Malaysian industrial relations at century's turn: Vision 2020 or a spectre of the past?

Malaysia's industrial relations (IR) has been characterized by extensive state control guaranteeing a high level of managerial prerogative within the workplace, minimal overt conflict and very little bargaining power for labour. These arrangements were an integral component of the package to attract investors when Malaysia's industrialization strategy focused on low-cost, export-oriented industries. Since then, however, Malaysia has adopted the goal of developed country status by 2020 and embarked on a higher value-added, more capital-intensive industrialization strategy. This paper analyzes current Malaysian IR at the workplace level, posing the question as to whether the economic progress towards 'Vision 2020' is being accompanied by a transformation of Malaysia's IR. It will be seen that there is evidence of substantial growth in training, the implementation of multi-skilling in some workplaces as well as isolated instances of some 'lean production' practices. Fundamental change, however, is not occurring; workers remain excluded from the decision-making process both within and outside the workplace.     

Mortgage Product Substitution and State Anti-predatory Lending Laws: Better Loans and Better Borrowers?

Mounting foreclosures and disclosures of abusive lending practices led many states to adopt new anti-predatory lending (APL) laws. Researchers have examined the impact of such laws on credit flows and the cost of credit. This research extends the literature by examining whether the market responded to these laws by substituting different mortgage products for those restricted by APL provisions. The evidence indicates that the laws were effective in restricting loans with targeted characteristics, and that the market substituted other product types to maintain access to credit and affordability in the face of these restrictions. The laws reduced the involvement of investor and second home purchases but appeared to impact borrower credit scores or down payments.     

Contingent Employment Relationships Between Tour Guides and Tour Operators in Ecuador: Human Resource Management Practices and Attitudinal Outcomes

This study examines a unique contingent employment relationship—that between tour guides and tour operators in Ecuador. Linkages among tour operators’ HR practices, interactions between operations managers and tour guides, and the tour guides’ attitudes toward both the tour operator and the ultimate tourist-client are investigated. Tour guides are found to exhibit dual commitments to both operators and tourist-clients. Affective commitment to the tour operators was found to partially mediate the relationship between organizational entry HR practices, compensation related HR practices, operations manager interactions, and tour guides’ commitment to the tourist-client, suggesting that tour guides’ perceptions about the tour operator may affect their ultimate customer service delivery. Satisfaction with tips was more directly related to commitment to the tourist-client, as was the interaction of pay administration satisfaction and tip satisfaction, supporting the notion that contingent pay beyond base pay provided by the tour operator and its delivery may impact tour guides’ motivation to provide quality service to the end client. Practical implications for the tour operators, and tourism ministries are offered.     

Surface mining of coal: efficiency of US interior mines

In this paper the relative efficiency in surface mining of US interior coal is investigated. A nonparmetric, non-stochasitic method is applied to 186 observations and esch firm's efficiency is calculated relative to the piecewise llinesr frontier technology. In adition, three sources of inefficiency are identified, namely: Scale, congestion and purely technical inefficiency. The outcome of the study shows among other things that on the average, captive mines are more efficient than non-captive mines, and that unionized mines are more efficient than non-unionized mines.     

Valuing mortality impacts of smoke exposure from major southern California wildfires

While the mortality impacts of urban air pollution have been well addressed in the literature, very little is known about the mortality impacts and associated social cost from wildfire-smoke exposure (Kochi et al., 2010, USEPA, 2004). In an attempt to address this knowledge gap, we estimate the social cost associated with excess mortality due to smoke exposure during the 2003 southern California wildfires. Accounting for confounding factors such as seasonality and fluctuation of daily mortality levels, we identify 133 excess cardiorespiratory-related deaths caused by wildfire-smoke exposure. The mean estimated total mortality-related cost associated with the 2003 southern California wildfire event is approximately one billion U.S. dollars. Accounting for mortality costs associated with wildfire-smoke exposure allows for a better understanding of the tradeoffs associated with fuel treatment programs and suppression costs.     

Who Are Ethnic Entrepreneurs? A Study of Entrepreneursapos; Ethnic Involvement and Business Characteristics

This article proposes that the term "ethnic entrepreneur" should be defined by the levels of personal involvement of the entrepreneur in the ethnic community instead of reported ethnic grouping. It hypothesizes that significant differences in personal and business characteristics will surface between the most community-involved and least community-involved ethnic entrepreneurs. T-tests were done on 112 Asian and Latino entrepreneurs split into top and bottom quartiles on the personal involvement scale. Results showed several significant differences between the two groups on variables relating to the entrepreneurs' background characteristics, business-related goals, cultural values, business strategies, and business performance.     

The impact of alternative operationalizations of industry structural elements on measures of performance for entrepreneurial manufacturing ventures

Using a sample of 115 manufacturing ventures, this study examined elements of industry structure which prior theory and research in the fields of industrial organization economics, strategic management, and entrepreneurship suggest are the most important structural characteristics of industries. Future researchers should carefully select the particular operationalization of industry structure as our research demonstrates that the influence of industry structural elements on measures of firm performance is strongly dependent upon the particular operationalization utilized. In addition, measures of industry structure were found to have a differential impact on alternative measures of firm performance, suggesting that different performance measures are not interchangeable proxies for one another. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Better Access to Water,Better Children's Health: A Mirage?

In Egypt, diarrhoeal diseases remain the main cause of mortality among young children, although the percentage of households with an “improved” access to water, according to the definition used by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is very high. This article seeks to shed light on this paradox, by better identifying the populations affected by problems of access to water, taking into account three dimensions—the time it takes to access a source of water, daily cut-offs and behaviour with respect to storage—and by applying alternative matching estimators to estimate the effects of defective water access on child diarrhoea. It is found that children whose families are identified as having a water access problem through the use of broader-based definitions have a greater likelihood of contracting diarrhoeal diseases. This article, thus, shows that the mortality of children in Egypt could be further reduced by improving households' access to water.