Documents Lloyd, Caroline 21 results

"Trade unions are potentially important actors in shaping digitalisation to benefit workers. Research suggests supportive national labour market institutions can help unions to influence digital change in the workplace. This article considers the reach of national institutions, or ‘country effect', and its relationship with union strength at the workplace. It applies a multilevel analysis to explore union influence over digital technology in the food and drink processing sector in Norway and the UK, two countries with starkly contrasting institutions. Drawing on interviews with officers and shop stewards in two unions, it compares a sample of workplaces with relatively strong and weak union organisation. The findings indicate union strength at the workplace has a more significant impact on union's role in digitalisation in Norway, where there are strong institutional supports, than in the UK where these are lacking. The article contributes to analysing the relationship between ‘country-effect' and union strength at the workplace in the shaping of digitalisation.

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"There is a widely held assumption that product market strategies, skill and pay are linked. Supportive evidence is typically drawn from manufacturing and using quantitative analyses. Emergent research of the link in services is ambivalent and has methodological limitations. This article addresses this weakness. It compares the skills and pay of room attendants in upper and mid-market hotels using qualitative research. It finds that the link is weak, even decoupled. The findings suggest a reconceptualization is needed of the link in services and that interventions other than product market re-positioning are needed to deliver higher skills and better pay."

"There has been considerable debate about the impact of different national institutional environments on work organization. The Nordic countries, with their strong trade unions and well developed systems of social partnership around collective bargaining and vocational education and training, are found to be particularly advanced when it comes to developing more autonomous job roles. While institutions are said to play a key role, some commentators point to the existence of national employment ‘logics' which may have a more far-reaching influence. Drawing upon qualitative research, the article compares the job of fitness instructor in Norway and the UK. The study finds little evidence of a clear country-level difference in job design, suggesting that if there is a national employment ‘logic' it has been overwhelmed by specific industry dynamics."

"The article explores the claim that Scandinavian countries have been able to support forms of work organization which afford employees higher levels of autonomy and control, compared with liberal market economies, such as the UK. Focusing upon the experience of vocational teachers in England, Wales and Norway, the article compares levels of autonomy, discretion and decision-making influence. The research finds evidence that Norway is indeed distinctive, and that both the institutional and policy context, alongside the actions of trade unions, are crucial in explaining the differences found."