Managing the Employment Relationship

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by SAGE Publishing in Strategic Human Resource Management: An International Perspective, 2nd Edition on 2017, available at: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/strategic-human-resource-management/book249141.The chapter discusses and explores the employment relationship within a UK and international context. It looks at Government ideological perspectives, employee engagement and employee voice.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Three essays on skills, training and labor institutions

This thesis explores the interplay among technological change, training for workers’ upskilling, and labor market institutions which presents some theoretical ambiguities and empirical shortcomings that need to be fulfilled in the scientific literature to also contribute to the policy debate. Industry 4.0 processes, fueled by digital technologies and tools, are deeply changing the nature and organi-sation of work, requiring the workforce to acquire new competences and to perform new tasks and, therefore, forcing firms to hugely invest in human capital to maintain high levels of competitiveness and of employment. This is the starting point of the dissertation, which is articulated in three chapters and uses mixed methods to conduct the analysis. The first chapter grounds the basis of the analysis through a literature review. Given the fact that the relation between technological change and employment is a controversial issue, what emerges is the primary importance of institutions and policies capable of reabsorbing the technological unemployment which tends to be stronger where the industrial relations are more adversarial than co-operative. Nonetheless, the direction of influence of trade unions on firm innovation and strategic investments in staff and technology is perceived as very ambiguous. The review of the theoretical mechanisms and country-level empirical evidence suggests that those mechanisms act differently across countries, and the variance must be interpreted in interaction with the different industrial relations systems. Hence, the essay includes a comparative international analysis of collective and workplace bargaining tools about digital innovation, and consequently organization of labour and training. By describing employees’ representatives’ rights of information, consultation and co-determination across Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, and Sweden, the goal is to assess the existence of common patterns beyond the differences, which emerges in the increasing shift towards establishment-level bargaining, with potential interesting effects on the extent of the space of negotiation on technology adoption. The second chapter offers a quantitative analysis about the moderating role of employees’ representatives on gender biased training incidence and makes use of an intersectional perspective about discrimination in accessing training activities. In fact, recent studies have contributed to the exam of the relation between trade unions and training with respect to temporary and permanent workers also in cross-countries comparative perspective; on the other side, gender has always been a key-variable in human capital theory, due to the different investment horizons that men and women predict for themselves. Labour market segmentation models highlight the effects of employment flexibilization on career perspective of different subgroups; a key-point to address is whether gender-unbalanced distribution of part-time contracts, widespread among women, has created an additional gender discrimination in the segment of non-standard employees. In this scenario, employees’ representative can exert a moderating role on training incidence, being associated with the increasing in the probability for an employee of being trained regardless of gender and employment status. Furthermore, ER can counteract inequalities and discrimination in the skills provision also when training is employer provided. The third chapter concludes the dissertation presenting a qualitative analysis aiming to describe the firm-level space of negotiation on technology adoption and implementation through the case study of Enterprise Resource Planning systems. The aim is to assess whether ER are involved in the digital organization of labour, by exploring some critical issues that emerge from the literature review about ERP and Information Systems and are also coherent with the conceptual framework built in this thesis.I processi di Industria 4.0 stanno cambiando radicalmente la natura e l’organizzazione del lavoro, costringendo le imprese a enormi investimenti in capitale umano per mantenere alti livelli di competitività e occupazione. Il primo capitolo costruisce la base del ragionamento attraverso una rassegna della letteratura. Dal momento che la relazione tra cambiamento tecnologico e livello di occupazione è una questione controversa, ciò che emerge è l’importanza primaria di istituzioni e politiche capaci di riassorbire la disoccupazione tecnologica che tende ad essere più forte quando le relazioni industriali sono più conflittuali rispetto a quando sono tipo cooperativo. Tuttavia, la direzione dell’influenza dei sindacati sulle imprese in merito a innovazione e investimenti strategici in personale e tecnologia è percepita come molto ambigua. La rassegna dei meccanismi teorici e delle evidenze empiriche a livello paese suggerisce che tali meccanismi agiscano diversamente tra paesi e che la differenza debba essere interpretata in interazione con i diversi sistemi di relazioni industriali. Perciò, il saggio include un’analisi comparativa a livello internazionale degli strumenti della contrattazione collettiva e sul posto di lavoro riguardanti l’innovazione digitale e, conseguentemente, l’organizzazione del lavoro e la formazione. Attraverso la descrizione dei diritti di informazione, consultazione e codeterminazione in capo ai rappresentanti dei lavoratori tra Italia, Germania, Regno Unito e Svezia, l’obiettivo è quello di valutare l’esistenza di tratti comuni al di là delle differenze, come emerge dal progressivo spostamento verso la contrattazione sul posto di lavoro, con potenziali interessanti effetti sull’ampiezza dello spazio di negoziazione sull’adozione delle tecnologie. Il secondo capitolo presenta un’analisi quantitativa riguardo all’effetto di moderazione dei rappresentanti dei lavoratori sul bias di genere nell’accesso alla formazione a proposito del quale si adotta una prospettiva intersezionale. Infatti, lavori recenti hanno contribuito all’esame della relazione tra sindacati e formazione rispetto ai lavoratori a tempo determinato e indeterminato anche in prospettiva comparata tra paesi; d’altro canto, il genere è sempre stata una variabile chiave nella teoria del capitale umano in virtù dei diversi orizzonti di investimento che uomini e donne prevedono per sé stessi. I modelli di segmentazione del mercato del lavoro mettono in luce gli effetti della flessibilizzazione dell’occupazione sulle prospettive di carriera per diversi sottogruppi; un punto chiave da valutare è se la distribuzione sbilanciata per genere dei contratti di lavoro part-time, ampiamente diffusi tra le donne, abbia creato una discriminazione di genere aggiuntiva nel segmento dei lavoratori non-standard. In questo scenario, i rappresentanti dei lavoratori possono esercitare un effetto di moderazione sull’accesso alla formazione, essendo associati con l’aumento della probabilità di essere formati indipendentemente dal genere e dal contratto di lavoro. In aggiunta, i rappresentanti dei lavoratori possono contrastare disuguaglianze e discriminazione nell’offerta di competenze anche quando la formazione è pagata dal datore di lavoro. Il terzo capitolo conclude la dissertazione con l’esposizione di un’analisi qualitativa svolta con l’obiettivo di descrivere il sopra menzionato spazio di negoziazione a livello d’impresa attraverso un caso studio sui sistemi di Enterprise Resource Planning. L’obiettivo è valutare se i rappresentanti dei lavoratori siano coinvolti nell’organizzazione digitale del lavoro, esplorando alcune criticità emerse dalla revisione della letteratura sui software ERP e sui sistemi informatici e che sono coerenti anche con il framework teorico costruito in questa tesi

Gender Voice and Correlations with Peace

The statistics regarding violence in today’s society are staggering. A newly released study published by the World Health Organization, making headlines in the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 3, 2002) reports that “Violence Took 1.6 Million Lives in 2000.” Notably, this report considers only the data obtained from the seventy countries that report such statistics to the World Health Organization. It does not include reports from many countries whose violence is also high, such as Burundi, Rwanda, Iraq, Liberia and Afghanistan. This manuscript seeks to address some of these issues of violence by considering issues of gender. We pose the question whether there may be some correlation between violence and the lack meaningful involvement of women in the economy. If the countries that appear more violent are also countries where women are systematically excluded from business opportunities, perhaps one way to curb some of the societal violence would be to improve the opportunities for women in the economy. Multi-national corporations can play an important role in increasing these opportunities. As has been argued elsewhere, a reduction in poverty promotes stability and leads to a more peaceful society. Studies show that in developing countries, involving women in the economy as wage earners can reduce poverty. As the locus of production shifts away from the home, an initial decline in employment opportunities may occur. However, this eventually disappears and both women and men benefit.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39915/3/wp530.pd

Acquisition quality improvement within Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest

The purpose of this project is to identify and analyze Process Management and Audit Program (PMAP) results for Naval Facilities Command, Southwest (NAVFAC SW). The goal is to identify reoccurring contract deficiencies and issues using the Six Phases of Contract Management Process as a guide to target areas for improvement, in order to provide a comprehensive process review, with recommendations for future contracting process improvements at NAVFAC SW. It will be to management’s advantage to share these results with their acquisition workforces in order to help increase acquisition compliance and reduce the recurring findings, with the overall goal of reducing the exposure to risk. During this project, it was discovered that there are 14 recurring PMAP findings that need to be addressed. Suggestions are offered to help get these problems under control. It was also suggested that in 24 to 36 months, an NPS student conduct similar research to see whether there has been PMAP improvement, so that the work of contract process improvement will continue to go forward at NAVFAC SW.http://archive.org/details/acquisitionquali1094545914Civilian, Department of the NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Targeting the principle implementation in the system of social support

Purpose: The article aims to identify the actual problems of implementing the principle of targeting in the social protection system in Russia and to develop a set of measures to transform the mechanism of its provision based on a differentiated approach, which implies not only differences in the size of social transfers, but also on various forms of such support. Design/Methodology/Approach: As the basic approaches of the study there were chosen the theory of social investment and the conception of result-based budgeting. The study suggested the development of a more effective financial support system, the substantiation of a differentiated approach to the organization of a social system based on a single method by determining the degree of financial vulnerability of citizens and the development of methodological recommendations on the use of financial instruments to strengthen the targeting of social protection of needy citizens. Findings: The article substantiates that the necessary condition for the transformation of the social protection system to strengthen the social and financial security of needy citizens is the development of a differentiated approach in the provision of social support measures. Practical Implications: The results of the study can be implemented into the management of social protection in order to improve its efficiency and effectiveness by using the targeting of social transfers based on clear criteria of need, the differentiated approach implementation in determining the measures of social support through the use of "map of social support of citizens", expanding the application of social contract technology. Originality/Value: The set of measures proposed in the study will make it possible not only to adjust and direct social support to really needy recipients and to differentiate the volume of the support provided, but also to create conditions for the recipients of targeted protection to self-sufficiency, which, in turn, will contribute to the poverty reduction.peer-reviewe

Trusted operational scenarios - Trust building mechanisms and strategies for electronic marketplaces.

This document presents and describes the trusted operational scenarios, resulting from the research and work carried out in Seamless project. The report presents identified collaboration habits of small and medium enterprises with low e-skills, trust building mechanisms and issues as main enablers of online business relationships on the electronic marketplace, a questionnaire analysis of the level of trust acceptance and necessity of trust building mechanisms, a proposal for the development of different strategies for the different types of trust mechanisms and recommended actions for the SEAMLESS project or other B2B marketplaces.trust building mechanisms, trust, B2B networks, e-marketplaces

Applications of Blockchain in Business Processes: A Comprehensive Review

Blockchain (BC), as an emerging technology, is revolutionizing Business Process Management (BPM) in multiple ways. The main adoption is to serve as a trusted infrastructure to guarantee the trust of collaborations among multiple partners in trustless environments. Especially, BC enables trust of information by using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). With the power of smart contracts, BC enforces the obligations of counterparties that transact in a business process (BP) by programming the contracts as transactions. This paper aims to study the state-of-the-art of BC technologies by (1) exploring its applications in BPM with the focus on how BC provides the trust of BPs in their lifecycles; (2) identifying the relations of BPM as the need and BC as the solution with the assessment towards BPM characteristics; (3) discussing the up-to-date progresses of critical BC in BPM; (4) identifying the challenges and research directions for future advancement in the domain. The main conclusions of our comprehensive review are (1) the study of adopting BC in BPM has attracted a great deal of attention that has been evidenced by a rapidly growing number of relevant articles. (2) The paradigms of BPM over Internet of Things (IoT) have been shifted from persistent to transient, from static to dynamic, and from centralized to decentralized, and new enabling technologies are highly demanded to fulfill some emerging functional requirements (FRs) at the stages of design, configuration, diagnosis, and evaluation of BPs in their lifecycles. (3) BC has been intensively studied and proven as a promising solution to assure the trustiness for both of business processes and their executions in decentralized BPM. (4) Most of the reported BC applications are at their primary stages, future research efforts are needed to meet the technical challenges involved in interoperation, determination of trusted entities, confirmation of time-sensitive execution, and support of irreversibility

Practical guidelines for effective bank resolution

This study adopts a practical approach in developing a set of guidelines on designing a bank resolution framework and implementing efficient bank resolution methods in Latin America. It identifies six pillars that are useful for establishing a bank resolution framework. The study aims to guide policymakers choose from a set of bank resolution methods, by outlining their advantages and disadvantages and establishing efficiency requirements. The focus is on the good-bank/bad-bank approach, which is a type of purchase and assumption mechanism that has increasingly become part of the newer legal frameworks in Latin America. The good-bank/bad-bank approach is an effective bank resolution method because it can be very successful in meeting certain efficiency criteria, including the minimization of contagion costs and preservation of business.Banks&Banking Reform,,Access to Finance,Debt Markets,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress