Immigration controls are often presented by government as a means of ensuring 'British jobs for British workers' and protecting migrants from exploitation. However, in practice they can undermine ...labour protections. As well as a tap regulating the flow of labour, immigration controls function as a mould, helping to form types of labour with particular relations to employers and the labour market. In particular, the construction of institutionalised uncertainty, together with less formalised migratory processes, help produce 'precarious workers' over whom employers and labour users have particular mechanisms of control.
What do the recent trends in German economic development convey about the trajectory of change? Has liberalization prepared the German economy to deal with new challenges? What effects will ...liberalization have on the co‐ordinating capacities of economic institutions? This article argues that co‐ordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks. Firms seek labour co‐operation in the face of tighter competitive pressures and exploit institutional advantages of co‐ordination. However, tighter co‐operation with core workers sharpened insider–outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization. The combination of plant‐level restructuring and social policy change forms a trajectory of institutional adjustment of forming complementary economic segments which work under different rules. The process is driven by producer coalitions of export‐oriented firms and core workers’ representatives, rather than by firms per se.
•Comprehensive framework on culture's moderating role in job satisfaction models.•Focus on four key dimensions of culture and seven top drivers of job satisfaction.•Analyses are based on a sample ...from 24 nations.•Some job characteristics’ impacts vary significantly between countries.•Partially, these differences are moderated by individual dimensions of culture.
International research on job satisfaction suggests that the relationship between job characteristics and job satisfaction differs across countries. These differences might be due to an effect of cultural differences. However, to date, there has been little systematic research on the question if and how national culture moderates different job characteristics’ influences on job satisfaction. We address this research gap by referring to the four key dimensions of culture defined by Hofstede and seven top drivers of job satisfaction. Empirical analyses are based on a sample from 24 nations. Findings indicate that some job characteristics’ impacts vary significantly between countries, while others prove to be independent of national context. These differences are indeed partially, significantly moderated by individual dimensions of culture.
Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), characteristic for current socio-economic development, significantly affect the vital activity of society, as well as the fundamental ...principles of economic development. This situation requires the creation and implementation of adaptation mechanisms. The study aims to quantify the adaptation of employment to the conditions of the VUCA world in Russian regions. It is hypothesised that the employment of the population in Russian regions with different levels and types of economic development is not adapted to the conditions of the VUCA world. The article analysed a theoretical and methodological platform for examining the labour market and employment that presents Russian and foreign experience. The study revealed the effects of the VUCA world on employment: accelerated response of quantitative employment parameters to economic changes (including by increasing the mobility of workers); post-industrial transformation of the employment structure; formation and dissemination of non-standard forms of employment. The developed methodology for assessing the adaptation of employment to the conditions of the VUCA world was applied to evaluate the key characteristics of this process. The methodology was tested in a number of Russian regions that differ in the level and type of economic development by analysing statistical data for the period 2014–2019. At the present stage, a low and average degree of adaptation of employment is recorded, regardless of the socio-economic development of regions. The proposed comprehensive recommendations are aimed at solving the key problems of adapting employment to the conditions of the VUCA world and are addressed to the subjects of social and labour relations.
Extant research on high-performance work systems (HPWSs) has primarily examined the effects of HPWSs on establishment or firm-level performance from a management perspective in manufacturing ...settings. The current study extends this literature by differentiating management and employee perspectives of HPWSs and examining how the two perspectives relate to employee individual performance in the service context. Data collected in three phases from multiple sources involving 292 managers, 830 employees, and 1,772 customers of 91 bank branches revealed significant differences between management and employee perspectives of HPWSs. There were also significant differences in employee perspectives of HPWSs among employees of different employment statuses and among employees of the same status. Further, employee perspective of HPWSs was positively related to individual general service performance through the mediation of employee human capital and perceived organizational support and was positively related to individual knowledge-intensive service performance through the mediation of employee human capital and psychological empowerment. At the same time, management perspective of HPWSs was related to employee human capital and both types of service performance. Finally, a branch's overall knowledge-intensive service performance was positively associated with customer overall satisfaction with the branch's service.
Theoretical developments in the analysis of organizations have recently turned to an "organizational becoming" perspective, which sees the social world as enacted in the microcontext of communicative ...interactions among individuals through which meaning is negotiated. According to this view, organizational change is endemic, natural, and ongoing; it occurs in everyday interactions as actors engage in the process of establishing new meanings for organizational activities. We adopt this approach to study how meanings were negotiated by senior and middle managers in a workshop held as part of a culture change program at a telecommunications company. Our study identifies two very different patterns in these negotiations, constituted by the particular communicative practices adopted by participants. We discuss the implications of these patterns for organizational change in relation to generative dialogue and power-resistance relations between senior and middle managers.
In this qualitative research, we enhance understanding of leader influences on employee voice perceptions by examining which leaders influence these perceptions and why these influences occur. We ...conducted 89 interviews in a high-tech multinational corporation with employees at multiple levels in two manufacturing and two R&D units that differed significantly on "speak up"-related items on a company-wide employee survey. Systematic analysis of the interview data led us to conclude that a broad spectrum of leaders from supervisors to senior managers influences individual employee voice perceptions in both direct and indirect ways. For example, informants referred to "skip-level leaders," those leaders two to five levels above themselves, as reasons to view voice as risky or futile nearly as often as they referred to immediate bosses. We present evidence related to "how" and "why" these patterns of influence occur by reviewing the direct and indirect modes of influence identified and by outlining the managerial functions that provide occasions for skip-level leaders to have direct influences on employee voice perceptions. We also point to differences in the specific echelons of leadership that were most influential across the units studied. We propose that multilevel, multileader influences on voice perceptions result naturally from modern workflows, the essential functions performed by skip-level leaders, and deep-seated employee attitudes about authority in hierarchical organizations. We propose further that differences in which levels of skip-level leadership are most critical to employee voice perceptions in different units depend on which leaders have the power to handle strategic contingencies and to resolve key uncertainties within particular work environments. Finally, we delve into the theoretical implications of our findings to offer a set of research propositions that can be tested in future research. Collectively, our findings point to a complex and nuanced picture of multilevel leader influences on employee voice perceptions with important practical implications for management.
ABSTRACT
The classical conceptualization of the working class, of workers’ collective action and, especially, of trade unionism, was implicitly or explicitly based on the Standard Employment ...Relationship that, for a few decades, has been dominant in North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia. The ‘classical’ model of collective bargaining, which has shaped the world's traditional labour movements, was based on this conceptualization. However, it is now increasingly undermined by the rapid spread of ‘informal’ or ‘precarious’ labour in the global North. It is our contention that the ‘classical’ view of the working class and workers’ collective action is fundamentally biased and takes as a norm or standard what was in fact an historical exception. The real norm or standard in global capitalism is insecurity, informality or precariousness, and the Standard Employment Relationship is an historical phenomenon which had a deep impact in a limited part of the world for a relatively short period of time. If, as we argue, the ‘Rest’ is not now becoming like the ‘West’, but the other way round, then the ‘traditional’ forms of collective action that have developed in the North Atlantic region during the last two centuries are gradually losing much of their impact. New forms of collective action are emerging, though these are often still at an embryonic stage. It is, therefore, high time to rethink the concept of the working class and the ways in which it can further its interests.
We investigated the relationship between personal control—employees' perceptions of autonomy and impact at work—and voice—employees' expression of challenging but constructive work-related opinions, ...concerns, or ideas. Specifically, we developed and tested an explanation that integrates two conceptual perspectives (i.e., dissatisfactionbased versus expectancy-based) on the effects of personal control. Using data from 586 nurses, we found that the relationship between personal control and voice was Ushaped. Further, organizational identification acted as a moderator: When personal control was low, voice was lower for employees with stronger identification. When personal control was high, voice was higher for employees with stronger identification.
PDF
