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Articles 1 - 30 of 39
Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Groups, Teams, And The Division Of Labor — Interdisciplinary Perspectives On The Organization Of Work, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast
Groups, Teams, And The Division Of Labor — Interdisciplinary Perspectives On The Organization Of Work, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast
Rosemary Batt
The purpose of this chapter is to survey and critique this varied landscape of research on groups at work, drawing out common themes and selective weaknesses with the goal of suggesting a more synthetic and informed future agenda. Our discussion is not encyclopedic, but rather focused on three quite different research traditions: those based in psychology, in industrial relations, and in critical sociology. We outline the intellectual landscape of each case and highlight areas of agreement and disagreement. We argue that this project of cross-disciplinary theory building encounters substantial challenges, but is rich in potential. These traditions differ in their …
Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman
Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman
Eli D Friedman
Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of ‘alienated politics’. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm be-cause of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The …
The Liberating Consequences Of Creative Work: How A Creative Outlet Lifts The Physical Burden Of Secrecy, Jack Goncalo, Lynne Vincent, Verena Krause
The Liberating Consequences Of Creative Work: How A Creative Outlet Lifts The Physical Burden Of Secrecy, Jack Goncalo, Lynne Vincent, Verena Krause
Jack Goncalo
A newly emerging stream of research suggests creativity can be fruitfully explored, not as an outcome variable, but as a contributor to the general cognitive and behavioral responding of the individual. In this paper, we extend this nascent area of research on the consequences of creativity by showing that working on a creative task can contribute to feelings of liberation— feelings that can help people to overcome psychological burdens. We illustrate the liberating effects of creativity by integrating the embodied cognition literature with recent research showing that keeping a secret is experienced as a psychological and physical burden. While secrecy …
Remote Work: Examining Current Trends And Organizational Practices, Bradford Bell
Remote Work: Examining Current Trends And Organizational Practices, Bradford Bell
Bradford S Bell
[Excerpt] Although remote work offers a number of potential benefits, it is not without risks and challenges. Companies can find it difficult to build a culture that is accepting and supportive of remote work. It can also be difficult to track exactly who is working remotely, particularly when remote work is adopted more informally, and to measure the business impact of these initiatives. Remote workers can face a number of personal and professional challenges. For instance, they may struggle for exposure and access to professional opportunities and there is the risk that those working outside the office can become socially …
Revisiting The Meaning Of Leadership, Joel Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, Marya Besharov
Revisiting The Meaning Of Leadership, Joel Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, Marya Besharov
Marya Besharov
During the past fifty years, organizational scholarship on leadership has shifted from a focus on the significance of leadership for meaning-making to the significance of leadership for economic performance. This shift has been problematic for two reasons. First, it has given rise to numerous conceptual difficulties that now plague the study of leadership. Second, there is now comparatively little attention to the question of how individuals find meaning in the economic sphere even though this question should arguably be one of the most important questions for organizational scholarship. This chapter discusses several reasons for the shift, arguing that one of …
Family Wages: The Roles Of Wives And Mothers In U.S. Working-Class Survival Strategies, 1880-1930, Ileen Devault
Family Wages: The Roles Of Wives And Mothers In U.S. Working-Class Survival Strategies, 1880-1930, Ileen Devault
Ileen A DeVault
The common image of a female wage earner in the U.S. in the decades around the turn of the 20th century is that of a young, single woman: the daughter of her family. However, the wives and mothers of these families also made important economic contributions to their families' economies. This paper argues that we need to rethink our evaluation of the economic roles played by ever-married women in working-class families. Using a range of government reports as well as IPUMS, I document three ways in which working-class wives and mothers strove to bring cash into their family units: through …
Creativity From Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity In Mixed-Sex Work Groups, Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle Duguid, Jessica Kennedy
Creativity From Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity In Mixed-Sex Work Groups, Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle Duguid, Jessica Kennedy
Jack Goncalo
Most group creativity research is premised on the assumption that creativity is unleashed by removing normative constraints. As work organizations become increasingly diverse in terms of gender, however, this assumption needs to be reconsidered since mixed-sex interactions carry a high risk of offense. Departing from the assumption that normative constraints necessarily stifle creativity, we develop a theoretical perspective in which creativity in mixed-sex groups is enhanced by imposing a norm to be politically correct (PC)—a norm that sets clear expectations for how men and women should interact with one another. We present evidence from two group experiments showing that the …
The Experience Of Failed Humor: Implications For Interpersonal Affect Regulation, Michele Williams, Kyle Emich
The Experience Of Failed Humor: Implications For Interpersonal Affect Regulation, Michele Williams, Kyle Emich
Michele Williams
The purpose of this study was to investigate failed interpersonal affect regulation through the lens of humor. We investigated individual differences that influenced people’s affective and cognitive responses to failed humor and their willingness to persist in the interpersonal regulation of positive affect after a failed attempt.
Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Barbara Bergmann's background paper divides data needs in the antidiscrimination area into data that would be useful in the formulation of national policy and data that would be useful as an aid in enforcing the laws and executive orders against discrimination. Although the former are likely to be of greatest concern to the commission, she has performed a valuable service by discussing these interrelated needs in one place. I find much to agree with, and very little to disagree with or question, in her paper. The presentation is, in the main, an objective one and she tempers her desire …
Review Of The Book Nonmonetary Eligibility In State Unemployment Insurance Programs: Law And Practice, Ronald Ehrenberg
Review Of The Book Nonmonetary Eligibility In State Unemployment Insurance Programs: Law And Practice, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] This monograph focuses on a relatively under-researched topic, namely, the effects of nonmonetary eligibility rules for both initial receipt of benefits and continued receipt once benefits are granted on the rates at which UI benefits are denied to applicants. The authors very competently employ both econometric and case study research methods to address these issues. Their econometric work utilizes quarterly state-level data between 1964 and 1981 and a fixed-effects framework to isolate those parameters of state unemployment insurance laws that influence denial rates. To supplement these analyses, they conduct interviews with key state and local program officials in six …
Review Of The Book Labor Relations And The Litigation Explosion, Ronald Ehrenberg
Review Of The Book Labor Relations And The Litigation Explosion, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Labor Relations and the Litigation Explosion is a very readable book that is easily accessible to nonspecialists. (The author has presented more technical treatments of the material elsewhere; see Flanagan 1986a, 1986b.) The early chapters begin with a discussion of federal policy towards labor relations in the United States under the National Labor Relations Act, a documentation of the growth of unfair labor practice charges that occurred over the 1950-1980 period and then a demonstration that this growth can be only partially "explained" by the changing industrial and regional distribution of employment in the United States. Quite interestingly, he …
Review Of The Book Wage Indexation In The United States: Cola Or Uncola?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Review Of The Book Wage Indexation In The United States: Cola Or Uncola?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Hendricks and Kahn's book is a major contribution to the literature on wage indexation. The authors, together with a team of graduate assistants, have painstakingly put together a data file from Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of National Affairs sources that covers over 10,000 individual contract negotiations during the 1967-82 period. A major portion of their book is devoted to econometric analyses of these data; specifically, analyses of the determinants of COLA incidence, the determinants of COLA strength, the effect of COLAs on wage inflation, and the effect of COLAs on strike activity. Earlier versions of some of …
Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook
Regional Integration And Transnational Labor Strategies Under Nafta, Maria Cook
Maria Lorena Cook
[Excerpt] This paper argues that while the internationalization of the economy has tended to weaken national labor movements, the internationalization of domestic politics may expand the traditional arenas for strategic action for labor unions. In particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been portrayed by some of its many critics as representing the consolidation of a neoconservative or neoliberal project that will not only shape the future economic development of the region, but also constrain its social policies and limit its political options (Grinspun and Cameron 1993: Chapter 1). However, these same critics have also noted that the debate …
Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg
Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …
The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst
The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
We describe how one can use multivariate regression models and data collected by the National Research Council as part of its recent ranking of doctoral programs (Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change) to analyze how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influence subjective ratings of doctoral programs in 35 academic fields. Using data for one of the fields, economics, we illustrate how university administrators can use the models to compute the impact of changing the number of faculty positions they allocate to the field on …
Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson
Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …
Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer
Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …
Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg
Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] The members of Generation X are the young faculty members of today and the immediate future. The panelists at this session of the conference were asked to discuss the effects of this generation on academic norms and institutional governance and the types of new models that may be emerging for academia as a result of them. More specifically, they were asked if the attitudes and loyalties of these young faculty members really do differ from that of the Baby Boom Generation, how their attitudes and behavior affect graduate programs, what academic institutions will need to do to attract the …
Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg
Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Most colleges and universities adopted budgets for the 2002-03 academic year in the spring and early summer of 2002. At that time, a pessimist might have cited several factors – negative rates of return from institutional endowments, a rising unemployment rate, an economic recession, and large increases in college and university enrollments, for example - to predict that faculty members would not see their earnings increase substantially in real terms in the coming year. The good news is that, overall and on average, the pessimists' worst fears proved incorrect. The bad news is that the overall aver-ages don't tell …
The Changing Distributions Of New Ph.D. Economists And Their Employment: Implications For The Future, Ronald Ehrenberg
The Changing Distributions Of New Ph.D. Economists And Their Employment: Implications For The Future, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Academic careers are no longer the be-all and end-all for economics Ph.D. students, and the findings and background provided by Siegfried and Stock help to explain why this is so. The median age at which individuals receive economics Ph.D.'s in the Siegfried and Stock sample is 32. While they are somewhat surprised at this finding, it parallels the experiences of many other fields. Increasingly, students are working before proceeding to doctoral studies. Often Ph.D. students in economics enter their programs after having spent several years working for government agencies or research consulting companies—work that has whetted their appetites for …
Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis
Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
The simplest competitive labor market model asserts that if tenure is a desirable job characteristic for professors, they should be willing to pay for it by accepting lower salaries. Conversely, if an institution unilaterally reduces the probability that its assistant professors receive tenure, it will have to pay higher salaries to attract new faculty. Our paper tests this theory using data on salary offers accepted by new assistant professors at economics departments in the United States during the 1974-75 to 1980-81 period, along with data on the proportion of new Ph.D.s hired by each department between 1970 and 1980 that …
The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg
The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] This paper has focused on the impact of retirement policies on the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. All of the policies discussed, except for early retirement provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining contracts were seen to have adverse effects on the level and distribution of employment. Hence, the paper illustrates the more general point that policies designed to promote one social goal may well detract from achieving other goals and suggests that more explicit attention should be given to the employment effects of social programs and legislation prior to their adoption.
How Would Universities Respond To Increased Federal Support For Graduate Students?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer
How Would Universities Respond To Increased Federal Support For Graduate Students?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] This paper has demonstrated that doctorate-producing universities respond to changes in the number of FTSEG students supported on external funds by altering the number of FTSEG students that they support on institutional funds. While institutional adjustment to changes in external support levels appears to be quite rapid, in the aggregate the magnitude of these responses is quite small. A increase of 100 in the number of FTSEG students supported by external funds is estimated to reduce the number supported on institutional funds by 22 to 23. Since some of the institutional funds that are "saved" may be redirected to …
Institutional Responses To Increased External Support For Graduate Students, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer
Institutional Responses To Increased External Support For Graduate Students, Ronald Ehrenberg, Daniel Rees, Dominic Brewer
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
This paper uses institutionally based data to estimate how universities would respond to increased federal support for graduate students. It demonstrates that doctorate-producing universities do respond to changes in the number of full-time science and engineering students supported on external funds by altering the number of students that they support on institutional funds. Institutional adjustment to changes in external support levels appears to be quite rapid. However, in the aggregate, the magnitude of these responses is quite small.
Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore
Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …
Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Holzer's paper has a number of attributes that I find very appealing. It focuses on an important topic and uses two different data bases to test the robustness of its findings. It uses alternative specifications of the variable of interest (reservation wages), examines the sensitivity of the results to alternative sets of control variables, uses a variety of statistical methods to confront a number of statistical issues, and honestly reports cases in which any of the above leads to differences in results. Finally, the paper does not claim more than the evidence warrants—a feature not present in enough academic …
Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Michael Bognanno
Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Michael Bognanno
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Much attention has been devoted to studying models of tournaments or situations in which an individual's payment depends only on his or her output or rank relative to that of other competitors. Academic interest derives from the fact that under certain sets of assumptions, tournaments have desirable normative properties because of the incentive structures they provide. Our paper uses nonexperimental data to test whether tournaments actually elicit effort responses. We focus on professional golf tournaments because information on the incentive structure (prize distribution) and measures of individual output (players' scores) are both available. We find strong support for the proposition …
Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] The papers in this volume should give the reader a sense of the exciting empirical research that has recently taken place on compensation-related issues. As a set, these papers considerably expand our empirical evidence on the effects of compensation policies. Several papers show that executive compensation is structured in a way that at least implicitly ties executive compensation changes to measures of corporate performance, and —crucially—that doing so leads to improved corporate performance (Leonard, Murphy/Gibbons, Abowd). Others show that compensation systems that pay workers for performance, in the sense of providing explicit or implicit incentives for high levels of …
Unemployment Insurance, Duration Of Unemployment, And Subsequent Wage Gain, Ronald Ehrenberg, Ronald Oaxaca
Unemployment Insurance, Duration Of Unemployment, And Subsequent Wage Gain, Ronald Ehrenberg, Ronald Oaxaca
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] In order to evaluate what the "optimal" level of UI benefits is, one must therefore first estimate the magnitude of the relationships between UI benefits levels and unemployed workers' durations of unemployment and post-unemployment wages. There have been several previous studies of the impact of UI benefits on duration of spells of unemployment, however none have been completely satisfactory methodologically. To our knowledge, there have been no previous studies of the system's impact on subsequent wage rates. We attempt to fill these gaps, utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) to estimate both relationships. The plan of our …
Workers, Racism And History: A Response, Nick Salvatore
Workers, Racism And History: A Response, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] This intimate dependence of white egalitarianism upon black exclusion forms the central theme of Herbert Hill's essay. Arguing that this condition is neither episodic nor solely of historical interest, Hill asserts that these racist attitudes (and the action that flowed from them) were systemic across two centuries of working class development and actually provide the central continuous rational for understanding institutional trade union activity from the early nineteenth century into the present. America's labor unions. Hill writes, are "the institutional expression of white working class racism, and of policies and practices that resulted in unequal access, dependent on race, …