Partnership in practice

This paper examines human resource management practices adopted in a group of eight case study firms and their tendencies towards versus away from partnership. The analysis is based on data collected during interviews with 124 employees (75 in organisations tending towards partnership and 49 in organisations tending away from partnership) and senior managers, conducted in 1997-1998 for the Job Insecurity and Work Intensification Survey (JIWIS). Drawing on the perspectives of senior managers and employees, we examine the tendency of firms towards and away from partnership in employment relations; and in keeping with the JIWIS methodology (Burchell et.al., 2001) we combine quantitative and qualitative evidence in our analysis. Specifically, we are interested in what partnership looks like in these different contexts, the reasons it is pursued (or not), the degree to which companies have been successful in achieving their partnership objectives (from the perspective of both management and employees), and the conditions that have either facilitated or impeded partnership in relationships with employees

Your employees: the front line in cyber security

First published in The Chemical Engineer and reproduced by Crest - Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, 26/01/2016 (https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/employees-front-line-cyber-security/

German economic performance: disentangling the role of supply-side reforms, macroeconomic policy and coordinated economy institutions

Since unification, the debate about Germany's poor economic performance has focused on supply-side weaknesses, and the associated reform agenda sought to make low-skill labour markets more flexible. We question this diagnosis using three lines of argument. First, effective restructuring of the supply side in the core advanced industries was carried out by the private sector using institutions of the coordinated economy, including unions, works councils and blockholder owners. Second, the implementation of orthodox labour market and welfare state reforms created a flexible labour market at the lower end. Third, low growth and high unemployment are largely accounted for by the persistent weakness of domestic aggregate demand, rather than by the failure to reform the supply side. Strong growth in recent years reflects the successful restructuring of the core economy. To explain these developments, we identify the external pressures on companies in the context of increased global competition, the continuing value of the institutions of the coordinated market economy to the private sector and the constraints imposed on the use of stabilizing macroeconomic policy by these institutions. We also suggest how changes in political coalitions allowed orthodox labour market reforms to be implemented in a consensus political system

Soviet industry and the Red Army under Stalin : a military-industrial complex?

The paper considers some of the views of the Stalin–era relationship between Soviet industry and the Red Army that are current in the literature, and disentangles some confusions of translation. The economic weight of the defence sector in the economic system is summarised in various aspects. The lessons of recent archival research are used as a basis for analysing the army–industry relationship under Stalin as a prisoners’ dilemma in which, despite the potential gains from mutual cooperation, each party faced a strong incentive to cheat on the other. It is concluded that the idea of a Soviet military–industrial complex is not strictly applicable to the Stalin period, but there may be greater justification for the Soviet Union after Stalin

How public sector pay and employment affect labor markets : research issues

Structurally, the public sector has a more important economic role to play in developing countries than in industrial countries, particularly in how it affects labor markets. Evidence from many developing countries shows that public sector pay, employment, and performance are hurting the labor markets'ability to allocate workers among sectors and skill requirements. In many countries, the civil service and the public sector wage bill have grown to unsustainably high levels. The public sector is so big that interventions in the sector - with or without spillover effects into the nonpublic sector - make it more difficult for wages and employment to respond to shifts in demand and supply. Nonwage benefits are seldom related to productivity, so they can be particularly distorting. At the same time, a long-term drop in real civil service wages and the compression of wage ranges have caused critical shortages of managerial and technical workers in the civil service. The resulting skill imbalances in the rest of the domestic economy reduce international competitiveness in some countries. Policy reform has focused on the reform of large, inefficient public sectors because of their cumulative negative effects on economic growth and competitiveness. Policies to adjust relative prices from nontradables toward tradables have led to some movement of employment out of the public sector, but significant rigidities remain. Workers are attracted to the public sector because of complex economic and social incentives that are difficult to change - and the relationship between public sector interventions and the underlying political and economic forces is an important area for research. The slow progress in restructuring the public sector in many countries highlights the needto address more forcefully and more subtly how public sector policies affect the labor market.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Municipal Financial Management

PPR working papers : catalog of numbers 1 to 105

This paper contains a numerical listing of working papers produced by Policy, Planning, and Research. Each citation contains a brief abstract, and the contact point for the paper.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

The future of work: Towards a progressive agenda for all. EPC Issue Paper 9 DECEMBER 2019

Europe’s labour markets and the world of work in general are being transformed by the megatrends of globalisation, the fragmentation of the production and value chain, demographic ageing, new societal aspirations and the digitalisation of the economy. This Issue Paper presents the findings and policy recommendations of “The future of work – Towards a progressive agenda for all”, a European Policy Centre research project. Its main objectives were to expand public knowledge about these profound changes and to reverse the negative narrative often associated with this topic. It aimed to show how human decisions and the right policies can mitigate upcoming disruptions and provide European and national policymakers with a comprehensive toolkit for a progressive agenda for the new world of work

Partnership in Practice

This paper examines human resource management practices adopted in a group of eight case study firms and their tendencies towards versus away from partnership. The analysis is based on data collected during interviews with 124 employees (75 in organisations tending towards partnership and 49 in organisations tending away from partnership) and senior managers, conducted in 1997-1998 for the Job Insecurity and Work Intensification Survey (JIWIS). Drawing on the perspectives of senior managers and employees, we examine the tendency of firms towards and away from partnership in employment relations; and in keeping with the JIWIS methodology (Burchell et.al., 2001) we combine quantitative and qualitative evidence in our analysis. Specifically, we are interested in what partnership looks like in these different contexts, the reasons it is pursued (or not), the degree to which companies have been successful in achieving their partnership objectives (from the perspective of both management and employees), and the conditions that have either facilitated or impeded partnership in relationships with employees.industrial partnership, corporate governance, cooperation

Moving Up in the New Economy: Career Ladders for U.S. Workers

[Excerpt] This book is about restoring the upward mobility of U.S. workers. Specifically it is about the one workforce-development strategy that is currently aimed at exactly that goal – the strategy of creating (or re-creating) not just jobs but also career ladders. Career-ladder strategies aim to devise explicit pathways of occupational advancement