Context, strategy and financial participation: a comparative analysis

This article investigates where financial participation is most likely to be encountered, and explores its compatibility with collective forms of employee voice. It is based on the findings of a major international survey of human resource management (HRM) practices. We found that financial participation was not affected by collective employee voice, but that national context and associated HRM strategies had significant effects on its nature and extent. As financial participation is likely to make for greater variation in wage rates, it tends to weaken industry-level bargaining. By re-casting the fundamental determinants of wages, it is also likely to facilitate greater wage dispersion within the firm. Hence, it was found that financial participation is more commonly encountered in liberal market contexts, and in firms practising calculative HRM, where countervailing employee power is weak, whether or not collective bargaining is formally present

Employee turnover, HRM and institutional contexts.

Literature on comparative capitalism remains divided between approaches founded on stylized case study evidence and descriptions of broad trends, and those that focus on macro data. In contrast, this study explores the relevance of Amable’s approach to understanding differences in employment relations practice, based on firm-level micro data. The article examines employee–employer interdependence (including turnover rates) in different categories of economy as classified by Amable. The findings confirm that exit – whether forced or voluntary – remains more common in market-based economies than in their continental counterparts and that institutionalized employee voice is an important variable in reducing turnover. However, there is as much diversity within the different country categories as between them, and across continental Europe. In Denmark’s case, high turnover is combined with high unionization, showing the effects of a ‘flexicurity’ strategy. While employee voice may be stronger in Scandinavia, interdependence is weaker than in continental Europe

Collective and individual voice: convergence in Europe?

This paper uses longitudinal survey data from Britain, Germany and Sweden to examine whether, as some researchers have suggested, there has been a convergence internationally towards individual forms of employee voice mechanism and, if so, to measure the extent and trajectory of change. The paper begins by examining the importance of the employee voice issue. It then reviews competing accounts of the utility of different forms of employee voice and their manifestations within different varieties of capitalism. It is hypothesized that there has been a general trend away from collective and towards individual voice mechanisms; this reflects the predominant trajectory of managerial practices towards convergence with the liberal market model. This hypothesis is largely rejected. The data showed only very limited evidence of directional convergence towards individual voice models in the three countries. Collective voice remains significant in larger organizations, and although it takes a wide range of forms that include but go beyond unions and works councils, this is a positive finding for proponents of those institutions

Varieties of firm: complementarity and bounded diversity

This is a study of the nature of internal diversity within liberal and collaborative market economies. Based on large scale comparative survey data, we assess the extent to which specific clusters of practices are associated with specific varieties of capitalism. Given that recent literature has pointed to internal diversity within specific national contexts, we explore the nature of internal diversity within both liberal and collaborative market economies, and what makes each variety of capitalism distinct. We find that more than one cluster of practices is indeed likely to be encountered in a particular national context, but that this diversity was bounded: only a limited number of alternative paradigms are likely to emerge and persist. The survey findings not only shed light on the nature of this internal diversity, but also reveal the fact that liberal and collaborative markets remain distinct, with the rights accruing to employees being more deeply embedded in a wide cross section of firms within the latter

Engineering soil organic matter quality: Biodiesel Co-Product (BCP) stimulates exudation of nitrogenous microbial biopolymers

Biodiesel Co-Product (BCP) is a complex organic material formed during the transesterification of lipids. We investigated the effect of BCP on the extracellular microbial matrix or ‘extracellular polymeric substance’ (EPS) in soil which is suspected to be a highly influential fraction of soil organic matter (SOM). It was hypothesised that more N would be transferred to EPS in soil given BCP compared to soil given glycerol. An arable soil was amended with BCP produced from either 1) waste vegetable oils or 2) pure oilseed rape oil, and compared with soil amended with 99% pure glycerol; all were provided with 15N labelled KNO3. We compared transfer of microbially assimilated 15N into the extracellular amino acid pool, and measured concomitant production of exopolysaccharide. Following incubation, the 15N enrichment of total hydrolysable amino acids (THAAs) indicated that intracellular anabolic products had incorporated the labelled N primarily as glutamine and glutamate. A greater proportion of the amino acids in EPS were found to contain 15N than those in the THAA pool, indicating that the increase in EPS was comprised of bioproducts synthesised de novo. Moreover, BCP had increased the EPS production efficiency of the soil microbial community (μg EPS per unit ATP) up to approximately double that of glycerol, and caused transfer of 21% more 15N from soil solution into EPS-amino acids. Given the suspected value of EPS in agricultural soils, the use of BCP to stimulate exudation is an interesting tool to consider in the theme of delivering sustainable intensification

Multiple double-exchange mechanism by Mn2+^{2+}-doping in manganite compounds

Double-exchange mechanisms in RE$_{1-x}$AE$_{x}$MnO$_{3}$ manganites (where RE is a trivalent rare-earth ion and AE is a divalent alkali-earth ion) relies on the strong exchange interaction between two Mn$^{3+}$ and Mn$^{4+}$ ions through interfiling oxygen 2p states. Nevertheless, the role of RE and AE ions has ever been considered "silent" with respect to the DE conducting mechanisms. Here we show that a new path for DE-mechanism is indeed possible by partially replacing the RE-AE elements by Mn$^{2+}$-ions, in La-deficient La$_{x}$MnO$_{3-\delta}$ thin films. X-ray absorption spectroscopy demonstrated the relevant presence of Mn$^{2+}$ ions, which is unambiguously proved to be substituted at La-site by Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering. Mn$^{2+}$ is proved to be directly correlated to the enhanced magneto-transport properties because of an additional hopping mechanism trough interfiling Mn$^{2+}$-ions, theoretically confirmed by calculations within the effective single band model. The very idea to use Mn$^{2+}$ both as a doping element and an ions electronically involved in the conduction mechanism, has never been foreseen, revealing a new phenomena in transport properties of manganites. More important, such a strategy might be also pursed in other strongly correlated materials.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Biodiesel co-product (BCP) decreases soil nitrogen (N) losses to groundwater

This study compares a traditional agricultural approach to minimise N pollution of groundwater (incorporation of crop residues) with applications of small amounts of biodiesel co-product (BCP) to arable soils. Loss of N from soil to the aqueous phase was shown to be greatly reduced in the laboratory, mainly by decreasing concentrations of dissolved nitrate-N. Increases in soil microbial biomass occurred within 4 days of BCP application—indicating rapid adaptation of the soil microbial community. Increases in biomass-N suggest that microbes were partly mechanistic in the immobilisation of N in soil. Straw, meadow-grass and BCP were subsequently incorporated into experimental soil mesocosms of depth equal to plough layer (23 cm), and placed in an exposed netted tunnel to simulate field conditions. Leachate was collected after rainfall between the autumn of 2009 and spring of 2010. Treatment with BCP resulted in less total-N transferred from soil to water over the entire period, with 32.1, 18.9, 13.2 and 4.2 mg N kg(−1) soil leached cumulatively from the control, grass, straw and BCP treatments, respectively. More than 99 % of nitrate leaching was prevented using BCP. Accordingly, soils provided with crop residues or BCP showed statistically significant increases in soil N and C compared to the control (no incorporation). Microbial biomass, indicated by soil ATP concentration, was also highest for soils given BCP (p < 0.05). These results indicate that field-scale incorporation of BCP may be an effective method to reduce nitrogen loss from agricultural soils, prevent nitrate pollution of groundwater and augment the soil microbial biomass