La recherche comparative en relations industrielles: l'apport de la tradition ethnographique

La recherche comparative en relations industrielles bénéficie actuellement d'un regain d'intérêt. Un des thèmes majeurs est la génération du consentement au sein de l'atelier. Il existe déjà une tradition de recherche bien établie sur ce thème, mais son apport n'a reçu que peu d'attention jusqu'ici. L'article expose les grandes lignes de cette tradition ethnographique, mettant ses forces en relief. Il existe aussi des points faibles, notamment en ce qui a trait à la généralisation des résultats. Après évaluation, ces limites paraissent moins définitives que ne le suggèrent certaines critiques. Des exemples de l'application de cette approche à l'étude comparative sont présentés, et un programme de recherche est avancé.The shopfloor is receiving renewed attention within the field of comparative industrial relations. This interest reflects academic concerns, notably a wish to understand how new managerial techniques actually function, but also developments in the real world, particularly the competitive challenge of Japan and the perception that it is in the regulation of labour within the workplace that a large part of Japan's success lies. An important but neglected mode of workplace inquiry, the ethnographie tradition, has a major part to play in understanding the shopfloor in comparative perspective. The paper sets out its approach, considers issues of validity and generalization, illustrates its contribution to comparative analysis, and outlines a research agenda for the future.The approach has three key components. The first is its theoretical perspective on the nature of work relations. Conflict is the central principle underlying the organization of work because workers are exploited by employers. This "structured antagonism" underlies day-to-day relations. At this level, cooperation becomes significant. Conflict is not separate from co-operation. The two are intertwined, and the analytical task is to understand how in a particular workplace they are organized and expressed. Second, therefore, the object of inquiry is the regulation of work: the rules, procedures, customs and understandings that regulate how workers' capacity to labour is translated into actual effort. Third, research methods place particular weight on intensive observation, though studies that use relatively casual observation still adopt an ethnographic orientation to the extent that they focus on day-to-day behaviour and the processes by which conflict and consent are organized.Several problems with the approach are commonly identified. One is a tendency to descend into mere description of the drudgery of working lives. A second is that studies of individual workplaces can offer no wider generalizations. The former is a weakness of certain studies, and to develop its potential the approach needs a tightly disciplined consideration of analytical issues. There are five ways in which it can thereby offer generalizations: 1) the excavation of activities that would otherwise lie hidden, together with the demonstration that they question certain theories about organizational functioning; 2) the indication of mechanisms linking different phenomena together; 3) the analysis of single "critical cases" which are able to throw light on wider developments; 4) the use of comparisons of workplaces; and 5) the development of a research programme which permits cumulative knowledge to be generated. International comparisons using ethnographic methods are as yet rare, but four approaches illustrate the potential. The first is simply to explore a country in the light of existing assumptions. For example, the small number of shopfloor studies of Japan help to explode myths about the nature and origins of workers' consent. Second, one country is studied using the perspectives of another. This can ask about processes which tend to be taken for granted within a country and can begin to explain how processes of labour regulation differ, for example what role the strike plays in different national regimes. Third, studies from different countries can be set alongside each other. Where these studies were conducted in similar types of technology and product markets, the distinctive effects of national Systems are revealed. For example, studies of Britain and North America reveal the distinctive roles played by the state in the development of factory regimes. Finally, direct comparison between workplaces can test out and develop ideas derived from more indirect comparisons.Such studies help to explain what remains obscure within existing comparative analyses. For example, the "political economy" tradition tries to explain patterns of labour regulation in terms of the incorporation of labour within national political Systems, and it uses strike statistics as a major index of industrial behaviour. An ethnographic approach goes much deeper than such statistics, and it relates national-level developments to the site where cooperation is actually generated, namely, the workplace. It can thus resolve certain puzzles within existing accounts.There are several ways in which the perspective can develop its comparative contribution. An obvious one is to explore changes in manufacturing industry, looking for example at quality circles in two or more countries and exploring their connections with existing Systems of regulation. There is also a need to extend the approach to little-studied groups such as white-collar workers. The range of countries can also be extended, from the advanced capitalist nations which have generally been the focus, to newly industrializing economics.The tradition has, in view of its marginal place in the social science canon, made several significant contributions in the past. As the workplace gains increasing significance in the pursuit of competitive advantage, its future potential is even greater

From Industrial Relations to the Employment Relationship: The Development of Research in Britain

Nous utilisons des données sur l'accréditation dans la province de la Nouvelle-Ecosse pour établir que la convergence des systèmes de relations industrielles américain et canadien est loin d'être inévitable. Nous examinons la base de la thèse de la convergence à partir de la littérature sur les campagnes d'accréditation. Nous n'avons trouvé que très peu de données canadiennes permettant une comparaison directe entre les campagnes d'organisation des syndicats nationaux canadiens versus les habiletés d'organisation des unions internationales et le taux de succès global des syndicats oeuvrant exclusivement aux États-Unis.Afin de faire cette comparaison, nous présentons le contexte des relations industrielles en Nouvelle-Ecosse et nous soutenons que l'environnement socio-politique et du droit du travail n'y est pas différent de celui des États-Unis. Ensuite, nous décrivons notre méthode de recherche. Ce faisant, nous présentons un modèle incluant la variable dépendante, le taux de succès de l'accréditation, et des variables indépendantes spécifiques aux employeurs, aux syndicats et aux situations.Après avoir présenté quelques statistiques descriptives concernant les campagnes d'accréditation entre 1979 et 1988, nous utilisons l'analyse probit (tableau 2) pour voir dans quelle mesure les différentes variables spécifiques aux employeurs, aux syndicats et aux situations sont reliées à la variable dépendante.Comparés aux unions internationales du secteur privé, les syndicats canadiens du secteur public et du secteur privé connaissent une probabilité significativement plus grande (p<.05) de succès dans une élection d'accréditation. 11 y a une forte relation entre la taille de l'unité de négociation et le succès dans l'organisation, les plus grandes unités connaissant moins de succès (p<.01). À l'examen du groupe occupationnel des travailleurs, les coefficients de tous les autres groupes sont négatifs lorsque comparés à la santé, au service social et à l'éducation des travailleurs. Cependant, seulement ces campagnes d'organisation impliquant des employés de service connaissaient moins de probabilité (p<.05) d'aboutir à une victoire syndicale. Conformément à nos attentes et à la documentation existante (Gilson et al. 1989), les campagnes d'organisation conduites au Cap-Breton avaient plus de probabilité (p<.05) de réussir. Alors, contrairement aux arguments de Troy, nous concluons que les campagnes d'organisation dans le secteur privé canadien, même lorsque conduites dans un environnement juridique de style américain, demeurent remarquablement efficaces avec un taux de gain de 68 % sur une période de dix ans, démontrant aucune preuve de déclin longitudinal. De plus, nous avons découvert de façon irréfutable que les syndicats internationaux sont incapables de rivaliser avec la performance d'organisation des syndicats canadiens.En somme, il n'y aucune différence significative entre le secteur public et le secteur privé lorsque ce sont des syndicats canadiens qui conduisent les campagnes d'organisation. Cela implique que c'est seulement la présence de syndicats internationaux qui explique toute différence significative dans le succès des campagnes d'organisation. Sur la période de dix ans étudiée, nous n'avons trouvé aucune tendance à la baisse dans l'habileté des syndicats canadiens à organiser le secteur privé — une prédiction centrale au point de vue de Troy à l'effet que la convergence est inévitable (1991 : 43). Même sans politique du travail interventionniste, politique propre aux relations industrielles canadiennes selon Troy, le succès des campagnes d'organisation des syndicats canadiens dans le secteur privé néo-écossais entre 1979 et 1988 s'établit au taux remarquablement élevé de 68 %. Cela confirme ce que d'autres ont conclu (Rose et Chaison 1985; Kumar 1991; Robinson 1992) à l'effet que les syndicats canadiens sont des organisateurs supérieurs. Toute étude des tendances divergentes entre les États-Unis et le Canada doit tenir compte de ce facteur. Les futures études canadiennes portant sur le succès de l'organisation syndicale devront examiner explicitement les habiletés d'organisation en termes d'allocation des ressources, d'impact du syndicalisme social (Robinson 1992) et des racines du support au syndicalisme dans les communautés (Gilson, Spencer et Granville 1989).This paper uses certification data from the province of Nova Scotia to provide further evidence that convergence of industrial relations Systems between the U.S. and Canada is far from unavoidable. Contrary to arguments advanced by Troy, private sector organizing in Canada, even when operating under a U.S.-style legal environment, remains remarkably robust, posting a win rate of 68 percent over a ten-year period with no evidence of longitudinal decline. Furthermore, there is compelling evidence that international unions are unable to match the organizing performance of their Canadian counterparts

El conflicto laboral: temas y debates en la investigación reciente.

Sin resume

On the poverty of a priorism: technology, surveillance in the workplace and employee responses

Many debates about surveillance at work are framed by a set of a priori assumptions about the nature of the employment relationship that inhibits efforts to understand the complexity of employee responses to the spread of new technology at work. In particular, the debate about the prevalence of resistance is hamstrung from the outset by the assumption that all apparently non-compliant acts, whether intentional or not, are to be counted as acts of resistance. Against this background this paper seeks to redress the balance by reviewing results from an ethnographic study of surveillance-capable technologies in a number of British workplaces. It argues for greater attention to be paid to the empirical character of the social relations at work in and through which technologies are deployed and in the context of which employee responses are played out

On Central Charges and Hamiltonians for 0-brane dynamics

We consider general properties of central charges of zero branes and associated duality invariants, in view of their double role, on the bulk and on the world volume (quantum-mechanical) theory. A detailed study of the BPS condition for the mass spectrum arising from toroidal compactifications is given for 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 BPS states in any dimensions. As a byproduct, we retreive the U-duality invariant conditions on the charge (zero mode) spectrum and the orbit classification of BPS states preserving different fractions of supersymmetry. The BPS condition for 0-branes in theories with 16 supersymmetries in any dimension is also discussed.Comment: 23 pages, latex fil

Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Combining Yao’s Algorithm and Double Bases

Abstract. In this paper we propose to take one step back in the use of double base number systems for elliptic curve point scalar multiplication. Using a mod-ified version of Yao’s algorithm, we go back from the popular double base chain representation to a more general double base system. Instead of representing an integer k as Pn i=1 2 bi3ti where (bi) and (ti) are two decreasing sequences, we only set a maximum value for both of them. Then, we analyze the efficiency of our new method using different bases and optimal parameters. In particular, we pro-pose for the first time a binary/Zeckendorf representation for integers, providing interesting results. Finally, we provide a comprehensive comparison to state-of-the-art methods, including a large variety of curve shapes and latest point addition formulae speed-ups

Granular Solid Hydrodynamics

Granular elasticity, an elasticity theory useful for calculating static stress distribution in granular media, is generalized to the dynamic case by including the plastic contribution of the strain. A complete hydrodynamic theory is derived based on the hypothesis that granular medium turns transiently elastic when deformed. This theory includes both the true and the granular temperatures, and employs a free energy expression that encapsulates a full jamming phase diagram, in the space spanned by pressure, shear stress, density and granular temperature. For the special case of stationary granular temperatures, the derived hydrodynamic theory reduces to {\em hypoplasticity}, a state-of-the-art engineering model.Comment: 42 pages 3 fi

The ZEPLIN II dark matter detector: data acquisition system and data reduction

ZEPLIN-II is a two-phase (liquid/gas) xenon dark matter detector searching for WIMP-nucleon interactions. In this paper we describe the data acquisition system used to record the data from ZEPLIN-II and the reduction procedures which parameterise the data for subsequent analysis.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure