The end of jobs for life?: corporate employment systems: Japan and elsewhere

"It is not only in Japan that traditional employment systems are being called into question. It has become conventional wisdom on the OECD conference circuit that we are entering a new era of intensified global competition in which only the most and quot;flexible" firms can survive. ''Flexibility'' and the elimination of rigidities, particularly labour market rigidities, became, in the mid-1980s, the keynote of prescriptions both for lack of competitiveness and for rising unemployment. Even earlier reservations about the desirability of preserving a "core" of stable, long-serving, committed workers, differentiated from a flexible "periphery" have given way to prescriptions for wholesale ''down-sizing.'' There is a flexibility trade off. Concern with labour market flexibility -- especially managers'' ability to hire and fire at will -- is strengthened in the Anglo-Saxon economies by the inflexibility of the financial markets they face. Japanese firms, being more insulated from the short-term demands of shareholders, have hitherto been able to afford more ''rigid'' employment systems from which they gain the advantage of employee commitment and cooperative and flexible attitudes to work. But today the competitiveness/flexibility concern grows in Japan too. The lifetime employment/seniority-constrained pay and promotion system is under attack. Advocacy of change is common; assertions that wholesale change has already taken place almost equally common. The reasons are to be found partly in the objective situations of many firms after four years of recession, partly in a loss of self-confidence and a ''resurgence of the American model.'' Actual change seems in fact to be marginal, but there are a number of grounds for expecting change in the future: value change -- greater affluence, diminished work ethic, and diminished egalitarianism; the possible resurgence of shareholder power; the declining influence of unions; the declining ''intellectual quality'' of blue-collar and routine white-collar workers; increased inter-firm competition and the reduction of industry cartel understandings; slower growth; low wage competition, particularly in future from China, and the "hollowing-out" response thereto. Those who have a stake in Japan''s "employee sovereignty" jimponshugi, and would be reluctant to see it slide into just another version of "shareholder sovereignty" Anglo-Saxon capitalism, might be expected to be proposing legislation to bring company law in line with current Japanese reality. No one seems to be doing so.

Methods for the calculation of critical loads and their exceedances in the UK

Report to Defra, prepared under Contract AQ0826. This report describes the calculation and mapping of critical loads and their exceedances in the UK. It consolidates information from earlier “UK Status Reports” into a single report. Part I describes the methods and data used to (a) map the distribution of 14 UK habitats sensitive to acidification and/or eutrophication; (b) calculate critical loads of acidity and of nutrient nitrogen. Part II describes the calculation of critical load exceedances (ie, the amount of excess deposition above the critical load) and presents results and maps based on UK deposition data for 2009-2011. Part III describes the application of site-relevant critical loads to UK SACs, SPAs, SSSIs

Modelling and mapping of exceedance of critical loads and critical levels for acidification and eutrophication in the UK 2013-2016. Final report

This report covers the work of the original contract (2013-15) and the following one-year extension (2015-16). The overall purpose of this project was to maintain, and where appropriate update, the UK critical loads database, and to provide estimates of critical load and critical level exceedance based on current pollutant deposition or concentrations, and scenarios for the future. The exceedance results were used to inform policy makers on the areas of sensitive habitats and designated sites potentially at risk from air pollution and were updated annually to provide a UK indicator of the impacts of air pollution on ecosystems. The project also supported the UK National Focal Centre (NFC) for critical loads modelling and mapping. The 1-year extension to this contract additionally included the biodiversity modelling required to enable the UK NFC to begin work in preparation for responding to the 2015-17 “Call for Data” under the UNECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP)

Crop Updates 2006 - Cereals

This session covers twenty nine papers from different authors: PLENARY 1. The 2005 wheat streak mosaic virus epidemic in New South Wales and the threat posed to the Western Australian wheat industry, Roger Jones and Nichole Burges, Department of Agriculture SOUTH COAST AGRONOMY 2. South coast wheat variety trial results and best options for 2006, Mohammad Amjad, Ben Curtis and Wal Anderson, Department of Agriculture 3. Dual purpose winter wheats to improve productivity, Mohammad Amjad and Ben Curtis, Department of Agriculture 4. South coast large-scale premium wheat variety trials, Mohammad Amjad and Ben Curtis, Department of Agriculture 5. Optimal input packages for noodle wheat in Dalwallinu – Liebe practice for profit trial, Darren Chitty, Agritech Crop Research and Brianna Peake, Liebe Group 6. In-crop risk management using yield prophet®, Harm van Rees1, Cherie Reilly1, James Hunt1, Dean Holzworth2, Zvi Hochman2; 1Birchip Cropping Group, Victoria; 2CSIRO, Toowoomba, Qld 7. Yield Prophet® 2005 – On-line yield forecasting, James Hunt1, Harm van Rees1, Zvi Hochman2,Allan Peake2, Neal Dalgliesh2, Dean Holzworth2, Stephen van Rees1, Trudy McCann1 and Peter Carberry2; 1Birchip Cropping Group, Victoria; 2CSIRO, Toowoomba, Qld 8. Performance of oaten hay varieties in Western Australian environments, Raj Malik and Kellie Winfield, Department of Agriculture 9. Performance of dwarf potential milling varieties in Western Australian environments, Kellie Winfield and Raj Malik, Department of Agriculture 10. Agronomic responses of new wheat varieties in the Southern agricultural region of WA, Brenda Shackley and Judith Devenish, Department of Agriculture 11. Responses of new wheat varieties to management factors in the central agricultural region of Western Australia, Darshan Sharma, Steve Penny and Wal Anderson,Department of Agriculture 12. Sowing time on wheat yield, quality and $ - Northern agricultural region, Christine Zaicou-Kunesch, Department of Agriculture NUTRITION 13.The most effective method of applying phosphorus, copper and zinc to no-till crops, Mike Bolland and Ross Brennan, Department of Agriculture 14. Uptake of K from the soil profile by wheat, Paul Damon and Zed Rengel, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Western Australia 15. Reducing nitrogen fertiliser risks, Jeremy Lemon, Department of Agriculture 16. Yield Prophet® and canopy management, Harm van Rees1, Zvi Hochman2, Perry Poulton2, Nick Poole3, Brooke Thompson4, James Hunt1; 1Birchip Cropping Group, Victoria; 2CSIRO, Toowoomba, Qld; 3Foundation for Arable Research, New Zealand; 4Cropfacts, Victoria 17. Producing profits with phosphorus, Stephen Loss, CSBP Ltd, WA 18. Potassium response in cereal cropping within the medium rainfall central wheatbelt, Jeff Russell1, Angie Roe2 and James Eyres2, Department of Agriculture1, Farm Focus Consultants, Northam2 19. Matching nitrogen supply to wheat demand in the high rainfall cropping zone, Narelle Simpson, Ron McTaggart, Wal Anderson, Lionel Martin and Dave Allen, Department of Agriculture DISEASES 20. Comparative study of commercial wheat cultivars and differential lines (with known Pm resistance genes) to powdery mildew response, Hossein Golzar, Manisha Shankar and Robert Loughman, Department of Agriculture 21. On farm research to investigate fungicide applications to minimise leaf disease impacts in wheat – part II, Jeff Russell1, Angie Roe2and James Eyres2, Department of Agriculture1, and Farm Focus Consultants, Northam2 22. Disease resistance update for wheat varieties in WA, Manisha Shankar, John Majewski, Donna Foster, Hossein Golzar, Jamie Piotrowski, Nicole Harry and Rob Loughman, Department of Agriculture 23. Effect of time of stripe rust inoculum arrival on variety response in wheat, Manisha Shankar, John Majewski and Rob Loughman, Department of Agriculture 24. Fungicide seed dressing management of loose smut in Baudin barley, Geoff Thomas and Kith Jayasena, Department of Agriculture PESTS 25. How to avoid insect contamination in cereal grain at harvest, Svetlana Micic, Paul Matson and Tony Dore, Department of Agriculture ABIOTIC 26. Environment – is it as important as variety in sprouting tolerance? Thomas (Ben) Biddulph1, Dr Daryl Mares1, Dr Julie Plummer1 and Dr Tim Setter2, School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia1 and Department of Agriculture2 27. Frost or fiction, Garren Knell, Steve Curtin and Wade Longmuir, ConsultAg Pty Ltd, WA 28. High moisture wheat harvesting in Esperance 2005, Nigel Metz, South East Premium Wheat Growers Association (SEPWA) Projects Coordinator, Esperance, WA SOILS 28. Hardpan penetration ability of wheat roots, Tina Botwright Acuña and Len Wade, School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia MARKETS 29. Crop shaping to meet predicted market demands for wheat in the 21st Century, Cindy Mills and Peter Stone,Australian Wheat Board, Melbourn

Making sense of globalisation

This paper, originally written as an encyclopaedia survey, considers as globalisation all the consequences of the long-term cheapening of, and expansion of the technical possibilities of -transport and communication; a process more or less uninterrupted since the improvements of navigation in the fifteenth century, though recently much accelerated. It considers five main areas of contemporary discussion: 1. How integrated global markets really are. (Not as much as one might think.) 2. How far globalisation erodes the sovereignty of nation-states, reducing their autonomy in making economic policy. (More for some than for others.) 3. The consequences of globalisation for the distribution of income among the world''s population; both among nations (equalising for good learners, not for others) and within nations (generally unequalising). 4. The problematic growth of a transnational ''world society'' (slow, probably unstoppable, but still a long way from creating a ''world class system'') and international governance (hesitant and more likely to be hegemonic than conciliar). 5. The interaction of national economic, political, military and cultural power, and the possibility and desirability of retaining distinctive national institutions, embodying distinctive national value preferences and cultures. (in the end, as much a matter of neo-liberalism vs. social democracy as of the persistence of Germanness or Japaneseness)

Incurable unemployment: a progressive disease of modern societies?

"It is widely acknowledged that the contemporary unemployment problem is very largely a problem of unemployed unskilled workers. This paper argues a. that high levels of unemployment and increasing dispersion in the primary labour income distribution are intimately related; b. that both reflect the impact of the accumulation of technology on the job structure; c. skill shortages are to be explained in increasing part by limits to the available stock of learning ability as well as to inefficiencies in training institutions; d. a sizable quantum of existing unemployment arises because the market clearing wage for people of low learning ability falls below either a statutory minimum wage or the reverse wage as set by the social security minimum; e. adequate discussion of these hypotheses is inhibited by a variety of taboos. Going from analysis to prescription, the paper argues that the more serious social problem is not unemployment per se, but the increasing inequality of condition of which it is a symptom. It seems particularly important to stress this, given that about the only cure for unemployment on offer seems to be greater ""flexibility"" - reduction of worker-protection ""rigidities"" - which would increase inequality; making the cure worse than the disease. Seemingly utopian long-run cures are considered, primarily moving towards a reasonably adequate universal citizen''s income. This so redefines the rights and duties of citizenship that the necessary redistribution is seen not as taking from the able and industrious to give to the feckless, but as taking from the gifted lucky ones who can get satisfying work, in order to give both to the unlucky ones who cannot work and to those who could work - but who choose to do other things.

Japanese capitalism, Anglo-Saxon capitalism: how will the Darwinian contest turn out?

Economic organization and economic behaviour in Japan - notably the employment relation, trading relations between business firms and the financing of industrial enterprise - are sufficiently different from prevailing patterns in the UK and the US for it to be reasonable to speak of different types of capitalism. If it be assumed that globalization will lead to institutional convergence in the long run, which type will predominate in the resultant world form ? The Anglo-Saxon one which conforms to the prescriptions of neoclassical economics and maximises factor mobility, or the Japanese one which apparently prospers by ignoring neoclassical recipes for allocative efficiency and concentrates, instead, on other kinds of efficiency ? The paper suggests some factors which have to be taken into account in searching for an answer, but hesitates to give one