Information-Intensive Government and the Layering and Sorting of Citizenship

A systematic literature review identified 41 studies, including four reviews, reporting on process redesign interventions in hospitals. Success factors for the changes included mechanisms to facilitate participation throughout the process, clearly documented protocols and expectations for the health professionals which were supported by education, mechanisms to audit and provide feedback on behaviours and performance, as well as being able to hold the participating health professionals accountable. The success of process redesign methodologies is found to be highly dependent on these performance-based human resource management (HRM) practices.     

Conflicts of Responsibility in the Globalized Textile Supply Chain. Lessons of a Tragedy

Eight years before the Rana Plaza collapse (24 April 2013), which killed over 1100 people and received huge international media coverage, a somewhat similar tragedy drew my attention: the collapse of the Spectrum Sweater Industries Ltd. factory (10 April 2005), which was responsible for the death of 64 people and led to some international mobilization. This paper describes and analyses the international career of the mobilization for the victims spurred by the tragedy. How were European consumers and citizens called upon to act? How did the European brands react? In the end, the question is how the appeal to Western firms’ “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) can help improve the working conditions prevailing in Southern factories. By applying a generic definition of responsibility (the controlled administration of a sanction) and minutely examining the imputations of responsibility consecutive to the Spectrum tragedy, the paper exposes the work of activists who attempted to establish Western companies’ responsibility, and how some of the tagged companies resisted their moral obligation to protect workers beyond an employer–employee relationship stricto sensu.     

Methodological choices in work-life balance research 1987 to 2006: a critical review

This study reviewed methodological choices (sampling frames, constructs investigated and measures used) in 245 empirical work-life balance papers published in a range of discipline-based peer-reviewed journals between 1987 and 2006. Results show that work-life balance studies need to establish greater consistency between the conceptualization of constructs and the operationalization of measures. There is also scope for well-designed field experiments to establish clear causal relationships between variables. Sampling choice in previous literature is somewhat constrained and may be enhanced by targeting single and same-sex parent families, manual and lower-skilled service workers, and employees providing eldercare. Researchers should also be more transparent in providing rationales for their choices of organizations or group lists used to target respondents. The findings have significant implications for understanding, interpreting, and utilizing the contemporary work and family literature.     

Presiones en contra y a favor de la formalización. Regulación y empleo informal en Mozambique

La economía informal representa la mayor parte del empleo en muchas economías emergentes. Según la teoría de la regulación, toda actividad económica se regula por un complejo engranaje de mecanismos formales e informales. A partir del caso de Mozambique, este artículo explora las presiones a favor y en contra de la formalización y las formas que puede tomar la regulación, sobre la base de una investigación cualitativa consistente en entrevistas en profundidad a personal directivo y observaciones. Los resultados revelan la ambivalencia del Estado al respecto, con actuaciones «progresistas», centradas en la modernización de normativas e instituciones, y otras «conservadoras» que inhiben el proceso de formalización.     

Pricing in the English NHS quasi market: a national study of the allocation of financial risk through contracts

The authors investigated how the formal national provisions for pricing in the National Health Service (which are a form of prospective payment, known as ‘Payment by Results’) are operationalized at local level. Transactions costs theory and existing evidence predict that actual practice often does not comply with contractual rules. A national study of pricing between 2011 and 2015 confirms this and indicates that such payment systems may not be appropriate to address the current financial and organizational challenges facing the NHS. As the NHS struggles radically to reconfigure services, it is necessary to reconsider the appropriateness of a wider range of pricing mechanisms to facilitate moving care out of hospitals.     

Initial endowments and economic reform in 27 post-socialist countries

This study explores how initial endowments at the start of transition have shaped reform outcomes and reform trajectories in 27 former communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. Countries of the former Russian Empire that had a large resources sector at the start of transition underperformed other countries in terms of the speed and the depth of economic reforms. The effect is particularly strong for privatization, enterprise restructuring and competition policy. Within country, Ottoman or Russian provinces that had a large natural resources sector in 1989 have a lower share of entrepreneurs and of small and medium sized enterprises today and also experience endemic corruption. Our results indicate that the propensity, or ability, of special interest groups to capture the reform process that would erode their rents were facilitated by the quality of institutions whose foundations go back centuries; and that the effects on the local economy are real.     

Book review

Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization Lee Sproull & Sara Keisler Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991, 212 pp., £1 8.00 Office Automation: Context, Experience and Future Andrew Doswell New York, Wiley, 1990, 300 pp., £24.95.

Managing Technological Development: Strategic and Human Resources Issues Urs E. Gattiker & Laurie Lanvood (Eds) Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1989, 232 pp., US$35.00.     

The Regulation of Private Schools Serving Low-Income Families in Andhra Pradesh,India

This paper sets out some findings of a research project carried out in private unaided schools in low-income areas of Hyderabad, India. The part of the research project documented here was designed to examine the question: Is the regulatory regime conducive to entrepreneurial action and market discovery with particular reference to the low-income schools in Hyderabad. This paper is narrowly focused, setting out the results of pattern matching empirical data with the Austrian economic concepts of entrepreneurship, rivalry, and market discovery. The research discovered that two regulatory regimes exist, one that is set out on paper in the Education Acts and associated rules, and another that operates in practice. That is, there is a combination of regulations on paper and regulations existing in an extra-legal sector. Generally it was found that the regulations in practice are consistent with market principles. Conversely the regulations set out on paper are not conducive to entrepreneurial innovation and market discovery. Recommendations for potential policy initiatives include the possibility of legitimising the extra-legal sector by introducing self-regulation possibly via self-evaluation systems for the private unaided schools.     

New development: 4P recommendations for implementing change,from research in hospitals

How are hospital staff involved in process improvement initiatives such as Lean? What can we learn from Lean implementation experiences about the sustainability of such initiatives? The authors considered such questions in a study of workplace change in Australia and Canada. They found that Lean is more likely to be sustained when leaders adopted the 4P recommendations presented in this article.     

When Does the Stepping‐Stone Work? Fixed‐Term Contracts Versus Temporary Agency Work in Changing Economic Conditions

This paper emphasizes differences among short‐term contracts in terms of career prospects. Using French data over the 2002–2010 period, we rely on a dynamic model with fixed effects to disentangle state dependence from unobserved heterogeneity. Although fixed‐term contracts may provide a ‘stepping‐stone’ to permanent positions, temporary agency work is hardly better than unemployment in this regard. The Great Recession of 2008 has changed the dynamics on the labor market and amplified the difference between fixed‐term contracts and temporary agency work. For both types of temporary workers, providing overtime work does not significantly increase the transition to permanent employment. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.