The distinctiveness of employment relations within multinationals: political games and social compromises within multinationals’ subsidiaries in Germany and Belgium

This work makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the strategic mechanisms that enable subsidiary management and union agency to exploit ambiguities in the subnational competitive context impacting labour flexibility-security concerns. In so doing, the article contributes to the distinctiveness of employment relations through scrutiny of the internal regime competition that fosters political games in MNCs. Studying the dynamics, we identify the set of structuring conditions governing political games, and explain why some workplace regimes generate social compromises whilst others do not. We reveal a set of strategic conditions (i.e. technology, embeddedness and MNC control) upon which compromise is built in six German and Belgian subsidiaries of four MNCs. Our analysis suggests that subsidiary control modes through expatriates and local embeddedness act as key mechanisms through which the effects of wider strategic drivers influence the form of social compromise

A Possible Role for Metallic Ions in the Carbohydrate Cluster Recognition Displayed by a Lewis Y Specific Antibody

BACKGROUND:Lewis Y (Le(y)) is a blood group-related carbohydrate that is expressed at high surface densities on the majority of epithelial carcinomas and is a promising target for antibody-based immunotherapy. A humanized Le(y)-specific antibody (hu3S193) has shown encouraging safety, pharmacokinetic and tumor-targeting properties in recently completed Phase I clinical trials. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:We report the three-dimensional structures for both the free (unliganded) and bound (Le(y) tetrasaccharide) hu3S193 Fab from the same crystal grown in the presence of divalent zinc ions. There is no evidence of significant conformational changes occurring in either the Le(y) carbohydrate antigen or the hu3S193 binding site, which suggests a rigid fit binding mechanism. In the crystal, the hu3S193 Fab molecules are coordinated at their protein-protein interface by two zinc ions and in solution aggregation of Fab can be initiated by zinc, but not magnesium ions. Dynamic light scattering revealed that zinc ions could initiate a sharp transition from hu3S193 Fab monomers to large multimeric aggregates in solution. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:Zinc ions can mediate interactions between hu3S193 Fab in crystals and in solution. Whether metallic ion mediated aggregation of antibody occurs in vivo is not known, but the present results suggest that similar clustering mechanisms could occur when hu3S193 binds to Le(y) on cells, particularly given the high surface densities of antigen on the target tumor cells

Reflections on the entrepreneurial state, innovation and social justice

The state and its role in technological innovation and social justice have become, once again, fashionable topics of political and economic debate. A number of innovation theorists argue that never more than today, it is necessary to rethink the state’s entrepreneurial role in society and welfare. Their argument provides justification for the existence of the state, going beyond classical political theory and especially contractarian accounts of legitimacy and obligation. It emphasises the ability and willingness of the state to take risks and reduce uncertainty of economic agents for the sake of innovation that can make everyone better off. This paper insists that although the risk-taking argument of innovation theorists deserves further attention and analysis, it should not be abstracted from a holistic politico-theoretical approach to the state. Such an approach is necessary for a critical understanding of the complex set of predominantly political institutions which compose the state and which have been historically developed to guarantee social evolution. Any risk-taking for innovative enterprise and mission-oriented investment ought to be justified and legitimised on the grounds of principled democratic procedures. This implies that innovation itself is a value-laden political process, requiring participation in the decision-making and standards of fairness

The Perils and Promises of Self-Disclosure on Social Media

In addition to their professional social media accounts, individuals are increasingly using their personal profiles and casual posts to communicate their identities to work colleagues. They do this in order to ‘stand out from the crowd’ and to signal attributes that are difficult to showcase explicitly in a work setting. Existing studies have tended to treat personal posts viewed in a professional context as a problem, since they can threaten impression management efforts. These accounts focus on the attempts of individuals to separate their life domains on social media. In contrast, we present the narratives of professional IT workers in India who intentionally disrupt the boundaries between personal and professional profiles in order to get noticed by their employers. Drawing on the dramaturgical vocabulary of Goffman (1959) we shed light on how individuals cope with increased levels of self-disclosure on social media. We argue that their self-presentations can be likened to post-modern performances in which the traditional boundaries between actor and audience are intentionally unsettled. These casual posts communicate additional personal traits that are not otherwise included in professional presentations. Since there are no strict boundaries between formal front-stage and relaxed back-stage regions in these types of performance, a liminal mental state is often used, which enables a better assessment of the type of information to present on social media

Organizational change and resistance: An identity perspective

A classic term in popular and scholarly literature on change management is ‘resistance to change’. It understands resistance in terms of opposition to managerial strategies for organizational change. Since change is generally viewed as reasonable and desirable within this literature, resistance to change promulgates the image of employees digging in their heels, refusing to offer support, and hindering a natural and necessary course of events (e.g., Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). More recently, some change management scholars have embraced a more positive framing of resistance by viewing it as an opportunity to generate ‘conversations’ about change by involving employees, although ultimately with the aim of securing support for change (e.g., Ford, Ford & D’Amelio 2008). Resistance according to this view becomes instrumental to the strategies pursued by management. Critical scholars challenge both these views of resistance by rejecting a managerialist agenda. Instead, they are sceptical of managerially imposed change and conceptualize resistance as legitimate attempts by employees to repudiate initiatives that may benefit organizational interests, but which will impact negatively on their interests and working conditions (e.g., Thompson & Ackroyd, 1995). In this chapter, we use a discursive approach to identity to interrogate these three approaches to resistance, and identify the different identities constructed in the different literatures – the ‘change agent’, the ‘change recipient’, and the ‘resistant subject’. Whether framing them in positive or negative terms, these different literatures tend to reify identities by categorizing individuals as either advocates or adversaries of change. We suggest that instead of fixed categories, identities are situationally constructed: organizational actors struggle to establish, maintain or disrupt particular notions of who they are and who others are in the process of negotiating organizational change and resistance. In this way, change, resistance and identity are intricately and dynamically connected. By reviewing how popular and critical literatures of change conceptualize resistance and identity, this chapter provides new insights to inform, and perhaps unsettle, received wisdom regarding resistance. Specifically, we aim to show how through the discursive enactment of identities in relation to change and resistance, organizational actors author different versions of self and other. The chapter is organized as follows. We start by introducing the concept of identity as discursively constructed. We then examine the literature on organizational change and identify three distinct ways in which resistance has been conceptualized in this literature. We then discuss the specific identities that are typically constructed in and by the different literatures. We critique the reified nature of these identities, analyzing how each of these literatures engages in forms of discourse that abstracts, objectifies and fixes actors’ identities, classifying them in terms of, for instance, active champions, passive recipients, poor victims, smart resistors, etc. Using a short vignette of a change workshop we show how in discursive struggles over organizational change and resistance, organizational actors construct reified versions of change resistors, change agents and change recipients through self-other talk. We also show how this reification of identities obscures a more fluid process insofar as participants switch from one type of self-other talk to another during discussions, resulting in actors ‘becoming’ – or laying variable claims to ‘being’ – resistant and compliant at different points in time. Finally, we discuss some of the analytical, practical and ethical implications of our analysis as well as a few limitations, in an attempt to offer directions for future research and practice