Disaggregating and reaggregating work: Workers,management and the struggle over creating coherency and purpose in a context of work degradation

The article argues that whilst there is a growing sense of degradation and worsening conditions (disaggregation) of work in the cleaning sector in general, there are some important contradictions which require complex organisational responses. In the main, there is a growing sense of isolation in this work, yet also a growing perception of autonomy and workers having to use discretion in new and challenging ways. This article focuses on these issues and management responses to reaggregate the nature of such work, creating new forms of identity and activities intended to enhance (or address) the levels of stability and sustainability at work as well as in operational processes. This management conundrum means that they need to deal with a range of job‐related, skill‐oriented worker learning and also representation issues. These responses bring to the fore the contested nature of such forms of work and how they are changing.     

Outsourcing with debt financing

This paper investigates the effect of capital structure on a firm’s choice between vertical integration and outsourcing. We model the production decision in a Principal-Agent framework and show that suppliers use debt as a strategic instrument to collect the surplus from outsourcing as their wealth constraint or limited liability ensures them more attractive compensation schemes. Investigating the buyer’s capital structure, we find that outsourcing with risky debt is more likely to occur for high values of the outsourcing surplus.     

Under What Conditions Is an Insurance Guaranty Fund Beneficial for Policyholders?

In this article, we derive conditions in an imperfect market setting, under which the introduction of a self‐supporting insurance guaranty fund improves the position of the policyholders. When a guaranty fund is advantageous given homogeneous firms in the market, all policyholders benefit from it to the same extent, if they have the same underlying risk preferences and are charged identical premiums. In a more realistic heterogeneous setting, the introduction of an insurance guaranty fund is in general no longer beneficial for all policyholders in the same manner. Hence, systematic wealth transfers take place between the policyholders of different insurance companies. As a possible solution, and in order to counteract this effect, we introduce a framework for utility‐based fund charges.     

The Internationalization of Spanish- and Portuguese-Speaking Banks

This article investigates which variables affect the location choice of banks from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in their process of internationalization. The article compares the differences in these variables for public and private banks. The sample consists of 141 banks operating in 58 countries. Results show that internationalization is undertaken by the largest banks, which preferably choose countries with similar language, close to the home country, and with the most opportunity for growth. Additionally, the effects of certain explanatory variables on the probability of expanding to a given country are different for public and private banks.     

Custom-built

Mass customization has rapidly moved from an abstract theory to a practical source of competitive advantage. Fabrizio Salvador has been studying the companies that have bolstered their business by tapping into the idiosyncratic needs of customers. Tom Brown reports on his latest thinking.     

The implications of job matching for retirement health insurance and leave benefits

This paper focuses on potential reasons for variations in benefit packages, in particular variations in the availability of retirement health insurance and leave. An important feature of our analysis is that we do not start with heterogeneity in workforces to explain fringe benefit differences across employers. It would be straightforward to say that differences across employers in fringe benefit packages simply represent differences in the preferences of their workforces. Rather, we focus on heterogeneity across employers as an important source of differences in fringe benefit packages. Preliminary evidence is found supportive of the predicted differences in the likelihood of such fringe benefits as retirement health insurance and leave based upon two variables–the extent of on-the-job training offered by the employer and the size of the employers. We also examine the implied links between these fringe benefits and such variables as average tenture and the proportion of the workforce that is female.     

Do tourists disperse weed seed? A global review of unintentional human-mediated terrestrial seed dispersal on clothing,vehicles and horses

Human-mediated seed dispersal is recognised as an important, but under-researched, issue. To assess the potential for tourists to act as unintentional seed dispersal agents, we reviewed published and unpublished data on seed dispersal via clothing, vehicles (cars) and in/on horses and donkeys, all of which can be used by tourists. Seeds from 754 species of terrestrial plants have been collected from these vectors, 15% of which are internationally recognised environmental weeds. Seeds were collected from personal clothing and equipment (228 species), the fur of donkeys and horses (42 species), horse dung (216 species) and vehicles (505 species). Most were herbs (429 species) or graminoids (237 species) and native to Europe. Annual Poa, White Clover, Kentucky Bluegrass and Yorkshire Fog were the most frequent species. There have been eight studies specifically on tourists, which identified 12 species on clothing, 26 on vehicles and 133 from horse dung. Methods that minimise the risk of tourists as human-mediated dispersal agents may therefore be appropriate for some tourism activities/destinations: suggestions are made. Further sampling using standardised experimental techniques is required to assess the relative risk associated with specific tourist activities and locations and determine which, and how much, seed is transported.     

Riding the Ever-Rolling Stream: Time and the Ontology of Violent Conflict

In this paper, we examine the ways in which the passage of time is dealt with in econometric studies of violent conflict and civil war with empirical attention to the dynamics of ethnic conflict. We argue that the mainstream approach to econometric studies of civil war is based on a time-invariant ontology and that this is not an appropriate or adequate way of capturing the causal patterns of violent conflict. Based analysis of replication datasets using structural break analysis and rolling windows, we show how careful attention to the passage of time reveals important macro-historical changes in the coefficients on ethnic diversity in explaining conflict incidence. We conclude that econometric studies of civil war need to pay more careful attention to the limitations on the generalizations that they draw through attention to the passage of time and better iteration with qualitative and historical studies.