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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Complementary Or Conflictual? Formal Participation, Informal Participation, And Organizational Performance, Adam Seth Litwin, Adrienne Eaton
Complementary Or Conflictual? Formal Participation, Informal Participation, And Organizational Performance, Adam Seth Litwin, Adrienne Eaton
Adam Seth Litwin
Most studies of worker participation examine either formal participatory structures or informal participation. Yet, increasingly, works councils and other formal participatory bodies are operating in parallel with collective bargaining or are filling the void left by its decline. Moreover, these bodies are sprouting in workplaces in which workers have long held a modicum of influence, authority, and production- or service-related information. This study leverages a case from the healthcare sector to examine the interaction between formal and informal worker participation. Seeking to determine whether or not these two forces—each independently shown to benefit production or service delivery—complement or undermine one …
Intermediary Cooperative Associations And The Institutionalization Of Participate Work Practices: A Case Study In The Danish Public Secto, Ole Henning Sørensen, Virginia Doellgast, Anders Bojesen
Intermediary Cooperative Associations And The Institutionalization Of Participate Work Practices: A Case Study In The Danish Public Secto, Ole Henning Sørensen, Virginia Doellgast, Anders Bojesen
Virginia Doellgast
Scandinavian countries are known for having a high adoption of cooperative models of work design. This article investigates the role of parity labour market associations, termed intermediary cooperative associations, in the dissemination of these models. Findings are based on an examination of the Centre for the Development of Human Resources and Quality Management (SCKK), a social partnership-based organization that funds workplace development projects at state workplaces, and of nine participative development projects that received financial and logistical support from the SCKK. These projects increased union and management commitment to partnership-based approaches to problem-solving, despite their ambiguous results for both …
Institutional Change And The Restructuring Of Service Work In The French And German Telecommunications Industries, Virginia Doellgast, Hiroatsu Nohara, Robert Tchobanian
Institutional Change And The Restructuring Of Service Work In The French And German Telecommunications Industries, Virginia Doellgast, Hiroatsu Nohara, Robert Tchobanian
Virginia Doellgast
This study analyses recent changes in collective bargaining institutions and their implications for employer strategies in the French and German telecommunications industries, drawing on case studies and survey data from call centre workplaces. Findings demonstrate that differences in both formal institutions and past logics of action influenced actor responses to changing markets and ownership structures. French trade unions were more successful in establishing encompassing bargaining structures and reducing pressures for pay differentiation, due to state support for the mandatory extension of agreements and unions’ strategic focus on centralizing bargaining. In contrast, bargaining in Germany has become increasingly fragmented and decentralized …
Collective Voice Under Decentralized Bargaining: A Comparative Study Of Work Reorganization In Us And German Call Centres, Virginia Doellgast
Collective Voice Under Decentralized Bargaining: A Comparative Study Of Work Reorganization In Us And German Call Centres, Virginia Doellgast
Virginia Doellgast
This article compares the process of and outcomes from work reorganization in US and German call centres, based on four matched case studies in the telecommunications industry. Both German cases adopted high-involvement employment systems with broad skills and worker discretion, while the US cases relied on a narrow division of labour, tight discipline and individual incentives. These outcomes are explained by differences in institutional supports for collective voice. Works councils in the German companies used their stronger participation rights to limit monitoring and encourage upskilling at a time when US managers were rationalizing similar jobs. Findings demonstrate that industrial relations …
Job Loss And The Fraying Of The Implicit Employment Contract, Kevin F. Hallock
Job Loss And The Fraying Of The Implicit Employment Contract, Kevin F. Hallock
Kevin F Hallock
[Excerpt] Most workers have one employment contract that is explicit and another one that is implicit. The explicit employment contract specifies working hours, compensation, and job tasks. The implicit contract involves expectations about the extent to which the employment relationship is not just a payment for labor on the spot market but instead is likely to continue over time. The possibility of a longer-term commitment between an employer and its employees in turn has a number of implications: for example, whether firms will seek to avoid mass layoffs unless or until absolutely necessary; whether firms may cushion the wages and …
Identity Work: Sustaining Transnational Collective Action At General Motors Europe, Ian Greer
Identity Work: Sustaining Transnational Collective Action At General Motors Europe, Ian Greer
Ian Greer
What are the conditions under which transnational collective action is initiated and sustained? This paper presents a case study of General Motors Europe, where labor leaders have mobilized the workforce and bargained with management at the transnational level repeatedly over more than a decade as a response to management whipsawing and threats of plant closures. In contrast to structuralist interest-based theories of union behavior, we identify a process of “identity work‟ that was necessary to sustain transnational worker cooperation.
Political Entrepreneurs And Co-Managers: Labour Transnationalism At Four Multinational Auto Companies, Ian Greer, Marco Hauptmeier
Political Entrepreneurs And Co-Managers: Labour Transnationalism At Four Multinational Auto Companies, Ian Greer, Marco Hauptmeier
Ian Greer
This paper examines labour transnationalism within four multinational automakers. In our sample, we find different forms of labour transnationalism, including transnational collective bargaining, mobilisation, information exchange and social codes of conduct. We explain these differences through the interaction between management and labour in the context of the company structure; of particular importance are transnational coercive comparisons by management and the orientations of worker representatives as political entrepreneurs or co-managers. We conclude that, although intensified worker-side crossborder cooperation were not preventing wage-based competition in general (due to the lack of between-firm coordination), they have reshaped employment relations within these MNCs.
Innovation In Isolation: Labor-Management Partnerships In The United States, Kirsten S. Wever, Rosemary Batt, Saul Rubinstein
Innovation In Isolation: Labor-Management Partnerships In The United States, Kirsten S. Wever, Rosemary Batt, Saul Rubinstein
Rosemary Batt
In the United States, as in other advanced industrial countries, worker participation in management has taken on increasing importance, placing pressures on employers and unions to change how they deal with employees/members, and with each other. This paper examines two of the most impressive cases in the U.S.: the partnerships between General Motors (G.M.) and the United Autoworkers union (U.A W.) at Saturn and between BellSouth and the Communication Workers union (C.W.A.). We outline the evolution and the basic features of these innovations, as well as highlighting certain ongoing problems. These problems, we argue, confront the parties to employment relations …
Three Plants, Three Futures, Lowell Turner
Three Plants, Three Futures, Lowell Turner
Lowell Turner
To spread teamwork and cooperation, managers need to reform themselves—especially their attitudes about workers. At NUMMI, management has provided a system of work and rewards that has earned the loyalty of most employees and local union leaders.
Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, And Quit Rates: Evidence From The Telecommunications Industry, Rosemary Batt, Alexander J.S. Colvin, Jeffrey Keefe
Employee Voice, Human Resource Practices, And Quit Rates: Evidence From The Telecommunications Industry, Rosemary Batt, Alexander J.S. Colvin, Jeffrey Keefe
Alexander Colvin
The authors draw on strategic human resource and industrial relations theories to identify the sets of employee voice mechanisms and human resource practices that are likely to predict firm-level quit rates, then empirically evaluate the predictive power of these variables using data from a 1998 establishment level survey in the telecommunications industry. With respect to alternative voice mechanisms, they find that union representation predicts lower quit rates, even after they control for compensation and a wide range of other human resource practices that may be affected by collective bargaining. Also predicting lower quit rates is employee participation in offline problem-solving …
Are National Exit Examinations Important For Educational Efficiency?, John H. Bishop
Are National Exit Examinations Important For Educational Efficiency?, John H. Bishop
John H Bishop
“This paper analyses effects of national or provincial exit examinations on education quality. On theoretical grounds, the paper argues that such examinations should increase high school achievement, particularly in examination subjects, and that teachers and students and parents and school administrators should focus more on academic achievement when making school-quality decisions. On the negative side, exit examinations may lead to a tendency to concentrate on learning facts, rather than understanding contexts.”
Student, Staff, And Employer Incentives For Improved Student Achievement And Work Readiness, John H. Bishop
Student, Staff, And Employer Incentives For Improved Student Achievement And Work Readiness, John H. Bishop
John H Bishop
“This article proposes a strategy for banishing mediocrity and building in its place an excellent American system of secondary education. Before a cure can be prescribed, however, a diagnosis must be made.”
Linkages Between Industrialization Strategies And Industrial Relations/Human Resource Policies: Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, And India, Sarosh Kuruvilla
Linkages Between Industrialization Strategies And Industrial Relations/Human Resource Policies: Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, And India, Sarosh Kuruvilla
Sarosh Kuruvilla
The case studies of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India presented in this paper support the author's contention that a country's industrialization strategy for economic development profoundly influences its industrial relations (IR) and human resources (HR) policy goals. The author finds that import substitution industrialization was associated with IR/HR policy goals of pluralism and stability, while a low-cost export-oriented industrialization strategy was associated with IR/HR policy goals of cost containment and union suppression. In countries that moved from a low-cost export-oriented strategy to a higher value added export-oriented strategy, the focus of IR/HR policy goals shifted from cost containment to …
Global Competition’S Perfect Storm: Why Business And Labor Cannot Solve Their Problems Alone, Denise M. Rousseau, Rosemary Batt
Global Competition’S Perfect Storm: Why Business And Labor Cannot Solve Their Problems Alone, Denise M. Rousseau, Rosemary Batt
Rosemary Batt
A perfect storm is a conjoining of forces that intensifies effects. This commentary addresses the economic perfect storm that the United States and many other developed countries face as they attempt to become globally competitive. Its forces conflate strategic change with the erosion of employment and income security as firms shed labor and old institutional arrangements, in turn degrading quality of work and family life for workers as well as the futures of retirees. We evaluate the responses of our commentators—Louis Uchitelle, J.T. Battenberg III, and Thomas Kochan—who assess the current crisis and possible solutions to it. Their responses and …