Documents Brown, Michelle 6 results

"Researchers have demonstrated that young people's union attitudes and joining is influenced by a range of workplace and job factors but little is known about what factors influence young people's union attitudes after leaving high school but prior to starting a career. Based on social learning theory, this paper explores the role of social networks as contributors to young people's positive union attitudes. Using data from 445 university students, the results show family, study major and friends' union attitudes have a positive impact on young peoples' union attitudes, which in turn predict willingness to join a union. We conclude the paper with a discussion of study findings for theories of union joining behaviour and union recruitment campaigns."

"Our research not only addresses the strategic purposes of expatriate assignments within multinational corporations but, unlike most earlier studies, extends the investigation to include their path-dependent outcomes. Adopting a knowledge transfer perspective we first re-define the principal assignment purpose categories of Edström and Galbraith (1977a) as business applications, organization applications and expatriate learning. These purpose categories are then conceptually related in terms of a four-part typological matrix based on individual-level knowledge-flow direction and role focus. Following a review of prior assignment purpose studies we posit that strategic expatriate assignment purposes should be considered not in isolation but relative to their potential outcomes. Adopting a single-case research design with multi-method data collection, we demonstrate the emergent nature of strategic assignment outcomes. It is shown for our transnational case organization that knowledge acquisition or learning by expatriates is an underestimated strategic assignment outcome, more so than either business or organization-related knowledge applications."

"This is the first study of how various factors, particularly unions, affect the likelihood of plant closures in Australia. Australia is of special interest in this connection, the authors argue, because of its unique industrial relations institutions, which, at the time of the study (1990-95), limited the capacity of established unionized firms to shed unionization except through plant closure. An analysis of Australian Industrial Relations Survey data shows that two of three measures of unionization had a robust positive influence on the probability of plant closure, and the third had a weaker positive influence. Depending on the specification, for example, a 10 percentage point increase in union density (one of the two measures found to have strong influence) was associated with a 1.3-1.7 percentage point increase in the probability of plant closure-representing a substantial increment, since the mean closure probability among these plants was about 16%."

'There is a well established literature on the antecedents of organizational commitment, though the relative importance of these antecedents to particular groups of workers remains unclear. Relying on a general set of antecedents for all workers may result in the application of inappropriate HRM policies and practices. Our focus is on knowledge workers as they have been identified as important to organizational success.The literature is, however, divided on what constitutes knowledge work so we develop and apply a measure that focuses on what these workers do.We then use this measure to examine attitudinal and behavioural commitment. We find, using responses from 1969 employees, knowledge workers have higher attitudinal commitment and lower intention to quit than routine-task workers. Further, the antecedents of commitment for knowledge workers and routine-task workers differ in many important respects, creating challenges for organizational decision makers.'