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Cluster analysis is applied to the union and employer tactics used in a sample of Ontario organising campaigns to identify the combinations of tactics or strategies that are used most often. Seven union organising strategies and five employer resistance strategies are revealed. Contingency table analysis shows that the union and employer strategies are not independent of one another. More active campaigns by one side (in terms of more tactics used) are met by more active campaigns by the other side. Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of the strategies on the outcome of the organising campaign. The most active strategies, including intensive communication with workers and worker committees, work best for the employers. For unions, strategies emphasising personal communication through house calls are the most effective.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between union renewal strategies and the adoption and implementation of information and communication technologies by trade unions.

The research centres on a case study of an Australian trade union, exploring the fit between recent changes to the industrial strategy and information technology strategy. It involved interviews with union officials and a review of union documentation.

Information and communication technologies have the potential to promote union renewal by enabling new forms of participation and activism. However, to achieve these outcomes the technologies must be part of an integrated union renewal strategy. The internal political processes of the union will shape both the union renewal strategies and the role and use of technology in implementing these strategies.

The research is based on a single trade union, thus limiting the generality of the conclusions drawn.

The paper concerns a relatively new research area on trade unions and offers a critical perspective on the use of information and communication technologies by trade unions.

The informal sector is expanding in the developing countries while the formal sector is shrinking. The loss of employees through workforce reduction strategies has adversely affected trade union membership in Ghana. To make up for the loss of members, the trade unions recruit the informal workers into their fold. Using in-depth interviews, this study explores trade union organization of informal workers and the suitability of these forms of organization within the informal sector in Ghana. The results indicate that formal trade unions are desperately adopting traditional methods and structures to organize informal workers into their fold without success. There is therefore the need for the informal workers to self-organize and for the trade unions to create streams of membership for affiliation.

Revitalization or regeneration has become an increasingly urgent task for Australian unions. This is largely due to the longer-term chronic decline in membership of organised trade unions and the increasingly hostile political and legal climate faced by Australian trade unions. Pessimistic scenarios presented by neo-liberal politicians and commentators have trade unions dissolving into obscurity over time as their relevance in an advanced post-industrial society declines. More optimistic scenarios, in part based on the recent experience of labor movements in the U.K. and Canada, see the difficult current climate as an opportunity to re-evaluate union strategies, structures and policies.

JoAnn Wypijewski, reflecting on the experience of workers laid off from General Electric’s (GE) Bloomington, Indiana refrigerator plant, as GE announced profits of $12.7 billion, and the relocation of half the production to Celaya, Mexico, asks: What will it take to match fire with fire at GE, not just in Bloomington but everywhere? Twenty years ago, Jack Welch openly articulated a strategy for taking the company to where it is today. The GE unions never developed a parallel strategy, and 100,000 lost jobs later, most of them still haven’t shed their faith in what the AFL-CIO likes to call “high-road capitalism.” During the 2000 national contract talks, Robert Thayer, the Machinists’ representative to the CBC, was trying to convince the company to agree not to interfere in future unionization drives, arguing that a “contract is a partnership, not a hindrance.” To which the company coolly asserted, “GE has never been neutral and doesn’t intend to be neutral” (Wypijewski, 2001, p. 22).GE has become an icon of global capital mobility and union avoidance. However, GE’s current capacities can be traced back to a long term, explicit strategy of corporate reorganization initiated in the 1940s. At that time GE was a vertically integrated manufacturing conglomerate, based in a series of huge, northern U.S. plants, organized at extremely high density by the left and militant UE. In the sixty years since, GE has transformed itself into a networked and globalized conglomerate, whose manufacturing capacity has been relocated endlessly, first into smaller U.S. greenfield sites and then increasingly overseas, decimating U.S. union density, and replacing UE with a patchwork of AFL-CIO affiliates that have embraced a far more conservative and limited vision of unionism. U.S. labor has been unable to halt this transformation.

The construction industry is widely recognized as one of the most hazardous sectors in the world. Despite extensive research on safety management, a critical issue remains that insufficient attention is devoted to safety practices in rural areas. Notably, accidents frequently occur during the construction of rural self-built houses (RSH) in China. Safety management tends to be overlooked due to the perceived simplicity of the construction process. Furthermore, it is essential to acknowledge that China currently lacks comprehensive laws and regulations governing safety management in RSH construction. This paper aims to analyze the behavior of key stakeholders (including households, workmen, rural village committee and the government) and propose recommendations to mitigate safety risks associated with RSH construction.

This paper applies evolutionary game theory to analyze the symbiotic evolution among households, workmen and rural village committee, in situations with or without government participation. Additionally, numerical simulation is utilized to examine the outcomes of various strategies implemented by the government.

Without government participation, households, workmen, and rural village committee tend to prioritize maximizing apparent benefits, often overlooking the potential safety risks. Numerical simulations reveal that while government involvement can guide these parties towards safer decisions, achieving the desired outcomes necessitates the adoption of reasonable and effective strategies. Thus, the government needs to offer targeted subsidies to these stakeholders.

Considering that during the construction phase, stakeholders are the main administrators accountable for safety management. However, there exists insufficient research examining the impact of stakeholder behavior on RSH construction safety. This study aims to analyze the behavior of stakeholders about how to reduce the safety risks in building RSH. Thus, the authors intend to contribute to knowledge in this area by establishing evolutionary game model. Firstly, this study carried out a theoretical by using tripartite evolutionary game to reveal the reasons for the high safety risk during building RSH. Practically, this research points out the important role of households, workmen and rural village committee in improving safety management in rural areas. Besides, some suggestions are proposed to the government about how to reduce construction safety risks in rural areas.

This study aims to examine biodiversity reporting by South African food producers and retailers. It not only draws attention to the disconnect between reporting on an important environmental issue and the sense of commitment to environmental responsibility, but also shows that over time, organisations are becoming more proactive about biodiversity reporting.

The research uses a content analysis of sustainability and integrated reports and organised hypocrisy as a theoretical framework for analysing biodiversity-related disclosures.

Consistent with an organised hypocrisy framework, the research finds that the several companies rely on corporate reporting to emphasise actions and internal management strategies that are already producing favourable results. In contrast, mission statements, firm policy commitments and forward-looking analysis are avoided. There is, however, evidence to suggest that the gaps between corporate reporting and action may be giving companies the time to reform their practices, align biodiversity disclosures with genuine corporate action and move towards truly integrated business models.

Poor biodiversity reporting raises questions about the extent to which companies are managing serious environmental issues that can have a direct impact on their business models. Improvements in biodiversity reporting also suggest that corporate reporting is maturing and that some organisations are beginning to understand the need for managing their biodiversity impact.

The paper offers empirical evidence on how the disconnect between organisational rhetoric and action is used to manage stakeholder expectations and negate the need for environmental reforms. In this manner, organised hypocrisy is framed as a specific legitimisation strategy. The research also shows that organised hypocrisy is not absolute; despite the opportunity to engage in organised hypocrisy, some companies are taking a more proactive approach to biodiversity reporting. As a result, it may be appropriate to see organised hypocrisy as part of a transition to higher quality integrated or sustainability reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to research how local councils in England responded to a national initiative intended to address the risk of the involvement of organised crime in local government procurement fraud. In so doing, it considers definitional issues before undertaking original research to explore how councils responded and, through in-depth interviews with three councils, what initial explanations may explain the responses. It concludes that the national initiative was insufficiently thought-through, and that councils’ responses were significantly influenced by the relevance of the threat of organised crime, financial constraints and competing priorities.

The case study involves a literature review, an analysis of official documentation, a questionnaire to local councils in the north of England and semi-structured interviews with anti-fraud practitioners in three councils in the northeast of England. The approach is to provide an analysis of the implementation of a national initiative to promote a local government response to procurement fraud by organised crime.

On the basis of original research, the paper proposes that the national initiative was insufficiently thought-through, and that councils’ responses were influenced by the relevance of the threat of organised crime, financial constraints and competing priorities.

The research looks at a national initiative and how local councils responded within the context of financial and other constraints. The research is limited in terms of the range of responses it sought, and that it only studied the experience of three local councils in detail. On the other hand, its findings support further research into the implementation of national initiatives in terms of practice on the ground.

The findings identify issues surrounding the design and implementation of national anti-fraud policies from the perspective of local government and will be of value to practitioners and academics interested in fraud, policing, organised crime, local government and policy making.

The paper is the first study in the UK on the local implementation of national strategies on procurement fraud and organised crime and raises positive and less-positive aspects of how far national strategies and intentions are addressed on the ground, with a focus on what factors may influence local implementation.

This empirical paper aims to explore the effectiveness of the organising model from a worker perspective in unionised workplaces within higher education support services.

A case study approach is used in two university Unison branches. Three themes were used to measure the efficacy of the organising model: participation, identification with the union, and union effectiveness.

The findings were mixed in terms of the success of the organising model in this setting. In terms of the three themes of analysis, there was strong instrumental participation in union matters at the workplace but a lack of deeper penetration of the wider organising agenda in terms of identifying with the union, represented by half the respondents only feeling the salience of their union membership at the workplace. Most respondents felt their union was effective at the workplace in terms of improving pay and conditions but the effectiveness of broader union building aims as proposed by the organising model was not endorsed.

The implications for the organising model from this research are that there need to be more resources and effort delivered at the workplace level through reps and members to make it truly effective and sustainable.

This research adds to a body of knowledge concerned with workers themselves and how they experience trade unionism at their place of work with the focus of their experience examined through the lens of the organising model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of a managerial approach to renewal for a union’s behaviour by analysing the UK’s fourth largest trade union – The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW).

The findings draw on in-depth semi-structured interviews with union officials.

The research findings show the significance of a managerialist approach to UDSAW’s renewal strategy and its correlation with existing renewal strategies of organising and partnership. However, this approach was not immune to context, with tensions between agency and articulation challenging the basic concept of managerialism and influencing union behaviour.

The data were collected from a single case with a small sample size.

The authors’ findings suggest that tensions between bureaucracy and democracy will mediate the extent to which managerialist approaches can be used within unions adding support to the strategic choice theory and underlying arguments that unions can influence their fortune. However, institutional and external pressures could see managerialism becoming more prevalent, with oligarchic and bureaucratic forces prevailing, which could be particularly applicable to unions operating in challenging contexts, such as USDAW. The managerialisation of unions has consequences for union officers; with officers facing increasing pressure in their roles to behave as managers with attendant implications for role conflict, identity and motivation.

If managerialism is becoming more prevalent with unions, with oligarchic and bureaucratic forces prevailing, this has potentially wider societal implications, whereby collectivism and worker-led democracy could become scarcer within unions and the workplace, thus irretrievably altering the nature of the employment relationship.

This paper brings together disparate themes in the literature to propose a conceptual framework of three key elements of managerialism: centralised strategies; performance management and the managerialisation of union roles. The authors’ findings demonstrate how there is scope for unions to adopt a hybrid approach to renewal, and to draw upon their internal resources, processes and techniques to implement change, including behavioural change. Consequently, theories and empirical studies of union renewal need to better reflect the complexities of approaches that unions are now adopting and further explore these models within the agency and articulation principles that underpin the nature of unions.