Beyond survival: the implementation of new forms of work organization in the UK and German steel industries

This paper outlines and analyses the major changes in work-force organization that have been introduced by British and German steel producers in the past decade, against a backcloth of retrenchment in the industry, new product development and technological change. Including multiskilling, a reduction in demarcation and team–working, these changes have had a major effect upon the composition of the work–force and the nature of work undertaken at the shopfloor level.

While these changes have had a common broad trajectory, they have been introduced at a different pace and in different forms. The contrasts are provided not only at the international level, but between plants in the same countries. The paper further outlines the response of trade unions to these changes and the implications for industrial relations at the shopfloor level.     

Employee perspectives on communication and consultation: findings from a cross-national survey

Highlighting the ongoing significance of national models of employment relations, this paper examines whether variation in communication and consultation practices between countries is reflected in employee perceptions. Drawing upon a survey of around 3,500 employees in four European countries – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – the paper explores whether workers' views on various aspects of communication and consultation are similar or different. It finds that there are certain similarities, with particular types of information and forms of communication being valued across the countries. However, differences are also identified. It is suggested that national institutions may well shape employee expectations about the nature of communication and consultation, feeding through to how satisfied they are with these processes.     

Embodied and Disembodied Technical Change in Fisheries: An Analysis of the Sète Trawl Fishery, 1985–1999

Overfishing and excess capacity in mostfisheries around the world have generated considerableand increasing concern about their biological and economic performance ramifications. Theseproblems, in part, stem from substantialinvestment in technical improvements to boats andequipment in fishing fleets, which exacerbatesexcess fishing capacity and low returns tofishing effort and investment, given regulatoryand biological constraints. However, little attempt hasbeen made to quantify the extent or effects oftechnical change in fisheries. In this paper, we usedetailed data on innovation patterns for 19vessels in the Sète trawl fleet of southernFrance to evaluate the contributions oftechnical change to catch rates. We find thatembodied technical change enhanced productivity by approximately one percent per year between 1985 and 1999, but that external (disembodied) events counteractedthis trend, causing a net output decline ofabout three percent per year.     

The Viability of Keynesian Demand Management in an Open Economy Context

This paper explains why, in an open economy context, Keynes-type demand management policies appear to have lost their ability to create jobs domestically. Instead stimulatory policies tend to create an import deficit (as jobs are created abroad) and the ear of inflation domestically. The paper then suggests remedies that will resurrect Keynes-demand management policies to stimulate expansion without experiencing balance of payment problems or domestic inflation.     

Trans-organizational innovation: a framework for research

Information and communication technologies, the evolution of a pattern of innovation based on technology fusion and the transition towards a knowledge-based economy are dominant trends. These trends support trans-organitational innovation, which typically involves the design of complex and technologically hybrid products. Trans-organizational innovation involves generating new knowledge out of knowledge inputs which are distributed across disciplines and organizations which may be geographically dispersed. This is critically dependent on management processes associated with learning. Learning is a contextually situated and interaction-intensive process, which during product innovation involves mutual interaction between characteristics of product and those of context. Such interactions continually evolve the designed form and functionalig of a product. Existing research has tended to neglect the complexities involved in trans-organitational innovation. A product-in-context framework for analyzing the trans-organitational innovation process is detailed in this paper. This framework can be used to examine the relationship between critical features at Product and context which mediate learning during trans-organizational product design and innovation and account for product design variation.     

Competition and public high school performance

Increasing the level of school competition has been suggested as a way to improve school performance. This study examines one of the most extreme examples of such reform using data from New Zealand public high schools. In the 1990s school zoning was abolished in New Zealand and public schools competed for students, not just with private schools, but also with each other. A categorical Data Envelopment Analysis model using data on school resources and student academic performance, stratified using student socio-economic characteristics, is used to calculate efficiency scores for schools. A regression model is then used to analyse differences in these efficiency scores and their relationship to different levels of competition.     

Two-stage DEA: <Emphasis Type=Italic>caveat emptor</Emphasis>

This paper examines the wide-spread practice where data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency estimates are regressed on some environmental variables in a second-stage analysis. In the literature, only two statistical models have been proposed in which second-stage regressions are well-defined and meaningful. In the model considered by Simar and Wilson (J Prod Anal 13:49–78, 2007), truncated regression provides consistent estimation in the second stage, where as in the model proposed by Banker and Natarajan (Oper Res 56: 48–58, 2008a), ordinary least squares (OLS) provides consistent estimation. This paper examines, compares, and contrasts the very different assumptions underlying these two models, and makes clear that second-stage OLS estimation is consistent only under very peculiar and unusual assumptions on the data-generating process that limit its applicability. In addition, we show that in either case, bootstrap methods provide the only feasible means for inference in the second stage. We also comment on ad hoc specifications of second-stage regression equations that ignore the part of the data-generating process that yields data used to obtain the initial DEA estimates.     

The Growth of Jobless Households in Australia

In this article it is shown that individual-based measures of joblessness and household measures of joblessness have diverged over the last twenty years with joblessness becoming increasingly concentrated in certain households.