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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

The Dynamics Of Poverty, Inequality And Economic Well-Being: African Economic Growth In Comparative Perspective, Gary S. Fields Sep 2015

The Dynamics Of Poverty, Inequality And Economic Well-Being: African Economic Growth In Comparative Perspective, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Two hundred and fifty million Africans (about 45% of the population) are poor. In rural areas, where most Africans live, there is, alas, a 'poor majority'. Rural poverty rates range from 37% in Madagascar and 41% in Kenya to 88% in Zambia and 94% in Ghana (Table 1). It is hard to imagine an issue in development economics that is of greater importance to humankind than the effects of economic growth on poverty and economic well-being. Yet there is remarkably little consensus on this vitally important issue, as illustrated by the following two polar positions: New patterns of growth will …


Changes In Poverty And Inequality In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields Sep 2015

Changes In Poverty And Inequality In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper presents new data on poverty, inequality, and growth in those developing countries of the world for which the requisite statistics are available. Economic growth is found generally but not always to reduce poverty. Growth, however, is found to have very little to do with income inequality. Thus the "economic laws" linking the rate of growth and the distribution of benefits receive only very tenuous empirical support here.


Income Distribution In Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, And Policy Issues In Broad-Based Growth, Gary S. Fields Sep 2015

Income Distribution In Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, And Policy Issues In Broad-Based Growth, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The aim of economic development is to raise the standard of living of a country's people, especially its poor. Economic growth, particularly when broadly based, is a means to that end. 'Underdevelopment' can be defined as a state of severely constrained choices. When one is choosing from among an undesirable set of alternatives, the outcome will itself be undesirable. Standards of living will be low. If standards of living are to be improved, people must have a better set of alternatives from which to choose. 'Economic development' is the process by which the constraints on choices are relaxed. Based …


Evaluating Policy Measures To Tackle Undeclared Work: The Role Of Stakeholder Collaboration In Building Trust And Improving Policy-Making, Colin C. Williams, Anton Kojouharov Jul 2015

Evaluating Policy Measures To Tackle Undeclared Work: The Role Of Stakeholder Collaboration In Building Trust And Improving Policy-Making, Colin C. Williams, Anton Kojouharov

Colin C Williams

The aim of this paper is to examine and analyse the realm of policy evaluation approaches and methods as they relate to assessing measures to tackle undeclared work. The discussion is set at the backdrop of a brief review of the more prominent theoretical and conceptual considerations in the policy evaluation literature. The paper then investigates results from policy assessments and evaluations illuminated in the previous GREY working papers, as well as some selected from the Eurofound database. The analysis of a limited sample of available policy evaluations and results demonstrates that a common probable cause of policy failure with …


Convergence In Industrial Relations Institutions: The Emerging Anglo-American Model?, Alexander Colvin, Owen Darbishire Jul 2015

Convergence In Industrial Relations Institutions: The Emerging Anglo-American Model?, Alexander Colvin, Owen Darbishire

Alexander Colvin

At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems across six Anglo- American countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model of the United States and Canada; the Voluntarist system of collective bargaining and strong unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and the highly centralized, legalistic Award systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors argue that there has been growing convergence in two major areas: First, of labor law toward a private ordering of employment relations in which terms and conditions of work and employment are primarily determined at the level …


The Globalization Of Service Work: Comparative Institutional Perspectives On Call Centers (Introduction To A Special Issue Of The Industrial & Labor Relations Review), Rosemary Batt, David Holman, Ursula Holtgrewe May 2015

The Globalization Of Service Work: Comparative Institutional Perspectives On Call Centers (Introduction To A Special Issue Of The Industrial & Labor Relations Review), Rosemary Batt, David Holman, Ursula Holtgrewe

Rosemary Batt

This introduction to the special issue on the globalization of service work provides an overview of the call center sector and its development in coordinated, liberal market, and emerging market economies. The introduction's authors situate this research in literature on the comparative political economy and industrial relations. Drawing on qualitative research and a unique survey of 2,500 establishments in 17 countries conducted in 2003-2006, they discuss the extent of convergence and divergence in management practices and employment relations. They also describe the research methodology for the overall research project, highlight its major findings, and summarize the contributions of the thematic …


How Institutions And Business Strategies Affect Wages: A Cross-National Study Of Call Centers, Rosemary Batt, Hiroatsu Nohara May 2015

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 …


Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill Apr 2015

Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of the comparative study of trade union organizational behaviour by John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, 'In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), which involves a target group of US and Australian trade unions.


Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla Apr 2015

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Eli D Friedman

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …


Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman Apr 2015

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …


Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman Apr 2015

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 …


Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman Apr 2015

Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the countermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus …


Labor Relations In A Globalizing World, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, Alexander Colvin Apr 2015

Labor Relations In A Globalizing World, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] This book traces how labor, management, and governments acting as individuals or as groups have shaped and continue to shape the employment relationship. Employment is analyzed through the perspective of industrial relations, the interdisciplinary field of study that concentrates on individual workers and groups of workers, unions and other forms of collective representation, employers and their organizations, and the environment in which these parties interact.


Training Needs Assessment : A Case Study Of Huco In India, Bahram Mahmoudi Mazraeh Shadi Mar 2015

Training Needs Assessment : A Case Study Of Huco In India, Bahram Mahmoudi Mazraeh Shadi

bahram mahmoudi mazraeh shadi

Abstract The aim of this research is to study the nature of Training Needs Assessment within the context Managers in company of HÜCO (Maharashtra) in India and the impact of TNA on organizational performance. According to the findings of this study in the field of theoretical arguments arising from them found that training needs assessment (TNA) using the dimensions of strategic competence, which is compatible with McGhee and Thayer's three-fold analysis. This study achieves in survey method with the use of a questionnaire on the 25 Managers in company of HÜCO (Maharashtra) were regarded as the research samples to analyze …


More Of The Same: Wages And Collective Bargaining Still Under Pressure, Torsten Müller, Stefan Clauwaert, Isabelle Schömann, Kurt Vandaele Jan 2015

More Of The Same: Wages And Collective Bargaining Still Under Pressure, Torsten Müller, Stefan Clauwaert, Isabelle Schömann, Kurt Vandaele

Kurt Vandaele

Even as the danger of deflation looms large, the strategy of internal devaluation continues to dominate EU crisis management. In the field of wages and collective bargaining this strategy entails constant pressure on wages and the relentless pursuit of further ‘structural reforms’ aimed primarily at increasing the downward flexibility of wages. This strategy is applied, what is more, not to the ‘crisis countries’ alone but also to the rest of Europe in the context of the country-specific recommendations adopted in the framework of the European Semester (Schulten and Müller 2015). This chapter sets out to achieve 2 aims, the first …


Trade Unions’ ‘Deliberative Vitality’ Towards Young Workers: Survey Evidence Across Europe, Kurt Vandaele Jan 2015

Trade Unions’ ‘Deliberative Vitality’ Towards Young Workers: Survey Evidence Across Europe, Kurt Vandaele

Kurt Vandaele

In Chapter 2, Kurt Vandaele focusses on the integration and participation of young workers in union life and structures. Vandaele uses data from six European Trade Union Federations to provide a comparative perspective of the established relationship between young workers and unions. As he notes, youth trade union structures can be successful and yield results in terms of membership and organising if they are not seen merely as ‘cosmetic constructions’.


Health Facility Guidelines And Management Benchmarks: Improving Workplace Health Services And Health Management In Factories, Farms And Other Workplaces In Low- And Middle-Income Countries, David Wofford, Marat Yu, Lauren Shields, Maria Pontes Jan 2015

Health Facility Guidelines And Management Benchmarks: Improving Workplace Health Services And Health Management In Factories, Farms And Other Workplaces In Low- And Middle-Income Countries, David Wofford, Marat Yu, Lauren Shields, Maria Pontes

Reproductive Health

This document contains a set of voluntary health and management guidelines for corporations and their supply chains to promote continual improvement and application of good practices, better access to men’s and women’s health services, and more effective use of health resources at workplaces in the developing world. It is focused on both quality of health services provided at the workplace and adequacy of company policies and management systems to ensure that workers have access to health services. The main goals of the guidelines are to: 1) help enterprises—multinational companies and their supplier or subsidiary companies in developing countries—improve the management …


National Culture And Leadership Style In A Multicultural Environment: The Luxembourg Case, Petra Garnjost, Stephen M. Brown, Jeanine K. Andreassi Jan 2015

National Culture And Leadership Style In A Multicultural Environment: The Luxembourg Case, Petra Garnjost, Stephen M. Brown, Jeanine K. Andreassi

WCBT Faculty Publications

Hofstede’s research on cultural differences and its implication for management style has been reviewed and acknowledged for decades. His findings suggest cultural dimensions have strong impact on expected behavior of supervisors and subordinates. The GLOBE survey identified leadership styles that work in any cultural environment. There is a strong indicator that in addi-tion to cultural specific leadership styles there is also a universal one. The leadership categories identified by GLOBE as universally effective, were very similar to the dimensions of transforma-tional leadership. This paper analyzes nationality as a predictor of Transformational Leadership style with a sample of 250 managers from …