Documents Batt, Rosemary 11 results

"The last twenty-five years of the twentieth century was a period of extraordinary change in organizations and the economies of the developed world. This continues today. Such has been the scale and momentum of events that, for some analysts, the only comparable periods are the early part of the twentieth century in which the shift to mass production and large-scale organization was accomplished, or the industrial revolution itself a hundred years earlier. Researchers in Europe and the USA in particular have been studying change in work and organizations, but there has been little attempt to systematize and draw together the results of their work. So far, the emphasis amongst writers on organizations considering the problem of contemporary change has been on ways of conceptualizing events, rather than also considering evidence. But what has actually happened? How much of the flux of events is real change, and how much mere change in emphasis in which apparent change is overlaying organizational continuity? How far are changes in particular events and sectors connected, and is an overall understanding of complex processes possible? TheOxford Handbook of Work and Organizationaims to bring together, present and discuss what is currently known about work and organizations and their connection to broader economic change in Europe and America. Issues of conceptualization are not neglected but, in contrast to other comparable volumes, the emphasis is firmly on what is known what and has been observed by researchers. The volume contains a range of theoretically informed essays, written by leading authorities in their respective fields, giving comprehensive coverage of changes in work, occupations, and organizations. It constitutes an invaluable overview of the accumulated understanding of research into work, occupations and organizations in recent decades. It shows that in almost every aspect of economic institutions, change has been considerable. The subject area of work, occupations and organizations is considered in five major sections of the volume: I, Work, Technology, and the Division of Labour; II, Managerial Regimes and Employee Responses; III, Organizing and Organizations; IV, Occupations and Organizations and V. Organizations, Institutions, and Boundaries. In this way the contemporary situation in work and organizations is considered extensively in its different dimensions and interconnections. The contributors have been selected for their expertise and include many leading authors in organizational analysis and substantive research. The handbook is thus an authoritative statement, and offers a valuable account of organizations at this time."

"An increasing share of the economy is organized around financial capitalism, where capital market actors actively manage their claims on wealth creation and distribution to maximize shareholder value. Drawing on four case studies of private equity buyouts, we challenge agency theory interpretations that they are ‘welfare neutral' and show that an alternative source of shareholder value is breach of trust and implicit contracts. We show why management and employment relations scholars need to investigate the mechanisms of financial capitalism to provide a more accurate analysis of the emergence of new forms of class relations and to help us move beyond the limits of the varieties of capitalism approach to comparative institutional analysis."

"This case study of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) demonstrates the value of resource dependence and contingency organizational theories-two branches of organization theory, which has most commonly been used to interpret firm behavior-for analyzing union revitalization. Consistent with predictions of those theories, the CWA responded to a changed environment by abandoning strategies that no longer achieved organizational objectives, but retaining and bolstering strategies that continued to be effective. Furthermore, like the organizations analyzed in Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik's classic exposition of resource dependency theory, in the face of heightened environmental complexity and uncertainty the CWA used political action, growth strategies, and inter-organizational linkages to gain advantage. The CWA conformed to another prediction of contingency theory by using an integration strategy-specifically, by making simultaneous and interactive use of activities in collective bargaining, politics, and organizing-to spur innovation and respond to environmental complexity and uncertainty."

"This article examines the dynamics of workplace change in European call centres. Survey data and case studies from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain show large national and sectoral differences in institutional inclusiveness and labour market segmentation. These reflect variation in the institutional constraints and resources available to employers and unions as they adjust to market changes. However, union strategies to organize new groups and close gaps in existing regulations are becoming increasingly important as restructuring undermines traditional forms of bargaining power."

"Using survey data for call centre establishments in eight countries, we examine the relationship between wages and human resource practices. High-involvement work design and the use of performance-based pay are significantly positively related to wages, whereas intensive use of performance monitoring is negatively associated with wages. These relationships are larger among liberal economies compared with co-ordinated ones, but individual country differences are large and, in many cases, do not conform to expectations regarding institutional differences between liberal and co-ordinated market economies. The exception is Denmark."