Managerial efficiency and human capital: an application to English association football

The problem of hidden action in organizations makes direct measurement of managerial performance problematic. But in English association football hidden action is unlikely to be as serious a problem because the owner observes the manager's performance each time the team plays. In this situation production frontier analysis may be used to measure managerial performance and analyze the variation in performance across managers in terms of manager human capital. Having some kind of prior affiliation with the club and achieving international recognition as a player are especially important. Overall, initial experience matters more than specific and general managerial experience. Copyright

The vulnerable worker in Britain and problems at work

This article investigates the experience of low paid workers without union representation. It reports on the findings of a recent survey of 501 low paid, non-unionized workers who experienced problems at work. The results demonstrate that problems at work are widespread and, despite a strong propensity to take action to try to resolve them, most workers failed to achieve satisfactory resolutions. In the light of these results, we argue that the current UK Government definition of vulnerability is too narrow because our results suggest that a large proportion of low paid, unrepresented workers are at risk of being denied their employment rights. Therefore we question the ability of the UK's current system of predominantly non-unionized employment relations to deliver employment rights effectively and fairly. © 2009 BSA Publications Ltd®

Training, Job Satisfaction, and Workplace Performance in Britain: Evidence from WERS 2004

This paper analyses the relationship between training, job satisfaction, and workplace performance using the British 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Several measures of performance are analysed including absence, quits, financial performance, labour productivity, and product quality. Although there is clear evidence that training is positively associated with job satisfaction, and job satisfaction in turn is positively associated with most measures of performance, the relationship between training and performance is complex, depending on both the particular measures of training and of performance used in the analysis. Copyright 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation 2009 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd..