Employee perceptions of well-being and organizational wellness offerings: A study of line-level employees in select-service hotels

ABSTRACT

This research assessed line-level employee perceptions of their own well-being and their awareness of wellness benefits offered by their organizations. Completed questionnaires were collected from 187 employees of select-service hotels in the Midwest. Employees had above average levels of well-being with full-time employees having significantly higher levels of well-being than part-time employees. Employees who are aware of available wellness programs had higher levels of well-being than those who are not aware of these programs. The findings suggest the need for organizations and managers to implement and communicate wellness program offerings to all employees.     

RURAL SOCIOLOGY AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIST: A REVIEW*

Following a discussion of the relationship between agricultural economics and rural sociology, the current status of the latter is discussed, including the differences between European and American approaches. The background to an emerging ‘sociology of agriculture’ is described and recent developments in the sociological analysis of some of its constituent components are considered. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between landholding and the social structure and to the development of ‘agribusiness’ as a vertically-integrated food-production complex. The impact of these on labour relations in agriculture and on the rural community are outlined. The article concludes with an assessment of future trends in rural sociology, concentrating on themes of rural development, the sociology of agriculture and the sociology of natural resources.     

HOME OWNERSHIP AND THE WEALTH POSITION OF BLACK AND WHITE AMERICANS*

This paper examines the wealth position of blacks relative to whites, on the basis of data in the Survey of Economic Opportunity. The analysis indicates that at the same levels of both income and wealth blacks consistently invest more in consumer durables, especially housing, than do whites. The paper then explores possible explanations for this finding, suggesting that these investment differences are not solely due to the income and wealth position of blacks, but may be due to a smaller set of investment opportunities institutionally fostered by discriminatory forces.     

Legalization of drugs: Effects on the workplace

In the last few years bipartisan support for legalizing drugs has grown to a surprising level. Because of the lack of involvement of the business community in this debate, we surveyed the human resource managers of 127 firms about their perceptions of the effects of legalization. Their responses were uniformly negative, with expectations that drug use, absenteeism, worksite crime, and liability costs would increase, while the quality and quantity of work would decline. They also forecast increases in drug testing, performance monitoring, and education and rehabilitation programs as a result.     

Distribution contracts to support optimal inventory holdings under demand uncertainty

When suppliers produce products for which demand is uncertain, they face a problem of inducing downstream distributors to stock inventory levels that the suppliers prefer. This paper considers a wide array of alternative supply contracts, each of which consists of a mixture of constant per-unit wholesale prices, buy-back arrangements, and post sale payments contingent on sales made, such as revenue sharing or buybacks. We show that linear supply contracts specifying any combination of two of these three instruments can implement the vertical integrated outcome for a monopoly, thereby generating the supplier's preferred inventory configuration and price distribution. We extend our results to differentiated product oligopoly, demonstrating that each supplier obtains its preferred inventory configuration and price distribution, given the choices of its rival. Distributors choose optimal inventories from the suppliers' standpoint, even if suppliers do not know the distribution of demand uncertainty, and, given the perfect competition among distributors, all profits in the supply chain are captured by suppliers. Thus, suppliers are able to deal with demand uncertainty with remarkably little information about demand, and without the need to control dealer actions in detail. In particular, suppliers need not specify either dealer inventories or resale prices, but instead encourage distributors to order based on information in their possession and to set prices that generate desirable resale price dispersion.     

Running on the spot? A review of twenty years of research on the management of human resources in comparative and international perspective

Research using a comparative and international perspective on the management of human resources is examined, drawing on articles published in leading human resource management, management/organizational behaviour and related social science journals between 1977 and 1997. In total a little under 2 per cent of the articles under review focused on the management of human resources in a comparative and international perspective. The largest group of these articles was comparative in nature (44 per cent), followed by those with an international perspective (35 per cent). A smaller number adopted a combined approach (17 per cent) and a few were separately classified as foreign national studies (4 per cent). Over time, there has been some progress made in terms of the number of articles published and the scope of topics covered. However, many of the articles displayed similar shortcomings to those noted in earlier reviews of cross-national management/organization studies: in particular, an over-reliance on a small number of primarily Anglo-Saxon countries, a lack of a longitudinal perspective, a loose specification of culture, an ethnocentric bias and a frequent failure to explain observed differences and similarities.     

Streets, Malls, and Supermarkets

We develop a model of competition between shopping centers, comparing competitive outcomes in three alternative modes of retail organization, namely: streets (in which neither developers or retailers internalize agglomeration effects between products); malls (in which developers internalize); and supermarkets (in which both developers and retailers internalize). For a fixed number of centers: (i) converting streets to malls intensifies developer (but not retailer) competition, which increases product range (i.e., the number of shops built by the developers) and consumer surplus, reduces profits, and has ambiguous effects on welfare; (ii) converting streets to supermarkets intensifies retailer and developer competition, has ambiguous effects on product range (number of shops), reduces profits, and increases social welfare. With free entry both conversions reduce the number of centers and, if there is excess entry, conversion to supermarkets (but not malls) unambiguously increases welfare.     

Balancing Conflicts of Interest when Employing Spouses

Employees can be put in situations where they are required to make decisions on behalf of the organization as part of their job duties. In these situations, organizations desire that employees make these decisions in the organization’s best interest. In an attempt to ensure that decisions are made in the best interest of the organization, some organizations implement anti-nepotism policies and no spouse rules. While the intent is to minimize conflicts of interest among employees, these policies exact costs to organizations. The present paper examines the costs and benefits of these types of policies, as well as the effects of family-friendly benefits, on organizations. The examination is further laid out in terms of four examples of how these policies and rules can be reframed into conflict of interest policies, allowing organizations to fully experience the benefits of increasing the size of the labor pool by being able to consider spouses and family members as potential applicants, while minimizing conflicts of interest. Finally, recommendations concerning the use of focused conflict of interest policies are made.

Teacher Effectiveness and Student Performance

This paper evaluates the effects of using graduate student instructors rather than regular faculty in a macro course. Experienced faculty presumably have a positive effect on student performance, yet graduate instructors appear to be as effective in teaching macro principles. What may be involved are different sets of skills: experienced faculty may have a greater depth of understanding of the material, more self-confidence, and a more critical approach. Graduate instructorS, on the other hand, may be able to grasp what students don't understand, and may make up in enthusiasm and approachability what they lack in understanding.

The author urges using more than one measure of effectiveness in studies of this type because of many things not captured: excitement with the subject, caution in accepting unsupported arguments, a perspective on the economic system, and the like.