Employment relationships: ideology and HRM practice

HRM appears to both believe that unitarism already exists in employment relationships and, at the same time, sees itself as the means to achieving unitarism through the introduction of systems of ‘high commitment management’ (HCM) in the workplace. The primary goal of HCM is empirical unitarism, achieved by the implementation of a system of practices aimed at aligning the interests and objectives of managers and workers. Not surprisingly these taken-for-granted values and beliefs in HRM about employment relationships have stirred debate in the literature, with many suggesting this is a flawed view of organizational life (Hart, 1993; Keenoy, 1999). This study has attempted to verify empirically these assumptions from a managerial perspective by first identifying the current employment values and beliefs of managerial workers and management and second examining the extent to which these influence, or are influenced by, the adoption of high commitment practices in the workplace. It finds managers do consider employment relationships in general to be pluralist, however, when it comes to employment relationships in their own organizations managers' report these to be unitarist. A relationship is also found to exist between the use of HCM in the workplace and managerial values and beliefs, with increased usage of HCM being associated with unitary values and beliefs.     

The symbiosis of entities in the social engagement network: The role of social ventures

Social entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a mechanism for creating social and economic value. By applying population ecology, resource dependency and resource-based view perspectives, this paper develops a conceptual model to provide greater insight into how social entrepreneurship ventures collaborate with other organizations in a network to fulfill resource requirements. Through this process social ventures address unmet social needs to create value which leads to the development and growth of individuals, communities, and regions. Using a large city's economic development actors involved in small business promotion as test cases, this exploratory study illustrates that social ventures effectively acquire resources from the primary social engagement network actors: corporations, governments, and other social ventures. The framework introduced in the paper provides a means by which to better understand the context in which relevant social engagement players in a network exist and the synergies that they can develop.     

Direct and indirect transmission of avian influenza: results from a calibrated agent-based model

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper develops an agent-based model of the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a regional poultry sector. Spatially located flocks...     

The rise and fall of social partnership in postsocialist Europe: the Commonwealth of Independent States

Traditional trade unions throughout the postsocialist world embraced ‘social partnership’ as a means to secure their institutional survival in a radically changed economic and political environment. The commitment of national governments to social partnership ebbed and flowed through the 1990s, but it was confirmed, at least rhetorically, in Central and Eastern Europe by the prospect and requirements of accession to the European Union. This article explores the fate of social partnership in the ‘other half’ of Europe, the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, where social dialogue has largely been abandoned and trade unions alternatively marginalised or subordinated to the state apparatus.     

Addict Death

A bstract .   The full implications of the problem of the death of addicts have been ignored in the economic analysis of policy toward drugs. This article argues that drug dealers can, in theory, play an important role in sustaining the lives of addicts. This needs to be taken into account in policy enforcement and could lead to some radical changes to conventional policy proposals.     

The productivity performance of Irish dairy farms 1984–2000: a multiple output distance function approach

This study measures productivity growth on Irish dairy farms over the period 1984–2000. A total factor productivity index is constructed for the dairy system and is decomposed into technical change, efficiency change, and changes in scale efficiency. This is achieved by estimating a stochastic output distance function model of the production technology in use on Irish dairy farms. Overall, productivity on Irish dairy farms grew by 1.2% per annum over the sample period.

The implications of direct participation for organisational commitment,job satisfaction and affective psychological well‐being: a longitudinal analysis

The article examines the implications of direct participation for employees' organisational commitment, job satisfaction and affective psychological well‐being. It focuses on both task discretion and organisational participation. Applying fixed effect models to nationally representative longitudinal data, the study provides a more rigorous assessment of the conflicting claims for the effects of participation that have hitherto been based primarily on cross‐sectional evidence. Further, it tests a range of mechanisms by which direct participation leads to improved employee outcomes. Contrary to the critical literature, it shows that even after controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity, both forms of direct participation have positive effects for employees' organisational commitment and well‐being. The effects of task discretion are primarily direct, reflecting the intrinsic importance of personal control over the job task; in contrast, those of organisational participation derive to a greater extent from its indirect effect on the quality of working conditions.     

Standard setting in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is being adopted by European regulators as a data standard for the exchange of business information. This paper examines the approach of XBRL International (XII) to the meta-data standard's development and diffusion. We theorise the development of XBRL using concepts drawn from a model of successful open source projects. Comparison of the open source model to XBRL enables us to identify a number of interesting similarities and differences. In common with open source projects, the benefits and progress of XBRL have been overstated and ‘hyped’ by enthusiastic participants. While XBRL is an open data standard in terms of access to the equivalent of its ‘source code’ we find that the governance structure of the XBRL consortium is significantly different to a model open source approach. The barrier to participation that is created by requiring paid membership and a focus on transacting business at physical conferences and meetings is identified as particularly critical. Decisions about the technical structure of XBRL, the regulator-led pattern of adoption and the organisation of XII are discussed. Finally areas for future research are identified.     

human resource management in East Asian labour markets: some selected issues in strategic,organizational and operational research

The question of payment and its determination has in China exposed tensions between socially embedded values and the functional requirements for modernization. These can be expressed respectively in terms of a traditional model, which predicts that earnings will be higher for people who are older, loyal to their unit and male, and a reform model, which predicts that earnings will be higher for people who have formal qualifications, have relevant training, hold positions of greater responsibility and are performing well and/or belong to a successful enterprise. The postulates of these two models, and the extent to which their relevance has changed with China's economic reform, are examined in the light of data on 144 job-holders in six Beijing state-owned enterprises, collected at two points in time, namely October 1985 and March 1990. The results indicate that in 1985 factors identified by the traditional model, especially age, were the most important predictors of earnings. By 1990 some movement towards the reform model had taken place, although age continued to have an important, albeit weaker, association with level of earnings and the link between pay and performance was still quite limited.     

Training in the new private sector in Russia

The growth of the new private sector in Russia has been associated with the expansion of trade and services, requiring a labour force with different occupational and skill characteristics from those of the Soviet economy. This paper reports on the first research ever undertaken on training practices in the new private sector in Russia. The analysis is based on forty case studies of new private enterprises and a large-scale household survey in four relatively prosperous Russian cities carried out in the first half of 1998. The paper shows that the old system of vocational retraining has largely collapsed, but very little has arisen to take its place. The majority of new private employers make little provision for the training of their employees, relying heavily on training provided by previous state employers or on the motivation of their own employees or prospective employees to undertake training on their own initiative, at their own expense and in their own time. At the same time, the availability of appropriate training is limited and it is extremely expensive in relation to the resources available to new private employers. Nevertheless, those who undertake training experience significant increases in earnings.