Restructuring of Human Resource Management In The U.S.: Strategic Diversity

Change is endemic in the U. S. economy and in worker-management relations. This change can be examined from the perspective of increasing centralization in which public policy dictates that corporations and the state act in concert, to a decentralized market system in which assets are constantly being reconfigured to more productive uses. This paper looks at the evolution of industrial relations and personnel administration to human resource management within this context of continual change through centralized versus decentralized perspectives. Major shifts in HR policies in American companies are described. Within these major shifts, a wide diversity of policy options for workermanagement relations exist. A strategic-contingency model may provide a unifying framework to assist decision makers in choosing among these policy options

DiSCmap : digitisation of special collections mapping, assessment, prioritisation. Final project report

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users isequally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term? The 'Digitisation in Special Collections: mapping, assessment and prioritisation' (DiSCmap) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Research Information Network (RIN), aimed to:- Identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK Higher Education's libraries, archives and museums as well as faculties and departments.- Assess users' needs and demand for Special Collections to be digitised across all disciplines.- Produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users' needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources.- Provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector.The project was carried out jointly by the Centre for Digital Library Research (CDLR) and the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) and has taken a collaborative approach to the creation of a user-driven digitisation prioritisation framework, encouraging participation and collective engagement between communities.Between September 2008 and March 2009 the DiSCmap project team asked over 1,000 users, including intermediaries (vocational users who take care of collections) and end users (university teachers, researchers and students) a variety of questions about which physical and digital Special Collections they make use of and what criteria they feel must be considered when selecting materials for digitisation. This was achieved through workshops, interviews and two online questionnaires. Although the data gathered from these activities has the limitation of reflecting only a partial view on priorities for digitisation - the view expressed by those institutions who volunteered to take part in the study - DiSCmap was able to develop:- a 'long list' of 945 collections nominated for digitisation both by intermediaries andend-users from 70 HE institutions (see p. 21);- a framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria which could be used to inform current and future digitisation priorities; (see p. 45)- a set of 'short lists' of collections which exemplify the application of user-driven criteria from the prioritisation framework to the long list (see Appendix X):o Collections nominated more than once by various groups of users.o Collections related to a specific policy framework, eg HEFCE's strategically important and vulnerable subjects for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics.o Collections on specific thematic clusters.o Collections with highest number of reasons for digitisation

Governing the West Bank: What Role Do Elite Level Civil Servants Actively Represent?

Representative bureaucracy is used to understand original data, shedding light on the administrative side of the politico-administrative axis in one part of one of the world’s most contentious and divisive conflicts: the Palestinian Israeli conflict. We theorize and test six different theoretically existent roles of elite level bureaucrat (ELB) role conceptions in the West Bank. Using Q Methodology in 22 ELB interviews, we identify two empirically existent bureaucrat role conceptions associated with serving the public: one traditional Wilsonian/Weberian; the other a coproducer of public policy. Bureaucrats serve the entire population, as in public service motivation, not a sub-section. They believe that politics and bureaucracy should be separate and share concerns that bureaucratic independence is in jeopardy. The discovery of these profiles suggests that both pro-social and active representations on behalf of primary identities are notably absent, suggesting further investigation is required into bureaucrat role conceptions in the fragile or developing society

Making Democratic-Governance Work: The Consequences for Prosperity

Does democratic governance expand wealth and prosperity? There is no consensus about this issue despite the fact that for more than half a century, rival theories about the regime-growth relationship have been repeatedly tested against the empirical evidence, using a variety of cases, models and techniques. To consider the issues, Part I of this paper reviews and summarizes theories why regimes are expected to influence economic growth directly, either positively or negatively. After considering these debates, Part II discusses the technical challenges facing research on this topic and how it is proposed to overcome these. Part III presents the results of the comparative analysis for the effects of democratic governance on economic growth during recent decades. The descriptive results illustrate the main relationships. The multivariate models check whether these patterns remain significant after controlling for many other factors associated with growth, including geography, economic conditions, social structural variables, cultural legacies, and global trends. The evidence supports the equilibrium thesis suggesting that regimes combining both liberal democracy and bureaucratic governance are most likely to generate growth, while by contrast patronage autocracies display the worst economic performance. The conclusion considers the implications

Students and Workers and Prisoners - Oh, My! A Cautionary Note About Excessive Institutional Tailoring of First Amendment Doctrine

First Amendment free speech doctrine has been called institutionally oblivious for ignoring how different institutions present different legal questions. This Article analyzes a little-discussed phenomenon in the growing literature about institutional context in constitutional law. With certain institutions, the situation is not institutional obliviousness but the opposite: extreme institutional tailoring of speech doctrine. The burden of proof ordinarily is on the government to justify speech restrictions, but in three institutions--public schools, workplaces, and prisons--courts allow heavy speech restrictions and defer to government officials. Even if these institutions need to restrict speech unusually often, why do we need different doctrine--institutionally tailored government-deferential standards--rather than standard heightened scrutiny? Courts have given no real answer. This Article serves three purposes. First, it attempts a descriptive analysis of why courts might perceive a need to tailor doctrine to these institutions. The two main arguments are waiver and risk. The waiver argument is straightforward. Individuals in certain institutions made a free, ex ante choice to enter a setting with restrictive rules. The risk argument is somewhat more involved. Heightened scrutiny, by declaring speech restrictions presumptively invalid, risks erroneously allowing dangerous speech in institutions in which there is both high error cost and high error probability. Error cost is high if a court erroneously allows disruptive speech in, for example, a prison prone to riots. Error probability is high because in these complex institutions, information costs are high for courts (so courts should defer to institutional judgments) and speech restrictions are warranted more often (so even a modest rate of error can yield a high number of errors). This risk analysis suggests that economics can help analyze constitutional issues involving risk and error cost and probability. Second, this Article undertakes a critical analysis of the above arguments for institutional tailoring, finding several flawed or overstated. The waiver argument contravenes precedent (and so cannot be courts\u27 actual reason) and is based on exaggerated premises of free choice and foreseeable consequences. The error cost point is exaggerated because the government can often guard against harmful speech with monitoring rather than a ban. The error probability argument assumes high information costs of courts evaluating these institutions, yet courts regularly handle cases in more complex institutions. The waiver and risk arguments are exaggerated but not wholly unfounded. Both are stronger for prisons; and the waiver argument is stronger for workplaces than schools. This Article offers a typology of the strength of the waiver and risk arguments in each institution. Third, this Article proposes that speech law, like equal protection law, apply heightened scrutiny in all institutions, though with modest tailoring. Considering institutional context is good in moderation, bad in excess. By dividing speech rights so starkly by institution, courts have not recognized, but rather overstated, the uniqueness of schools, workplaces, and prisons--and allowed more speech restriction than is justified. This risk of exaggerating uniqueness is inherent to tailoring and should give courts pause before tailoring constitutional law. This Article concludes with a pragmatic proposal to scale back the tailoring of speech doctrine: Courts should apply intermediate scrutiny to speech claims in these institutions

Lowering the barriers for online cross-media usage: Scenarios for a Belgian single sign-on solution

The digitization has led to an ecosystem in which an online media portal has become an essential extension of traditional media and users are enabled to consume news and entertainment via different platforms. These evolutions pose some challenges for the media companies in terms of shifting business models, but they also bring them new possibilities in managing their relations with users. An important first step here is to identify the online users and turn anonymous users into registered ones. Today, however, there is a myriad of logins and passwords one needs when surfing the web, which can make the management of these logins a challenge for users. The Belgian media industry seeks to deal with this challenge by introducing a collaborative nation-wide single sign-on (SSO) system across their digital platforms, called Media ID. This paper provides four scenarios describing the potential outcomes in terms of user adoption and hence market potential of the integration of a SSO service into a regional media system. The scenarios are built upon focus group interviews with media users and in-depth interviews with the stakeholders from the involved media companies. They describe to what extent the innovative service can influence user’s online media consumption behaviour but also to what extent the media companies can implement it, two factors that mutually shape each other. In the discussion of the scenarios, requirements to ensure the broad applicability of a SSO service by both media users and media organizations are identified

Overview and Analysis of Practices with Open Educational Resources in Adult Education in Europe

OER4Adults aimed to provide an overview of Open Educational Practices in adult learning in Europe, identifying enablers and barriers to successful implementation of practices with OER. The project was conducted in 2012-2013 by a team from the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, funded by The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). The project drew on data from four main sources: • OER4Adults inventory of over 150 OER initiatives relevant to adult learning in Europe • Responses from the leaders of 36 OER initiatives to a detailed SWOT survey • Responses from 89 lifelong learners and adult educators to a short poll • The Vision Papers on Open Education 2030: Lifelong Learning published by IPTS Interpretation was informed by interviews with OER and adult education experts, discussion at the IPTS Foresight Workshop on Open Education and Lifelong Learning 2030, and evaluation of the UKOER programme. Analysis revealed 6 tensions that drive developing practices around OER in adult learning as well 6 summary recommendations for the further development of such practices