Trust in management: the role of employee voice arrangements and perceived managerial opposition to unions

This study examines the relationship between employee voice arrangements and employees' trust in management using data from the 2007 Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey of 1,022 employees. Drawing on social exchange theory and employee relations literature, we test hypotheses concerning the relationships between direct and union voice arrangements, perceived managerial opposition to unions and employees' trust in management. Consistent with our predictions, after controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, regression analyses indicated that direct voice arrangements were positively related to employees' trust in management. Union voice arrangements and perceived managerial opposition to unions were negatively related to trust in management. The article concludes by highlighting the study's implications for management practice and avenues for further research.     

The Hierarchical Erosion Effect: A New Perspective on Perceptual Differences and Business Performance

Organizations are coalitions of individuals with heterogeneous interests and perceptions (March and Simon, 1958/1993). We examine an important source of heterogeneity, namely the different perceptions individuals hold across hierarchical levels. We introduce the notion of a hierarchical erosion effect whereby individual perceptions about specific practices become less favourable the lower one goes in the hierarchy. Using data from 4,243 employees across four levels in 38 business units, we provide evidence that this effect exists, controlling for other factors, including the overall favourability of the business unit culture across eight practices. We show how the size of this hierarchical erosion effect varies depending on the nature of the organizational practice being evaluated and the extent to which executives share strategic information widely, and we also show that a lower hierarchical erosion effect is correlated with higher business unit growth. In doing so, we enrich understanding of two aspects of March and Simon's work, their notion of intra‐organizational heterogeneity and their distinctive view of the nature of hierarchy.     

International arbitration of investment disputes: are poor and badly governed respondent states more likely to lose?

Compelling empirical evidence on whether investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) is systematically biased against poor respondent states hardly exists. We focus on disentangling the effects of the respondent state’s per-capita income and the strength of domestic rule of law on ISDS outcomes. We find that both higher income and stronger than ‘normal’ rule of law reduce the probability of investor wins in international arbitration of disputes.     

Estimating time-varying variances and covariances via nearest neighbour multivariate predictions: applications to the NYSE and the Madrid Stock Exchange Index

In this article, we present a technique to obtain the time-varying covariance matrix for several time series for nearest neighbour predictors. To illustrate the use of this technique, we analyse the time-varying variances and correlations between the daily returns on two equity stock market indexes, the New York Stock Exchange and the Madrid Stock Exchange Index.