Whole genome duplication (WGD) is a major factor in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes, yet by doubling the number of homologs, WGD severely challenges reliable chromosome segregation 1–3, a ...process conserved across kingdoms 4. Despite this, numerous genome-duplicated (polyploid) species persist in nature, indicating early problems can be overcome 1, 2. Little is known about which genes are involved—only one has been molecularly characterized 5. To gain new insights into the molecular basis of adaptation to polyploidy, we investigated genome-wide patterns of differentiation between natural diploids and tetraploids of Arabidopsis arenosa, an outcrossing relative of A. thaliana 6, 7. We first show that diploids are not preadapted to polyploid meiosis. We then use a genome scanning approach to show that although polymorphism is extensively shared across ploidy levels, there is strong ploidy-specific differentiation in 39 regions spanning 44 genes. These are discrete, mostly single-gene peaks of sharply elevated differentiation. Among these peaks are eight meiosis genes whose encoded proteins coordinate a specific subset of early meiotic functions, suggesting these genes comprise a polygenic solution to WGD-associated chromosome segregation challenges. Our findings indicate that even conserved meiotic processes can be capable of nimble evolutionary shifts when required.
Ethical or 'socially sustainable' sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common. The ...issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored. Using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in Britain, the strategies used by labour activists, the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed. The article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices. It argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways, that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations, and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed.
This article examines how the interaction of migrant agency and policy arrangements influence different forms of regulated temporariness in Australia's temporary migration regime. It analyses ...regulated temporariness under the temporary skilled visa, the Seasonal Workers Program, working holidaymaker visa and international student visa schemes. The findings demonstrate that migrant temporariness is a form of insecurity driven not only by policies governing migrants' entry and stay, as existing migration studies theories emphasise, but also by the insecurity of their employment and settlement. This highlights the importance of employment regulations and post-arrival support policies in determining whether temporary migrants attain their migration objectives, which is a key factor shaping temporariness as a category of practice.
This paper analyzes the uneven processes underpinning industrial relations policy liberalization in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Drawing upon 140 elite interviews and building upon ...ideational comparative political theories, the paper highlights the role of ideas in the policy change process. It identifies how particular ideas can be used to construct policy problems, how these ideas can gain legitimacy through battles with competing ideas, and how policy legacies can influence whether ideas take root. The findings from the comparative case analysis expose a critical difference between “positive legacies” and “negative legacies” to account for different liberalization trajectories.
In this article, the authors examine the role of labor immigration as a source of institutional change. They use a “most different systems” comparative case study analysis of the Danish and ...Australian construction sectors to examine the impact of increased labor migration on skill-sourcing practices in countries with distinct national skill formation and industrial relations institutions. Drawing on 73 interviews with industry stakeholders, the authors find that labor migration has produced liberalizing pressures in both Denmark and Australia, albeit in ways that differ from each other. The article contributes to comparative institutional scholarship by illustrating how labor migration can promote or support institutional change in a liberalizing direction by disincentivizing coordinated skill formation. Findings suggest that while national institutions mediate external pressures, such as labor migration, such pressures may affect the incentive structures that can either maintain or erode national institutions.
This article examines employer organizations and labour immigration policy in Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on 102 elite interviews, it analyses employer organizations’ preferences and ...influence over recent reforms. The article builds on Culpepper's arguments relating to the significance of political salience and identifies the importance of various institutional factors, particularly social institutions, in shaping employer organizations’ decisions and engagement with the policy process. Political salience and social institutional legacies are critical for explaining why employer organizations played a central role in driving labour immigration reforms in Australia and a marginal role in the UK. Large intakes of workers from the European Union, which sustained immigration as a high salience issue and fuelled the Brexit campaign, also influenced the strategies of UK employer organizations.
This article uses human capital theory to analyse employer motivations for recruiting skilled migrants on temporary sponsored visas, a group receiving limited attention within human resource ...management (HRM) scholarship despite being an increasingly important part of the workforce in many organisations and countries. We address this gap through a survey analysis of 1602 employer respondents who sponsored temporary skilled visa holders in Australia. The findings indicate that cost-effectiveness as a motivator for recruitment decisions can be achieved not only through HRM strategies to maximise worker productivity, as human capital theories emphasise, but also by identifying groups of workers perceived as harder working than other groups. The findings also draw attention to the role of government policy in this identification process, specifically visa regulations constraining the mobility of temporary sponsored skilled migrants, which allows employers to utilise these workers' human capital effectively.
This article analyzes the impact of the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse on garment lead firms’ labor standards policies in the light of new governance approaches, particularly the pathbreaking ...Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Based on a sample of 20 Australian and German garment firms, the authors find that firms with low prior baseline standards revised their supply chain and sourcing policies and signed the Accord. Firms with medium and high baseline standards responded variously, from making no changes to revising their policies and signing the Accord. Firm response variation can be explained by stakeholder pressure occurring in different national industrial and institutional contexts following the Rana Plaza incident, which served as a focusing event. Results suggest the wider applicability of the focusing event framework for industrial relations scholarship and highlight some of the mechanisms driving changes in industrial relations institutions.
This article argues that the policy framework governing work and industrial relations in Australia and other liberal market economies is stuck in an outdated paradigm fixated on solving problems of ...labour that have diminished or no longer exist, such as excessive union power and overt forms of industrial conflict. This policy framework is poorly equipped for addressing increasingly urgent problems for labour, such as growing inequality and workforce insecurity. Drawing upon neo-pluralist ideas and the findings emerging from industrial relations research, the article presents recommendations for what a new industrial relations policy framework would look like. It advocates for the adoption of a neo-pluralist policy paradigm focused on the creation of quality employment, worker wellbeing, redistribution in bargaining and wage determination, fairer labour immigration policies, stronger protections against gender-based inequalities, and increased job security.
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