The effect of labor relations climate on the union participation process

Research examining union member attitudes and behaviors have produced inconsistent results for key relationships in models of union participation. Social information processing theory suggests that a contextual variable, labor relations climate, should systematically influence the attitudinal variables in these models. Our meta-analysis shows that labor relations climate moderates four of five key relationships. Consequently, theory on union member participation should be altered to reflect the recent emergence of less adversarial union-management relationships.     

How unions affect minority representation in building trades apprenticeship programs

I use program-level data to compare the relative representation of blacks and Latinos in the construction industry apprenticeship programs organized with and without trade union participation. Econometric analysis shows that there are significant differences between the black and Latino experiences. The black share is higher in union-management joint programs, but the Latino share appears to be higher in the unilateral employer programs. Although both groups have lower representation in the higher status (electrical and mechanical) and higher paying occupations, the Latino share is more sensitive to earnings.     

American union law: Sources of conflict

Japanese union-management relations are reputed to be cooperative, while American union-management relations are perceived to be adversarial. This study examines three sources of the adversarial union-management relations in the United States: union history, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, and the Wagner Act, as amended. Union history is a tale of conflict between workers who wished to cartelize and other workers who wished to be independent. It is not, primarily, a tale of conflict between capital and labor. The Norris-LaGuardia Act institutionalized conflict, and the Wagner Act enshrined it. To improve American unionmanagement relations significantly, so that American firms can be more effective international competitors, it is necessary, though not sufficient, to repeal both pieces of legislation.     

Collective Bargaining and Alcoholism:

In this project 106 collective bargaining contracts were analyzed to identify union-management responses to the problem of alcoholism in the workplace. The original contracts were collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and published on microfiche by the Microfilming Corporation of America. The contracts in this set were executed between 1977 and 1982, and cover all private sector employers with over 900 employees in Michigan. The purpose of this study was to determine the present state of collective bargaining language as a basis for identifying how employers in a unionized setting handle the problem of alcoholism at the work site. The authors discovered that alcoholism is most frequently dealt with in the disciplinary procedure. Clauses dealing with insurance benefits are the next most frequent site. There is evidence of alcoholism increasingly becoming an area for labor-management cooperation. The paper concludcs with some suggestions as to how EAP practitioners can enhance the success of programs in a unionized setting.     

National and local public relations campaigns during the 1946 steel strike

Although scholars recognize the importance of public relations in the process of negotiations between management and organized labor, few have attempted to document such efforts or to analyze their effects. This review of public relations activities at the local and national levels during the 1946 steel strike indicates that national public relations campaigns, conducted by the union and the steel trade association, had virtually no impact on the resolution of the strike at the local level, and local public relations programs, conducted by the union local and a small manufacturing company, did little to further management or union goals at the national level. If anything, the national programs only confused the community by offering messages that did not necessarily correspond to the local situation.     

Institutionalizing government public relations in Romania after 1989

Public relations are a new profession in Romania, an Eastern European former communist country which changed to a democratic regime in December 1989. It is generally considered to have emerged after 1990, although publicity and political propaganda preceded it (Rogojinaru in Sriramesh and Ver?i?, 2009, p. 553). Although the Romanian practice of public relations evolved and developed quickly aligning with the international practice, several campaigns and programs receiving awards during the last editions of IPRA Golden World Awards, SABRE Awards, Cannes Lions Awards or European Excellence Awards, there is still very little focus on research and theory. Thus, there is no major study on the history of public relations in Romania prior to 1989 to either confirm or challenge the conclusion of Grunig, Grunig and Ver?i? (2004) that there was no public relations in Eastern Europe before 1989 because the concept was not acceptable for socialism (p. 137). Even after 1989 while there is a growing body of literature on public relations in general published in Romanian, few studies addressed Romanian public relations which are more frequently described in practice than researched from the viewpoint of public relations theory. This exploratory research aims at identifying the characteristics of government public relations in Romania in 2011, the main stages in institutionalizing government public relations after 1989 and correlates them with the general evolution of public relations in Romania between 1989 and 2011.     

Conflict,strategic management,and public relations

Public relations will be a viable contributor to strategic management if it has knowledge and experience in the mixed motive model of public relations to include contention, avoidance, compromise, accommodation, cooperation, being unconditionally constructive, win/win or no deal, principled, and mediated.Secondly, membership in top management also depends on the experience and ability of the practitioner to do strategic planning and solve problems for the organization. This assertion incorporates the long-term accumulation of expertise and a relationship with the dominant coalition built on sound judgment and trust.     

Family patterns and the politicization of consumption relations

There has been little sociological research on the processes of exploitation and the politicization of relations of consumption. This study examines the role that family structure plays in the development of a class‐based politicization of consumption relations in a community. I compare communities of the Lake Superior region at the turn of the 20th century that were settled largely by the male immigrants living without families with structurally‐similar communities from the same region and time that were settled larged by married workers and their families. Using local newspapers, corporate reports and federal and state investigations, I compare the level of politicization of consumption relations in family‐settled communities with those settled by male workers. I find some relationship between family settlement patterns and the politicization of consumption in a community, but the relationship is not constant across communities. Family‐based communities do have a greater ability to organize alternatives to corporate‐controlled consumption than do non‐family based communities.     

A use of second-order co-orientation model in international public relations

This paper is an extension of a line of research that questions the possibility of applying the co-orientation theory in researching the communication behavior between “general” publics of nations. Here we included three nations, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia and questioned publics’ opinions on investment policies between mentioned nations. We extended the notion of co-orientation in international relations to include not only evaluations of two countries’ attitudes towards a third country, but also evaluations of opinions the two countries have between themselves (and to which the first is only an observer). We called it the second-order co-orientation. So far accuracy has been seen as the right objective for public relations using co-orientation. Our results question centrality of accuracy as the key performance indicator of effectiveness of public relations programs in the context of co-orientation model.     

Inter-ethnic relations in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia 1

The article deals with the development of minority policies in Mongolia since independence from China, and focuses on the effects that these policies have had on inter-ethnic relations. The main groups studied are the Khalkha Mongols, the Kazakhs, the Tuvans and the Han Chinese. The definitions of these groups as either ündesten or yastan have also varied over time, which has created theoretically interesting complexities. The article contains a sociolinguistic study of the inter-ethnic relations, with particular emphasis on education, culture, media and publishing. Furthermore, the tendency of the Tuvans to identify ethnically with the Mongols rather than with the Kazakhs is analyzed from the point of view of a sub-minority–majority identification theory. In Inner Mongolia, the inter-ethnic relations are problematic, and there are also severe tensions between the Mongols of Inner Mongolia and those of Mongolia. These ethnic policies have also played an important role in the development of the inter-state relations between Mongolia and the People's Republic of China.     

Public relations and community: A persistent covenant

In the 21st Century global public relations professional community, the need for a postmodern reformation is compellingly evident. Most theorizing begins with basic assumptions about the three main social actors for which public relations has been practiced: (1) corporations, (2) nongovernmental and civil society organizations (NGOs and CSOs), and (3) governments. Questions about society itself are rarely examined, but when they do come up, scholars and practitioners tend to assume generally accepted values and mores. Neglected has been a robust criticism of the concepts upon which such paradigms have been built.     

To be,or not to be: Paradoxes in strategic public relations in Italy

There is a paucity of empirical studies of public relations in Italy. This study sought to assess whether public relations departments are managed strategically in Italy and whether public relations contributes to the strategic management of organizations. Using the four generic principles that deal with strategic management, this study gathered data from public relations professionals working in the three major types of organizations: corporations, government agencies, and non-profits. The study found that regardless of the type of organization, few public relations practitioners are represented in the senior management of their organizations. Senior managers of non-profits tended to value public relations more than the other two sectors. Symmetrical communication again proved to be normative. By using a conceptual framework and research instruments that have been employed in studies conducted in other parts of the world, this study has generated data that can be used to compare strategic public relations in different socio-cultural environments – thus contributing to building a global theory of public relations.     

Relations between people, relations about things: gendered investment and the case of the Lake Victoria fishery, Tanzania

Using the example of one of the African fisheries that has been most significantly transformed from family based to commercialized—that on Lake Victoria in Tanzania—this article considers the social nexus of decision making and focuses on analyzing women’s place. It is true that women have never been more than a minority in fisheries due to traditional inheritance patterns and new market structures, both of which bypass women in questions of ownership and decision making. We look in vain for fishwives, if this means female fish producers acting with a highly visible degree of economic and social autonomy. There is no vernacular term to identify women who work with fish or those rare women who own fishing vessels. And yet the absence of derogatory representation suggests that there have been few attempts to detract from women who are active in the fishery. Should we thus be aiming at more subtlety in our analytical approaches to fishing relations on Lake Victoria? The article unveils the ways in which women’s relations with fishermen are negotiated and how agreements are reached on behalf of their families. It explores for women’s empowerment via the customary social relations and management arrangements that exist in these riparian communities. The lake fishery has a basis for development, but its potential for the kind of growth that will have returns for future generations rests on an appreciation of how fisher-wives conceive of, and respond to, the opportunities, constraints and risks of investing in this fishery.     

Unions,PAC contributions,and the NAFTA vote

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by organized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional voting. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives’ vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while business generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voting generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, unpublished data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contributions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Representatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, while Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign contributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.     

The effects of gainsharing on grievance rates and absenteeism over time

We sought to better understand the long-term impact of gainsharing by analyzing longitudinal changes in two key indicators of workplace union-management relations: grievance rates and employee absenteeism. Using a seven and one-half year longitudinal data set and an interrupted time series design, we found that the introduction of a Scanlon-type gainsharing plan was followed by a gradual and permanent decline in both of these indicators. These results provide strong quantitative evidence for the ability of gainsharing to transform existing labor-management relations. Using qualitative data, we consider the relationship between labor relations outcomes and other plant-level performance improvements following the introduction of gainsharing in this case.     

Government public relations during Herbert Hoover's presidency

While historians generally credit President Franklin Roosevelt with the establishment of robust public information activities in the federal government, this case study reviews those activities during the administration of Roosevelt's predecessor, Herbert Hoover. During Hoover's term, agency PR was conducted extensively and openly enough to trigger media and partisan attacks. This suggests that public relations emerged gradually in federal departments and agencies during the 20th century, well before FDR's inauguration in 1933, and was already a natural element of the emerging profession of public administration.     

An inside-out exploration of contemporary Chinese public relations education

This study provides an inside-out examination of contemporary Chinese public relations education. Particularly, it seeks to explore (1) how Chinese public relations educators make meaning of the imported U.S. body of knowledge of public relations; (2) how Chinese educators conceptualize Chinese public relations; and (3) the connection and disconnection between academia and industry. We conducted 49 face-to-face in-depth interviews and performed content analysis of 22 Web sites of Chinese universities with public relations programs. Research findings reflected the movement of Chinese PR from a merely technical function to a more strategic function centering on relationship building, reputation, social responsibility, and organizational identity. The findings also suggested significant influence of the U.S. PR education on the development of Chinese public relations education manifested through textbook adoption and core curricular design. However, the study has also shown that educators have undertaken substantial effort to localize the imported knowledge in accordance with China's unique cultural, economic, and political systems.     

Internationalizing the public relations curriculum

This article offers public relations educators guidance on the multiple ways that they can internationalize the public relations curriculum at their schools. Public relations education currently includes classes that focus on writing and management. However, with the increasing importance of international communication, many educators now see the need to create a course dedicated to international public relations. This article provides three proven options that will allow educators to incorporate the topics of culture, international practices, and culturally sensitive theory development into their public relations programs.     

Public relations education in Thailand

Public relation education in Thailand, offered at undergraduate and graduate levels at 21 universities, has become one of the most popular and competitive programs chosen by Thai students. This article discusses the development of public relations education in Thailand, the structure of current programs' curricula and course content at eight universities (three public, five private), graduate programs, instruction, and faculty.The in-depth interviews with public relations faculty revealed that while public university professors believed their students were well-prepared academically, most at private universities did not think the current curriculum sufficiently prepared students to be competitive in the work force in the future. The faculty uniformly agreed, however, that courses in interpersonal communication, intercultural/international communication, marketing communication, and new media technology should be added to the curriculum to help better prepare future practitioners to work in the global communication era.     

Commercial speech,protected speech,and political public relations

Political public relations play an unique role in American democracy because it occupies a dual role of providing both political and commercial speech. However, using analysis of the First amendment, public relations have increasingly been identified as commercial speech which receives limited protection under the U.S. Constitution. This study traces the evolution of the legal framework in which political PR has become associated with commercial speech, and how this association has made Constitutional analysis of political PR more complex. Implications for public relations practitioners and PR's role in democracy are discussed.