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This study investigates the origins and elaboration of the managerial “unitary” frame of reference associated with Alan Fox, focusing on unionised firms: the industrial relations context, intellectual roots, elaboration, adaptation by other writers, and international applicability.

Tracing the above requirements through contemporaneous sources.

Fox’s designation of the unitary frame needs to be understood in its 1960s’ context, particularly the promotion of “productivity bargaining”, and its furthering through management training and education. Fox’s specific contribution is identified. Subsequent UK writers have underplayed the importance of the legal dimension of managerial authority, especially relevant in the US context, while other extra-economic factors bolster the managerial unitary frame in authoritarian societies such as China.

The use of Fox's neglected 1960s’ writings; tracking how Fox developed the unitary frame concept and how it was funnelled into the narrow parameters of non-unionism by subsequent writers; identifying its applicability beyond the UK (with the USA as a historical example and China as a contemporary one).

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether unitary managers with different professional backgrounds carry out and reflect differently upon their roles as unitary managers.

This paper presents findings from two different studies, comprising both data from qualitative interviews and a nationwide survey.

Doctors and nurses in many respects perform their roles as unitary managers differently. They hold the same position but carry out their roles differently. Doctors are very committed to clinical tasks and stress to a great extent that clinical tasks should be integrated in management at the department level. The opposite is true for the nurses, where leadership first and foremost should be understood as management.

Even though doctors and nurses are in the same position they manage differently, being committed to different tasks within the unit. This is not the intention of the reform. However, the question is thus, will this have (severe) consequences for the organization? Or does it represent a healthy diversity in the health organisation?

This paper explores whether different professions carry out their managerial tasks differently and what practical implications this could have. It brings to the fore substantial empirical data on how one of the major reforms in Norwegian (and international) health care has been adopted and carried out by major professional groups.

This article examines the intellectual antecedents of Alan Fox’s frames of reference and contributes to academic work that seeks to unravel the pre-Donovan roots of British industrial relations. It examines the origins of the unitary and pluralist frames of reference with a particular focus on the work of Norman Ross.

This article draws on published academic materials to examine the origins of the unitary and pluralist frames of reference.

The article identifies usage of the term “frame of reference” in industrial relations literature from the 1940s and demonstrates the origins of the unitary and pluralist conceptions of the firm in the works of Ross in the 1950s and 1960s.

The article provides a “fresh look” at the origins of the frames of reference.

The chapter aims to clarify the relationship between corporate governance structure and corporate subscription to Global Compact standards. Part one of the chapter looks at the relationship between different models of board governance and active Global Compact participation by publicly listed companies. Part two of the chapter examines a number of external mechanisms aimed at bringing corporate behavior in line with Global Compact principles, and argues that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between internal governance structures and external provisions aimed at influencing corporate behavior.

Part one of the chapter uses an independent T-test to compare the average (mean) proportion of publicly listed companies from unitary board countries with an active Global Compact Communication on Progress status with the average proportion of publicly listed companies from two-tier/hybrid corporate governance systems listed as active Global Compact participants. Part two of the chapter uses primary and secondary sources to examine external mechanisms operating across national borders aimed at influencing corporate behavior.

The chapter finds that a higher proportion of public companies from countries with two-tier/hybrid corporate governance structures have become active Global Compact participants compared to public companies from legal systems with unitary board corporate governance structures. Part two of the chapter examines the potentially mutually reinforcing relationship between internal governance structures and external mechanisms for modifying corporate behavior.

While external codes and standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises appear to be influencing corporate behavior worldwide, quantitative data confirming and recording the extent and nature of this influence (if any) remains limited.

The chapter provides useful insights for policy makers and corporate leaders into the relationship between internal corporate governance structures and external codes, standards and guidelines aimed at influencing corporate behavior.

This chapter provides original insights into whether and how internal governance structures can complement and reinforce social standards regarding global corporate citizenship, and the legal guidelines reflecting those standards.

The main purpose of this paper is to document the research on development of a conceptual framework for the supply chain. The aims of the research were to develop an integrated framework, and to provide a methodology for planning of many components in the supply chain such as suppliers, materials, resources, warehouses, activities and customers. The proposed framework is based on the unitary structuring technique where bills of materials, bills of warehouses, project networks and operations routings, in both manufacturing and distribution networks, are combined into a single structure.

The framework is described along with illustrated numerical examples in the manufacturing and distribution environments.

The numerical testing has shown that each network in the supply chain provides an integrated approach to planning and execution of many components, and is capable of providing visibility, flexibility and maintainability for further improvement in the supply chain environment.

The framework and planning approach developed in this research are new in the area of supply chain management and provide a foundation for planning, control and execution in supply chain in various industries.

The tsunami that swept the shores of Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, killed over 30,000 people regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. This article deals with a different conflict – one fashioned by human beings, which has caused the loss of an estimated 70,000 lives. The vast majority of the lives lost have been from the minority Tamil population. The basic argument of this article is that the desire to uphold a unitary state in Sri Lanka established by the British colonial rulers in 1833 has really been the desire to establish Sinhala hegemony over the minorities, particularly the Tamil minority.

Equipment performance helps the manufacturing sector achieve operational and financial improvements despite process variations. However, the literature lacks a clear index or metric to quantify the monetary advantages of enhanced equipment performance. Thus, the paper presents two innovative monetary performance measures to estimate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance by isolating the effect of manufacturing fluctuations such as product mix price, direct and indirect characteristics, and cost changes.

The research provides two measures, ISB (Improvement Saving Benefits) and IEB (Improvement Earning Benefits), to assess equipment performance improvements. The effectiveness of the metrics is validated through a three stages approach, namely (1) experts' binary opinion, (2) sample, and (3) actual cases. The relevant data may be collected through accounting systems, purpose-built software, or electronic spreadsheets.

The findings suggest that both measures provide an effective cost–benefit analysis of equipment performance enhancement. The measure ISB indicates savings from performance increases when equipment capacity is greater than product demand. IEB is utilised when equipment capacity is less than product demand. Both measurements may replace the unitary cost variation, which is subject to manufacturing changes.

Manufacturing businesses may utilise the ISB and IEB metrics to conduct a systematic analysis of equipment performance and to appreciate the financial savings perspective in order to emphasise profitability in the short and long term.

The study introduces two novel financial equipment performance improvement indicators that distinguish the effects of manufacturing variations. Manufacturing variations cause cost advantages from operational improvements to be misrepresented. There is currently no approach for manufacturing organisations to calculate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance while isolating production irregularities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how certain limitations of the current approaches to planning and scheduling of aircraft heavy maintenance can be addressed using a single integrated framework supported by unified data structures.

The “unitary structuring technique”, originally developed within the context of manufacturing planning and control, is further enhanced for aircraft heavy maintenance applications, taking into account the uncertainty associated with condition‐based maintenance. The proposed framework delivers the advanced functionalities required for simultaneous and dynamic forward planning of maintenance operations, as well as finite loading of resources, towards optimising the overall maintenance performance.

Execution of maintenance operations under uncertainty involves materials changes, rectification and re‐assembly. It is shown that re‐scheduling of materials (spare‐parts), resources and operations can be taken care of by simultaneous and dynamic forward planning of materials and operations with finite loading of resources, using the integrated framework.

As part of adopting the proposed framework in practice, it needs to be guided by an overall methodology appropriate for application‐specific contexts.

The potential direct benefits of adopting the proposed framework include on‐time project completion, reduced inventory levels of spare‐parts and reduced overtime costs.

Existing approaches to aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling are limited in their capacity to deal with contingencies arising out of inspections carried out during the execution phase of large maintenance projects. The proposed integrated approach is, capable of handling uncertainty associated with condition‐based maintenance, due to the added functionalities referred to above.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the success of the US economy at the end of the second millennium do not necessarily mean the end of socialism. In fact both capitalism and socialism are beneficial for a unitary human development, which consists of both material and spiritual development. Capitalism, with its emphasis on self‐interest and individual freedom, has been crucial to material development. But socialism, with its preference for other‐interest and collective necessity, is conducive to spiritual development. Thus, what is needed for further development of the human race is a unitary economics that synergizes capitalism and scoialism.

The purpose is to present a new formal approach based on a partial integro‐differential equation, the space‐time state transition equation (STSTE), and on a set of general equations with which space‐time dynamical models of complex systems, such as social systems and ecosystems, can be built.

The STSTE provides the partial derivative of the density of a state‐variable with regard to time as a sum of time rates and space‐time rates. Time rates describe the dynamics of the system for each space‐point irrespectively of the other points, whilst space‐time rates describe this evolution as a consequence of the relation of each space‐point with a given set of other points of the space. This relation contains integrals over the accessibility domains (sets of space‐points with which each space‐point is related).

The STSTE is provided for any system of space‐coordinates and is compared with the reaction‐diffusion models (RD). The reason why it is more convenient to work with the STSTE than with the RD to model complex systems in the context of social systems and ecosystems is indicated.

An urban system (the city of Valencia, Spain) is presented as an application; an analytical solution strategy is stated under the simplest hypothesis for computing space‐time rates, and a computer program for the situation is developed to obtain numerical solutions.

A numerical comparison between the new STSTE model and the RD shows that, the STSTE model produces better results than the reaction diffusion model in validation.