Search results

This paper examines the effects of union change in Britain on changes in earnings dispersion 1983–1995. We investigate not only the decline in union density but also the greater wage compression among unionised workers, as well as changes in union density across skill groups. For the private sector, we find that deunionisation accounts for little of the increase in earnings dispersion. What unions have lost on the swings (lower density), they have gained on the roundabouts (greater wage compression). But for the public sector we find strong effects, because unions are increasingly organising the more skilled. This change in the character of public sector unions means that they no longer reduce earnings variation nearly as much as they once did.

Focuses on the approach to interpreting earnings equality found in the writings of a variety of economists and in particular, technological change and its effects on the demand skill resulting in earning inequality. Argues that the evidence in favour of the technological effect is weak and presents some alternatives for further consideration.

Understanding how worker well-being is distributed across the population is of paramount importance. With such knowledge policy makers can devise efficient strategies to improve social welfare. This volume contains 13 chapters on topics enhancing our comprehension of inequality across workers. The issues addressed deal directly with the economic institutions that affect individual and family earnings distributions. The themes explored include job training, worker and firm mobility, minimum wages, wage arrears, unions, collective bargaining, unemployment insurance, and schooling. Among the questions answered are: To what extent do greater work hours of women mitigate the widening family earnings distribution? To what extent does deunionization widen the distribution of earnings? Do computers really cause a widening of the earnings distribution? How would the Russian wage distribution change if one accounted for wage arrears? How much of job creation and job destruction comes about because of business relocation? To what extent does maternal education increase children's education? Why do increases in the minimum wage fail to substantially decrease employment as economic theory would predict? And, to what extent do job skills matter for low-income workers?

All member states of the European Union are facing the challenges of globalization and the pressures of meeting the convergence criteria for economic and monetary union. Germany faces an additional and unprecedented burden of integrating the former GDR politically, socially and economically. Superficially, political integration has occurred – socially and economically, little integration has been achieved. The additional strains and sacrifices are in danger of overburdening the consensus system which has represented West Germany’s distinctive strength and resilience. An apparent decline in consensus threatens above all that major post‐war innovation : the integration of German labour into a “democratised” corporatist system. The co‐operation and collaboration implicit in this system was paralleled by labour’s accommodatory practical philosophy of economic democracy. But will consensus survive? Will economic democracy wither away? Either a new politico‐industrial system is being born in Germany, or the old one will just disintegrate, with consequences extending well beyond Germany’s borders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if customer delight is possible when the service encounter result may not be successful. Such a scenario is increasingly likely with the experiential, sticky and unpredictable nature of many competitively based experiential encounters where one side wins and the other loses.

Across four studies using both field and panel data, this research provides a framework to evaluate how firms can still create customer delight even if the result of the encounter is unpredictable or possibly negative. Further, the authors combine qualitative data, structural equation modeling and experimental design to test the models across four competitively based experiential contexts.

Findings indicate that firms can create delight through a variety of antecedent variables, including employee expertise, servicescape, social congruence and atmosphere. Neither importance of winning nor expectations for a win significantly alter the relationships of these antecedents in creating delight. Further, evidence from this research indicates that both feelings of nostalgia and geographic self-identity enhance delight’s effect on behavioral intentions, while geographic self-identity also enhances delight’s effect on customers’ evangelizing to others.

This research extends the field’s understanding of the customer delight construct, sticky vs smooth encounters, as well as providing guidance to both practitioners and academics on new possibilities in the delight realm.

This research provides insights for practitioners on how to maximize customer emotions aside from surprisingly disconfirming customer expectations, as well as leaning into different tactics to influence the customer that are not outcome based.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to evaluate customer delight in competitively based experiential encounters where the encounter result is unpredictable and possibly negative.

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.

A GOOD deal of fuss has been occasioned by the barring of several novels by the Libraries Association recently. Into the pros and cons of the matter—which have been over‐canvassed already—we do not propose to enter in detail: these circulating libraries and their customers can be left to reconcile their own differences of opinion. It is, however, unfortunate that a few commercial circulating libraries, when combining to form an association, should have chosen a title that was bound to be confused with that of the Library Association.

This article analyses the earnings attainment of male African immigrants in the United States. Using OLS regression and data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing, we identified the determinants of annual earnings attainment of male African immigrants and examined them by country of origin. We also assessed the impact of skill transferability via ability to speak English on such earnings. Results showed that the process of earnings attainment of African immigrants vary by country of origin. For example, while educational attainment is a significant predictor of annual earnings for only Kenyan and South African immigrants, duration of stay in the United States is significant for immigrants from Cape Verde. Overall, the pay‐offs of college education are higher for South African immigrants than it is for the other groups. Non‐Anglophone immigrants begin with a disadvantage relative to their English‐speaking counterparts. However, this disadvantage is eroded by the length of stay in the US, ability to speak English, and other job‐related characteristics.