Human Resource and Employment Practices in Telecommunications Services, 1980-1998

[Excerpt] In the academic literature on manufacturing, much research and debate have focused on whether firms are adopting some form of “high-performance” or “high-involvement” work organization based on such practices as employee participation, teams, and increased discretion, skills, and training for frontline workers (Ichniowski et al., 1996; Kochan and Osterman, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995). Whereas many firms in the telecommunications industry flirted with these ideas in the 1980s, they did not prove to be a lasting source of inspiration for the redesign of work and employment practices. Rather, work restructuring in telecommunications services has been driven by the ability of firms to leverage network and information technologies to reduce labor costs and create customer segmentation strategies. “Good jobs” versus “bad jobs,” or higher versus lower wage jobs, do not vary according to whether firms adopt a high- involvement model. They vary along two other dimensions: (1) within firms and occupations, by the value-added of the customer segment that an employee group serves; and (2) across firms, by union and nonunion status. We believe that this customer segmentation strategy is becoming a more general model for employment practices in large-scale service | operations; telecommunications services firms may be somewhat more | advanced than other service firms in adopting this strategy because of certain unique industry characteristics. The scale economies of network technology are such that once a company builds the network infrastructure to a customer’s specifications, the cost of additional services is essentially zero. As a result, and notwithstanding technological uncertainty, all of the industry’s major players are attempting to take advantage of system economies inherent in the nature of the product market and technology to provide customized packages of multimedia products to identified market segments. They have organized into market-driven business units providing differentiated services to large businesses and institutions, small businesses, and residential customers. They have used information technologies and process reengineering to customize specific services to different segments according to customer needs and ability to pay. Variation in work and employment practices, or labor market segmentation, follows product market segmentation. As a result, much of the variation in employment practices in this industry is within firms and within occupations according to market segment rather than across firms. In addition, despite market deregulation beginning in 1984 and opportunities for new entrants, a tightly led oligopoly structure is replacing the regulated Bell System monopoly. Former Bell System companies, the giants of the regulated period, continue to dominate market share in the post-1984 period. Older players and new entrants alike are merging and consolidating in order to have access to multimedia markets. What is striking in this industry, therefore, is the relative lack of variation in management and employment practices across firms after more than a decade of experience with deregulation. We attribute this lack of variation to three major sources. (1) Technological advances and network economics provide incentives for mergers, organizational consolidation, and, as indicated above, similar business strategies. (2) The former Bell System companies have deep institutional ties, and they continue to benchmark against and imitate each other so that ideas about restructuring have diffused quickly among them. (3) Despite overall deunionization in the industry, they continue to have high unionization rates; de facto pattern bargaining within the Bell system has remained quite strong. Therefore, similar employment practices based on inherited collective bargaining agreements continue to exist across former Bell System firms

Preschool Nutrition and Subsequent Schooling Attainment: Longitudinal Evidence from Tanzania

This study analyses how childhood health determines future academic performance in Kagera region in Tanzania. Academic outcomes considered are years of education and delay in enrollment, while the measure of childhood health is (relative to the median) height. The repercussions of malnutrition in childhood on subsequent learning and school performance are analyzed by using a unique longitudinal dataset. Result indicate the degree to which malnutrition leads to reduced lifetime earning capacity due to both delays in schooling and declines in total schooling

Detecting Accurate Emotions in Faces

Anger race bias is the tendency to misidentify expressions of emotion, specifically anger, in Black or racially ambiguous faces that are fearful or neutral (Hutchings & Haddock, 2008). Anger is often associated with aggression (Murphy et al., 2005). Therefore, the inaccurate perception of anger and threat may lead to an inappropriate response and could increase the likelihood that a police officer will shoot at a suspect (Correll et al., 2007). From 2015 to 2020, police officers shot and killed over 100 unarmed Black males (Washington Post, 2020). This study examined if anger race bias could be reduced through emotion identification training. Faces from the Chicago Face Database were used to train participants on the emotions of neutrality, fear, and anger. Participants identified emotions on a series of Black, White, LatinX, and Asian faces on pre-and post-test measures. Two weeks following the post-test, participants were invited to complete a follow-up test to determine their retention of the training. We found that the experimental group accurately identified more facial expressions on average than the control group. These preliminary results demonstrate feasibility in developing emotion recognition trainings to decrease anger race bias with the potential to be helpful in police settings

Second generation governance indicators

This paper summarizes progress made in a DfID-funded World Bank initiative to test and develop policy-relevant, politically acceptable, quantitative indicators of governance. There are two major components involved in the process of generating indicators that are practical means of reform. Political acceptability is key in developing neutral quantitative benchmarks of good governance that can be embraced by reformers. In addition to political acceptability, measuring governance must be comprehensive and institutionally specific so that reformers know which institutions to reform and how to do so. This paper explores some of the most promising second generation indicators of good governance and elaborates on how they are being used in World Bank operations.governance, institutions, development

A Case Against Collaboration

In family law, as in other legal disciplines, the use of alternative dispute resolution has dramatically increased. In a process called collaborative divorce, separating spouses hire attorneys who agree to work together—almost entirely outside of the court system—to reach a settlement ending the marriage. A team of experts, including mental health professionals, financial neutrals, and parenting coordinators, helps the parties resolve conflicts and settle property, support, and custody disputes. For divorcing couples, the collaborative process promises emotional healing and avoidance of contentious litigation. Advocates for collaborative divorce describe the transformational effects of the process in an evangelical tone. But collaborative divorce has costs. Collaboration can include considerations of marital fault that feminists helped eliminate from divorce laws. By focusing on conflict resolution, even for the purpose of building post-divorce relationships, collaborative negotiations introduce judgments of “good” and “bad” marital conduct, potentially reinforcing stereotyped gender roles, such as the blameless wife and the guilty husband. These heteronormative paradigms are out of date: gender roles have evolved, the population of married people has changed, and marriage rights have extended to couples of the same sex. Collaborative processes also have distributive consequences. Collaboration privileges wealthy parties who may understate their bargaining power. At the same time, collaboration may not reach vulnerable spouses who could benefit from therapeutic interventions. Collaborative divorce can be blind to situational power and structural inequality. The purpose of these critiques is not to undermine therapeutic approaches or to argue that law should ignore spousal misconduct. Rather, this Article suggests that advocates for collaborative divorce—including some feminist scholars who have theorized the shortcomings of no-fault divorce laws—might understand better how parties negotiate, and what they may sacrifice, within a collaborative framework

Preparing Christian health workers for international work: Evaluating a short global health course

Improving global health education to ensure health professionals are prepared and competent in the world's increasingly interconnected health-scape is a vital need. For many health professionals, global health education is facilitated through short, pre-departure courses in cross-cultural health and development work. There is currently limited literature on both the availability and the effectiveness of such courses. Our research aim was to explore the impact of a short course in global health education, designed and delivered by an Australian not-for-profit organisation, Intermed SA (Intermed). We conducted a short online survey of Intermed graduates, followed by semi-structured interviews with selected participants. The results indicate that Intermed's International Health and Development course was effective in achieving the course objectives as assessed by graduates, whilst also having a positive practical impact on the graduates' professional development

Institutional strengthening in Egyptian development aid projects

In recent years Dutch aid projects have focused more on institutional strengthening. The overall impact of this type of aid has been limited. This paper explores possible reasons for this. In Egypt, it appeared to be difficult to make significant changes in the institutional setting. Main constraints were the low salaries, recruitment and personnel policies and the organisational culture within the government. Another factor that may have played a role is inadequate recognition of cultural backgrounds of the international consultants advising in Egypt. This is explored using Hofstede¿s and Trompenaar¿s typologies of culture and their effects on management. Maslow¿s Hierarchy of Needs, as applied to the environment of institutional strengthening, is also considered. Adjusting an organisational culture to improve efficiency and sustainability of the organisation is a long and difficult process and should not be seen as an extension of tradition technical assistance aid projects, but rather it should be implemented as a dedicated long-term project. A major finding is that short-term consultancies may only be effective for idea generation, and not as instruments for implementing change management. Managerial capacity building should be a long-term activity with gradual change, particularly in government settings. Recognition of organisation culture in light of trans-national cultural typologies by Hofstede and Trompenaars, as well as, acceptance of the most pressing needs of the target group as the responsibility of one and the same financing agency are found lacking in traditional Development Aid