Urgency of trade reform over trade liberalisation

The GATT system has in recent years revealed a number of dangerous weaknesses. Therefore there is reason for concern not only with the further liberalisation of trade within the accepted framework of GATT rules but with a reform of the rules as well.     

The effects of offering flexible work practices to employees with unpaid caregiving responsibilities for elderly or disabled family members

Approximately one in 10 employees in Australia, the United States, and Europe have unpaid caregiving responsibilities for elderly or disabled family members. This combination of employment and caregiving roles is problematic when there is conflict between their simultaneous demands. Flexible work practices can be an important mechanism for assisting these employees. However, limited attention has been given to determining the benefits of flexible work practices for these employees, or the process by which these effects arise. We address these gaps via a survey of employees with unpaid caregiving responsibilities for family who are elderly or disabled. Results indicate that greater availability of flexible work practices improves perceptions of workplace support for combining caregiving and employment. This effect was partially and sequentially mediated by disclosure, practice utilization, and practice helpfulness. Additionally, practice availability had a direct positive effect on practice utilization, while disclosure had a direct positive effect on perceived support. Overall, the findings demonstrate the benefits of flexible work practices for employees with caregiving responsibilities. The study also points the way to interventions that can improve the effectiveness of flexible work practices by demonstrating how the potential benefits of these practices are translated into actual improvements in perceived support.     

Towards a Post-Dualistic Business Ethics: Interweaving Reason and Emotion in Working Life

We highlight and challenge the dominance of rationalist assumptions in business ethics that promote and legitimize a privileging of reason over emotion as a source of moral action. We ask whether it is possible for business ethics not only to challenge this hierarchy but to avoid its reversal. We start by exploring some origins of reason-based ethics and relate these to ideas about organization. Here we hint at some popular examples of this kind of ethics and discuss two of its more important sources of inspiration: Kant and Weber. Next, we consider the relationship between bureaucracy and morality before evaluating Bauman's ideas about morality in bureaucratic organizations. We argue that Bauman fails to challenge the dualism between reason and emotion as he inverts the hierarchical relationship between them. Contending that this hierarchization should be abandoned, we explore how the preceding discussion illuminates business ethics and address some consequences of our anti-dualist position.     

The Dual Meaning of Managerial Careers: Organizational and Individual Levels of Analysis

A theoretical framework is proposed which brings out the duality of managerial careers by distinguishing between organizational and individual levels of analysis. At the organizational level, careers can be seen as part of a process of social reproduction, which points the way to linking organizational form and behaviour with comparatively stable career patterns characteristic of particular firms or kinds of firm. At the individual level careers are expressed as a sequence of work role transitions, representing choices between opportunities presented to managers by organizations. Each level of analysis illuminates a different aspect of managerial careers, but it is equally important that each should be seen in the light of the other.     

The model employment termination act: Provisions and discussion

Recently, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws completed a drafting of the Model Employment Termination Act (META). The goal of this suggested state legislation is to end the patchwork of state-defined protections offered to employees who are terminated in at-will work environments. If META provisions are adopted there will be a substantial change in both the protection offered employees and the litigation of wrongful discharge claims within the adopting state. This article presents the changes proposed by META and discusses these changes and their potential implications for employers and employees.     

Commonwealth Convergence Toward a Narrower Scope of Auditor Liability to Third Parties for Negligent Misstatements

There have been fundamental shifts in the legal liabilities of auditors in the twentieth century. The article analyses myriad cases. It reveals that case rulings in the later decades moderated previous decisions that had resulted in an expansion of the scope of auditor liability. It shows that there has been a convergence in approach within Commonwealth nations in respect of auditor liability for negligent misstatements. Numerous factors are identified that explain, first the expansion of auditor liability in the early to middle decades of the twentieth century, and also its subsequent reversal in latter decades. The article concludes by arguing that the current positions not likely to remain. The decisions of the courts are shown to be the products of continual struggle to balance the respective rights and interests of auditors, investors (both current and prospective) and the wider community.     

Union partnership as a facilitator to HRM: improving implementation through oppositional engagement

Abstract

This paper provides a nuanced insight into the workplace level interactions between a union and HRM systems within a union-management partnership arrangement. Soft outcomes of HRM systems typically suffer from compromised implementation by managers struggling to balance competing operational priorities, but we show how a union limits this poor implementation. Qualitative and documentary data were retrieved from a major UK retailer and a trade union to examine how union activity interacts with HRM delivery. Firstly, union communication systems enhanced or replaced company systems of employee voice. Secondly, union activity policed management implementation of HRM practices to limit their subjugation to short-term productivity increases, improving outcomes for employees and the HRM system for the company. These outcomes were achieved through oppositional engagement within the context of partnership, which points towards a persisting and productive pluralism within the cooperative rhetoric.     

Exploring client scenarios associated with scenario planning

All scenario planning projects have a ‘client’ and one of the most challenging tasks facing a scenario planner is the client's role or position in the way projects are conceptualized, delivered and received. The scenario planner has to establish and manage a ‘successful client relationship’—but what actually constitutes that for a scenario planning project?The client acts as the conduit between the scenario planner and the organization for which the scenario planning project is being undertaken.The ‘client as conduit’ implies several challenges for the scenario planner including:

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The client's awareness and understanding of scenario planning as a method for their organization to learn from the future [1].

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The client's level of commitment to learning from the future.

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The size and context of the scenario planning project.

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The position of the client within a network of people and/or resources required to run a scenario planning project.

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The client's involvement or position within the scenario building team created in the project.

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The benefits and risks accruing to the client through the execution of the scenario planning project.

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The client organization's capacity to act strategically; its power to perform.

This paper will explore, through storytelling, different pictures of client relationships associated with scenario planning. The stories are developed from a deep and extensive well of scenario practitioner and consulting experience over the last 15 years to explore and discuss these client issues, and how clients for scenario planning projects have evolved, and how they may enhance or restrict scenario planning projects in the future.     

Marketers expressing the future: Scenario planning for marketing action

Thomas Friedman exhorts us to imagine the future [1] - we urge marketers to invent the future, to learn the future faster, and to deliver the future earlier. Marketers are asked to develop scenarios about emerging technologies such as broadband wireless but more often than not have no education or training in scenario planning. Also marketers are often stuck in a strategic planning mindset based on successful replication of past marketing strategies. Strategic management and marketing learning has ventured into futures and foresight methodologies, but with strong focus on conventional macroscopic high-level scenario planning methods.This paper positions scenario planning as a method to express the future vision, both tacit and explicit, of business, products and services in a clear succinct story form, to underpin all elements of a marketing strategy (goals, position and execution). The scenario planning for marketing action (SPMA) model is introduced and discussed incorporating eight principles: moderation and time compression; storytelling led new product and service development; customer orientation; iterative dynamic scenarios; complexity science to foster non-linear thinking; risk weighted scenarios; participant hosted scenario workshops; springboard consolidation.The SPMA method was proven and evolved within postgraduate Executive education courses in Sydney and Bangkok from 2003 to 2007. This approach is fundamental for marketers to gain competences in “learning the future faster”, thus possessing capabilities to imagine and invent the future and deliver the future earlier.