Do cultural differences explain differences in attitudes towards unions? Culture and attitudes towards unions among call centre workers in Britain and India

This article adds to the literature on worker attitudes towards unions by investigating the impact of cultural attitudes and the call centre labour process on union attitudes among call centre workers in Britain and India. It is hypothesised that workers with egalitarian and collectivist cultural attitudes will be more likely to have pro-union attitudes than other workers, although if the impact of cultural attitudes is mediated by history and institutions, it might be expected that this relationship is stronger for British than Indian workers. Conversely, if union attitudes are largely a function of the call centre labour process, we would expect union attitudes to be similar among workers in both countries. Our results only partially support our hypotheses. Collectivist attitudes are only weakly related to union attitudes among the British sample but are more strongly related in the Indian sample. There are significant differences between union attitudes among our British and Indian samples. The article concludes that relationship between cultural attitudes and union attitudes are heavily dependent on institutional context. Cultural attitudes are unlikely to be either a constraint or a facilitator of union efforts to organise workers

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube–Poly(porphyrin) Hybrid for Volatile Organic Compounds Detection

Porphyrins due to their unique and interesting physicochemical properties have been widely investigated as functional materials for chemical sensor fabrication. However, their poor conductivity is a major limitation toward the realization of porphyrin-based field-effect transistor/chemiresistor sensor. The issue of conductivity can be overcome by exploiting the excellent electrical property of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to make a SWNTs-based hybrid device in which SWNTs would act as a transducer and porphyrin as a sensory layer. The present attempt was to fabricate a SWNTs–poly­(tetraphenylporphyrin) hybrid through electrochemical route and to evaluate its potential as a low-power chemiresistor sensor for sensing acetone vapor as a model for volatile organic compounds. Functionalization of SWNTs with porphyrin polymer by the electrochemical method resulted in a fuller coverage of SWNTs surface compared to a partial coverage by adsorption and thereby higher sensitivity. SWNTs were coated with poly­(tetraphenylporphyrin) of different thickness by applying different charge density to optimize sensing performance. Differences in sensing performance were noticed for hybrids fabricated at varying charge densities, and the optimum sensing response was found at 19.65 mC/cm². The hybrid exhibited a wide dynamic range for acetone vapor sensing from 50 to ∼230 000 ppm with a limit of detection of 9 ppm. The field-effect transistor studies showed a negative threshold voltage shift and almost constant transconductance when exposed to air/analyte, indicating electrostatic gating dominated sensing mechanism. Further, the results confirmed a good stability of the device over a period of 180 days. The long-term device stability along with the sensing capability at low analyte concentration with a wide dynamic range and easily scalable fabrication technique signify the potential of SWNT–poly­(porphyrin) hybrid for volatile organic compound sensing applications

Effect of Atomic Interconnects on Percolation in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Thin Film Networks

The formation of covalent bonds to single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) or graphene surfaces usually leads to a decrease in the electrical conductivity and mobility as a result of the structural rehybridization of the functionalized carbon atoms from sp² to sp³. In the present study, we explore the effect of metal deposition on semiconducting (SC-) and metallic (MT-) SWNT thin films in the vicinity of the percolation threshold and we are able to clearly delineate the effects of weak physisorption, ionic chemisorption with charge transfer, and covalent hexahapto (η⁶) chemisorption on these percolating networks. The results support the idea that for those metals capable of forming bis-hexahapto-bonds, the generation of covalent (η⁶-SWNT)­M­(η⁶-SWNT) interconnects provides a conducting pathway in the SWNT films and establishes the transition metal bis-hexahapto organometallic bond as an electronically conjugating linkage between graphene surfaces