Workplace Flexibility Practices in SMEs: Relationship with Performance via Redundancies, Absenteeism, and Financial Turnover

This workplace flexibility study uses primary data on private sector small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lancashire, United Kingdom, collected in 2009 during the recent “credit crunch” recession. Key features include: (1) objective measures of SME performance; (2) a focus on the previously relatively neglected relationship between workplace flexibility practices (WFPs) and three SME performance indicators, namely, redundancies, absenteeism, and financial turnover; and (3) a timely contribution to research on SMEs. Numerical, functional, and cost WFPs analyses, via zero-inflated Poisson and linear regressions, control for SME and market characteristics. Despite SMEs having limited resources, the results show a significant section of SMEs to be innovative and entrepreneurial organizations, embracing advancements in employment relations regarding employee discretion, training, participative working arrangements, and/or job security. Moreover, results indicate that WFPs have the potential to assist SMEs in responding to periods of constrained demand. Flexitime and job sharing are associated with low permanent-employee redundancies. Training, job security, and family-friendly practices relate to low absenteeism with reductions of up to six annual days per worker. Job security and profit-related pay are associated with high financial turnover. Staff pay-freeze links with high financial turnover, but to the detriment of redundancies and absenteeism, whereas management pay-cuts or management pay-freeze relate to low financial turnover. On a cautionary note, spending cuts, often enforced by policymakers, may be of limited benefit to SMEs, and thus other approaches would appear more fruitful

Workforce nationality composition and workplace flexibility in Britain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper, with an organisational focus, is to offer a novel examination of the association between workforce nationality composition and workplace flexibility practices (WFPs), an under-researched topic with high potential benefits at microeconomic and macroeconomic level. Design/methodology/approach – British data are used, as the UK has experienced significant immigrant flows and has a relatively high level of labour market flexibility. The Workplace Employee Relations Survey 2011, sampling 2,500 British workplaces, offers for the first time data on workforce nationality. Via zero-inflated regressions, the number of non-UK nationals employed in a workplace is assessed against a wide range of numerical, functional and cost WFPs. Findings – There are significant links between WFPs and the employment of non-UK nationals, and these are distinct for non-UK nationals from the European Economic Area (EEA) when compared to non-UK nationals from outside the EEA. The former are more likely to be in “good” employment, with job security, working from home, job autonomy and training. Yet, both types of non-UK nationals are more likely to be employed in workplaces making high use of causal contracts. The implications of these results are discussed. Originality/value – The paper addresses the need to research migration from a relatively new perspective of WFPs while also taking into account the diversity of non-UK nationals. The topic is of importance to organisations, as well as to labour market and migration policymakers. Timely results are of value in view of heightened interest in migration

THE INFLUENCE OF THE NUMBER OF ACTIVE ENTERPRISES IN SERVICES ON EXPORTS. THE CASE OF 25 EU COUNTRIES IN 2007

Services are the most important contributor to the GDP and also the most important job generator. Countries development, usually, is based on the services sector. The present paper is aiming to highlight the influence of the number of active enterprises in services on exports. The paper is based on a model generated using data provided by Eurostat, for 25 EU countries and for 4 services categories. Generated in Eviews 4.1, the model is correctly specified, with a R-squared value of 0.65, and revealed a validated influence of the number of enterprises active in Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods and in Real estate, renting and business activities on exports.enterprise, services, exports, European Union

The Impact of Workplace Human Resource Management Practices on Company and Employee Performance in Britain.

Spanning thirteen years of British employee relations, and using three datasets with a total of over 80,000 observations, this thesis comprises three empirical studies of workplace practices. It focuses on the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices on employee job satisfaction and on work effort, as well as analysing the relationship between training and promotion. Subjective constructs are deployed, positioning this research at the forefront of modem Labour Economics, while also attempting to bridge the HRM and Labour Economics literature. Original results include: the discovery of a consistently high and positive impact of employer-encouraged training and learning on job satisfaction and employee effort; the study of effort intensity; a contribution towards the setting of a research framework on effort; the use of a matched employee-employer data to analyse workplace employment relations; an inter-temporal analysis of training and promotion; the finding that returns to training in the extant literature are biased upward; and the finding that training and promotion with the same employer are positively associated. Several human resource management practices - in particular job autonomy, employee involvement and pay negotiation - and perceptions of pay inequality have highly significant effects on job satisfaction. Additionally, the thesis determines sets of practices that could lead to higher employee and workplace effort. The research agenda supported by this thesis can contribute to a more satisfactory and performance-enhancing workplace environment, hence to creating a stronger economy and to the achievement of higher societal well-being

The Impact of Workplace Human Resource Management Practices on Company and Employee Performance in Britain.

Spanning thirteen years of British employee relations, and using three datasets with a total of over 80,000 observations, this thesis comprises three empirical studies of workplace practices. It focuses on the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices on employee job satisfaction and on work effort, as well as analysing the relationship between training and promotion. Subjective constructs are deployed, positioning this research at the forefront of modem Labour Economics, while also attempting to bridge the HRM and Labour Economics literature. Original results include: the discovery of a consistently high and positive impact of employer-encouraged training and learning on job satisfaction and employee effort; the study of effort intensity; a contribution towards the setting of a research framework on effort; the use of a matched employee-employer data to analyse workplace employment relations; an inter-temporal analysis of training and promotion; the finding that returns to training in the extant literature are biased upward; and the finding that training and promotion with the same employer are positively associated. Several human resource management practices - in particular job autonomy, employee involvement and pay negotiation - and perceptions of pay inequality have highly significant effects on job satisfaction. Additionally, the thesis determines sets of practices that could lead to higher employee and workplace effort. The research agenda supported by this thesis can contribute to a more satisfactory and performance-enhancing workplace environment, hence to creating a stronger economy and to the achievement of higher societal well-being

The involvement of the public and private sector - elements with influence on travel & tourism demand during the crisis period

In the context of the economic crisis, the consumers´ behavior registered changes, so tourists have become highly price sensitive and tending to economize on the duration of their holidays. Starting with the changes generated by the economic crisis, the need to achieve a new economic level is felt both in the public sector through the development and consolidation of new public policies and also in the private sector through the involvement into solid plans, with adapted initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to capture the impact of the public and private sectors involvement on the Travel& Tourism (T& T) demand during the current economic crisis, the period 2008-2010. As design, the content is divided into three main parts, as follows: the perspectives of public and private sector on T& T industry, the impact of the economic crisis on T& T, and the econometric analysis which is concentrated on the connection between the T& T demand and some potential variables with impact on it. The methodology refers mainly to the econometric analysis, constructed in concordance with the findings of the paper. In order to test the link between the variables, the author uses the macroeconomic approach, by including into analysis the European Union member countries. Regarding originality, the paper reveals the positive influence, as real growth, of the T& T Direct Industry in GDP and the capital investment in T& T on the T& T demand

CLASSIFICATION CRITERIA USED AS BASIS FOR AN EFFECTIVE MUNICIPAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

The immediate reality reveals a significant difference in terms of practical use between public and private property management. It can be noticed that the emphasis is placed to a higher extent on the private property management, which is more profit-oriented, compared to the public property management, driven by the public sector’s purpose to achieve the welfare of its citizens. However, during the last years, the interest in assets management has grown also at municipal level. The motivation for applying a strategic municipal property management comes from the necessity to mach the municipal long-term needs for their own use of properties, as well as to use their properties in order to attract investment and promote sustainable socio-economic development of their cities and regions. Referring to the Balkan area, a lack of strategy can be noticed with regard to the real asset management of municipal properties. In order to support the efforts of the municipalities in articulating real asset strategies, a project on “Municipal Property Management in South- Eastern Cities (PROMISE)†is carried on (2009-2012), supported by the ERDF within the South-East Territorial Co-operation Programme. It is expected to contribute to supporting urban environmental sustainability improvement through regeneration programmes, to promoting economic sustainability via the encouragement of innovative investments, to facilitating social sustainability through urban social infrastructure development, as well as to improving social services and social cohesion policies. This paper, derived from the above mentioned project, emphasizes the importance of using the most suitable classification criteria in order to ensure an effective municipal property management. In the beginning a comprehensive international literature review and a structured conceptual clarification are provided, referring to papers like those by Jolicoeur and Barret (2004) and Musil (2006) as having had an important contribution to this topic. Then, specific classification criteria in the case of Romania are pointed out, followed by a discussion on features of assessment extracted from the evaluation practice. The results may contribute to the identification of reliable variables that can be used as a starting point for the strategic management of municipal properties. Keywords: municipal property, classification criteria, strategic management

Kazius-bursi salmonella mutagenicity and carcinogenicity predicted by the base of acute toxicity in quantitative SAR (QSAR)-analysis, by MLR and PNN applied to 13- Thiophosphonates pesticides

In this paper, the acute toxicity, the carcinogenicity potential, and the Kazius-Bursi Salmonella mutagenicity of thirteen compounds were predicted in silico technology by ToxPredict software, for rodent’s species, in a quantitative SAR (QSAR) – analysis. The obtained models demonstrated the dependence of Kazius –Bursi Salmonella mutagenicity and carcinogenicity potential with physical-chemical parameters by MLR (multiple linear regression) and PNN (probabilistic neural network)