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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.

Using new survey data for Bulgarian executives during 1989‐1992, presents some of the first evidence on the nature of managerial labour markets for a country in transition. Finds that internal labour markets for managers are quite underdeveloped, suggesting insufficient firm‐specific human capital accumulation by managers, weak incentive effects of promotion tournaments, and an inability to use promotions as a job assignment mechanism; the use of incentive pay schemes (as compared to traditional fixed wage payments) is limited and is declining; and internal wage structures are relatively flat, leading to weak incentive effects for all contenders in the CEO promotional tournament and to an inability to ensure that the most able contenders will win. All these findings point to potentially serious inefficiencies and thus to serious public policy concerns. There exists an urgent need for a strategy to promote internal labour markets for managers, which would include both incentive pay systems for managers and steeper internal wage structures.

This chapter applies arguments advanced by Drnevich and Shanley (this volume) to the strategic leadership literature – an area of work where such multi-level analyses seem likely to be particularly appropriate. In an analysis of the relationship between managerial capabilities and firm performance, this chapter breaks from tradition in the strategic leadership literature by examining the interaction between three levels of analysis. In doing so, this chapter identifies the conditions under which leadership can be a source of competitive advantage for a firm, when labor markets will allocate managerial talent imperfectly across competing firms, and when managers will and will not be able to appropriate the rents their specific managerial talents might generate.

This paper aims to investigate the “gender management gap” in the scientific labour market in the North East of England. The paper seeks to compare and contrast employment, ownership, management structure and capacity between men and women in the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) sector.

The empirical investigation is based on a survey of 60 SET‐based small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), operating in the North East of England.

The results show that women are particularly under‐represented in managerial and senior positions of scientific nature in the private sector in the North East of England. The “glass ceiling” effect appears to be widespread.

There are very limited empirical data and research on the nature and level of participation of women in the scientific managerial labour market at firm level in the UK. There is a need for more rigorous research at firm and regional levels to examine the cumulative effects of underlying factors that prevent women from progression, beyond the “glass ceiling”, in the scientific labour market.

This paper builds upon a research project funded by the ESRC Science in Society Programme. The key findings have resulted in a subsequent award from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Impact Grants to establish the “North East Role Model Platform for Innovative Women” in the light of the Science City Initiative.

The “gender management gap” in the scientific labour market in the North East of England has not, empirically, been investigated before and appears to be a highly neglected area of public policy and research.

Using a matching approach and multivariate logit analysis we determine that management of firms involved in MBOs more frequently chose income increasing accounting policies than did a matched sample of non‐MBO firms. The results provide support for the managerial economic incentives hypothesis as a motivation for accounting policy choices. The results of the study are consistent with a number of earlier studies such as Groff and Wright (1989), Hagerman and Zmijewski (1979) and Zmijewski and Hagerman (1981) that also find support for the managerial economic incentives hypothesis for accounting choices. DeAngelo (1986), Perry and Williams (1994) and Wu (1997) find evidence supporting the hypothesis that, in order to reduce the cost of acquiring shares from current stockholders, managers seeking to take firms private make income decreasing discretionary accruals in the period immediately prior to the MBO. In testing this theory DeAngelo (1986), Perry and Williams (1994) and Wu (1997) focus on the overall effect of a pool of business decisions and accruals made in the year immediately prior to the MBO. We theorize that managements’ self‐serving behavior begins far in advance of the actual MBO. The final terms of the MBO are the culmination of numerous actions and choices by management over a period longer than one year. In testing our hypotheses we focus on three specific accounting policy choices made over a period of three years leading up to an MBO and find significant evidence of self‐serving behavior through the use of income increasing accounting policy choices.

Since the mid-1980s, much research attention has been devoted to top management teams and their impact on the strategic behavior and performance of firms. In particular, this research has focused on the role of top managers’ background, values, and experiences in explaining the choices they make. So far, this research has largely failed to address the national context in which top management teams are formed and operate. Empirical studies have typically involved top management teams of U.S. firms. Other studies are rare, and when they exist, they usually do not take the national context into account. This paper explores the impact of national context characterized by society-specific value systems and institutions, on the composition, organization, and functioning of top management. We address three topics in particular: (1) national variations in the structure and practices of top management and their implications for managerial choices; (2) national governance systems that define and constrain the tasks and functioning of top management teams; and (3) national institutions that help to define managerial selection, promotion, and career patterns.

It appears that the role of money as a motivator in work tasks has increased substantially during the past decade. This applies particularly to managerial and executive grades. First, why this might be the case is discussed. Second, the literature on the early research into the pay of the chief executive is reviewed, since a major point of consideration was the relationship between CEOs′ pay and firms′ performance. Third, the evidence on profit sharing and company performance is examined, as it appears that this form of linkage has increased in the last decade, particularly for managerial and executive grades. Fourth, a model for testing the relationship between managerial remuneration and the performance of the firm is presented. This model is then applied to internal and external measures of performance for a sample of 147 firms in the UK electrical and office equipment industry for the year 1987, and conclusions are drawn.

Drawing upon a political economy approach, this article aims to analyze the transformations in the labor market within the context of contemporary capitalism, focusing on the phenomenon of financialization.

Financialization is defined as a distinct wealth pattern marked by a growing proportion of financial assets in capitalist wealth. Within financial markets, corporate performance is continuously assessed, in a process that disciplines management to achieve expected financial results, with consequences throughout corporate management.

We find that this phenomenon has implications for labor management, resulting in the intensification of labor processes and the adoption of insecure forms of employment, leading to the fractalization of work. These two mechanisms, added to the indebtedness of workers, constitute three elements for disciplining labor in contemporary capitalism.

We argue that these forms of discipline constitute a subsumption of labor to finance, resulting in an increase in labor exploitation. This formulation of the relationship between financialization and changes in the realm of labor also contributes to understanding the unrealizing potential of social free time in contemporary capitalism.

The study supports the existence of a relationship between components of CEO compensation and firm performance. On average, the sampled firms can be characterized as having high levels of CEO cash compensation and high ROE, as well as high levels of stock option values and high market returns. These between‐firm effects suggest the existence of labor market norms linking executive compensation with firm performance. CEO cash compensation was also strongly influenced by CEO age and firm size.

A central issue of public policy in relation to employment behaviour, particularly in the United States and Britain since the 1960s, has been the question of how to deal with discrimination against minority groups. The latter may be taken to include women, coloured employees, immigrants, foreign workers, the young and the elderly, but in this paper we concentrate on race and sex discrimination which have tended to receive most attention from both academics and policy‐makers. Further, attention is focused on the USA and Britain, partly because there is more evidence on the workings of equal opportunity legislation in the USA than in any other country, and partly for the reason that developments in Britain appear to mirror those in the USA. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the precise extent of discrimination at the macro‐level, on account of variations in personal characteristics and establishment variables, detailed analysis of the operation of local labour markets and individual enterprises and establishments then becomes crucial. Here a feature of recent empirical work has been the emphasis placed on the internal labour market (ILM) and the related concept of the dual labour market (DLM). This is, in fact, highly relevant to equal opportunity legislation not only because it is at the level of the individual organisation or unit of employment that the laws are to be applied but also because, as will be outlined below, the legislation appears to have certain features which are consistent with a dualist interpretation of the operation of the labour market and the emphasis on equality of training and promotion opportunities is most appropriate and significant in the context of a well‐developed internal labour market.