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In the last 20 years wage inequality in the United States has grown significantly. At the same time, the increased popularity of employee involvement or the so-called high-performance work practices seems to offer opportunities for more skilled, autonomous, and participatory work. For many, this is a positive alternative to low-wage jobs, though others suggest that such jobs may raise skill requirements sufficiently to leave many workers behind and thereby contribute to growing inequality. Yet others are more critical and view participatory work systems as merely a method of work intensification. This paper examines the impact of participative work systems on workers’ wages and generally finds modest evidence of significant effects.

This chapter considers the commitment of gender equality at universities and how it is expressed and measured via a gender equality scorecard. The Gender Equality Scorecard is seen as an accountability measure that seeks to build awareness of the magnitude of the problem (if it exists), interpret the meaning of the (in)equities, and move to action. It is regarded as a supportive mechanism to the development and implementation of a Gender Policy as articulated in The UWI Strategic Plan, 2012–2017. The development of a Scorecard is also seen as an example of collaborative governance in action that fosters engagement, commitment, and action across an institution. The proposed model draws upon the experiences of the Gender Equity Scorecards used by international development agencies and other higher educational institutions. The chapter proposes a framework and methodology using staff and student data from The University of the West Indies for the period 1990–1991 to 2011–2012 to build a Gender Scorecard. Finally, the Scorecard is seen as a tool to track performance related to the creation and enhancement of relevant structures and processes to institutionalize gender equality into the functions, operations, and governance of institutions.

This chapter analyzes the influence of inclusion, equal opportunity and antidiscrimination policies on the strength of diversity in a foreign firm domiciled in a developing country.

It used a questionnaire to collect fact from the depth of employees’ experiences of diversity management in practice to understand its implication for the strength of diversity in the workplace. It questioned the nature of the constructs on diversity in line with the effect of equal opportunity in the workplace.

The component factor analysis extraction method obtained valuable constructs from the stated dimensions of items in the questionnaire. The regression technique was used to analyze the influence of these constructs on the strength of diversity in the workplace.

The results revealed that inclusiveness is necessary to intensify the strength of diversity in foreign organization in a developing nation, with the need to deepen alternative equal opportunity policy and diverse work culture awareness. Power relations strategies foster staff welfare, but weaken compensation by merit heighten employees’ sentiments.

Data were only collected from the companies head office; its branches were not covered.

Employees detect biases in equal opportunity policies beyond the guises of control power relation. Thus, besides a policy for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, an alternative equal opportunity policy is essential to intensify diversity.

It empirically probes foreign organizations in a developing country staff response to changes in the workplace due to the cautious implementation of inclusion, equal opportunity and antidiscrimination policies to foster diversity.

Most research on worker participation treats it as an establishment-level phenomenon even though it is seldom used on an establishment-wide basis. This paper, however, examines how three forms of incentive compensation are used at the job level, and it assesses the potential ramifications for inequality. I find that the use of incentive compensation reflects the gender composition, unionization, and functional role of jobs. Jobs with many full-time women, for instance, are less likely to use group incentives and profit sharing because they are less likely to play central or managerial roles in establishments. This suggests that incentive compensation may increase inequality.

Higher replacement rates often imply higher levels of absenteeism, yet even in generous welfare economies, employers provide sick pay in addition to the public sick pay. Using comparative population-representative workplace data for Britain and Norway, we show that close to 50% of private sector employers in both countries provide sick pay in excess of statutory sick pay. However, the level of statutory sick pay is also much higher in Norway than in Britain. In both countries, private sick pay as well as other benefits provided by employers are chosen by employers in a way that maximizes profits having accounted for different dimensions of labor costs. Several health-related privately provided benefits are often bundled. In both countries easy-to-train workers, high turnover and risky work are linked to less extensive employer provision of extended sick leave and sick pay in excess of statutory sick pay. In contrast, the presence of a trade union agreement is strongly correlated with both the provision of private sick pay and extended sick leave in Britain but not in Norway. We show that the sickness absence rate is much higher in Norway than in Britain. However, the higher level of absenteeism in Norway compared to Britain relates to the threshold for statutory sick pay in the Norwegian public sick pay legislation. When we take this difference into account, no significant difference remains.

Road trauma remains a significant concern internationally. Traffic crashes rank within the top three leading causes of death for individuals aged between 15–44 years old, with nonfatal casualties occurring at around 30 times the rate of fatal incidents. Historically, road safety research has not captured factors relating to driving purpose. However, more recently, researchers have focused on the importance of driving for work. Over a third of traffic volume represents commuting or driving in the line of employment; improving workplace road safety practices represents a tangible way of reducing road trauma. This chapter considers the link between safety culture and best practice in workplace road safety. It is argued that best practice is not a term to define individual safety practices, but a system of practices that create a culture of safety. This research uses data collected on organizations workplace road safety practices within the Australian context. This data has been collected by the National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP); an initiative that constitutes a network of organizations and academics working together to develop a positive road safety culture. Twenty-four case studies are presented of organizations that have implemented workplace road safety programs to improve their safe driving culture. Qualitative analysis was conducted to systematically categorize the safety initiatives and their indicators of success. Almost all case studies expressed the importance of developing a safety-first culture in the workplace. Third-party regulation, internal policy and corporate social responsibility form the foundation of workplace safety. However, it was the culture and attitude towards the safety initiatives that achieved effectiveness in the long-term. The findings of this research support the argument that best practice is best achieved when integrated within a culture that values and prioritizes safety, rather than implemented in isolation to other elements in the workplace system.

The aim of this chapter is to apply a Feminist Social Constructionist (FSC) epistemological stance to the analysis of the literature on sexual harassment and aggression in the workplace. Research demonstrates that institutions and their policies are ineffective in addressing sexual harassment and that, for the most part, perpetrators are not sanctioned. This chapter deconstructs the ways in which Canadian policies and systemic variables serve to silence victims of workplace abuse and, consequently, protect perpetrators. To this end, we review the definition, legislation and policies related to sexual harassment. Next, factors that lead to risk, reporting and silencing are assessed. As well, organizational responses are analysed to identify institutional factors that result in creating environments that serve to perpetuate sexism, and the resulting victimization of workers with little to no change in the number of perpetrators being implicated.

We demonstrate in a laboratory experiment that the effectiveness of performance-contingent incentives is inversely related to risk-aversion levels. For about 16.5% of participants, performance fails to improve under performance-pay, and the probability of such failure increases with risk-aversion. This phenomenon works in part through the reduced effort level of more risk-averse individuals when effort level is positively correlated with risk exposure. It is also associated with higher self-reported levels of stress by more risk-averse people working under performance-contingent pay. We find no evidence of such stress causing decrements in the quality of effort affecting performance after controlling for effort level. However, controlling for effort, more risk-averse participants perform better under a fixed salary, leaving less room for improvement under performance-pay.

We investigate the relationship between job complexity and skill development of adult workers in Europe using the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey. ¹ The results suggest that challenging workplaces in which jobs are designed to include complex tasks that place high demands on workers’ skills also stimulate skill development. Increasing the degree of job complexity has positive and robust effects on the degree of skill development. Skill development is also positively linked to job tenure. The analysis stresses the importance of on-the-job learning and contextual workplace characteristics for adult workers’ skill development.