Documents theoretical analysis 111 results

"This paper seeks to provide a theoretical explanation to the contradictory results found by the empirical literature concerning the effects of recent workplace organizational changes on job stability. We develop an endogenous job destruction model à la Mortensen-Pissarides (1994) where a modernizing firm may offer to the worker a tayloristic job (traditional organization) or a holistic job (modern organization). We then study the evolution of job stability during the transition from a tayloristic to a holistic organization. Our results point towards the importance of the restructuring costs supported by firms during the modernizing trajectory as the main factor responsible for the variations in job stability."

"This book presents a major longitudinal comparative analysis of decision-making in seven organizations in three countries: the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands.

Although studies of decision-making and power relations within organizations are not new, Decisions in Organizations breaks new ground in two respects. First, it develops methods for tracing and measuring changes in the longitudinal decision-making process over the whole cycle of events relating to tactical and strategic issues. Second, it uses an original combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to allow meaningful interpretation of the statistical results. The outcome is a theoretical model which throws fresh light on the complexities of organizational events and helps to explain the main ingredients of power, and the role and limitation of participative decision-making.

A number of the authors' findings question or extend the conclusions of previous research. For example, the under-utilization of employees' skills and competence, which is widespread, emerges as a very significant outcome of excessively centralized power. Contrary to previous research, conflicts are shown to play a useful role in decision-making and to be to some extent a natural consequence of employee involvement. The implementation phase of decisions, hitherto ignored, is seen as important, and both theoretically and empirically distinct from earlier phases. These and other findings have practical, policy-relevant implications for design and practice."

"The healthy worker effect (HWE) poses a serious methodological problem to investigators of occupational cohorts in that it may mask mortality excesses that result from occupational exposures. This problem is further complicated by the fact that the strength of the HWE generally varies according to sociodemographic, employment, and time-related factors. While the HWE has been well documented among numerous cohorts of male workers, little is known about its expression among female occupational workers. Follow-up mortality data on 44,154 employees from the Hanford nuclear facility for the period of 1944-1986 were examined using standardized mortality ratio (SMR) analysis to assess whether modifiers of the HWE were expressed differently in females than in males. Results of this analysis show that while the HWE was modified by race, age at hire, occupational class, and length of follow-up in both male and female cohorts, different patterns of modification emerged across the two subgroups. Learning about how gender differentiates expression of the HWE will help investigators more precisely assess the confounding effect of the HWE in studies of working cohorts. Therefore, this study's findings are relevant for designing and interpreting future occupational cohort studies."

"We analyse the efficiency of schooling choices in a wage-posting search equilibrium model with on-the-job search. The workers have multidimensional skills and the search market is segmented by technology. Education determines the scope — or adaptability— of individual skills. Individuals obtain schooling to leave unemployment more quickly and to climb the wage ladder rapidly through job-to-job mobility — that is, to speed up job shopping. Education reduces firms' monopsony power in the wage determination by improving workers' mobility. As a result, the wage distribution shifts rightward with aggregate schooling. However, the ratio of vacant jobs to job seekers also falls in each sector. Either one or the other externality may dominate, implying, respectively, under- or over-education. A combination of minimum wage and schooling fee can decentralize the efficient allocation."

"This paper uses longitudinal survey data from Britain, Germany and Sweden to examine whether, as some researchers have suggested, there has been a convergence internationally towards individual forms of employee voice mechanism and, if so, to measure the extent and trajectory of change. The paper begins by examining the importance of the employee voice issue. It then reviews competing accounts of the utility of different forms of employee voice and their manifestations within different varieties of capitalism. It is hypothesized that there has been a general trend away from collective and towards individual voice mechanisms; this reflects the predominant trajectory of managerial practices towards convergence with the liberal market model. This hypothesis is largely rejected. The data showed only very limited evidence of directional convergence towards individual voice models in the three countries. Collective voice remains significant in larger organizations, and although it takes a wide range of forms that include but go beyond unions and works councils, this is a positive finding for proponents of those institutions."