Foreign Divestment and Employee Disclosure and Consultation in the UK, 1978-1985

This thesis has two main objectives, namely, - to contribute to the theory of foreign divestment through a detailed analysis of the causes of UK plant closures by foreign-owned MNCs, - and to evaluate UK legislation on employee disclosure/consultation, with particular reference to its effect on foreign MNCs. The Financial Times has recorded since 1978 the closure of 96 manufacturing operations majority-owned by foreign MNCs. This thesis analyses 13 of them which involved compulsory redundancy of 500 or more employees in four industrial case studies. A total of 11 MNCs from 5 countries are examined, and the impact of home country culture is assessed. Of the three theoretical explanatory models of foreign divestment, condition-based theory emerges as far more appropriate than the motivation-based, and precipitating- circumstance based theories. The plant closures by foreign MNCs were due to certain unfavourable changes in the business environment, though these were not always sufficient to explain some closures. Deteriorating conditions created strong motives to divest, and new Chief Executives were often appointed. The arrival of a new man should be seen, not as a cause of, but, as a signal to divestment. The Department of Employment is content that workers receive the statutory minimum notification of redundancy, or pay in lieu of notice. Thus, not surprisingly, British employees' representatives were not consulted "at the earliest opportunity", but were informed some months after the decision had been made by the parent company at corporate headquarters. Regardless of market conditions and the parent company's financial situation, Union Officials will always castigate companies which close plants. It matters little whether they receive three months or three years notice, and whether or not their representatives meet the Chief Executive Officer of the parent company. Proponents of greater information disclosure believe that employees would use the knowledge to save Jobs, but in two closures, the fully-informed workforces voted against proposals in the knowledge that rejection endangered their plants. The behaviour of the Dutch, French, German and Canadian MNCs conformed with cultural profiles. Home country culture appears to have had influence on the three European MNCs and on the Canadian firm, but the behaviour of the seven US MNCs is so disparate that national culture appears to have had little impact. The British TUC has accused one foreign-owned firm of breaching the OECD's Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises during the divestment process. This case is analysed and reinforces the view that the key section on Employment and Industrial Relations is of little value. This crucial chapter of the Guidelines has no impact on corporate behaviour and is ineffective because it does not in any way supplement national law. While the EEC's "Vredeling Proposals" would raise the minimum legal requirements, many firms already exceed the UK legal minimum in some respects, eg. period of notice of closure. All of the plant closures examined in this thesis were part of a broader corporate restructuring strategy. Britain has not lost its attraction for foreign investors, though divestment will continue. Delays in restructuring may ultimately prove counterproductive. As the rate of technological change accelerates, the western world must come to grips with its fundamental economic and social problem, ie. a surplus of labour. Protracted debate and discussion on further legislation on employee disclosure and consultation has tended to divert attention from more pressing matters

Anatomy of a Reversed Foreign Divestment Decision: General Motors and Its European Subsidiary, Opel.

During this recent period of economic crisis andrising unemployment, General Motors, the US multinational,announced its decision to sell off Opel, its loss-making Europeanoperations. Foreign divestment (FD) decisions are notoriouslysecret, and often very controversial, arousing strong opposition.Whilst such decisions are difficult to make, they are an essentialaspect of corporate international business strategy. Plantclosures that involve substantial lay-offs attract scrutiny fromgovernments and policy-makers. This paper explores the recentmajor divestment proposals by these two global auto producersand the subsequent negotiations with governments in the homeand host nations

Secretome Analysis of Skeletal Myogenesis Using SILAC and Shotgun Proteomics

Myogenesis, the formation of skeletal muscle, is a multistep event that commences with myoblast proliferation, followed by cell-cycle arrest, and finally the formation of multinucleated myotubes via fusion of mononucleated myoblasts. Each step is orchestrated by well-documented intracellular factors, such as cytoplasmic signalling molecules and nuclear transcription factors. Regardless, the key step in getting a more comprehensive understanding of the regulation of myogenesis is to explore the extracellular factors that are capable of eliciting the downstream intracellular factors. This could further provide valuable insight into the acute cellular response to extrinsic cues in maintaining normal muscle development. In this paper, we survey the intracellular factors that respond to extracellular cues that are responsible for the cascades of events during myogenesis: myoblast proliferation, cell-cycle arrest of myoblasts, and differentiation of myoblasts into myotubes. This focus on extracellular perspective of muscle development illustrates our mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches to identify differentially expressed secreted factors during skeletal myogenesis

Investigating Student Understanding of Quantum Mechanics: Spontaneous Models of Conductivity

Students are taught several models of conductivity, both at the introductory and the advanced level. From early macroscopic models of current flow in circuits, through the discussion of microscopic particle descriptions of electrons flowing in an atomic lattice, to the development of microscopic non-localized band diagram descriptions in advanced physics courses, they need to be able to distinguish between commonly used, though sometimes contradictory, physical models. In investigations of student reasoning about models of conduction, we find that students often are unable to account for the existence of free electrons in a conductor and create models that lead to incorrect predictions and responses contradictory to expert descriptions of the physics. We have used these findings as a guide to creating curriculum materials that we show can be effective helping students to apply the different conduction models more effectively.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 36 references and note

Understanding and Affecting Student Reasoning About Sound Waves

Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of resources, i.e. grouped building blocks of thinking that are commonly used in many different settings. Students in our university physics classes often used sets of resources that were different from the ones we wish them to use. By designing curriculum materials that ask students to think about the physics from a different view, we bring about improvement in student understanding of sound waves. Our curriculum modifications are specific to our own classes, but our description of student learning is more generally useful for teachers. We describe how students can use multiple sets of resources in their thinking, and raise questions that should be considered by both instructors and researchers.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 28 references, 7 notes. Accepted for publication in the International Journal of Science Educatio

Continued high rates of antibiotic prescribing to adults with respiratory tract infection: survey of 568 UK general practices

OBJECTIVES: Overutilisation of antibiotics may contribute to the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance, a growing international concern. This study aimed to analyse the performance of UK general practices with respect to antibiotic prescribing for respiratory tract infections (RTIs) among young and middle-aged adults.SETTING: Data are reported for 568 UK general practices contributing to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.PARTICIPANTS: Participants were adults aged 18-59?years. Consultations were identified for acute upper RTIs including colds, cough, otitis-media, rhino-sinusitis and sore throat.PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: For each consultation, we identified whether an antibiotic was prescribed. The proportion of RTI consultations with antibiotics prescribed was estimated.RESULTS: There were 568 general practices analysed. The median general practice prescribed antibiotics at 54% of RTI consultations. At the highest prescribing 10% of practices, antibiotics were prescribed at 69% of RTI consultations. At the lowest prescribing 10% of practices, antibiotics were prescribed at 39% RTI consultations. The median practice prescribed antibiotics at 38% of consultations for 'colds and upper RTIs', 48% for 'cough and bronchitis', 60% for 'sore throat', 60% for 'otitis-media' and 91% for 'rhino-sinusitis'. The highest prescribing 10% of practices issued antibiotic prescriptions at 72% of consultations for 'colds', 67% for 'cough', 78% for 'sore throat', 90% for 'otitis-media' and 100% for 'rhino-sinusitis'.CONCLUSIONS: Most UK general practices prescribe antibiotics to young and middle-aged adults with respiratory infections at rates that are considerably in excess of what is clinically justified. This will fuel antibiotic resistance.<br/

Addressing student models of energy loss in quantum tunnelling

We report on a multi-year, multi-institution study to investigate student reasoning about energy in the context of quantum tunnelling. We use ungraded surveys, graded examination questions, individual clinical interviews, and multiple-choice exams to build a picture of the types of responses that students typically give. We find that two descriptions of tunnelling through a square barrier are particularly common. Students often state that tunnelling particles lose energy while tunnelling. When sketching wave functions, students also show a shift in the axis of oscillation, as if the height of the axis of oscillation indicated the energy of the particle. We find inconsistencies between students' conceptual, mathematical, and graphical models of quantum tunnelling. As part of a curriculum in quantum physics, we have developed instructional materials to help students develop a more robust and less inconsistent picture of tunnelling, and present data suggesting that we have succeeded in doing so.Comment: Originally submitted to the European Journal of Physics on 2005 Feb 10. Pages: 14. References: 11. Figures: 9. Tables: 1. Resubmitted May 18 with revisions that include an appendix with the curriculum materials discussed in the paper (4 page small group UW-style tutorial

The pathogen profile of a honey bee queen does not reflect that of her workers

Throughout a honey bee queen’s lifetime, she is tended to by her worker daughters, who feed and groom her. Such interactions provide possible horizontal transmission routes for pathogens from the workers to the queen, and as such a queen’s pathogen profile may be representative of the workers within a colony. To explore this further, we investigated known honey bee pathogen co-occurrence, as well as pathogen transmission from workers to queens. Queens from 42 colonies were removed from their source hives and exchanged into a second, unrelated foster colony. Worker samples were taken from the source colony on the day of queen exchange and the queens were collected 24 days after introduction. All samples were screened for Nosema spp., Trypanosome spp., acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), black queen cell virus (BQCV), chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV), Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), Lake Sinai virus (LSV), and deformed wing virus master variants (DWV-A, B, and C) using RT-qPCR. The data show that LSV, Nosema, and DWV-B were the most abundant pathogens in colonies. All workers (n = 42) were LSV-positive, 88% were Nosema-positive, whilst pathogen loads were low (1 × 106 genome equivalents per pooled worker sample). All queens (n = 39) were negative for both LSV and Nosema. We found no evidence of DWV transmission occurring from worker to queen when comparing queens to foster colonies, despite DWV being present in both queens and workers. Honey bee pathogen presence and diversity in queens cannot be revealed from screening workers, nor were pathogens successfully transmitted to the queen

Photoinitiated polymerisation of monolithic stationary phases in polyimide coated capillaries using visible region LEDs

The spatially controlled synthesis of poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene dimethacrylate) monolithic stationary phases in polyimide coated fused silica capillaries by visible light induced radical polymerisation using a three-component initiator and a 660 nm light emitting diode (LED) as a light source is presented here