionals to deflect some important institutional pressures affecting their work.