Search results

The literature on the union wage premium is among the most extensive in labour economics but unions’ effects on other aspects of the wage-effort bargain have received much less attention. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature through a study of the union premium in paid holiday entitlements.

The authors examine the size of the union premium on paid holidays over time, with a particular focus on how the premium was affected by the introduction of a statutory right to paid holidays. The data come from nationally representative surveys of employees and workplaces.

The authors find that the union premium on paid holidays is substantially larger than the union premium on wages. However, the premium fell with the introduction of a statutory minimum entitlement to paid leave.

This is the first study to examine explicitly the interaction between union representation and the law in this setting. The findings indicate the difficulties that unions have faced in protecting the most vulnerable employees in the UK labour market. The authors argue that the supplanting of voluntary joint regulation with statutory regulation is symptomatic of a wider decrease in the regulatory role of unions in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers that induce companies to change their rules for managing product development. Most companies use a form of rule-based management approach, but surprisingly little is known about what makes companies change these rules. Furthermore, this management technology also has developed over time into different versions, but what drives firms from one version to another has only been suggested, not empirically studied.

The dynamics of the rules of five companies are analyzed over a period of more than ten years based on three rounds of interviews with 40 managers.

Previous research has assumed that the dynamics of product development rules are based on internal learning processes, and that increasingly competent management will stimulate the implementation of newer and more complex rule regimes. However, the analysis here indicates that there are different drivers, both internal and external, that cause companies to adopt new rules or modify their existing ones, such as changes in organizational structures, organizational conflicts and changes in ownership or strategy. In addition, contrary to the predictions in previous research, companies sometimes move back and forth between different generations of rules. Companies that have moved to a more flexible third generation of rules might revert to their second generation rules, or supplement their flexibility with an increased level of management control and information systems. A model is proposed to explain the relationship between the drivers of rule change and the actual dynamics of rules, incorporating two sets of moderators: organizational moderators and rule-related moderators.

The findings indicate that many factors influence the modification of rules, and that there is no simple linear progression from one generation to another. Organizational learning is one among several other factors that influences the dynamics of rules for managing product development. Further research is needed to explore the dynamic relationship between different factors, the proposed moderators and changes to rules. Lack of historical record keeping in companies puts special requirements on research concerning rules.

Companies need to consider how and why their present versions of rules have emerged, whether or not the existing rules can actually solve the challenges they face today, whether or not the rules support the intended company strategy, and what mechanisms influence their product development rules.

A great deal of research has investigated the relationship between the uses of structured rule-based approaches to manage product development, but little is known about what makes these rules change. This is the first study to uncover the multitude of drivers that stimulate change in product development rules and to suggest sets of moderators that influence the outcome.

This article presents an empirical test of three hypotheses dealing with the modernisation of polyethnic societies. An hypothesis derived from the functionalist/developmental perspective and two hypotheses derived from the conflict/competition perspective are assessed using survey data on Francophone‐Anglophone relations in contemporary Quebec. The main conclusions are that 1) the cross‐sectional design using survey data allows a clear test of Hechter's (1975) reactive ethnicity hypothesis; 2) the reactive ethnicity hypothesis is supported in the analysis; 3) the resource competition hypothesis (e.g., Nielsen 1980) is also supported; 4) the reactive ethnicity and resource competition hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as some recent authors have claimed (Nielsen 1980; Ragin 1979), and can best be seen as two variants of the same communal competition perspective imbedded in the conflict theory tradition.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the economic importance of performance-related-pay (PRP) in Britain through the 2000s using firm-level data.

The authors utilise nationally representative, monthly data on the total wage bill and employment of around 8,500 firms. Using these data, the authors decompose the share of the total economy-wide wage bill accounted for by bonuses into the shares of employment in the PRP and non-PRP sectors, the ratio of base pay between the two sectors, and the gearing of bonus payments to base pay within the PRP sector.

The growth in the economic importance of bonuses in Britain in the mid-2000s – and subsequent fluctuations since the onset of recession in 2008 – can be almost entirely explained by changes in the gearing of bonus to base pay within the PRP sector. There has been no substantial change in the percentage of employment accounted for by PRP firms; if anything it has fallen over time. Furthermore, movements in the gearing of bonuses to base pay in the economy are heavily influenced by changes in Finance: a sector which accounts for a large proportion of all bonus payments in Britain.

The paper demonstrates the importance of understanding further how firms decide the size of bonus payments in a given period.

This is the first paper to present monthly firm-level data for Britain on the incidence and size of bonus payments in the 2000s.

Month after month we bring forward additional evidence of the injury resulting from the use of chemical “preservatives” in food, while the Authorities feebly hesitate to give specific legal effect to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee which made such a complete inquiry into this question. The evidence upon which those recommendations were based has been fully corroborated by a number of different observers. FERE and others have shown that, as regards boric acid and borax, even when administered in the smallest medicinal doses, there is always the risk that these drugs may aggravate, or even produce, renal diseases. These observations have been confirmed by the work of Dr. CHARLES HARRINGTON, an account of which has been recently published. Twelve cats were fed on the same food; six were treated with borax, one had no preservative, and five were given a preservative which had no apparent effect. The experiment extended over a period of 133 days, the quantity of borax given averaging about 0.5 grms, per diem. Three of the borated cats soon became ill, and one died at the end of six weeks. On the termination of the experiment the cats were all killed, and upon examination it was found that the organs of the six cats which had not taken borax were in perfectly sound and healthy condition, while the others, with one exception, were all suffering from nephritis. Of course, instances are recorded in which patients have been treated with borax and boracic acid with apparently no injurious result, but as a general rule these experiments have been of too short duration to allow of the desired information being arrived at, and the results must therefore be regarded as inconclusive and unreliable. It is perfectly evident that the kidneys may be for a short time quite capable of eliminating many objectionable substances, but the long‐continued use of such bodies, as Dr. HARRINGTON'S researches clearly indicate, sets up an inflammatory condition of the kidneys which, of course, interferes with the effective performance of their proper functions, and lays the foundations for complications of the most serious nature.

Faith‐based activism in living wage campaigns is on the rise. Summarizes recent campaigns to enact living wage ordinances in US municipalities, underscoring the role of community‐church partnerships such as Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, and other local organizations in the struggle for wage justice. Explores the theological bases of this activism by tracing the evolution of the concept of a just, living wage in Christian social economic thought. To illustrate the historical and philosophical roots of living wage discourse, provides textual analysis of major Roman Catholic and Episcopal Church documents and briefly considers writings by US social economists in the first half of the twentieth century.

ALTHOUGH you are reading a professional journal, you may be interested in the impressions of a semi‐outsider, one who has teetered on the edge of the maelstrom of modern librarianship without actually having fallen in—yet. The experience may even be salutary; who knows?

Under the new Compliance Program Rules, each U.S. registered investment adviser and U.S. registered investment company was required to designate a Chief Compliance Officer (“CCO)” by October 5, 2004. The CCO title is expected to carry supervisory responsibility for many of the newly appointed officers, which may lead to personal liability if they are charged with a failure of the duty to supervise. As a result, there is renewed interest in the standard of care applicable to supervisory personnel of investment advisers and the manner in which they may be insulated from regulatory liability for claims of failure to supervise persons under their control who violate certain federal securities laws (“Federal Securities Laws)”.

The purpose of this paper is to help managers determine whether RFID is appropriate for their particular organizational needs and to give them some guidelines for implementing an RFID solution.

This paper is a general review of RFID and offers instructions to managers who are in a dilemma as to whether RFID is right for their organization or application.

The results of this study provide managers with procedures to follow that will enable them to minimize RFID implementation problems.

For practicing managers, these implementation procedures have important implications. As with any technological implementation, the needs of the organization, its personnel, and customers must be at the forefront of the process.

This paper offers managers a valuable perspective on the RFID implementation process for their organization.