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

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)

OrganiZational communication and organiSational communication: Binaries and the fragments of a field

In this paper, I employ personal narrative to help cast light on connections and tensions between organiZational communication research, as produced in the United States, and organiSational communication research, as produced in Aotearoa New Zealand. I address the issue by highlighting three sets of differences between these bodies of research: canonical, institutional and theoretical. I then unpack how these differences are apparent in my own university before sketching out three ways in which we might productively use such tensions to achieve radical engagement, and critique disciplinary others, identities, and locations

The Influence of Stock Market Listing on Human Resource Managment: Evidence for France and Britain

We use data from REPONSE 2004 and WERS 2004 to analyse whether approaches to HRM differ according to whether an establishment is part of a company with a stock exchange listing. In both countries we find that listing is positively associated with teamworking and performance-related pay, while in France, but not in Britain, it is also linked to worker autonomy and training. Our findings are inconsistent with the claim that shareholder pressure operates as a constraint on the adoption of high-performance workplace practices. The pattern is similar in the two countries, but with a slightly stronger tendency for listing to be associated with high-performance workplace practices in France.corporate governance, human resource management, employment relations

Are the Dorsa Argentea on Mars eskers?

The Dorsa Argentea are an extensive assemblage of ridges in the southern high latitudes of Mars. They have previously been interpreted as eskers formed by deposition of sediment in subglacial meltwater conduits, implying a formerly more extensive south polar ice sheet. In this study, we undertake the first large-scale statistical analysis of aspects of the geometry and morphology of the Dorsa Argentea in comparison with terrestrial eskers in order to evaluate this hypothesis. The ridges are re-mapped using integrated topographic (MOLA) and image (CTX/HRSC) data, and their planar geometries compared to recent characterisations of terrestrial eskers. Quantitative tests for esker-like relationships between ridge height, crest morphology and topography are then completed for four major Dorsa Argentea ridges. The following key conclusions are reached: (1) Statistical distributions of lengths and sinuosities of the Dorsa Argentea are similar to those of terrestrial eskers in Canada. (2) Planar geometries across the Dorsa Argentea support formation of ridges in conduits extending towards the interior of an ice sheet that thinned towards its northern margin, perhaps terminating in a proglacial lake. (3) Variations in ridge crest morphology are consistent with observations of terrestrial eskers. (4) Statistical tests of previously observed relationships between ridge height and longitudinal bed slope, similar to those explained by the physics of meltwater flow through subglacial meltwater conduits for terrestrial eskers, confirm the strength of these relationships for three of four major Dorsa Argentea ridges. (5) The new quantitative characterisations of the Dorsa Argentea may provide useful constraints for parameters in modelling studies of a putative former ice sheet in the south polar regions of Mars, its hydrology, and mechanisms that drove its eventual retreat.FEGB is funded by STFC grant ST/N50421X/1 and is grateful for bursaries provided by The Open University, The Ogden Trust and the British Society for Geomorphology. SJC was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Grant RPG-397. We would like to thank Peter Fawdon for his technical advice. We are grateful to RD Storrar for providing raw data for the Canadian eskers, and to both RD Storrar and H Bernhardt for their insightful reviews of the manuscript.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.icarus.2016.03.02

Transmission of climate risks across sectors and borders

Systemic climate risks, which result from the potential for cascading impacts through inter-related systems, pose particular challenges to risk assessment, especially when risks are transmitted across sectors and international boundaries. Most impacts of climate variability and change affect regions and jurisdictions in complex ways, and techniques for assessing this transmission of risk are still somewhat limited. Here, we begin to define new approaches to risk assessment that can account for transboundary and trans-sector risk transmission, by presenting: (i) a typology of risk transmission that distinguishes clearly the role of climate versus the role of the social and economic systems that distribute resources; (ii) a review of existing modelling, qualitative and systems-based methods of assessing risk and risk transmission; and (iii) case studies that examine risk transmission in human displacement, food, water and energy security. The case studies show that policies and institutions can attenuate risks significantly through cooperation that can be mutually beneficial to all parties. We conclude with some suggestions for assessment of complex risk transmission mechanisms: use of expert judgement; interactive scenario building; global systems science and big data; innovative use of climate and integrated assessment models; and methods to understand societal responses to climate risk. These approaches aim to inform both research and national-level risk assessment

Modelling Esker Formation on Mars

International audience<p><strong>Introduction:</strong>  Eskers are sinuous sedimentary ridges that are widespread across formerly glaciated landscapes on Earth. They form when sediment in subglacial tunnels is deposited by meltwater. Some sinuous ridges on Mars have been identified as eskers; whilst some are thought to have formed early in Mars’ history beneath extensive ice sheets, smaller, younger systems associated with extant glaciers in Mars’ mid latitudes have also been identified. Elevated geothermal heating and formation during periods with more extensive glaciation have been suggested as possible prerequisites for recent Martian esker deposition.</p><p>Here, we adapt a model of esker formation with g and other constants altered to Martian values, using it initially to investigate the impact of Martian conditions on subglacial tunnel systems, before investigating the effect of varying water discharge on esker deposition.</p><p><strong>Methods:</strong> To investigate the effect of these values on the operation of subglacial tunnel systems we first conduct a series of model experiments with steady water discharge, varying the assumed liquid density (r<sub>w</sub>) from 1000 kgm<sup>-3</sup> to 1980 kgm<sup>-3</sup> (the density of saturated perchlorate brine) and ice hardness (A) from 2.4x10<sup>-24</sup> Pa<sup>-3</sup>s<sup>-1</sup> to 5x10<sup>-27</sup> Pa<sup>-3</sup>s<sup>-1</sup> (a temperature range of 0°C to -50°C). We then investigate the impact of variable water discharge on esker formation to simulate very simply a possible release of meltwater from an assumed geothermal event beneath a Martian glacier or ice cap.</p><p><strong>Results and Discussion:</strong>  A key aspect of model behaviour is the decrease in sediment carrying capacity towards the ice margin due to increased tunnel size as ice thins. Our results suggest that Martian parameters emphasise this effect, making deposition more likely over a greater length of the conduit. Lower gravity has the largest impact; it reduces the modeled closure rate of subglacial tunnels markedly as this varies with overburden stress (and hence g) cubed. Frictional heating from flowing water also drops, but much less sensitively. Thus, for a given discharge, the tunnels tend to be larger, leading to lower water pressure and a reduction in flow power. This effect is amplified for harder ice. Higher inferred fluid density raises the flow power, but by a smaller amount.</p><p>These effects are clearly seen in the variable discharge experiments. Sediment is deposited on the falling limb of the hydrograph, when the tunnels are larger than the equivalent steady-state water discharge would produce. Sediment deposition occurs much further upglacier from the glacier snout, and occurs earlier on the falling limb leading to longer periods in which deposition occurs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Our results suggest that esker formation within a subglacial meltwater tunnel would be more likely on Mars than Earth, primarily because subglacial tunnels tend to be larger for equivalent water discharges, with consequent lower water flow velocities. This allows sediment deposition over longer lengths of tunnel, and to greater depths, than for terrestrial systems. Future work will use measured bed topography of a mid-latitude esker to assess the impact of topography on deposition patterns and esker morphology, and we will expand the range of discharges and sediment supply regimes investigated.</p&gt