In January 1992, human resources manager Louise Moser Illes was notified, along with nine hundred co-workers, that the semiconductor plant where she worked would be closed by the end of the year. A ...month later, she began to document the process that she helped carry out and that left her without a job. Closing a plant takes a heavy toll on the employees, the community, and the company management. While much has been written about the effects of plant shutdowns in the past three decades, Sizing Down is one of the first studies of the process itself. Illes uses her paradoxical perspective as a victim of downsizing charged with its orchestration to examine every phase of the shutdown and to draw out the constructive lessons that can be learned from the experience. What she learned at the Signetics semiconductor plant in Orem, Utah, has relevance for people caught in any reduction of personnel and facilities. From the compelling stories of how individual employees responded and her own observations of the parent company, Illes teases out the most effective strategies to sustain worker morale. How did employees regain equilibrium in their working lives? Which management decisions helped retain the company's essential human resources and contributed to its overall financial health? What were the minor problems that went unnoticed until they grew difficult to manage? Illes includes an appendix of the questions asked of workers and managers, suggesting guidelines to minimize the disasters of sizing down.
Are we living in an age of permanent austerity? In this insightful book, Bent Greve provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of welfare states since 2000, exploring the ways by which austerity can ...be measured and quantified. Through detailed comparative analysis between states, this book dissects the implementation of economic retrenchment, its extent and impact in Europe.
Policing in an Age of Austerity uniquely examines the effects on one key public service: the state police of England and Wales. Focusing on the major cut-backs in its resources, both in material and ...in labour, it details the extent and effects of that drastic reduction in provision together with related matters in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This book also investigates the knock-on effect on other public agencies of diminished police contribution to public well-being.
The book argues that such a dramatic reduction in police services has occurred in an almost totally uncoordinated way, both between provincial police services, and also with regard to other public agencies. While there may have been marginal improvements in effectiveness in certain contexts, the British police have dramatically failed to seize the opportunity to modernize a police service that has never been reformed to suit modern exigencies since its date of origin in 1829. British policing remains a relic of the past despite the mythology by which it increasingly exports its practices and officers to (especially) transitional societies.
Operating at both historical and contemporary levels, this book furnishes a mine of current information. Critically, it also emphasizes the extent to which British policing has traditionally concentrated on the lowest socio-economic stratum of society, to the neglect of the policing of the more powerful. Policing in an Age of Austerity will be of interest to academics and professionals working in the fields of criminal justice, development studies, and transitional and conflicted societies, as well as those with an interest in the social schisms caused by the current financial crisis.
The rebirth of competition and the extensive "exit" that has resulted are among the most important developments in Central Europe since the demise of Communism. This text examines why, how, and to ...what extent enterprises have reduced their size or left the market altogether during the first years of the transition from socialism to capitalism in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
This study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, ...and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and human resource management. Heralded as a model of lean production when it opened in 1989, CAMI promised workers something different from traditional plants—a humane environment, empowerment, and cooperative labor-management relations. However, the enthusiasm workers felt during the orientation and early phases of production steadily declined, as did their involvement in participatory activities. Workers came to describe CAMI as just another car factory. Union challenges and shopfloor resistance to key elements of the lean system grew, capped by a five-week strike in 1992. The authors attribute workers' disillusionment to lean production itself rather than to North American managers' inadequate implementation.
In this ethnographic study of post-paternalist ruination and renovation, Christian Straube explores social change at the intersection of material decay and social disconnection in the former mine ...township Mpatamatu of Luanshya, one of the oldest mining towns on the Zambian Copperbelt. Touching on topics including industrial history, colonial town planning, social control and materiality, gender relations and neoliberal structural change, After Corporate Paternalism offers unique insights into how people reappropriate former corporate spaces and transform them into personal projects of renovation, fundamentally changing the characteristics of their community.
Although the practice of downsizing is prevalent, its effects on organisational outcomes remain poorly understood. This article examines how and when downsizing affects organisational innovation. ...Using a unique data set of UK firms over a period of 22 years, we test the effect of downsizing on innovation outputs by considering the moderating role of resource slack and constraints. We argue and empirically demonstrate that downsizing has a dual effect on innovation, contingent on the firm's level of resources. Our results reveal that downsizing affects innovation outputs positively in firms experiencing resource slack and negatively in firms experiencing resource constraints. We also show that the effect is more immediate in resource-constrained firms. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed.
Although the practice of downsizing is prevalent, its effects on organisational outcomes remain poorly understood. This article examines how and when downsizing affects organisational innovation. ...Using a unique data set of UK firms over a period of 22 years, we test the effect of downsizing on innovation outputs by considering the moderating role of resource slack and constraints. We argue and empirically demonstrate that downsizing has a dual effect on innovation, contingent on the firm's level of resources. Our results reveal that downsizing affects innovation outputs positively in firms experiencing resource slack and negatively in firms experiencing resource constraints. We also show that the effect is more immediate in resource-constrained firms. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed.
Although the practice of downsizing is prevalent, its effects on organisational outcomes remain poorly understood. This article examines how and when downsizing affects organisational innovation. ...Using a unique data set of UK firms over a period of 22 years, we test the effect of downsizing on innovation outputs by considering the moderating role of resource slack and constraints. We argue and empirically demonstrate that downsizing has a dual effect on innovation, contingent on the firm's level of resources. Our results reveal that downsizing affects innovation outputs positively in firms experiencing resource slack and negatively in firms experiencing resource constraints. We also show that the effect is more immediate in resource-constrained firms. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed.
In this ethnographic study of post-paternalist ruination and
renovation, Christian Straube explores social change at the
intersection of material decay and social disconnection in the
former mine ...township Mpatamatu of Luanshya, one of the oldest
mining towns on the Zambian Copperbelt. Touching on topics
including industrial history, colonial town planning, social
control and materiality, gender relations and neoliberal structural
change, After Corporate Paternalism offers unique insights
into how people reappropriate former corporate spaces and transform
them into personal projects of renovation, fundamentally changing
the characteristics of their community.
PDF
