Documents Benson, John 11 results

"This article argues that there is a trend towards enterprise unionism in a number of countries. The authors begin by defining enterprise unionism and developing a framework of analysis in terms of activities, governance, and resources. Utilizing this framework, six countries - Japan, US, France, Germany, UK and Australia - are examined. The trend towards enterprise unionism is best seen in terms of collective bargaining and joint consultation. The authors then consider various explanations for this tendency, including unions and their members, the state, and employers in their market context. This is followed by a discussion of the implications, which may be drawn, and the research gaps, which need to be filled. "

"The success of the Japanese company has often been attributed to a range of management practices and enterprise unionism. These claims, however, have been based on research that was conducted during periods of high economic growth where a major objective of the company was increasing market share. This article extends this research by assessing the impact of these factors on the financial performance of Japanese companies over the period 1991–2001, a period of economic decline and change. The findings of the research challenge the conventional view of the value of Japanese management practices and enterprise unions, and illustrate the need to consider these practices within a wider economic context."

'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.'