Managing labour: UK and Australian employers in comparative perspective, 1900-50

The exceptionalism of Australian industrial relations has long been asserted. In particular, the Australian system of industrial arbitration has been argued to contrast markedly with other countries, such as Britain, which developed a more 'voluntarist' model of industrial regulation. However this distinction relies upon limited historical research of workplace-level developments. In this paper, we focus on a comparative analysis of employer practice in British and Australian workplaces during the first half of the twentieth century. While we find some differences in the nature and extent of management control between the British and Australian experience, what is more striking are the strong similarities in employer practice in work organisation, employment and industrial relations. While economic and institutional factors explain differences in employer practice, fundamental similarities appear to relate to the close economic and social linkages between British and Australian business

Heard Island and McDonald Islands

The sub-Antarctic Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) group is an Australian external territory located in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean. The island group was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1997 for its outstanding natural universal values, primarily due to the relative absence of human influence on the natural environment. The Territory also forms part of a 65 000 km2 Marine Reserve, declared under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in 2002 to protect the conservation values of the islands and the surrounding unique and vulnerable marine ecosystems. The Territory and Marine Reserve are managed by the Australian Antarctic Division of the Department of Environment and Water Resources, in accordance with the Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan 2005, which aims to address a range of potential human pressures, most notably the risk of introduced species

Miners, silica and disability : the bi-national interplay between South Africa and the United Kingdom, c1900-1930s

This paper investigates silicosis as a disabling disease in underground mining in the United Kingdom (UK) before Second World War, exploring the important connections between South Africa and the UK and examining some of the issues raised at the 1930 International Labour Office Conference on silicosis in Johannesburg in a British context. The evidence suggests there were significant paradoxes and much contestation in medical knowledge creation, advocacy, and policy-making relating to this occupational disease. It is argued here that whilst there was an international exchange of scientific knowledge on silicosis in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was insufficient to challenge the traditional defense adopted by the British government of proven beyond all scientific doubt before effective intervention in coal mining. This circumspect approach reflected dominant business interests and despite relatively robust trade union campaigning and eventual reform, the outcomewas an accumulative legacy of respiratory disease and disability that blighted coalfield communitie

The Use and Abuse of the Doctrine of Vicarious Liability

Through an analysis of recent case law, this article seeks to highlight the flaws in the current English law approach to the doctrine of vicarious liability. Focusing on the new ‘close connection’ test for determining the ‘course of employment’ requirement, it argues that the recent expansion of employer’s no-fault liability for the acts of employees has been founded upon a set of principles that are not only theoretically unsound, but also unjustifiable by reference to the normative background of the doctrine of vicarious liability. The article further argues that the judicial reasoning used in these cases indicates fundamental confusion about the nature of the distinction between direct and vicarious liability, and a particular lack of understanding about the concept of the non-delegable duty

International Development alumnus discusses green technology

Anne McIvor graduated from the MSc Development Management programme in 1998. She went on to found Cleantech Investor, a consultancy service for clean technology companies seeking investment

Employing dynamic fuzzy membership functions to assess environmental performance in the supplier selection process

The proposed system illustrates that logic fuzzy can be used to aid management in assessing a supplier's environmental performance in the supplier selection process. A user-centred hierarchical system employing scalable fuzzy membership functions implement human priorities in the supplier selection process, with particular focus on a supplier's environmental performance. Traditionally, when evaluating supplier performance, companies have considered criteria such as price, quality, flexibility, etc. These criteria are of varying importance to individual companies pertaining to their own specific objectives. However, with environmental pressures increasing, many companies have begun to give more attention to environmental issues and, in particular, to their suppliers’ environmental performance. The framework presented here was developed to introduce efficiently environmental criteria into the existing supplier selection process and to reflect on its relevant importance to individual companies. The system presented attempts to simulate the human preference given to particular supplier selection criteria with particular focus on environmental issues when considering supplier selection. The system considers environmental data from multiple aspects of a suppliers business, and based on the relevant impact this will have on a Buying Organization, a decision is reached on the suitability of the supplier. This enables a particular supplier's strengths and weaknesses to be considered as well as considering their significance and relevance to the Buying OrganizationPeer reviewe