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The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate employees' work motivation in China. It aims to give answers to two questions: what motivates employees in China? What are the effects of personal characteristics on work motivation for employees in China?

The study used convenience sampling to select the sample and the respondents were randomly selected from employees of six organizations, from people in the personnel market and also from people walking around in shopping centres in a very representative city of China – Ningbo. Then, descriptive statistics, t‐test (one sample t‐test, independent sample t‐test and one‐way ANOVA), regression analysis and scatter plots were used to analyze the data.

The findings of the study are: all the 15 motivation factors listed in the questionnaire, including good pay, promotion, desirable work environment, good welfare package, good bonus system, good company policy, good interpersonal relationships, good supervisors, job security, the opportunity to use my ability, a sense of challenge and achievement, positive recognition, autonomy, self‐actualization and interesting job, do motivate employees in China; good pay is the most important motivator for employees in China; employees' work motivation is affected by their personal characteristics.

It is believed that these findings can assist organizations in China, those located in Ningbo in particular, in effectively motivating their employees. It may also be applied to organizations located in other parts of the world which have Chinese employees.

An interview with Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, about er latest book, The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay & Meaning to Everyone’s Work.

She believes that leaders can either view their employees as a cost to be minimized, invest little in them and operate with high turnover, or they can see them as drivers of profitability and growth—investing heavily in them, designing their work for high productivity and contribution and therefore operating with low turnover.-- “the good jobs strategy.”

The secret sauce of good jobs strategy is four operational choices—focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train and operate with slack—that improve productivity and contribution and make that higher investment possible.

The competitive costs of low people investment are even higher than the poor operational execution costs.

By making the work better and increasing pay, companies can better attract and keep their talent and enforce high standards, which improve execution and service, uplifting revenue. Few have examined this important topic more closely than Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, best-selling author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.

This paper aims to examine the two different approaches adopted in the UK to regulate directors’ remuneration. The paper also aims to explore the two approaches to understand which one better regulates directors’ pay and why. It provides an account of the two approaches’ evolution, effectiveness and challenges towards the regulation of directors’ remuneration. The paper will also make some recommendations on both approaches and the way forward to better regulate directors’ remuneration.

The paper reviews various corporate governance codes, its recommendations on directors’ remuneration, its effectiveness and the challenges it face in regulating directors’ remuneration. The paper also reviews provisions of the Companies Act 2006 on directors’ remuneration, its effectiveness and challenges faced.

The paper finds that corporate governance adopts a better approach to regulating directors’ pay than the Companies Act 2006 because it targets the pay setting process. However, the existence of grey areas and lack of enforcement procedure poses a challenge on its effectiveness. The Companies Act 2006 is unable to regulate directors’ pay adequately because it adopts a corrective approach and it considers directors’ remuneration as a management responsibility.

The paper offers an up-to-date assessment of the two approaches to regulating directors’ pay in the UK. It highlights the challenges faced by both approaches and which approach could regulate directors pay better and its challenges. The paper further makes recommendations on how the regulation of directors’ remuneration can be effective in the UK.

There is a strange paradox at play in workplaces today – and it has all to do with that most basic of needs: “pay”. Employees might well be working longer hours and taking out more second jobs, but the amount of money they have left in their pockets simply is not keeping pace with the cost of living.

This paper examines how pay has shot back to the top of the things employees most want from their employer, but (despite this) it also examines the extent to which pay – the greatest cost most businesses face – seems overlooked in terms of being measured with the same sort of ROI rigour as other business costs.

Most firms would not invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in new IT if it did not yield some form of efficiency/productivity return but, as this paper argues, many firms can quite easily see the total pay of their employees’ pay rise by the same amount, and yet they know nothing about whether paying some staff more than others will actually boost productivity and profitability.

It is this paper’s view that compensation measurement and management is vital if businesses are to understand how what they pay impacts performance. Firms that use data may discover they do not need to improve everyone’s pay by the same amount to boost their productivity, but they can do more targeting compensation around key people and key performers.

The paper examines two different approaches adopted in the UK to regulate directors’ remuneration. The aim is to explore the approaches to understand which one better regulates directors’ pay and why. It provides an account of the approaches’ evolution, effectiveness and challenges toward the regulation of directors’ remuneration.

The paper reviews various corporate governance codes, their recommendations on directors’ remuneration, their effectiveness and the challenges of regulating directors’ remuneration. The paper also reviews provisions of the Companies Act 2006.

The paper finds that corporate governance adopts a better approach to regulating directors’ pay than the Companies Act 2006, because it targets the pay-setting process. However, the existence of gray areas and lack of enforcement procedure poses a challenge to its effectiveness. The Companies Act 2006 is unable to regulate directors’ pay adequately, because it adopts a corrective approach and it considers directors’ remuneration as a management responsibility.

The paper offers an up-to-date assessment of the two approaches to regulating directors’ pay in the UK. It highlights the challenges faced by both approaches and considers which approach could regulate directors pay better and its challenges.

The existing literature involving director compensation has been concentrating on its absolute or intrinsic values. Although the relevant studies have generated mixed findings, research in other fields suggests that the power of an incentive may be determined by its value relative to the chosen referencing standard more than its absolute value. This study aims to investigate how relative director pay affects corporate investment efficiency.

This study takes a fresh theoretical viewpoint by framing the investigation using the dimensional comparison theory and proposing that a directorship also presents a relative value that may influence the board’s performance. Ordinary least squared regressions and two-stage system generalised method of moments are used to analyse 14,267 firm-year observations.

The empirical results suggest that the relative director pay is a better estimate of the power of the incentive than the absolute pay. A positive association between the relative director pay and investment efficiency is evident, while the absolute pay has no significant effect on investment decisions. Director overcompensation, however, will cancel out the positive effect of director compensation on investment efficiency. Firms with relatively lower unexpected investment (UI) level benefit the most from an increase in the relative director pay, while neither absolute nor relative director pay affects investment choices in firms with a high UI level because of significantly more overcompensation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to investigate the effect of relative director pay. It is also the first to examine the role of dimensional comparison in strategic decisions which is the single untended comparison framework in the director pay design. The current director pay structure has emphasised social and temporal equality by standardising the pay structure and vesting the equity-based pay over a long period. Yet it ignores the fact that people decide their commitment level by comparing the reward with an internal referent too. The findings speak to the dimensional comparison theory in that the inequality emanated from dimensional or internal comparison may be accentuated by the perceived equality in other comparison frameworks, driving the different performances in the roles one assumes.

The paper aims to examine worker job attribute preferences, by which is meant the extent to which individuals desire a variety of specific qualities and outcomes from their paid work. It seeks to examine how these preferences are ranked and to identify their principal correlates.

The study makes use of a quantitative methodology, notably the application of an ordered probit model to analyse a data set which has its origins in the 2006 Skills Survey.

“Work you like doing”; a “secure job”; “friendly people to work with”; and “opportunities to use your abilities” are the four highest ranked job attribute preferences. Worker job attribute preferences vary with the characteristics of the worker, including gender, domestic circumstances, highest qualification held and occupation.

The study reports “correlations” and does not imply “causation”. The findings are for the year 2006. On the assumption that job attribute preferences are constrained by the employment opportunities available, the findings may change with the economic cycle, in a manner comparable to recent research findings about some facets of job satisfaction.

This is the first detailed statistical examination of this subset of questions in the survey in question.