The Supervision of Convict Gangs in New South Wales 1788–1830

Despite its significance as a mechanism for controlling and extracting productivity from a workforce, the nature and character of convict supervision has been largely ignored by historians. To redress this neglect, this article establishes the character of the supervision of male convicts employed in government labour gangs. It is concluded that supervision was, until at least 1822, a critically important strategy for the extraction of labour effort from convict gangs and that it was rationally designed, systematically structured and effectively performed. After 1822 supervision was much more concerned with discipline and control although it was no less sophisticated or complex.     

Connectivity and control in the year 2000 and beyond

By now, most executives are familiar with the famous Year 2000 problem--and many believe that their companies have the situation well in hand. After all, it seems to be such a trivial problem--computer software that interprets "oo" to be the year 1900 instead of the year 2000. And yet armies of computer professionals have been working on it--updating code in payroll systems, distribution systems, actuarial systems, sales-tracking systems, and the like. The problem is pervasive. Not only is it in your systems, it's in your suppliers' systems, your bankers' systems, and your customers' systems. It's embedded in chips that control elevators, automated teller machines, process-control equipment, and power grids. Already, a dried-food manufacturer destroyed millions of dollars of perfectly good product when a computer counted inventory marked with an expiration date of "oo" as nearly a hundred years old. And when managers of a sewage-control plant turned the clock to January I, 2000 on a computer system they thought had been fixed, raw sewage pumped directly into the harbor. It has become apparent that there will not be enough time to find and fix all of the problems by January I, 2000. And what good will it do if your computers work but they're connected with systems that don't? That is one of the questions Harvard Business School professor Richard Nolan asks in his introduction to HBR's Perspectives on the Year 2000 issue. How will you prepare your organization to respond when things start to go wrong? Fourteen commentators offer their ideas on how senior managers should think about connectivity and control in the year 2000 and beyond.     

Ranking agencies under moral hazard

Summary. We provide rankings across uncertain outputs generated by agents functioning within the Principal-Agent paradigm. For agents who are identical except for their productivity, a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for an agent to be preferred is that her output dominates that of lower agents in the sense of First Degree Stochastic Dominance (FDSD) at every level of effort. Sufficient conditions are based on Blackwells ranking of information systems and involves a characterization of FDSD using stochastic matrices. Our conditions for ranking outputs extends earlier results concerning the value of information within the agency framework. We also show how our techniques can be adapted to rank agents even if the first-order approach for determining optimal contracts fails to hold.Received: April 2, 1996; revised version: October 30, 1996This revised version was published online in February 2005 with corrections to the cover date.     

Technology transfer and the process of technological innovation: new concepts,new models1

Many so-called ‘technology transfer’ programs are based on the belief that the process is essentially one of communication rather than of innovation. As such, the designers and managers of such programs concern themselves with questions of how to transfer technology after it is already developed, rather than how to develop or adapt technology so that it is transferable. The net result, we believe, has been a very poor showing and a very low level of effectiveness. To design a successful transfer program one must develop a view of the flow of technology in an integrated innovation process, and this paper concludes with the presentation of a highly significant flow model in which the critical aspect is constant assessment of the non-technological factors during the entire course of the innovation cycle–including those related to marketing, regulations, capital and human resources.     

Work-life balance policy and practice: Understanding line manager attitudes and behaviors

Work-life balance (WLB) is receiving increasing attention in the human resource management field. Line managers are playing a more active role in HRM decision-making, including work-life balance decisions, with the devolution of human resource management responsibility. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this paper develops a conceptual model explaining what affects line manager WLB policy and practice behaviors and the consequent impact on employee WLB experience in their organizations. Line manager WLB policy involvement, policy awareness, perceived policy instrumentality, and personal policy utilization are variables which are proposed to impact line manager attitudes towards WLB policies. These attitudes, in turn, are proposed to affect three employee WLB policy outcomes: employee WLB policy awareness, policy uptake, and policy satisfaction. The implications for future research and practice are set out.     

Turnaround: Retrenchment and recovery

Empirical research was conducted to investigate retrenchment as an integral component of the overall turnaround process. An industry study provided an anchored operational definition of a turnaround situation, indications of its internal and external causes, and an application of an absolute measure of its severity. The research further produced an empirical discrimination between retrenchment as a stand-alone response to financial decline and retrenchment as an initial phase of a turnaround strategy, and an identification of activities that can be used to classify entrepreneurial vs. efficiency emphases in a turnaround firm's recovery response.     

The industrial relations of appraisal: the case of teachers

The industrial relations of appraisal is a neglected area. Here the author examines the introduction of an appraisal scheme of a unionised, public sector occupational group, and shows how an apparently individualised approach is collectivised by union involvement. It draws on documentary sources, quantitative and qualitative data in the analysis.     

Finding an Alternative to Bureaucratic Models of Organization in the Public Sector

Demands for enhanced levels of efficiency and effectiveness have caused many to question traditional bureaucratic forms in public sector organizations. Team-based structures have been cited as an attractive alternative, perceived as facilitating the necessary levels of flexibility, innovation and responsiveness. Through the case of one Next Steps agency, the authors explore the difficulties encountered by rigid bureaucracies in their attempts to introduce team-working. It is argued that cultural change must act as a pivot for movement towards structural change, embodying all of the perceived positive aspects of team-working within public sector organizations. This will, in turn, facilitate the achievement of desired performance outcomes.