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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
How Institutions And Business Strategies Affect Wages: A Cross-National Study Of Call Centers, Rosemary Batt, Hiroatsu Nohara
How Institutions And Business Strategies Affect Wages: A Cross-National Study Of Call Centers, Rosemary Batt, Hiroatsu Nohara
Rosemary Batt
This paper, drawing on a 2003-2006 establishment-level survey of 1,819 call centers in 15 countries, examines effects of industrial relations institutions and employer strategies on wage variation across coordinated, liberal, and emerging market economies. The authors find several contradictory patterns, which confirm theoretical predictions for some countries and contradict them for others, suggesting diverse institutional reactions to the emergence of a new economic activity. Consistent with prior research, Denmark, France, and Sweden exhibit patterns of low wage dispersion and no union wage premium, and the United States, Canada, and emerging market economies exhibit quite high levels of dispersion. Contrary to …
Human Resource And Employment Practices In Telecommunications Services, 1980-1998, Rosemary Batt, Jeffrey Keefe
Human Resource And Employment Practices In Telecommunications Services, 1980-1998, Rosemary Batt, Jeffrey Keefe
Rosemary Batt
[Excerpt] In the academic literature on manufacturing, much research and debate have focused on whether firms are adopting some form of “high-performance” or “high-involvement” work organization based on such practices as employee participation, teams, and increased discretion, skills, and training for frontline workers (Ichniowski et al., 1996; Kochan and Osterman, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995). Whereas many firms in the telecommunications industry flirted with these ideas in the 1980s, they did not prove to be a lasting source of inspiration for the redesign of work and employment practices. Rather, work restructuring in telecommunications services has been driven by the ability of firms …
Slippage In The System: The Effects Of Errors In Transactive Memory Behavior On Team Performance, Matthew Pearsall, Aleksander Ellis, Bradford Bell
Slippage In The System: The Effects Of Errors In Transactive Memory Behavior On Team Performance, Matthew Pearsall, Aleksander Ellis, Bradford Bell
Bradford S Bell
[Excerpt] Although researchers have consistently shown that the implicit coordination provided by transactive memory positively affects team performance, the benefits of transactive memory systems depend heavily on team members’ ability to accurately identify the expertise of their teammates and communicate expertise-specific information with one another. This introduces the opportunity for errors to enter the system, as the expertise of individual team members may be misunderstood or misrepresented, leading to the reliance on information from the wrong source or the loss of information through incorrect assignment. As Hollingshead notes, “information may be transferred or explicitly delegated to the ‘wrong’ individual in …
The Economic Costs And Benefits Of Self-Managed Teams Among Skilled Technicians, Rosemary Batt
The Economic Costs And Benefits Of Self-Managed Teams Among Skilled Technicians, Rosemary Batt
Rosemary Batt
This paper estimates the economic costs and benefits of implementing teams among highly-skilled technicians in a large regional telecommunications company. It matches individual survey and objective performance data for 230 employees in matched pairs of traditionally-supervised and self-managed groups. Multivariate regressions with appropriate controls show that teams do the work of supervisors in 60-70% less time, reducing indirect labor costs by 75 percent per team. Objective measures of quality and labor productivity are unaffected. Team members receive additional overtime pay that represents a 4-5 percent annual wage premium, which may be viewed alternatively as a share in the productivity gains …