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

The climate crisis: An introductory guide to climate change [Book Review]

Human‐induced climate change, sometimes called “global warming,” has, unfortunately, become a “hot” topic, embroiled in controversy, misinformation, and claims and counterclaims. It should not be this way, because there are many scientific facts that provide solid information on which to base policy. There is a very strong observational, theoretical, and modeling base in physical science that underpins current understanding of what has happened to Earth's climate and why and what the prospects are for the future under certain assumptions. Moreover, these changes have impacts, which are apt to grow, on the environment and human society. To avoid or reduce these impacts and the economic and human effects of undesirable future climate change requires actions that are strongly opposed by those with vested interests in the status quo, some of whom have funded misinformation campaigns that have successfully confused the public and some politicians, leading to paralysis in political action. Without mitigation of climate change, one would suppose that at least society would plan sensibly for the changes already happening and projected, but such future adaptation plans are also largely in limbo. The implication is that we will suffer the consequences. All of these aspects are addressed in this informative and attractive book, which is written for a fairly general but technically informed audience. The book is strongly based upon the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and therefore has a solid scientific basis. Many figures, graphs, and maps come from the three IPCC working group reports, although the captions often do not explain the detail shown. Given that the IPCC reports totaled nearly 3000 pages, to distill the complex material down to 249 pages is no mean task, and the authors have succeeded quite well

Present and Last Glacial Maximum climates as states of maximum entropy production

The Earth, like other planets with a relatively thick atmosphere, is not locally in radiative equilibrium and the transport of energy by the geophysical fluids (atmosphere and ocean) plays a fundamental role in determining its climate. Using simple energy-balance models, it was suggested a few decades ago that the meridional energy fluxes might follow a thermodynamic Maximum Entropy Production (MEP) principle. In the present study, we assess the MEP hypothesis in the framework of a minimal climate model based solely on a robust radiative scheme and the MEP principle, with no extra assumptions. Specifically, we show that by choosing an adequate radiative exchange formulation, the Net Exchange Formulation, a rigorous derivation of all the physical parameters can be performed. The MEP principle is also extended to surface energy fluxes, in addition to meridional energy fluxes. The climate model presented here is extremely fast, needs very little empirical data and does not rely on ad hoc parameterizations. We investigate its range of validity by comparing its performances for pre-industrial climate and Last Glacial Maximum climate with corresponding simulations with the IPSL coupled atmosphere-ocean General Circulation Model IPSL_CM4, finding reasonable agreement. Beyond the practical interest of this result for climate modelling, it supports the idea that, to a certain extent, climate can be characterized with macroscale features with no need to compute the underlying microscale dynamics.Comment: Submitted to the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Societ

On non-stationarity of ENSO

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2003. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 30 (2003): 1910, doi:10.1029/2003GL018225.Evolutionary spectral analysis has been used to study changes through time in the variability of ENSO-related time series. However, the significance of estimated evolutionary spectra has not been formally assessed. This paper describes a test for non-stationarity based on an estimate of the evolutionary spectrum and a time series bootstrap procedure. The test is applied to the seasonal time series of sea level pressure at Darwin. No significant non-stationarity is found

Different atmospheric moisture divergence responses to extreme and moderate El Niños

On seasonal and inter-annual time scales, vertically integrated moisture divergence provides a useful measure of the tropical atmospheric hydrological cycle. It reflects the combined dynamical and thermodynamical effects, and is not subject to the limitations that afflict observations of evaporation minus precipitation. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of the tropical Pacific moisture divergence fields calculated from the ERA-Interim reanalysis reveals the dominant effects of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on inter-annual time scales. Two EOFs are necessary to capture the ENSO signature, and regression relationships between their Principal Components and indices of equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) demonstrate that the transition from strong La Niña through to extreme El Niño events is not a linear one. The largest deviation from linearity is for the strongest El Niños, and we interpret that this arises at least partly because the EOF analysis cannot easily separate different patterns of responses that are not orthogonal to each other. To overcome the orthogonality constraints, a self-organizing map (SOM) analysis of the same moisture divergence fields was performed. The SOM analysis captures the range of responses to ENSO, including the distinction between the moderate and strong El Niños identified by the EOF analysis. The work demonstrates the potential for the application of SOM to large scale climatic analysis, by virtue of its easier interpretation, relaxation of orthogonality constraints and its versatility for serving as an alternative classification method. Both the EOF and SOM analyses suggest a classification of “moderate” and “extreme” El Niños by their differences in the magnitudes of the hydrological cycle responses, spatial patterns and evolutionary paths. Classification from the moisture divergence point of view shows consistency with results based on other physical variables such as SST

Exploring the relationship between appraisals of stressful encounters and the associated emotions in a work setting

Exploring work stress using a transactional perspective requires researchers to consider not just the role of appraisal of a stressful encounter but also the relationship of this appraisal with emotions. This research sets out to explore the appraisal-emotion relationship in a work setting. Using data from 174 civic administrators from New Zealand, sequential tree analysis (which presents patterns in a system of hierarchical ordering) was used to create the pattern of appraisals of stress associated with each of three emotions: anger, anxiety and frustration. The results suggest that if we are to advance our understanding of the appraisal-emotion relationship then future research needs to explore what common characteristics bind together and help shape appraisal patterns, whether some appraisals are more complex than others, and whether some appraisals are more potent than others. The results also raise the question of how best such relationships should be investigated in order to understand the nature of a stressful encounter. In the future, work stress researchers may wish to consider the utility of more context-sensitive measures such as appraisals

On the transport of Gaussian measures under the one-dimensional fractional nonlinear Schrödinger equations

Under certain regularity conditions, we establish quasi-invariance of Gaussian measures on periodic functions under the flow of cubic fractional nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations on the one-dimensional torus.Comment: 42 pages; typos corrected, added Remark 1.8. To appear in Ann. Inst. H. Poincar\'e Anal. Non Lin\'eair

Good governance in sport: a survey of UK national governing bodies of sport

This report presents the findings from a research project focusing on the governance of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) in the UK. Governance has become an increasingly important issue that NGBs in the UK have had to address over the last decade due to examples of poor management, financial failure, and increased public funding for sport that have resulted in the need for more professional sports administrative structures. These issues have been addressed during the last decade by UK Sport and the Sports Councils as part of a Modernisation Programme aimed at improving NGB governance. The objective of this research project was to analyze standards of governance at UK NGBs and consider the extent to which some of the recommendations from the Modernisation Programme have been implemented. It is hoped that this will be the first of an annual research project focusing on these issues and that future reports will be able to track trends and changes in the way that NGBs are governed in the UK. The research took place between October 2009 and January 2010 and has been carried out by a team of three researchers from the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre, a research centre in the Department of Management at Birkbeck, University of London. The research team carried out an online survey in which all NGBs recognised by each of the four home country sports councils – Sport England, Sport Northern Ireland, sportscotland and the Sports Council for Wales – were invited to take part. The findings of the report are based on responses provided by 60 NGBs. The report presents detailed analysis of three key areas relating to NGB governance: the board and committee; human resource management; and stakeholder management and corporate responsibility