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1 – 10 of over 1000Biodiversity is required to sustain life on earth, but the rampant growth in the illegal wildlife trade has created a global conservation challenge, where the African continent is…
Abstract
Purpose
Biodiversity is required to sustain life on earth, but the rampant growth in the illegal wildlife trade has created a global conservation challenge, where the African continent is one of the primary casualties. This paper aims to explore how South African National Parks (SANParks) (as the custodian of the largest population of rhinos in the wild) accounts to its stakeholders about how it has discharged its biodiversity mandate relating to rhino preservation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper seeks to determine whether the increase in rhino-poaching over the period from 2006 to 2015 is reflected by a concomitant increase in related disclosures in SANParks’ annual reports. It adopts a mixed-methods research approach using both descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as a qualitative analysis of pertinent narrative disclosures describing how SANParks accounts to its stakeholders on the discharge of the rhino-related component of its biodiversity mandate.
Findings
The study finds that SANParks uses its publicly available annual reports to disclose how it has discharged the rhino-related component of its biodiversity mandate. In this regard, it identified a strong positive correlation between incidents of rhino-poaching and annual report disclosures in the period up to 2010. Initially, SANParks disclosed its rhino-poaching-related performance through impression management to bolster its legitimacy, but later focused its reporting on its rhino conservation efforts.
Originality/value
Although the subject of rhino-poaching has been extensively researched, this one of the first papers to explore the phenomenon from a governance and accountability perspective of a state-owned entity (\ SANParks) under the mantle of extinction accounting.
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Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the…
Abstract
Purpose
Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the design of conflict resolution systems to the processes used for resolving conflicts to the outcomes of the systems. Scholars from these specialties, however, have paid considerably less attention to external workplace conflict resolution through litigation. This chapter analyzes certain areas of such litigation, focusing specifically on workplace conflicts involving issues of managerial and employee misclassification, independent contractor versus employee status, no-poaching agreements, and executive compensation.
Methodology/approach
Leading recent cases involving these issues are examined, with particular attention given to the question of whether the conflicts reflected therein could have been resolved internally or through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods rather than through litigation.
Practical implications
Implications of this analysis are drawn for workplace conflict resolution theory and practice. In doing so, I conclude that misclassification disputes could likely be resolved internally or through ADR rather than through litigation, but that no-poaching and executive compensation disputes could very likely not be resolved internally or through ADR.
Originality/value
The chapter draws on and offers an integrated analysis of particular types of workplace conflict that are typically treated separately by scholars and practitioners. These include misclassification conflicts, no poaching and labor market competition conflicts, and executive compensation conflicts. The originality and value of this chapter are to show that despite their different contexts and particular issues, the attempted resolution through litigation of these types of workplace conflicts has certain common, systematic characteristics.
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Managing attrition is a major challenge for outsourcing vendors. Literature on management control in offshore outsourcing is dominated by the formal approaches to control design…
Abstract
Purpose
Managing attrition is a major challenge for outsourcing vendors. Literature on management control in offshore outsourcing is dominated by the formal approaches to control design, which do not adequately consider the influence of contextual factors. This article aims to adopt the lens of institutional theory, and use empirical data gathered from case studies in both the UK and India to improve the understanding of the institutional logics that shape the control of attrition.
Design/methodology/approach
This article draws on in‐depth qualitative research undertaken with directors and senior managers in client and vendor firms engaged in outsourcing relationships that span both corporate and national boundaries. Drawing on empirical data from the UK and India, the interplay between the management control of attrition and contextual factors is analysed, and the practices adopted to manage these contextual factors are also identified and discussed.
Findings
The analysis presents relevant aspects of the regulative, normative and cognitive institutions inhabited by vendor firms and the challenges such aspects present for managing attrition. The dynamics of institutions and control are discussed in the area of attrition, and the interplay between institutions and control is outlined. The regulative, normative and cognitive institutions inhabited by vendor firms contrast markedly to that of the client in relation to social and legal rules, norms and practices.
Research limitations/implications
The paper develops a theoretical basis for linking control and context in offshore outsourcing, drawing on the work of Scott in institutional theory, and Friedland and Alford, in institutional logics. This paper offers an alternative conceptualisation of control in attrition based upon rationalistic modelling through institutional logics.
Practical implications
This paper offers key implications for research, in improving the understanding of contextual factors and management control in global outsourcing relationships. Both clients and vendors in offshore outsourcing need to be aware of the influence of contextual factors when managing attrition.
Originality/value
The interplay of institutional logics and implications on the control of attrition provides an interesting approach to understanding how firms manage attrition in offshore outsourcing.
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As we have indicated in the introductory section, the employment protection legislation was drafted principally with full‐time, permanent employees — so called “core workers”— in…
Abstract
As we have indicated in the introductory section, the employment protection legislation was drafted principally with full‐time, permanent employees — so called “core workers”— in mind. The legislation of the mid‐70s which established the “statutory floor of employment rights” effectively excluded millions of workers from its protections because they were considered to be self‐employed, or failed to qualify through lack of continuity of employment. Indeed, it may well be argued that, if the policy behind the legislation was to protect those workers which collective bargaining could not reach, the groups who were excluded — the “peripheral workers” — were the ones in the greatest need of protection.
PLANNERS INVOLVED WITH Milton Keynes—Britain's space‐age city being built on 22,000 acres of north Buckinghamshire—have become embroiled in a classic ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma…
Abstract
PLANNERS INVOLVED WITH Milton Keynes—Britain's space‐age city being built on 22,000 acres of north Buckinghamshire—have become embroiled in a classic ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma which poses a disruptive threat to any new town development.
This article examines the nature of industrial relations and work practices in Japanese firms within an investment cluster in Telford, Shropshire. Telford has the highest…
Abstract
This article examines the nature of industrial relations and work practices in Japanese firms within an investment cluster in Telford, Shropshire. Telford has the highest concentration of Japanese firms in one site in Britain. The article examines how conditions which were supposedly favourable to the transfer of Japanese production and personnel practices ‐ a new town, offering greenfield investment opportunities within a quiescent industrial relations environment ‐ actually did not facilitate ease of transfer. Rather, we suggest that problems within the labour market, including the very absence of trade unions as a collective voice for expressing workers’ grievances, created conditions unfavourable to the transplantation of Japanese work and personnel practices.
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There have been well‐publicised stories of workers who have got the sack rather than join a union. David Harvey looks at the way managements and unions are handling the dilemmas…
Abstract
There have been well‐publicised stories of workers who have got the sack rather than join a union. David Harvey looks at the way managements and unions are handling the dilemmas posed by the closed shop law and its impact on the individual's liberty to work where he chooses.
By “political economy” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to human economising behaviour. The body of knowledge includes both theory …
Abstract
By “political economy” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to human economising behaviour. The body of knowledge includes both theory — theorems, laws, empirical generalisations, etc., and “facts” — history, description of institution, statistical data, etc. By “Christian theology” I mean both the method of thought and the body of knowledge which refer to the human religious understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. “Religious” here implies awareness of, or belief in, God. The body of knowledge may include pre‐Christian religion (such as that reported in the Old Testament), and the results of independent inquiry (such as natural theology) in so far as these are interpreted by, or “refracted” through what theologians call the “Christ event”.
Keith Hoskin and Richard Macve
In a 1977 publication Alfred Chandler singled out the Springfield Armoryas the site where single‐unit management was pioneered in the UnitedStates, crediting Superintendent…
Abstract
In a 1977 publication Alfred Chandler singled out the Springfield Armory as the site where single‐unit management was pioneered in the United States, crediting Superintendent Roswell Lee (1815‐1833) with establishing a first “managerial” approach to work discipline and labour accounting. However, as economic breakthrough came only in 1841/2, it has since been argued that Lee′s role has been overestimated. Re‐examines archival evidence to show that: the changes of 1842 at Springfield were not due to external economic pressures, but to pressure exerted by West Point graduates in the Ordnance Department; Lee, as the dominant arms manufacturer in the 1820s, was not “held back” by economic factors from implementing any changes he desired; and his system of work organization was never even potentially managerial, with his accounting system in particular having been fundamentally misinterpreted. The evidence reinforces the case for viewing the invention of modern business and managerialism as primarily a disciplinary breakthrough.
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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that some enterprise unions in South China, as strategic labor actors, made local progress in collective bargaining, but further…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that some enterprise unions in South China, as strategic labor actors, made local progress in collective bargaining, but further elaborates on why gainful bargaining would require a more systematic understanding of the prevailing industrial structure.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is mainly drawn from intensive site visits and 51 in-depth interviews in 2013 and 2014, and several follow-ups up to 2018. Three cases of collective bargaining, featuring different union strategies of assertive negotiation, informal cooperation and direct confrontation, are discussed in detail.
Findings
The study illustrates that viable collective bargaining with worker-supported unions is possible in China. However, the effectiveness of bargaining does not count on this alone; the supply chain structure also imposes significant constraints, mainly by narrowing the bargaining scope of each supplier and differentiating the structural power of their unions. In these cases, institutionalized union coordination beyond individual suppliers is proposed.
Research limitations/implications
These cases began as post-strike bargaining in Japanese auto supply chains and became the frontier of industrial relations in China. The impact of the supply chain in different sectors or regions requires further study.
Originality/value
This paper draws attention to the effect of an “invisible” but increasingly significant factor, industrial structure, on enterprise-level collective bargaining in China, unlike many previous criticisms of unwillingness or incompetence among labor actors.
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