Job security, unionisation, wages and privatisation: a case study in the Turkish cement industry

In the recent years, many studies have dealt with the economic aspects of privatisation both in developing and developed countries. There is, however, a lack of systematic enquiries into employees’ opinions about privatisation, albeit a number of claims have been advanced about the impact of privatisation upon the political attitudes of employees, and about its effects on employment relations. This article aims to contribute to filling this gap by analysing employees’ attitudes towards the effects of privatisation on their job security, unionisation and wages. The study is based upon field-work conducted in the Turkish cement industry in 1996, and the research covers 150 employees. The findings of the research hardly support the idea put forward by the new right that privatisation would undermine the class contradictions between bourgeoisie and proletariat (Heller, 1984; Vickers and Yarrow, 1988).     

Privatisation Effects: Some Evidence from Serbia

This paper analyses basic outcome and effects of the privatisation process in Serbia. The first two parts of the paper deal with general achievements of the newest privatisation plan adopted in 2001. We present a brief background of the results of the privatisation process, analysing changes in the structure of enterprises by ownership status, the number of privatised firms, revenues earned through privatisation, the rate of successful transactions, and other relevant privatisation indicators. The paper continues with an analysis of a survey conducted within a sample of Serbian enterprises offering some evidence about performance, competition, and restructuring within different types of firms: socially owned, privatised, and new private. Contrary to the broadly accepted statement that new private firms are leading in transition economies, according to our estimation of the effects of the ownership type on firm performance, it appears that the privatised sector seems to be more active. A comparison of the survey results with findings for three neighbouring countries indicates that there is no general conclusion about the way how ownership status of a firm affects its performance in a transition economy. Although conclusions drawn from our survey analysis should be regarded as preliminary and limited by the quality of survey data and could not be generalised for the privatisation process in other transition countries, the findings we present, including the comparison made with other economies, could contribute to the understanding of both privatisation effects in general and effects remarkable for the Serbian economy.      

Political Beliefs in an Era of Economic Decline: Farmers' Attitudes Toward State Economic Intervention,Trade, and Food Security1

Abstract The effects of the economy on political attitudes is a longstanding sociological issue that is receiving renewed attention in the face of recent U.S. economic downturns. While the impacts of the farm crisis on financial and household well-being of farm operators have been addressed by a number of studies, few have explored its political outcomes. Four perspectives that consider how economic forces translate into political beliefs are outlined, two reflecting objective economic position (class location and financial pressure) and two indicating subjective appraisals (feelings of economic uncertainty and subjective deprivation). Data from a sample of Ohio farm operators for 1987 are used to analyze how the perspectives are related to progressive beliefs about farming, the domestic nonfarm economy, and third-world food production. Indicators of objective economic position and subjective appraisals have relatively limited impact on farmers' political attitudes. Of these indicators, subjective appraisals were more closely related to attitudes. In addition, operators' stances on farm political issues also affect their views on domestic nonfarm and third-world policy agendas. Implications were found for studies of farmers' political attitudes as well as for broader sociological theory regarding the development of progressive attitudes during periods of economic decline.     

COVID-19 Pandemic and Non-standard Employees in Japan

This article aims to grasp the influence of the pandemic on standard and non-standard employees in Japan and clarify its disparity between them. In 2020, there was an imbalance between the slight increase in standard employees and the massive loss of non-standard employees in the labour market. Non-standard employees' working hours were greatly reduced, often without allowances for absence, and hence their monthly income considerably diminished. As a result, their well-being also declined. Thus, the pandemic has affected employment, and its impact has been felt most strongly by non-standard employees. This does not mean that there is no discriminatory treatment of non-standard employees in firms. However, a closer look at the real picture reveals a variety of factors. In addition to the discriminatory treatment that is related to the Japanese employment system, a combination of managerial factors such as the shortage of standard employees, practical factors such as differences in wage systems, and the lack of sufficient information about the expansion of the coverage of the Employment Adjustment Subsidy, have placed non-standard employees at a huge disadvantage.     

Disordered Gambling among Chinese Casino Employees

A previous study suggests that casino employees are at higher risk for disordered gambling than non-casino employees. The present study examined the cognitive correlates of the gambling involvement of Chinese casino employees. These potential cognitive correlates included attitudes toward the gaming industry and gambling activities, perceived job meaningfulness, and job stress. One hundred and nineteen Chinese respondents (M = 57; F = 62) working as dealers in Macao casinos were recruited through convenience sampling to fill out a questionnaire. The results revealed that about 7% of the respondents scored 10 or more on the South Oaks Gambling Screen and engaged in disordered gambling. Path analysis showed that attitude toward the gaming industry had a positive impact on job meaningfulness, which largely explained variances of job stress among casino employees. Job stress had a significant, but weak, direct impact on disordered gambling. Though causality between variables cannot be confirmed, this study provided insights into the impacts of cognitive factors on gambling involvement among Chinese front-line employees in the gaming industry. Implications of the findings were also discussed.     

Employees as information influencers of organization’s CSR practices: The impacts of employee words on public perceptions of CSR

This study investigates the impact of employees’ words about their organization’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on external publics’ attitudes and behaviors toward the organization. Specifically, it examines how the valence (positive vs. negative) of employees’ words regarding a CSR campaign interacts with the type of channel (face-to-face vs. social media) of employees’ communication behaviors, and how these factors affect external publics’ perceived authenticity of the organization’s CSR, corporate attitudes, and purchasing intentions, respectively. An online experiment among 221 general consumers in the United States was conducted. The results demonstrated that negative messages regarding CSR distributed by employees in face-to-face communication decreased publics’ favorable attitudes and behavioral intentions to a greater extent than that distributed via social media (i.e., Facebook). However, the effect of communication channel became insignificant when positive messages regarding CSR were shared by employees. The results further showed that perceived authenticity mediated the effects of channel and message valence on publics’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Theoretical and practical implications for CSR practices and employee communication are discussed.     

Getting a Piece of the Pie

Abstract

This article outlines challenges facing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered employees at the workplace because of a lack of federal legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. A conceptual framework, PIE, is offered which addresses the protection, inclusion and equity issues which must be considered in order to create a safe and productive working environment for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered employees. Additionally, attitudes, knowledge and skills are described which a practitioner would need to acquire, so as to become culturally competent in working with sexual minority employees.     

The News Media in Children's Political Socialization

The research reported examines the impact of the news mediaas an agent of political socialization on children's politicalknowledge, their attitudes toward political parties and electoralsystems, and their activities relative to politics. Childrennews media use and level of political knowledge function asprimary sources of causal effects for each other. They are consistentlymore important in their effects on the attitudes and types ofparticipation studied in this research than are the parentaland educational system socialization indicators or the structuralvariables of grade and gender.     

The Challenge of Cultural Elites: Celebrities and Social Movements*

Although celebrities have become a regular fixture in modern social movements, there is little explicit theory on why, or on how they may affect the movements in which they participate. We begin by discussing the resources celebrities can bring to bear on social protest movements, as well as the risks that celebrity participation entails both for the movement and for the celebrity. We suggest a notion of political standing, which sets limits on the sorts of causes in which celebrities will generally participate. In constructing their legitimacy to speak for a movement, celebrities frequently alter the claims of that movement to more consensual kinds of politics. We examine the entry, action, and influence of celebrities in particular movements by looking at two recent controversies in which celebrities are deeply involved: The ongoing efforts to preserve the woods around Walden Pond, and the recent passage, and subsequent political fallout, of an antigay referendum in Colorado. In the first case, celebrity participation led to a redefining of movement claims into a nonconflictual inclusive politics that skirted important questions. In the second case, the larger claims of gay rights and liberation were eclipsed by the entry of celebrities into the conflict who universalized the opposition to discrimination. We conclude by discussing the systematic biases that movement use of celebrities may create, and the need to consider the impact of celebrities’peculiar relationships to audiences as they affect political movements and public life.     

Contributions of participatory ergonomics to the improvement of safety culture in an industrial context

This paper presents the results of an ergonomic intervention conducted within a blast furnace plant. As part of its risk prevention program, the company decided to set up an action plan, in a participatory manner, by setting up working groups to solve health & safety issues. This field mission involved 230 employees, 80 of whom participated actively by being incorporated into working groups. After four months of intervention, a questionnaire survey has been conducted among employees to study the effects of participation on the safety climate. The results seem promising and show that the benefits of participation are numerous: a more positive safety climate associated to safer attitudes and behaviors. However, rather than just participation, it seems to be the employee involvement in the working groups and the satisfaction they derive from their participation that guarantee these positive results. Hence, participatory ergonomics seems to be an effective way to decrease the number of unsafe behaviors at work, provided that the type of participation has been previously well defined and organized according to the specific context of each organization.     

Privatisation as professionalisation? Attitudes,motives and achievements among Swedish social workers

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relationship between privatisation and professionalisation in social work. In social services, privatisation is often seen as a politically planned (policy-driven) process as part of liberalisation strategies for market orientation of the welfare state. However, there are several reasons to believe that there is also a process of spontaneous privatisation (sometimes driven by demand), where professionals go private and provide various types of services to local welfare authorities. In this article, our aim is to explore the extent, impact and consequences of such profession-driven privatisation and to discuss whether privatisation is a strategy for professionalisation.

This article investigates: (1) attitudes among social workers and social work students toward privatisation in general and private practice in particular; (2) the extent and types of activities being performed privately; (3) the motives whether or not to choose self-employment; (4) the differences between public and self-employed social workers in terms of professionalisation.

Data are based on surveys of 1,000 Swedish social workers and 801 social work students. The results show ambivalence among professionals toward privatisation. The authors discuss the reasons for this at an individual and collective level. Although the share of social workers in private practice in Sweden is low, between 6 and 8%, more than one third of Swedish social workers expect to be working in private practice within 10 years. The circumstances faced by self-employed social workers, who rank higher on almost every professionalisation indicator (i.e. formal education, attitude toward research, internal status, wage level, autonomy), support the hypothesis about profession-driven privatisation.     

Will claims workers dislike a computerized fraud detector?

The computerized fraud detector (CFRD) assigns suspicion scores to questionable automobile insurance claims. Evaluators pilot tested this algorithm in three offices, comparing its effects with three matched offices. Observers uncovered that in two target offices and one comparison office, Millennium 2000 (M2K) also was being installed. The study design thus became as follows: Two offices had two interventions, one office had CFRD but not M2K, another office had M2K but not CFRD, and two offices had neither. Hierarchical linear models document that offices with both new computer systems will have the most unfavorable employee attitudes toward computerized fraud detection, followed by offices with only one new system. Employees with jobs of higher rank and employees not receptive to innovation will dislike computerized fraud detection. Implementation of one computer system, CFRD or M2K, may have minor negative fixed effects on employee attitudes, but their effects on the between-office variance are inconsequential.     

EXPOsing Men's Gender Role Attitudes as Porn Superfans

Much contemporary debate about pornography centers on its role in portraying and perpetuating gender inequality. This article compares traditional gendered attitudes between cisgender men attending the Adult Entertainment Expo (n = 294) and a random sample of male respondents from the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS), a U.S. representative survey of general attitudes and beliefs collected every two years (n = 863). Our survey borrowed questions from the GSS to measure attitudes about gender equality across four dimensions: (1) working mothers, (2) women in politics, (3) traditional gender roles in the family, and (4) affirmative action for women in the workplace. Through bivariate analyses, we found that “porn superfans” are no more sexist or misogynistic than the general U.S. public on two of the four measures (women in politics and women in the general workplace) and held more progressive gender‐role attitudes than the general public on the other two measures. We conducted binary logistic regressions for those two measures to determine if the relationship remained significant when controlling for other factors. For one dimension, working mothers, it did (p < .001). Our results call into question some of the claims that porn consumption fosters de facto negative and hostile attitudes toward women.     

Globalization and National Identity in Japan

Abstract: Globalization and national identity are two separate but important concepts in contemporary sociology; however, neither is well grounded. There is little consensus. Yet we need to establish a foundation for talking about globalization and national identity and the relationship between them. By reviewing literature, this paper presents many sides of the related controversies. Globalization can be interpreted from many different perspectives: economic, social, psychological, political, even philosophical. There is little argument that globalization is now a major characteristic of our daily lives. Identity had its beginnings in psychology and was then superimposed upon social systems, thereby explicating local, regional and national identities: Who are we? We are like those people, but unlike those other people. When considering complex concepts, we need to ask appropriate questions of both parents and their children (due to socialization). In the research study described in this paper, two sample data sets from Japan were used (N = 2,164), both employing an identical questionnaire: (a) a nationwide survey of parents and their children aged 15 through 17; and (b) a nationwide survey of adults. The two stage stratified sampling method was used. The study revealed that Japanese children had more positive and open‐minded attitudes toward “others” than did their parents and older adult groups. One's generation has an important impact on national identity among the Japanese. The findings also indicate that Japan is not a nation‐state in which national identity plays a particularly significant role. The study also suggested numerous opportunities for future research.     

Evolving Socio-economic Conditions in Central and Eastern Europe: A Myrdalian View

The debate about the effects of transformation policies will continue, given the impossibility of isolating their impact while holding constant other factors responsible for performance. However, one conclusion that can be drawn is that, using comparable performance indicators, trends in China, except for inflation and political democracy, are either similar to or more positive than corresponding results in CEE (Chai, 1992; Field, 1992; Harrold, 1993; Yeh, 1992). In nearly every year since 1978 China's actual performance has exceeded that planned, while in CEE the decline in economic activity following the implementation of transformation measures has consistently exceeded the most pessimistic forecasts of policy-makers and their foreign advisers. In consequence, the social and economic costs borne by the Chinese during their transformation have been much less than in CEE. Based upon his own goals and assessment of CEE policies and their expected and actual consequences (see Tables 1 and 2). Myrdal would evaluate the performance of CEE economies as relatively poor⁶ Negative assessments would be accorded to social and economic equalisation, rise in productivity, rise in living standards, and social discipline and rational planning. He would find both positive and negative aspects for each of the other four criteria.⁷ Overall, he would evaluate the ‘tendencies’ as unfavourable because of the absence of any clear positive trends throughout the region. This evaluation, combined with the comparison with China, calls into question the efficacy of CEE policies based upon the assumption that transformation requires rapid privatisation, elimination of subsidies to state-owned enterprises, and stabilisation measures prior to institutional reforms, or that the state ought to adopt a passive role concerning supply-side responses during the transformation process. As the consummate political economist, Myrdal would criticise CEE goals and policies and suggest alternatives consistent with his value premises and his theory of development.     

‘Now,We Have the Same Rights as Men to Keep Our Jobs’: Gendered Perceptions of Opportunity and Obstacles in a Mexican Workplace

Drawing on extensive qualitative data at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation, this case study investigates professional employees’ perceptions of changes to a prohibitive work policy requiring women to quit working upon marriage and having children. Employees believed the policy change meant working women were valued employees, but how this translated into opportunity highlighted distinct views of the types of positions professional women could occupy at the company, reinforcing sex‐segregated job allocation. Whereas women's narratives pointed to cultural resistance, men's narratives attributed the dearth of women in higher level positions to their lack of professionalism and commitment to work. The work policy change only guaranteed the right for women to work as the company modernized to fit the neoliberal demands of the global marketplace. Now women faced the challenge of turning that right into career advancement in a traditionally masculine‐defined company. I argue that even with the policy change, gendered discourses on women in professional occupations constructed and maintained gender inequities in the workplace. This study contributes to the scholarly discussion on gendered discourses within the context of global restructuring by showing how mechanisms at work maintain gender inequity in the workplace.     

Web survey design and administration.

Many claims are being made about the advantages of conducting surveys on the Web. However, there has been little research on the effects of format or design on the levels of unit and item response or on data quality. In a study conducted at the University of Michigan, a number of experiments were added to a survey of the student population to assess the impact of design features on resulting data quality. A sample of 1,602 students was sent an e-mail invitation to participate in a Web survey on attitudes toward affirmative action. Three experiments on design approaches were added to the survey application. One experiment varied whether respondents were reminded of their progress through the instrument. In a second experiment, one version presented several related items on one screen, while the other version presented one question per screen. In a third experiment, for one series of questions a random half of the sample clicked radio buttons to indicate their answers, while the other half entered a numeric response in a box. This article discusses the overall implementation and outcome of the survey, and it describes the results of the imbedded design experiments.     

Media use and transnational political and civic participation: a case study of Mexicans in the USA

Although communication is largely understood as a prerequisite for transnational activity, little research explores exactly how transnational communities use media and what the implications of media use are for transnational civic and political participation. Research from communication studies suggests that media can affect civic and political participation in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. In an effort to merge literature from transnational and communication studies, in this study I focus on the case of Mexicans in the USA, offering secondary analyses of two datasets concerning their communication habits and civic and political participation in Mexico. Results suggest differential effects on participation based on preferences for certain media and pre‐existing attitudes.     

Political Marriages:

The married lives of political leaders, women in particular, have recently gained the attention of the U.S. public. To date, research has not directly examined the perceptions and attitudes of political couples, especially when the wife is the politician. This research toward sex roles as reported by political women and their spouses. Participants consisted of women political candidates running for state level office in two New England states as well as a sample of husbands. Results revealed differential perceptions between political women and husbands on the two major variables. Significant differences were also found for husbands of elected and unelected women. The classification of participants into subgroups reflecting election outcome is not to imply that the variables examined in this research determine success or lack thereof at the polls, or within the marital relationship.     

Participation without Negotiating: Influence of Stakeholder Power Imbalances and Engagement Models on Agricultural Policy Development in Uganda

Although the political context in Uganda exhibits democratic deficit and patronage, research and development actors have given little attention to the possible negative impact these may have on agricultural policymaking and implementation processes. This article examines the influence of power in perpetuating prevailing narratives around public participation in agricultural policymaking processes. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected between September 2014 and May 2015 using 86 in‐depth interviews, 18 focus group discussions, and recorded observations in stakeholder consultations. Results indicate that while the political setting provides space for uncensored debates, the policymaking process remains under close control of political leaders, technical personnel, and high‐level officers in the government. Policy negotiation remains limited to actors who are knowledgeable about the technical issues and those who have the financial resources and political power to influence decisions, such as international donors. There is limited space for negotiation of competing claims and interests in the processes by public and private actors actively engaged in agricultural development, production, processing, and trade. Thus, efforts to achieve good governance in policy processes fall short due to lack of approaches that promote co‐design and co‐ownership of the policies.