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1 – 10 of 39J. Peter Leeds, Krystal N. Roach, Scott K. Burtnick and Holly M. Moody
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a taxonomy useful for classifying the training activity preference patterns adopted by executives and for describing how these…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a taxonomy useful for classifying the training activity preference patterns adopted by executives and for describing how these patterns relate to important workplace measures. Although many organizations hold that well-trained and developed leaders are important for organizational success, little is known about the patterns of self-developmental activities that such leaders choose to initiate and how such training impacts organizational outcomes. Understanding these patterns may be useful in characterizing leaders in terms of training interest and showing a relation between executive training and valued organizational outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 4,624 senior executives who completed a training activity and attitude survey, cluster analysis was used to derive a five-type training and development (T&D) taxonomy. Types varied by training activity pattern/attitudes and the proportion of well-trained and less-well-trained executives in each agency were described. The researchers collected an independent sample of employee perceptions of engagement and leader effectiveness and number of equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaints within each agency.
Findings
Organizations with higher concentrations of well-trained/developed leaders tend to have employees with more favorable workplace attitudes and higher regard for senior leaders and generate smaller proportions of EEO complaints.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected from 2011 and 2012, government leaders were sampled, and outcome analyses were conducted at the agency level rather than at the individual level.
Practical implications
A link between leader training and organizational outcome is useful for promoting and justifying such training to stakeholders.
Social implications
Characterizing leaders by training pattern will be useful in examining training usage/interest and in crafting programs tailored to leaders of different patterns.
Originality/value
An executive training pattern taxonomy is unique in the literature and evidence linking such training to outcome is rare.
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Bob Carter, Peter Fairbrother, Rachel Sherman and Kim Voss
The organising model of trade unionism, developed in the United States since the early 1990s, has been subject to a good deal of scrutiny. Accounts stemming from the AFL-CIO, or…
Abstract
The organising model of trade unionism, developed in the United States since the early 1990s, has been subject to a good deal of scrutiny. Accounts stemming from the AFL-CIO, or those close to it, are, unsurprisingly, enthusiastic and largely uncritical (Mort, 1998). On the left of American social thought, there are critics who contend that the changes wrought by the new leadership of the Federation are of little significance and charges that older forms of business unionism and class collaboration still dominate practice (Moody, 1999; Slaughter, 1999). Between these poles are a number of writers who are supportive, but have criticisms and concerns about aspects of the programme being developed by the AFL-CIO and amongst unions more generally. These issues range from union attitudes towards the Democrats (Brecher & Costello, 1999), through the lack of innovative tactics adopted to gain certification (Bronfenbrenner, 1997), to the absence of internal democracy (Benson, 1999). Questions have also been raised about the very adequacy of the organising model to address the problems facing the working class of America as a whole (Eisencher, 1999a).
Meghan E Hollis and Jeremy M. Wilson
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between community type classifications and police strength. Prior research has examined other correlates, but no attempts…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between community type classifications and police strength. Prior research has examined other correlates, but no attempts have been made previously to examine the relationship between community type (as outlined and defined by Chinni and Gimpel, 2010) and police staffing levels.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a combination of NDLEA data on police strength, Uniform Crime Report data on crime, census data, and Chinni and Gimpel’s (2010) community classifications, this paper analyzes the relationship between a variety of correlates and police strength in 15,917 communities.
Findings
The study found that police staffing does differ by community type as well as by a variety of other key community characteristics.
Research limitations/implications
This implies that further research on appropriate tools to determine appropriate staffing levels is needed.
Practical implications
This work indicates that traditional “peer benchmarking” approaches used to determine police strength should not be considered the best practice. Other approaches may be more appropriate and should be examined.
Originality/value
This is the first study to incorporate classifications of community type in the analysis of police strength.
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Paul Blyton, Edmund Heery and Peter Turnbull
Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing…
Abstract
Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.
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The Center for Women’s Business Research estimates women are now the majority owners in 6.7 million privately held businesses in the United States and equal owners in another 4.0…
Abstract
The Center for Women’s Business Research estimates women are now the majority owners in 6.7 million privately held businesses in the United States and equal owners in another 4.0 million firms. When part owners in multiple businesses are included the female ownership total climbs to an estimated 15.6 million businesses. Women majority owners account for nearly half (48 per cent) of the privately‐held firms in the United States. Their businesses generate $2.46 trillion in sales. They employ 19.1 million people and spend an estimated $492 billion on salaries and $54 billion on employee benefits. The number of women‐owned firms increases at twice the rate of all new firms (14 per cent versus 7 per cent) and the number of employees nearly as fast (30 per cent versus 18 per cent). Women owners are rapidly moving into all industries, with the fastest growth percentages in the fields of construction (30 per cent), transportation, communications and public utilities (28 per cent) and agricultural services (24 per cent). Worldwide, with women entrepreneurs in under developed countries leading the way, women‐owned firms now comprise between one‐fourth and one‐third of all businesses. Given the numbers, it would be almost impossible to overestimate the impact of women owned businesses in today’s global economy.
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It is remarkable how few cases in any outbreak are attended by a fatal issue, and pathological data from post‐mortem examinations are correspondingly meagre. The clinical symptoms…
Abstract
It is remarkable how few cases in any outbreak are attended by a fatal issue, and pathological data from post‐mortem examinations are correspondingly meagre. The clinical symptoms point to the upper intestinal tract as the area most affected, and this is in accordance with the findings at necropsy. The severe vomiting and purging must remove much of the unabsorbed toxic material within the alimentary canal, and the rapid recovery in many cases is presumably the beneficial result of these excretory processes. It would be expected that the cases presenting evidence of infection with living organisms would show more prolonged symptoms than in those in which only toxins are present, but in most cases recovery occurs rapidly, and evidence of invasion of the blood stream by organisms is seldom obtained. Nevertheless, the development of aggultinins to salmonella organisms is frequently reported, even in cases in which toxins only are supposed to have been present. As it is the general experience of bacteriologists that it is extremely difficult to produce antibodies in the blood of animals by administering organisms by the alimentary tract, and is only partially successful when enormous doses are given, and frequently only after starvation or in association with the feeding of agents which interfere with normal digestion, this finding of aggultinins in the blood of food‐poisoning cases is the more remarkable and worthy of fuller investigation on experimental lines.
The earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, not only caused extensive direct damage to the population but also triggered a nuclear power plant accident…
Abstract
The earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, not only caused extensive direct damage to the population but also triggered a nuclear power plant accident that brought the terror and reality of radiation. The restoration of communities in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures presents enormous problems. People from the radiation-contaminated areas have faced numerous ordeals since resettlement after the accident. Through personal interviews with victims, this chapter investigates what happened in the regional societies and how community consciousness changed as a result of the combined natural and manmade catastrophes. The study focuses on the restoration of community from social bonds through mutual help networks as a spontaneous social order. As the result of interviewing, some propositions were developed concerning the transformation of mutual help networks. The stronger the outside assistance from volunteers whom the victims came to trust and rely on, the weaker inside communal help becomes. Inventorying and clarifying the particular problems of conflict in stricken communities such as the loss of confidence in neighbors, the possibilities of rebuilding communities are explored, especially indicating how to cope with the social demise of communities that local people had formed and occupied all their lives.
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Tina L. Margolis, Julie Lauren Rones and Ariela Algaze
Films focusing on girls and women with anorexia have not found major producers and distributors in Hollywood, yet movies on subjects such as suicidality and bipolar disorder have…
Abstract
Films focusing on girls and women with anorexia have not found major producers and distributors in Hollywood, yet movies on subjects such as suicidality and bipolar disorder have been showcased. Eating disorders affect approximately 30 million people in the United States alone, and it has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, so this invisibility seems incongruous. The authors theorize that Hollywood avoids this subject because of ontological anxiety. Movie plots are schemas and young females are inextricably associated with fertility and futurity. An anorexic’s appearance contradicts and nullifies this symbolic role because anorexia often leads to infertility and death. Psychological studies and philosophical arguments claim that a belief in an afterlife and the regeneration of humankind create coherence and meaning for individuals. An anorexic’s appearance and behavior represent images of self-destruction – images that inflame the viewer’s unconscious and primordial fears about the annihilation of the species. By avoiding the topic of anorexia, Hollywood defends against its symbolic fears of mortality but diminishes the importance of the subject through its absence; it ignores its place in women’s social history and erases its place in American history. Because of Hollywood’s social reach and because greater visibility is correlated with a reduction in stigma, the authors conjecture that a film on this subject would inspire necessary attention to women’s roles, public mores, public policies, and the social good.
Anthony M. Gould, Michael J. Bourk and Jean-Etienne Joullié
This paper takes a long-term view of how the US public and private sectors have been viewed in relation to each other. It notes that since the time of approximately the Nixon…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper takes a long-term view of how the US public and private sectors have been viewed in relation to each other. It notes that since the time of approximately the Nixon Administration, each sector has not been viewed favourably by the public. Over the past 40 years, the private sector has been perceived as being run by the unscrupulous and the public sector by incompetents. The essay argues that Donald Trump was able to exploit these circumstances to win the 2016 election.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a polemic. It relies on archival research and data to create a new view of historical eras in US business history. The object of analysis is the idea of relative legitimacy, the public image of the State vis-a-vis business and business managers.
Findings
Although the paper addresses business history, a novel argument is presented about the 2016 US Presidential election. It is proposed that Trump took advantage of unique historical circumstances; therefore, his win had more to do with the moment than with him personally.
Research limitations/implications
The paper interprets the 2016 Presidential race as the end-point of a 250-year journey. It sets a new agenda, in that previous analyses have mostly viewed the ascendancy of Trump as pertaining to distinctively post-industrial twenty-first-century phenomena.
Social implications
In analysing the 2016 Presidential race, the emphasis is largely removed from issues of personality or partisan politics.
Originality/value
The paper takes a view of the 2016 election which has not hitherto been adopted. It proposes a new concept – relative legitimacy – as having a substantial explanatory value.
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