Corporate governance and employment relations

Using the 2004 United Kingdom Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this paper examines the impact of corporate governance on HRM practices and employment relations outcomes within organizations in the UK. The analysis suggests that when a remote external stake-holder is assigned dominance, particularly in the case where their liability is limited and the organization is large, the conditioning of managerial commitments on the requirements of the dominant stake-holder has the potential to undermine the effectiveness of the HRM system in achieving its objectives

Corporate Governance and Employment Relations

Using the 2004 United Kingdom Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this paper examines the impact of corporate governance on HRM practices and employment relations outcomes within organizations in the UK. The analysis suggests that when a remote external stake-holder is assigned dominance, particularly in the case where their liability is limited and the organization is large, the conditioning of managerial commitments on the requirements of the dominant stake-holder has the potential to undermine the effectiveness of the HRM system in achieving its objectives.Corporate governance, human resource management, stakeholding, employment relations, work and employment relations survey

Blazes: Coordination Analysis for Distributed Programs

Distributed consistency is perhaps the most discussed topic in distributed systems today. Coordination protocols can ensure consistency, but in practice they cause undesirable performance unless used judiciously. Scalable distributed architectures avoid coordination whenever possible, but under-coordinated systems can exhibit behavioral anomalies under fault, which are often extremely difficult to debug. This raises significant challenges for distributed system architects and developers. In this paper we present Blazes, a cross-platform program analysis framework that (a) identifies program locations that require coordination to ensure consistent executions, and (b) automatically synthesizes application-specific coordination code that can significantly outperform general-purpose techniques. We present two case studies, one using annotated programs in the Twitter Storm system, and another using the Bloom declarative language.Comment: Updated to include additional materials from the original technical report: derivation rules, output stream label

Corporate governance, stakeholding and the nature of employment relations within the firm

This paper investigates the effect of different forms of corporate governance on the structure and nature of stakeholder relationships within organizations and the consequent impact on employment relations within the firm. In this, HRM assumes a dual role in delivering improvements in production efficiency and in fostering employee commitment to the organization and its objectives. However, different forms of corporate governance prioritise stakeholder interests in ways that may bring these two objectives into conflict. To address these questions, we examine the interrelationship between corporate governance, HRM practices and HRM outcomes in a comparative analysis of companies operating under alternative forms of governance, including private sector, public sector and family-owned firms. The empirical analysis is based on the UK Work and Employment Relations Survey (WERS98)

Corporate governance, stake-holding and the nature of employment relations within the firm

This paper investigates the effect of different forms of corporate governance on the structure and nature of stakeholder relationships within organizations and the consequent impact on employment relations within the firm. In this, HRM assumes a dual role in delivering improvements in production efficiency and in fostering employee commitment to the organization and its objectives. However, different forms of corporate governance prioritise stakeholder interests in ways that may bring these two objectives into conflict. To address these questions, we examine the interrelationship between corporate governance, HRM practices and HRM outcomes in a comparative analysis of companies operating under alternative forms of governance, including private sector, public sector and family-owned firms. The empirical analysis is based on the UK Work and Employment Relations Survey (WERS98).corporate governance, human resource management, stakeholding, employment, relations and Work and Employment Relations Survey

Applications of interannual-to-decadal climate prediction: an exploratory discussion on rainfall in the Sahel Region of Africa

This perspective explores how climate services may potentially incorporate information emerging from the new science of interannual-to-decadal (I2D) climate prediction. The geographic focus is the Sahel region of West Africa, which has demonstrated prediction advances for rainfall on the I2D timescale, and vulnerability to climate hazards. The perspective draws on reviews of predictability and applications in the region and a national workshop in Sudan to explore applications. Decadal prediction is an emerging capability, to date being undertaken primarily as a learning process. However, for the multi-year forecast information, we identify a number of new dimensions that challenge product design and user uptake. Current experiments often present forecasts as the average conditions for a target first year, and then subsequent set of years raising a question of what a forecast of mean average conditions for years 2-5 represents in terms of climate to expect, and how annual updates to multi-year forecasts may be produced and communicated. Stakeholder consultations highlighted some of the concerns noted for existing seasonal forecasts, but now translated into terms for multi-year information, such as confidence in information, need for research on temporal downscaling (which may now include information on the risks of climate anomalies in the individual years that make up the forecast period), capacity development, and that communities would need to be convinced about effectiveness, alongside careful communication, especially in the context of multi-year planning. This perspective captures one of the first learning case studies on how I2D prediction may be explored in a given region, a first step towards climate services development that integrate I2D information

Combining social network analysis and sentiment analysis to explore the potential for online radicalisation

The increased online presence of jihadists has raised the possibility of individuals being radicalised via the Internet. To date, the study of violent radicalisation has focused on dedicated jihadist websites and forums. This may not be the ideal starting point for such research, as participants in these venues may be described as “already madeup minds”. Crawling a global social networking platform, such as YouTube, on the other hand, has the potential to unearth content and interaction aimed at radicalisation of those with little or no apparent prior interest in violent jihadism. This research explores whether such an approach is indeed fruitful. We collected a large dataset from a group within YouTube that we identified as potentially having a radicalising agenda. We analysed this data using social network analysis and sentiment analysis tools, examining the topics discussed and what the sentiment polarity (positive or negative) is towards these topics. In particular, we focus on gender differences in this group of users, suggesting most extreme and less tolerant views among female users

Between Art and Social Science: scenic composition as a methodological device

The scenic composition (SC) is a methodological device enabling the synthesis and articulation of researchers' own complex experiences of events witnessed during data collection. Positioned between art and social science, it makes use of literary conventions to synthesise "experience near" accounts of data for interpretation. This article explains how the SC is composed by drawing on associative thinking and illustrates its use within a specific case study. The conceptual basis of the SC is discussed with reference to the work of LORENZER, WINNICOTT and BION. This is the first study in which four compositions, each by a different researcher, have been used to provide a multi-faceted view of a complex event, a live webcast. The compositions are presented along with researchers' reflections. Common themes and significant differences relating to life situations, histories and dispositions of the researchers emerge. The differences were expressed through choice of literary genres, which are common cultural resources. We ask what was achieved through the use of SCs compared with a thematic analysis of the webcast, and find that apart from synthesising and presentational functions, they give access to a multi-sensory range of researchers' experiences, including unconscious elements which were then available for reflexive interpretation by an interpretation panel