Private voluntary regulation in Business in the Community and Stonewall: The strengths of weak regulation

Understanding how to effectively regulate labour standards is a central issue in the field of industrial relations because it significantly impacts the lives of individual workers, as well as society and the environment at large. In this work, I draw attention to a relatively new and increasingly relevant method of regulating labour standards called ‘private voluntary regulation’. Hitherto, private voluntary regulation has been widely criticised of being weak and ineffective, particularly due to its lack of enforceability, its struggle to disseminate meaningful minimum standards and its potential for shallow implementation within the workplace. However, the existing literature on private voluntary regulation has generally ignored two substantial issues. First, research was predominantly conducted in the context of global supply chains, while national-level private voluntary regulation remains under-studied. Second, the agency of private actors, such as employers themselves or private collective organisations who may actively influence its effectiveness has largely been ignored in favour of structural considerations, such as organisational size, age, sector, and industry. To address these research gaps, I identify and evidence the relevance of three actor-centric independent variables which significantly impact the success of private voluntary regulation in shaping and influencing labour standards. These are: first, the ‘framing’ of private voluntary regulation, comprising of ‘business-case framing’ and ‘ethical framing’; second, the ‘interactions’ between the member firms in collective organisations, including ‘cooperation’ and ‘competition’; and third, the ‘governance’ of private voluntary regulation within firms, including ‘top-down governance’ and ‘bottom-up governance’. I argue that when these three variables work in conjunction with one another than labour standards can be effectively raised through private voluntary regulation. I empirically substantiate this argument through a comprehensive investigation of two British collective organisations that are involved in private voluntary regulation, namely ‘Business in the Community’ and ‘Stonewall’, as well as, ten of their member firms. I draw on multi-method data collection and triangulate three qualitative methods and one quantitative method to obtain more objective and generalisable empirical findings. These include firstly, a relational content analysis of documents, articles and press releases; secondly, 91 semi-structured interviews with experts and representatives of my case study organisations; thirdly, participant observations at 31 separate events; and finally, two small-scale online surveys with the member employers of the collective organisations. Through an iterative process of shuttling back and forth between existing theory and my collected empirical data, I develop and substantiate a theoretical argument which uses private actor agency to explain the fluctuating success of private voluntary regulation in raising labour standards. Firstly, I find that Business in the Community primarily relies on business-case framing to convince many employers to join its cause surrounding responsible business activity. These employers choose to participate in the private voluntary regulation of labour standards principally because it can result in improved financial performance through various pathways. This includes better employee recruitment and retention, the winning of new work contracts, a strengthening of brand image, and improved compliance with the law. While business-case framing results in high levels of firm commitment, its profit-centric ideology leads some businesses to merely make superficial changes to labour standards and even provides some employers with a smokescreen to hide other malpractices. Stonewall, on the other hand, relies more strongly on ethical framing which emphasises the notion that joining their membership is simply ‘the right thing to do’. I show that Stonewall gently challenges member firms on a moral level which is comparatively a less salient financial argument, and yet leads to more profound changes in labour standards. However, both Business in the Community and Stonewall tailor their usage of business-case and ethical framing depending whom they are talking to, and often use a combination of both types of framing. In fact, I show that the most successful changes to labour standards are made in those firms that actively respond to business-case, as well as ethical framing. Second, Stonewall primarily relies on inter-firm competition through its central benchmarking tool, namely the ‘Workplace Equality Index’. It fosters a competitive environment where employers are encouraged to self-monitor their own workplace policies and practices, to submit annual applications with supporting evidence, to receive external feedback, and to actively engage in a ‘race to the top’ of constantly elevating levels of labour standards. Business in the Community also utilises some successful competition, such as through its annual ‘Responsible Business Awards’; yet, I found these tools to be rather celebratory and to result in surface-level changes to labour standards. Instead, the main emphasis of interaction in Business in the Community is on creating cooperation between employers through its prestigious business network. This tactic successfully resulted in the dissemination and sharing of best practice, as well as in some communal projects. However, cooperation through business networks, I found, may at times remain a self-congratulatory façade so that employers feel as part of a ‘responsible business club’, without necessarily raising labour standards effectively. Competition and cooperation are not necessarily mutually exclusive however, and the most successful changes are made in those organisations that are both part of cooperative employer groups and are simultaneously in constant competition with other businesses. Finally, my ten firm level case studies revealed that top-down governance and bottom-up governance each carry distinctive advantages and disadvantages in implementing changes to labour standards through private voluntary regulation. Top down governance is most effective when changes are tactically and incrementally drip-fed into firms’ organisational culture, as well as actively aligned to their mission and values. Conversely, top-down governance can become tokenistic when new policies are not effectively translated into practices and lack dissemination across the organisation. Bottom-up governance is most effective in those firms where individuals or groups of employees actively take ownership of new private voluntary regulation initiatives and passionately use their agency to transform organisational cultures from within. Employee network groups (e.g. ‘LGBT employee networks’) are particularly valuable tools to drive change, especially when they provide workers with a voice and the power to influence management decision making through information feedback loops. However, bottom-up governance can at times lack the direction, strategy, support, and resources to effectively influence labour standards. Once again, my findings suggest a symbiotic and mutually reinforcing relationship between top-down and bottom-up governance leading to the most successful examples of change to labour standards through private voluntary regulation. Paradoxically, I find that those very aspects of private voluntary regulation that induce many critics to condemn it as ‘weak’, can – when collective organisations and their member employers utilise their agency in meaningful ways – turn into the ‘strengths’ of private voluntary regulation. When these private actors manage to successfully shape and influence private voluntary regulation through framing, interaction, and governance then it can in fact become a strong form of regulation. First, business-case and ethical framing can lead to an approachability and trust between collective organisations and private employers. Second, competition and cooperation can lead to an ever-evolving set of best practice standards. Third, top down and bottom-up governed private voluntary regulation can together lead to deep-rooted changes of organisational culture which emphasise worker voice. Thus, analogous to Mark Granovetter’s (1973) ‘strength of weak ties’, the effects of private voluntary regulation – allegedly a weak form of regulation – can through private actor agency, be strong

Rank Difference Analysis of Microarrays (RDAM), a novel approach to statistical analysis of microarray expression profiling data

BACKGROUND: A key step in the analysis of microarray expression profiling data is the identification of genes that display statistically significant changes in expression signals between two biological conditions. RESULTS: We describe a new method, Rank Difference Analysis of Microarrays (RDAM), which estimates the total number of truly varying genes and assigns a p-value to each signal variation. Information on a group of differentially expressed genes includes the sensitivity and the false discovery rate. We demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of our approach by applying it to a large synthetic expression data set and to a biological data set obtained by comparing vegetatively-growing wild type and tor2-mutant yeast strains. In both cases we observed a significant improvement of the power of analysis when our method is compared to another popular nonparametric method. CONCLUSIONS: This study provided a valuable new statistical method to analyze microarray data. We conclude that the good quality of the results obtained by RDAM is mainly due to the quasi-perfect equalization of variation distribution, which is related to the standardization procedure used and to the measurement of variation by rank difference

MIMAS: an innovative tool for network-based high density oligonucleotide microarray data management and annotation

BACKGROUND: The high-density oligonucleotide microarray (GeneChip) is an important tool for molecular biological research aiming at large-scale detection of small nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA and genome-wide analysis of mRNA concentrations. Local array data management solutions are instrumental for efficient processing of the results and for subsequent uploading of data and annotations to a global certified data repository at the EBI (ArrayExpress) or the NCBI (GeneOmnibus). DESCRIPTION: To facilitate and accelerate annotation of high-throughput expression profiling experiments, the Microarray Information Management and Annotation System (MIMAS) was developed. The system is fully compliant with the Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) convention. MIMAS provides life scientists with a highly flexible and focused GeneChip data storage and annotation platform essential for subsequent analysis and interpretation of experimental results with clustering and mining tools. The system software can be downloaded for academic use upon request. CONCLUSION: MIMAS implements a novel concept for nation-wide GeneChip data management whereby a network of facilities is centered on one data node directly connected to the European certified public microarray data repository located at the EBI. The solution proposed may serve as a prototype approach to array data management between research institutes organized in a consortium

The unexpected survival of employer collective action in the UK

The study of employer collective organizations has been revitalized recently but the most effective mode of theoretical analysis is debated. This article applies Schmitter and Streeck's competing logics of membership and influence framework to employer organizations in the United Kingdom. While literature using this framework argues that employer collective bodies are likely to prioritize the logic of influence by influencing the state through partnering with governments, we find that the opposite happened in the United Kingdom. Changing political economy meant that the logic of influence decayed in salience although did not disappear. Employer organizations prioritized instead the logic of membership to ensure survival

Profiling spermatogenic failure in adult testes bearing Sox9-deficient Sertoli cells identifies genes involved in feminization, inflammation and stress

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Sox9 </it>(<it>Sry </it>box containing gene 9) is a DNA-binding transcription factor involved in chondrocyte development and sex determination. The protein's absence in testicular Sertoli nurse cells has been shown to disrupt testicular function in adults but little is known at the genome-wide level about molecular events concomitant with testicular break-down.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To determine the genome-wide effect on mRNA concentrations triggered by the absence of <it>Sox9 </it>in Sertoli cells we analysed adult testicular tissue from wild-type versus mutant mice with high-density oligonucleotide microarrays and integrated the output of this experiment with regulatory motif predictions and protein-protein network data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report the genome-wide mRNA signature of adult testes lacking <it>Sox9 </it>in Sertoli cells before and after the onset of late spermatogenic failure as compared to fertile controls. The GeneChip data integrated with evolutionarily conserved <it>Sox9 </it>DNA binding motifs and regulatory network data identified genes involved in feminization, stress response and inflammation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results extend previous observations that genes required for female gonadogenesis are up-regulated in the absence of <it>Sox9 </it>in fetal Sertoli cells to the adult stage. Importantly, we identify gene networks involved in immunological processes and stress response which is reminiscent of a phenomenon occurring in a sub-group of infertile men. This suggests mice lacking <it>Sox9 </it>in their Sertoli cells to be a potentially useful model for adult human testicular failure.</p

Fhl5/Act, a CREM-binding transcriptional activator required for normal sperm maturation and morphology, is not essential for testicular gene expression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The LIM domain protein Fhl5 was previously found to interact with CREM, a DNA binding transcriptional regulator necessary for spermiogenesis in mammals. Co-transfection experiments using heterologous promoter constructs indicated a role for Fhl5 in transcriptional up-regulation of CREM-dependent testicular genes. Male mice lacking Fhl5 were reported to be fertile but displayed partially abnormal sperm maturation and morphology.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To identify Fhl5 testicular target genes we carried out two whole-genome expression profiling experiments using high-density oligonucleotide microarrays and total testis samples from Fhl5 wild-type versus homozygous mutant mice first in different and then in isogenic strain backgrounds.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Weak signal differences were detected in non-isogenic samples but no statistically significant expression changes were observed when isogenic Fhl5 mutant and wild-type samples were compared.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The outcome of these experiments suggests that testicular expression profiling is extremely sensitive to the genetic background and that Fhl5 is not essential for testicular gene expression to a level detected by microarray-based measurements. This might be due to redundant function of the related and similarly expressed protein Fhl4.</p

Employer organisations transformed

Employer organisations and the literature examining them have transformed since their inception in the 19th century. We systematically review this literature and the evolving role of employer organisations by focusing on the most cited publications of this body of academic work. This article provides a synopsis of our current understanding of employer organisations, identifies gaps in our knowledge, and develops the following argument. Employer organisations adapted to changing socio‐economic contexts by evolving within and across three roles—as industrial relations actor, political actor, and service provider. Historically, employer organisations were predominantly understood as an industrial relations actor with collective bargaining as their defining activity. However, employer organisations also influenced the political process through lobbying and participating in corporatist arrangements, although more recently their provision of member services has grown in scope and importance

Revisiting voluntarism: private voluntary regulation by employer forums in the United Kingdom

The abstract contributes to the literature by identifying a new form of voluntarism, the employer-led voluntarism of Employer Forums in the United Kingdom. Forums carry out private voluntary regulation to raise labour and social standards within their member firms through introducing codes of conducts and implementing norms through assessments, benchmarking, and certification. The article compares this new form with the traditional approach where unions and employer associations regulate jointly through collective bargaining. While the scope, scale, and impact of new and traditional voluntarism diverge, both are underpinned by the regulation of Employment Relations by non-state actors. Voluntarism is not in secular decline, but instead continues through the emergence of new employer-led forms

Ashbya Genome Database 3.0: a cross-species genome and transcriptome browser for yeast biologists

BACKGROUND: The Ashbya Genome Database (AGD) 3.0 is an innovative cross-species genome and transcriptome browser based on release 40 of the Ensembl developer environment. DESCRIPTION: AGD 3.0 provides information on 4726 protein-encoding loci and 293 non-coding RNA genes present in the genome of the filamentous fungus Ashbya gossypii. A synteny viewer depicts the chromosomal location and orientation of orthologous genes in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genome-wide expression profiling data obtained with high-density oligonucleotide microarrays (GeneChips) are available for nearly all currently annotated protein-coding loci in A. gossypii and S. cerevisiae. CONCLUSION: AGD 3.0 hence provides yeast- and genome biologists with comprehensive report pages including reliable DNA annotation, Gene Ontology terms associated with S. cerevisiae orthologues and RNA expression data as well as numerous links to external sources of information. The database is accessible at