British union renewal: does salvation really lie beyond the workplace?

The paper examines a union initiative to recruit among migrant workers through the provision of individual services outside of the workplace. While the initiative is shown to have initially generated new members, questions are raised about the viability of such an approach in the absence of mutually supportive access to workplace representation.     

Agency Structure and Firm Culture: OSHA, EPA, and the Steel Industry

We compare models of Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcementand compliance for steel plants during the 1980s. We find thatOSHA and EPA respond similarly to plant-level compliance andmeasures of hazardousness, but differently to firm-level complianceand risks of plant closing, and we relate the differences tothe agencies' differing organizational structures. Plant-levelcompliance is affected by enforcement pressure, compliance costs,and the firm's overall compliance behavior in similar ways forthe two regulatory areas, but environmental compliance was alsosensitive to plant size and risk of closing. Finally, we findthat the likelihood that a plant was in compliance with oneagency seemed at most weakly related to whether it was in compliancewith the other, but that plants likely to receive enforcementattention from one agency were also more likely to receive enforcementattention from the other agency.     

Developing a sustainability ethic in leaders

The triple bottom line of fiscal, social, and environmental success considerably alters how organizations (and stakeholders) measure sustainable success. More important, however, is the conceptual shift required to understand and successfully lead organizations within this increasingly accepted paradigm. This article uses a mixed‐methods approach to explore the conceptual development of a sustainability ethic in aspiring leaders. More specifically, the authors report research examining the curriculum and pedagogy of a leadership education effort, in this case a college‐level course, aimed at effecting change in both individual aspiring leaders and their immediate community. The article describes the philosophical and research base for the curriculum and specific activities with their pedagogical approach. Results show evidence of increased awareness, importance, and commitment to sustainability as well as changes in how students conceptualize sustainability leadership. Findings offer insights for further developing leadership education for sustainability.     

‘Good when they want to be’: migrant workers in the supermarket supply chain

Despite the increased attention paid to the role and effects of migrant labour in the contemporary economy, there has been insufficient attention to the role of employers and the employment relationship. Recent studies have highlighted distinctive labour power characteristics of new labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe that make them ‘good workers’ in the eyes of employers. Drawing on multiple case studies across the supermarket supply chain, this article explores what kind of human resource migrant labour is perceived to be, particularly by employers, and what happens in practice as the dynamic tensions of the employment relationship unfolds in particular sector contexts. It argues that utilisation is conditioned more by the requirements of temporal flexibility – framed by the dynamics of employment within the supply chain – than any essential features of migrant labour power.     

Unconscious Processes of Organizing: Intergroup Conflict in Mental Health Care

A critical but overlooked issue in Weick’s seminal work, The Social Psychology of Organizing (1969/1979), concerns ‘the heat’ of organizing processes, namely, the underground emotional processes underpinning the organizing of conflictual work relationships. We present a qualitative case study of psychiatric agencies mandated by public policy to collaborate but instead engaged in persistent conflict despite its deleterious effects on their working relationship and on the wellbeing of the clients they intended to serve. To explain these conflictual features of organizing, we integrate Weick’s organizing theory with systems psychodynamics to deepen the understanding of emotions in organizing, specifically the motivational forces underpinning sensemaking and actions between interacting psychiatric agencies. This integration of theories reveals a critical feature of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious organizing processes: When a threat is involved, sensemaking and action are overtaken by social defences, resulting in dysfunctional organizing of the primary task. Drawing on these findings, we enrich Weick’s seminal work by developing a model that portrays organizing as the ritualized interaction of emotions, sensemaking and behavioural responses.     

The Lindahl equilibrium in Schumpeterian growth models

The main motivation of the paper is to determine the social value of innovations in a standard scale-invariant Schumpeterian growth model, which explicitly introduces knowledge diffusion over a Salop (Bell J Econ 10(1):141–156 1979) circle. The social value of an innovation is defined as the optimal value of the knowledge inherent in this innovation. We thus have to price optimally knowledge. For that purpose, contrary to what is done in standard growth theory, we complete the markets using Lindahl prices for knowledge. The Lindahl equilibrium, which provides the system of prices that sustains the first-best social optimum in an economy with non rival goods, appears as a benchmark. First, its comparison with the standard Schumpeterian equilibrium à la Aghion and Howitt (Econometrica (60)2:323–351 1992) enables us to shed a new light on the issue of non-optimality of the latter. Second, the Lindahl equilibrium also allows us to revisit the issue of R&D incentives in presence of cumulative innovations. Finally, this benchmark may be a first step to understand how knowledge is exchanged in new technology sectors.     

R&D Subsidies,Spillovers, and Privatization in Mixed Markets

We examine the use of subsidies to research and development (R&D) in a mixed and a private duopoly market. We show that the socially optimal R&D subsidy is increasing in the degree of spillovers, but it is lower in the private duopoly. The optimal R&D subsidy leads to an increase in total R&D and production; however, it does not lead to the equalization of per firm output and therefore to an efficient distribution of production costs. We also find that privatization of the public firm reduces R&D activity and welfare in the duopoly market. This result stands even when optimal R&D subsidies are provided.     

Confucian Business Ethics and the Economy

Confucian ethics as applied to the study of business ethics often relate to the micro consideration of personal ethics and the character of a virtuous person. Actually, Confucius and his school have much to say about the morals of the public administration and the market institutions in a more macro level. While Weber emphasizes the role of culture on the development of the economy, and Marx the determining influence of the material base on ideology, we see an interaction between culture – specifically Confucian business ethics – and the economy. In this paper, we are going to study this interaction in several crucial stages of development of Confucianism. The paper concludes by postulating the relevance of Confucian business ethics to the global knowledge economy.     

Evidence of Large-Scale Social Interactions in Mammography in the United States

This paper examines the extent of social interactions in an individual’s decision to undergo mammography. Using Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System surveys from 1993 to 2016, the effect of other female screening behavior on an individual’s decision to have a routine breast cancer screening was measured by calculating the size of a so called “social multiplier” in mammography. A vector of social multipliers was estimated in the use of mammograms in the past 1–2 years by taking the ratio of group-level effects of exogenous explanatory variables to individual-level effects of the same variables. Peer groups were defined as same-aged women living in the same state. Three age groups of women were considered: 40–49, 50–74, and 75 and older. Several econometric approaches were used to analyze the effect of social interactions on mammography use, including ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and split-sample instrumental variable. For all women, evidence was found of social interactions associated with individual’s education, employment, and poor health. In addition, number of age-group-specific social multipliers was found. The strongest evidence of spillover in mammography was found for women ages 75 and older. Policy makers should be aware that, in the presence of a social multiplier, the value of any type of screening intervention is higher than the one that would be measured at the individual-level.