Employee attitudes to work-based counselling services

Work-based counselling services have increasingly been introduced in organizational settings in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper, a study is reported of the attitudes of 213 employees of a UK Health Authority towards an existing counselling service. Questionnaires sought information about attitudes to counselling, confidentiality, attitudes to those seeking counselling and general health. The results suggested that attitudes to work-based counselling services are predicted by employees' perceptions of those seeking counselling as trustworthy and their beliefs about the confidentiality of the service. The practical implications of these results are examined.     

Employee attitudes to work-based counselling services

Abstract

Work-based counselling services have increasingly been introduced in organizational settings in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper, a study is reported of the attitudes of 213 employees of a UK Health Authority towards an existing counselling service. Questionnaires sought information about attitudes to counselling, confidentiality, attitudes to those seeking counselling and general health. The results suggested that attitudes to work-based counselling services are predicted by employees' perceptions of those seeking counselling as trustworthy and their beliefs about the confidentiality of the service. The practical implications of these results are examined.     

New Mothers’ Employment and Public Policy in the UK,Germany, the Netherlands,Sweden, and Japan

Abstract. This paper investigates the link between family‐friendly policies and women's employment after birth of the first child in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Japan in the 1980s and the 1990s. Our econometric analyses use household panel data from each of the five countries: BHPS, GSOEP, OSA, HUS, and JPSC, respectively. Public policies that facilitate the combination of motherhood and paid employment offer an effective means in increasing the participation rate of first‐time mothers. The results also indicate that the availability and stimulation of good‐quality part‐time employment can provide additional, strong incentives for new mothers to enter active employment.     

UK International Joint Ventures with the Triad: Evidence for the 1990s

This paper identifies and analyses some basic trends and patterns in international joint venture activity between UK firms and partner firms located in the Triad (North America, Western Europe and Japan) over the 1990–96 period. Several dimensions of UK international joint venture activity are examined: trends over time, geographic distribution of foreign partners, industry characteristics, the purpose of the venture, the number of partners and the UK partners' equity shareholding. The study serves to update and extend previous analyses of UK international joint venture activity with partners from developed market economies.     

The effects of macroeconomic developments on individual companies' flows of funds

A system of models is described which traces the impact on individual companies' finances of changing the macroeconomic environment. This system comprises models of individual firms integrated with Cambridge's large-scale disaggregated model of the UK economy. Illustrative projections are provided for the period 1980–1988 for three companies under alternative exchange rate and interest rate assumptions; a balance sheet, income appropriation account and funds flow statement is generated for each company-year and each assumption. These case studies illustrate how sensitive companies' finances can be to changes in the macroeconomic environment and also how dissimilar can be the response of different companies' flows of funds to the same macroeconomic change.     

Flow and stock analysis of Polish unemployment: January 1990-June 1991*

Abstract. Unemployment is and will be for the foreseeable future one of the major issues of economies in transition. Not onIy is unemployment in post-communist economies a socially explosive problem; what happens on the unemployment front allows us to also make inferences about the state of the transition process in general. In this paper we look at Polish unemployment as it evolved from January 1990 to June 1991. A framework is developed which allows us to discuss flows into and out of unemployment. In analyzing the determinants of the various flows we discuss the macroeconomic environment brought about by the reforms and the role of prices and wages. However, we stress above all institutional and structural factors which have an impact on labour flows in the Polish post-communist economy. The stocks of several variables are also analyzed. We relate the trends of some unemployment stocks (especially the stocks of school leavers and group layoffs) to the trend of the overall stock of unemployment. We also look at the trends of vacancies and of various UIV ratios and touch upon the short run and long run trends of employment by sector. The main conclusion of the paper is that the high level of unemployment in Poland is neither due to the elimination of hidden unemployment (it actually increased in 1990!) nor a result of restructuring. The level of unemployment is high because of large inflows from outside the labour force and because hirings have been much fewer than in previous years while separations have only been slightly greater.     

EVOLVING INTERNATIONAL INFLATION DYNAMICS: WORLD AND COUNTRY‐SPECIFIC FACTORS

The decline in the level and persistence of inflation over the 1980s is a common feature of the most industrialized economies in the world. The rise in inflation volatility of the late 1970s and the subsequent fall of the 1980s is country specific for the UK, Canada, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, Italy, and Japan. Since the late 1980s, inflation predictability has declined significantly across the industrialized world. We link the empirical results to recent theories of international inflation.     

Rehires and Unemployment Duration in the Swedish Labour Market — New Evidence of Temporary Layoffs

The paper investigates temporary layoffs in the Swedish labour market. Previous reports of few temporary layoffs are rejected. About 45 percent of unemployed people who found a job returned to a previous employer. As a stock measure, 10 percent of the unemployed are on temporary layoff. Using new job and recall as distinct exits in a competing risks model, one cannot reject a horizontal duration dependence for new jobs, while the recall hazard shows a strong, negative duration dependence. Clearer predictions of the effect of education on job probabilities are also found. Further, the results probably have implications for the interpretation of several policy parameters, including labour market programme outcomes.     

UK International Joint Ventures: An Analysis of Patterns of Activity and Distribution

To date no study has presented data which systematically considers the detailed activity of UK firms in joint venture formation over a significant period of time. This paper attempts to rectify this position by providing key statistics on the formation of joint ventures between UK firms and partner firms in Western Europe, the USA and Japan over the 1980s. The study examines several dimensions of activity: Trends in UK joint ventures over time, geographic distribution, industry characteristics, joint venture purpose, number of partners, contractual form and the equity share of UK partners.     

A Study in Studying Corporate Boards Over Time: Looking Backwards to Move Forwards

This paper is based on data collected in the late 1980s and again in the late 1990s from interviews with chairmen, chief executives and board members in 12 large UK organizations such as Hanson, Marks & Spencer, Prudential and Glynwed. Although the primary focus is on theorizing and theory over time, this also leads us to question matters of method and methodology. The first section considers some of the study design issues raised by conducting this sequel study, noting that it was not possible to ‘repeat’ the first study for a number of important reasons. The second section observes that while our earlier analytical metaphor of organizing as explaining endures, the nature of the explanations has changed: ‘strategic focus’, ‘shareholder value’ and ‘corporate governance’ are now the contemporary watchwords although were unheard of in our interviews a decade earlier. The following section develops on this, concluding that in making judgements about future shareholder value, the primary evidence is drawn from events already past and interpreted through current explanations. We conclude on the importance of time to our theorizing, where there appears to be a confluence between time and person, in part, created and in part, supported by particular (judgements of) explanations of organizing prevailing at that time.     

Comparison of the Historic Recycling Risk for BSE in Three European Countries by Calculating the Basic Reproduction Ratio R0

A deterministic model of BSE transmission is used to calculate the R(0) values for specific years of the BSE epidemics in the United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands (NL), and Switzerland (CH). In all three countries, the R(0) values decreased below 1 after the introduction of a ban on feeding meat and bone meal (MBM) to ruminants around the 1990s. A variety of additional measures against BSE led to further decrease of R(0) to about 0.06 in the years around 1998. The calculated R(0) values were consistent with the observations made on the surveillance results for UK, but were partially conflicting with the surveillance results for NL and CH. There was evidence for a dependency of the BSE epidemic in NL and CH from an infection source not considered in the deterministic transmission model. Imports of MBM and feed components can be an explanation for this discrepancy, and the importance of imports for these observations is discussed.     

Labour Surplus,Worker Rights and Productivity Growth: A Comparative Analysis of Asia and Latin America

How do labour market conditions, trade union rights and job security regulations affect labour productivity? This paper is the first attempt at an empirical analysis of this important question for a large sample of Asian and Latin American countries. We provide new estimates of the rates of surplus labour in 20 countries, as well as detailed tables summarizing their key regulations governing certain aspects of union activity and layoffs. Then we exploit these and other data in an econometric analysis of intercountry differentials in the growth rate of labour productivity in manufacturing during the 1980s. Among the principal results, we find that, while all else remains the same, productivity growth rates are significantly higher in countries with relatively larger labour surpluses, the effects of excess of labour on productivity growth are affected by the strength or weakness of union rights. We also find that the impacts of union rights and job security protections on productivity trends may be either positive or negative, depending on the labour market situation.     

Executive pay, tournaments and corporate performance in UK firms

This paper explores the relationship between executive pay and corporate performance. First, we focus on the pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS), review recent evidence (mainly UK) and outline a methodology for calculating the PPS itself. Secondly, we review the evidence on tournament theory. Tournament models predict that career concerns generate incentives for executives and can explain observed variations in pay outcomes in the boardroom. Thirdly, we provide evidence on the distribution of the PPS for 532 executives within 100 large UK stock market companies for 1997. Unlike prior work, we include non-CEO executives in the analysis. We show that the PPS increases through organizational levels. Also the statistic is not constant across firms. Finally, we consider the relationship between corporate performance and incentives. We show, consistent with prior evidence, that there is a positive relationship between firm performance and the effective ownership of stock-based compensation by management.     

Japanese Retailing Through the 1990s: Retailer Performance in a Decade of Slow Growth

The development of Japanese retailing through the 1990s is used to illustrate the applicability of a Europe-based growth model in a recessionary market. Through the 1990s the Japanese economy suffered low growth and periods of recession, after strong growth through the 1980s. Retail sales in the 1990s increased only slightly whilst floor-space developments begun in the 1980s and the result of retailer expansion strategies generated increased retail capacity. Large retailers pursued strategies of opening more stores in order to generate sales, but this proved disastrous and resulted in lower productivity, high levels of debt, low levels of innovation and consequential need to restructure. General merchandise and department-store retailers were slow to see the need to restructure and innovate. In contrast, three groups of retailers obtained competitive advantages from the recession, namely retailers who responded quickly to emergent market segments, foreign retailers and e-retailers. The strategic responses to recession and the reasons behind these responses are illustrated and suggestions made on how the experiences of the 1990s will affect development in the early 2000s. Implications of the retailers' behaviour are indicated for retailer strategies, the restructuring of the sector and for research on strategy and structural change.     

Does the Public Sector Lead the Wage Evolution in the French Economy?

Has the wage policy of the State in the French public sector (government services and State owned enterprises) had a leading effect on wages in the private sector up until the early 1980s? This paper firstly aims at verifying the existence and analysing the causes of this leading effect. The second aim is to estimate the scope of the changes which took place from the early 1980s. It shows that the wage policy of the State did influence disinflation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Indeed, it not only slowed down the growth of wages in the public sector but, by this means, it also influenced indireclty the growth of wages in the private sector.     

Devising Context Sensitive Approaches To Change: The Example of Glaxo Wellcome

There is a growing awareness of the need for designers of organisational change to develop context sensitive approaches to implementation if change is to be successful. Existing change literature indicates that there are many aspects of an organisation’s change context that need to be considered, and a wide range of different implementation options open to those designing change. However, these contextual aspects and design options are not currently pulled together in a comprehensive manner, or in a form that makes them easily accessible to practitioners. This paper builds a framework, called the change kaleidoscope, which aims to achieve this. It illustrates the applicability of this framework in practice as an aid to managers in the development of context sensitive implementation approaches via a case study on the changes undertaken at Glaxo Wellcome UK since the early 1990s. This is an interesting case of a successful organisation that managed to change in a pro-active manner rather than in a crisis driven re-active manner. The paper concludes with the lessons for practitioners on the impact of certain contextual features and design choices during change as illustrated by the Glaxo Wellcome case, and a discussion on the use of the kaleidoscope in practice.     

The View from the Top: Senior Executives' Perceptions of Changing Management Practices in UK Companies1

There is a growing literature which suggests that the 1980s witnessed significant, even unprecedented changes in the management of organizations. This paper contributes to that literature by providing questionnaire and interview-based evidence of senior managers' perceptions of recent changes in management practice in large and medium-sized firms in the UK. The findings cover three main areas: the changing context of management practice; change initiatives in the areas of human resource management (HRM) and management levels; and the degree of success in managing change. Our findings suggest that senior managers perceive rapid and continuous change within the UK corporate sector. We conclude by suggesting that the changes reported appear to be of degree rather than a radical break with past management practices and that inconsistent means of facilitating change are seemingly being deployed.     

Disputes and the Tactics of Industrial Action in UK Manufacturing in the 1980s

ABSTRACT: This paper provides an analysis of the tactics of industrial action using data from pay settlements in UK manufacturing in the 1980s. The relative importance and determinants of different forms of action are examined. A deductive model of factors influencing the tactical decisions post impasse is developed and tested, incorporating three elements: the feasibility of different forms of action; the organizational capacity to take action; and the willingness to use particular sanctions. The paper includes a critique of the applicability of North American strike theories to the UK industrial relations context.     

Unemployment and Earnings Assimilation of Immigrants

The regional unemployment elasticity of annual earnings for non‐OECD immigrants is found to be more than three times larger than for natives, using micro data covering all immigrants in Norway in 1990 and a random sample of natives. The decline in relative earnings of non‐OECD immigrants from 1980 to 1990 can largely be explained by the stronger impact of rising unemployment on immigrant earnings. These results highlight the importance of controlling for different period effects caused by fluctuating unemployment in panel studies of earnings assimilation among immigrants.     

Social Structures and Resistance to Strategic Change: British Manufacturers in the 1980s1

This article examines the refusal of two UK manufacturers to adapt their strategic ‘repertoires’ to the recessionary and structural changes of the 1980s. From being industry leaders in 1980, both companies were relegated to overseas control by the end of the decade. Developing both institutionalist and contextualist approaches to organization, the article argues that this fatal resistance to change derived from the deep social structural roots of these two companies' politics and cultures. Conservative managers were able to defy new capitalist logics by drawing upon alternative social structural sources of power, legitimacy and inspiration. The article concludes by considering the implications of this plural structuring of organizations both for organizational theory and for the management of change in practice.