Revitalizing social dialogue in the workplace: the impact of a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices on reducing employee harm

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to unravel the relationship between current forms and realities of social dialogue in the workplace, the industrial relations climate, HRM, and employee harm. We tested a model specifying associations between (1) indicators of revitalized social dialogue, (2) perceived cooperation within the industrial relations climate, (3) perceived sustainability in HR practices, and (4) management perceptions regarding employee harm. The test was based on a survey conducted among 356 (HR-)managers and CEOs in Belgium. The results support the idea that a cooperative industrial relations climate and sustainable HR practices can reduce employee harm. More specifically, efficiency in social dialogue fully mediated the relationship between cooperative industrial climate and employee harm. In turn, industrial relations climate partially mediated the relationship between sustainable HR practices and employee harm. Finally, sustainable HR practices correlated positively with a cooperative industrial relations climate, suggesting that HR and employee relations reinforce rather than weaken each other.     

Smart,connected products change a company’s business strategy orientation

Smart, connected products have the potential to shift rivalries, opening up numerous new avenues for differentiation and value-added services. New entrants in a smart, connected world face significant new obstacles, starting with the high fixed costs of a more complex product design, embedded technology and multiple layers of new IT infrastructure. As smart, connected products expand an industry’s scope and the boundaries of competition, many companies will need to rethink their corporate purpose. As products continue to communicate and collaborate in networks, which are continuously expanding both in number and diversity, many companies will have to re-examine their core mission and value proposition. The authors present an analysis of changes that were initiated by applying new of smart and connected product technologies during creative discussions about disruptive innovation development. The objective of the article is to seek answers to the following research questions: Q 1: What is the role and significance of the new concept of products obtained as a result of substantial innovations? Q 2: How does the new concept of products impact the entrepreneurial strategy of organizations? Q 3: Does this concept trigger a change to the rules of competition?     

社会化网络营销中几个关键问题的解决策略

互联网不仅是信息的提供场所,更是一种新的社会群体构建的工具,借助互联网上的社会化软件,受众仅仅需要付出较少的努力就能聚集在一起,互联网上产生了众多以话题和内容为中心的有机组织,互联网的价值核心由信息的聚集转向群体的构建。网络营销需要适应这种转变,从对顾客个体的营销迁移到对顾客群体的营销,从单一的产品营销转变为主题化、多元化的活动营销。利用合适的社会性软件进行持续的对话将成为社会化网络营销的唯一有效方式。     

The Relevance of Ancient Greeks to Modern Business? A Dialogue on Business and Ethics

What follows is a dialogue, in the Platonic sense, concerning the justifications for "business ethics" as a vehicle for asking questions about the values of modern business organisations. The protagonists are the authors, Gordon Pearson – a pragmatist and sceptic where business ethics is concerned – and Martin Parker – a sociologist and idealist who wishes to be able to ask ethical questions of business. By the end of the dialogue we come to no agreement on the necessity or justification for business ethics, but on the way discuss the uses of philosophy, the meanings of integrity and trust, McDonald's, a hypothetical torture manufacturer and various other matters.     

Capitalism and its Regulation: A Dialogue on Business and Ethics

This dialogue engages with the ethics of politics of capitalism, and enacts a debate between two participants who have divergent views on these matters. Beginning with a discussion concerning definitions of capitalism, it moves on to cover issues concerning our different understandings of the costs and benefits of global capitalist systems. This then leads into a debate about the nature and purposes of regulation, in terms of whether regulation is intended to make competition work better for consumers, or to prevent negative outcomes for citizens. The conclusion speculates about the usefulness or otherwise of this Socratic method of dialogue.Martin Parker is Professor of Organisation and Culture at the University of Leicester Management Centre, having previously held positions at Staffordshire and Keele Universities. His research and writing is concerned with the ethics, politics and culture of organisation. Together with Campbell Jones and Rene ten Bos, he has just finished a textbook titled For Business Ethics which will be published by Routledge in 2005.Gordon Pearson is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Management, Keele University, having previously spent some fifteen years in academia teaching and writing mainly on strategy. Prior to that he spent thirty years in industrial general and strategic management.     

Trust and Dialogue: Theoretical Approaches to Ethics Auditing

The aim of this paper is to put forward an ethical framework for the conceptualization and development of ethics audits, here understood as a catalyst for company dialogue and in general, for management of ethics in the company. Ethics auditing is understood as the opportunity and agreement to devise a system to inform on ethical corporate behavior. This system essentially aims to increase the transparency and credibility of the companys commitment to ethics. At the same time, the process of elaborating this system allows us to introduce the moral dimension into company actions and decisions, thereby completing a key dimension of the production, maintenance and development of trust capital. To this end, the following four steps are taken. First, we analyze the relation between ethics auditing and trust as a basic moral resource in the dialogue between the company and its various stakeholders. Second, we examine the social balance sheet as a precursor to ethics auditing and focus on what prevents it from going further. Third, we attempt to reconstruct the basic moral assumptions underlying the companys social responsibility from the discourse ethics approach. Finally, we present a methodological framework from which to carry out our proposal, which embraces two basic theoretical perspectives stakeholder theory and the values derived from discourse ethics as a normative framework.     

THE EMERGENCE OF INSTITUTIONALISED SOCIAL DIALOGUE IN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper looks at the conceptual framework of social dialogue, investment in social capital and some international definitions of social dialogue as background to developments in this sphere in South Africa. Social dialogue is viewed as a mechanism for problem‐solving and reducing transaction costs. The paper considers the ramifications of the 1979 Wiehahn Report on labour relations, as well as the nature of social dialogue in the apartheid era and its workplace origins. Institutionally, the stepping stones to the emergence of the NEF and Nedlac are discussed, together with some of the issues involved in, and formal outcomes of, Nedlac over the past eleven years in public policy choices. It closes with an evaluation of institutionalised social dialogue in South Africa and its future. “With the transition to non‐racial democracy in 1994, it became the task of an ANC‐led government to attempt to resolve the economic contradictions that apartheid had created. To achieve this requires massive economic and social changes, great programmes of investment and structural change. It is necessary to create the vital human capital needed at every level, from rudimentary literacy to the highest ranks of science and technology; to overcome enormous deficiencies in all forms of social infrastructure, including housing, schools, health, and transport; to return land to the black population and restore ravaged rural areas; to expand black ownership of mining, industry, commerce, and finance; and to diminish enormous inequalities in income and wealth. The new regime has made a promising start, but South Africa's past will exert a powerful influence on its present and future for a long time to come, and these huge tasks will not be swiftly or easily accomplished.” Charles Feinstein (2005 )     

路由器教学的探讨

网络技术中路由器的安装与配置是个难点。这部分内容要讲到什么程度以及如何讲才能让学生乐于接受?作者根据当前路由设备的典型应用和自己的教学实践,提出了一些看法。     

旅游审美是诗意的对话——兼论中西哲学思想中的审美观

从旅游哲学的视角论述了中国道家的逍遥说、儒家的比德说、佛家的随缘人生观与西方现代哲学中的主体间性观点,认为旅游审美是诗意的对话,旅游审美的最高境界是旅游审美主体与旅游审美客体融为一体,由＂在场＂洞见＂不在场＂。     

激活文本 互动对话——新课改背景下阅读教学模式的探讨

新课改背景下,文本是学习语文知识、提高语文素养的一个载体,以文本阅读为基点,调动有效的模式组织课堂教学,可以实现学生、教师、文本三者真正意义上的互动对话。