Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Policy: New Life in an Old Connection

The purpose of this paper is to account for the revival of both academic and substantive interest in what had long been seen as an unimportant byway of social policy: the role of social partners, especially trade unions, in the management of national social insurance systems. The answer is found in the budgetary crises facing these systems along with the frequent embedded role of the social partner organizations in their governance. Meanwhile, this welfare state role of trade unions then has implications back on to the conduct of industrial relations. The diversity of national experiences is considered, including the reasons for British exceptionalism on this question. Particular use is made of a comparison between Italy and the Netherlands on the one hand (cases of some success in the role of social partners in managing change in social insurance arrangements), and France and Germany on the other (at the time of writing, cases of stalemate).     

Futures research—Working with management teams

This paper discusses ways of looking at the future, with particular emphasis on the future as a ‘conscious dream’, and discusses an approach by which conscious dreams can be represented as explicit models. A case study is given of the use of this method with three housing managers who were enabled by it to articulate their own images of the future and understand each others' images. The benefits to be gained from such a procedure are discussed.     

Meeting the Needs of Vulnerable Young Men: A Study of Service Provider Views

This article uses a qualitative approach to elicit the views of 31 professionals who provide services to vulnerable young men. The findings reveal six key themes following focus group interviews: (i) the importance of masculinity in explaining problematic behaviour; (ii) the misuse of alcohol and drugs; (iii) alienation and social isolation; (iv) concerns about suicide and self‐harm; (v) the quality of existing services; and (vi) recommendations for changes to services. Service providers generally acknowledged the social context in explaining these behaviours and argued for enhanced services and a more developed skills base in working with vulnerable young men.     

Selecting the optimum k in ridge regression

Two ridge rules are proposed for selecting the optimal k in ridge regression . Since the sampling distribution of the proposed rules are mathematically in tractable , a Monte Carlo study is conducted to examine their statisticl properties . Numerical results of the simulations in dicate that the performance of ridge rules depends upon the risk function used. Nevertheless, one of the ridge rules does produce a smaller mean squared error than the least squares estimator with the probability greater than 0.57 for all situations.     

Optimal voting rules for two-member tenure committees

A tenure committee first votes on whether to hire a candidate; if it does, it receives an informative performance signal, and then votes on whether to tenure the candidate; rejection at either stage returns the committee to a candidate pool, endogenising the value of the outside option. A candidate’s fate depends only on the behaviour of two ‘weather-vane’ committee members. Committee members may vote against favoured candidates if the weather-vane is opposed; enthusiastic assessments by one of these weather-vanes may harm a candidate’s chances by increasing others’ thresholds for hiring him; sunk time costs may lead voters who voted against hiring to vote for tenuring him, even after a poor probationary performance. For two member committees that are patient and perceptive, the optimal voting rule is a (weak) majority at the hiring stage and unanimity at the tenure stage; when such committees are impatient or imperceptive, the double (weak) majority rule is optimal. Perversely, the performance of a patient, imperceptive committee improves as its perceptiveness further declines. Consistent with practice, falling threshold rules are not optimal. Results on optimal voting rules are also presented in limit cases as committee members’ beliefs become more correlated. Finally, we compare the model to a discrete-time European options model.     

Depression and coping mechanisms in prisoners

In an attempt to identify the number, nature, and effectiveness of coping mechanisms used by long-term prisoners to cope with stress, a sample of inmates was administered scales measuring depression, coping strategies, and sensation-seeking. It was found that the prisoners' depression scores were very high, placing several inmates into the category of severe clinical depression. However, the number of coping mechanisms used by prisoners to deal with a stressful situation was not reflected by the depression scores. Extensive use of coping mechanisms was, if anything, associated with an increased level of depression. The expected relationship between sensation-seeking and proneness to depression in prison failed to emerge.