Documents Gonzalez Menendez, Maria 7 results

"This report:
- Assesses the current employment conditions of part-time workers in comparison with those of comparable full-time workers across a range of countries.
- Investigates the barriers to mutually agreed and freely chosen part-time work that meets the needs of both employers and workers.
- Identifies those government policies and enterprise policies and practices regarding working hours and working-time arrangements, which appear to be likely to improve both access to, and the quality of, part-time work arrangements, while also advancing gender equality.
- Reviews and analyses those government and enterprise policies, practices and overall conditions that may help workers to successfully transition between full- and part-time work."

"This paper analyses how research in cross-national comparative human resource management deals with ideas, values and norms. On the basis of an analysis of the articles with that focus that were published in selected leading journals between 2001 and 2010, it first identifies the main approaches to comparative work, which are labelled as materialism, hard institutionalism, soft institutionalism, interlocking institutionalism and culturalism. How each of these broad approaches deals with ideational values is critically assessed. The paper then reviews attempts to deal with two specific problems: the shaping of national and actor identities, and the production of new ideas and cross-national learning. We conclude that the ideational sphere is under-operationalised and under-theorised in most cross-national research on human resource and industrial relations management, and suggest how this problem might be addressed."

"In a context in which multinational corporations are increasingly able to choose their locations of production, this article examines how social and political governance actors in host regional economies attempt to attract and retain foreign direct investment. Based on a comparative study of two regions in each of Canada, Ireland, Spain and the UK, it shows both national and in some cases sub-national variations in the nature of attempts to attract and retain foreign investment, as well as in the actors involved. The article also discusses how these differences in policy interact with the characteristics of specific foreign investors. Our findings support arguments that attempts to embed regime-shopping firms are facilitated by active governance from social as well as state actors."

"Multivariate analysis of survey data for a Spanish region suggests a model of direct participation aimed mostly at workers' integration within a broadly neo-Tayloristic approach to labour management and pragmatism of unions and managers. These results question dominant perceptions of the determinants of direct participation, especially that direct participation may always be connected to change and that it cannot enhance institutional industrial relations and participation processes. The political system of industrial relations appears to mediate developments."

"This paper examines the influential Varieties of Capitalism argument (Hall and Soskice 2001) that economies tend to one of two forms of capitalism - liberal market and coordinated market economies - with different employment policies being conducive to economic success in each. An analysis of the relationship between financial and labour market systems suggests that the links between the two operate in a less deterministic way than is suggested by Hall and Soskice. This suggests that industrial relations actors are not prisoners of coordinated or liberal systems, and that 'political' choice retains a significant role in changes to employment systems"

"The paper analyses how regional actors have mobilised to attract and retain foreign direct investment in two Spanish regions with different political approaches to the management of economic issues, including industrial relations. These regions are Madrid, the main pole of attraction of foreign direct investment in Spain, and Asturias, with a large tradition of heavy industry and a greater dependence on a small number of large employers. It finds the regions have adapted to international competition in substantially different manners and considers the alternative reasons why this might be the case, highlighting the role of organised labour both in the inward investment regimes themselves, and in shaping the nature of the different compromises they involve. "