‘An assembly line in the head’: work and employee relations in the call centre

To date, academic studies of the call centre ‘sector’ remain limited in scope. Here the authors attempt to remedy that omission by analysing the recent and spectacular growth of call centres in the UK, drawing on a wide variety of sources, including two extensive surveys of developments in Scotland during 1997.     

STOCK INDEX FUTURES HEDGING: HEDGE RATIO ESTIMATION, DURATION EFFECTS, EXPIRATION EFFECTS AND HEDGE RATIO STABILITY

This paper examines hedging effectiveness for the FTSE-100 Stock Index futures contract from 1984 to 1992. It investigates the appropriate econometric technique to use in estimating minimum variance hedge ratios by undertaking estimations using OLS, an ECM and GARCH. Simple OLS outperforms more complex econometric techniques. Additionally, the paper examines the impact ofhedge duration and time to expiration on estimated hedge ratios and hedge ratio stability over time. It is shown that hedge ratios and hedging effectiveness increase with hedge duration, hedge ratios approach unity as expiration approaches and while hedge ratios vary over time they are stationary.     

Reviews

“LOCAL EMPLOYMENT PLANS” Norwich City Council, 1987: Taking Norwich into the 1990s. Norwich, free.

Bristol City Council, 1987: Bristol: An Employment Plan. Bristol, £1.00.

Reading Borough Council, 1987: Creating Opportunities: A Programme for Jobs in Reading. Reading, no price stated.

Cleveland County Council, 1987: Unemployment Strategy. Middlesbrough, free.

Sheffield City Council: Employment and Economic Development Department 1987: Sheffield Employment Matters. Issue 1. Sheffield, £10 for 3 issues.

Lancashire Enterprises Ltd, 1987: Annual Report 1986-87. Preston, free.

“ETHNIC MINORITIES AND YOUTH TRAINING” Malcolm Cross and Douglas Smith (editors) 1987: Black Youth Futures: Ethnic Minorities and the Youth Training Scheme, National Youth Bureau. No price stated.

“HOMEWORKING” Allen, S. and Wolkowitz, C., 1987: Homeworking: Myths and Realities. London: Macmillan, £25.00 cloth, £7.95 paper.

“STRATEGY FOR RETAILING” Montgomery, J., 1987: Trade Winds — the changing face of retailing and retail employment in the South East — an alternative strategy. South East Economic Development Strategy, Daneshill House, Danesgate Street, Stevenage, Herts. No price stated.     

如何组织创业团队

当你终于艰难地做出了决定，“我要去创业”，而且你已经有了切入市场的产品或者仅仅是一个点子的话，你最重要的任务就是建立起一个共同创业的团队。在硅谷流传这样一个“规则”，有两个哈佛MBA和MIT的博士组成的创业团队几乎就是获得风险投资人青睐的保证。当然这只是一个故事而已，     

Cash prizes and mail survey response rates: A threshold analysis

In a study involving the mailing of some 3,150 questionnaires, the ability of six kinds of incentives to augment survey responses was tested against a no-incentive control condition. Two of the incentives were small prepaid monetary amounts (25￠ and $1.00), while the remaining four consisted of the opportunity for respondents to win cash prizes valued at either $50, $100, $150, or $200. The use of such cash prizes enabled an approximate test of the just-noticeable-difference principle in terms of both its absolute and differential threshold hypotheses. The 25￠ and $1.00 incentives yielded response rates that were significantly larger than that of the control group. No confirmation of the differential threshold hypothesis was evidenced, at least over the range of cash prizes employed in the present study. In contrast, the absolute threshold hypothesis received support. Suggestions for further research in this area were also identified.     

MANAGEMENT AND SIZE ECONOMIES IN THE ENGLAND AND WALES DAIRY SECTOR

Analyses of size economies in the England and Wales dairy sector have generally been made on the basis of comparisons of input-output measures. These measures have been classified according to input use and farm size and have led to conclusions about efficiency and structural change. This paper examines the influence of managerial ability on economies of size using econometrically estimated long-run average cost (LAC) functions from Milk Marketing Board data for 1980/1. The results show that the LAC curve is U-shaped though skewed to exhibit greater economies than diseconomies of size. Better managed farms are shown to produce any given level of output at lower average cost. Moreover, they have larger optimal levels of output.     

Dynamism and embeddedness: towards a lower road? British subsidiaries of American multinationals

This article examines the effects of changes in the dynamics of the American national business system on industrial relations settlements in the UK subsidiaries of American multinational corporations (MNCs). While institutionalist analyses of country‐of‐origin and host‐country effects must take account of changes in national business systems, such as the rise of the shareholder value ideology in the USA, empirical analysis reveals a pattern of pathway adjustment rather than radical change in employment relations at the UK subsidiary level. This suggests that although US MNCs are embedded within the American business system, their subsidiaries are not passive ciphers but autonomous sites through which influences must pass.