Documents Wright, Mike 11 results

"After years of watching company health and safety programs fail to prevent major incidents, injuries, illness, and death in industrial workplaces, union health and safety staff and rank and file activists took up the challenge of creating a union-run alternative program. Named the Triangle of Prevention (TOP), the program successfully engages both local unions and management in incident and near-miss reporting and investigation, root cause analysis, recommending and tracking solutions, and learning and sharing lessons. In all phases, TOP uses a hierarchical, systems-of-safety-based approach to hazard identification, reporting, prevention and control while aiming to engage the union, its members, and all other employees of a worksite. This article explains the foundations and workings of this program, the role of an expansive worker-to-worker training regimen, and the ways in which the program has transformed workplaces."

"This article explores the impact of private equity (PE) firms on human resource management practices in buy-outs using data drawn from the first representative pan-European survey into this issue. The findings suggest the overall impact of PE on high-performance work practices (HPWP) is affected more by length of the investment relationship than the countries where PE is going to or is coming from. PE investment results in the increased use of HPWP in buy-outs the longer the anticipated time to exit. With respect to the PE firms' country of origin, buy-outs backed by Anglo-Saxon PE firms are as likely to introduce new HPWP (and are specifically more likely to extend performance-related pay schemes) as those backed by non-Anglo-Saxon PE firms, suggesting some adaptation to the local host country contexts of buy-outs."

"This paper reports the findings from a survey of the effects of management buyouts on human resource management (HRM). Buyouts resulted in increased employment, the adoption of new reward systems, and expanded employee involvement. These developments support the resource-based view that buyouts develop internal assets over agency theory predictions that managers will adopt a cost reduction approach. The type of buyout influences the subsequent development of HRM. Buyouts report more commitment-orientated employment policies where employees own shares, and where the buyout pursues a 'buy and build' corporate strategy and adopts a business strategy of enhancing customer service and developing markets."

"A buy-out is a fundamental change in the structure of ownership that may affect the way employee relations develop within an organization. Little is known about the impact of buy-outs upon employee relations. This paper aims to address this gap. We focus on two main questions. First, what are the effects of a buy-out on employee relations in an organization? Second, does the national institutional context affect the impact of buy-outs on employee relations? The paper reports changes to employee relations in buy-outs in the contrasting institutional environments of the UK and the Netherlands. Overall, we find that buy-outs positively affect HR practices with increases in training, employee involvement, the number of employees and pay levels. The positive effects appear to be significantly stronger in a less institutionalized environment like the UK than in the more institutionalized environment of the Netherlands. Buy-outs raised HRM practices in the UK to a level closer to, although still below, that of Dutch buy-outs."

"International staffing is relatively unexplored for service firms as much of the literature focuses on manufacturing firms. We draw on the knowledge-based perspective to analyze three key issues related to venture capital firms' international staffing: composition of the international staffing pool; reasons for the deployment of expatriates; and the process through which staff co-ordinate international decision-making, respectively. These research questions are investigated in an exploratory study combining a survey and qualitative interviews. The results suggest that the recruitment of local executives is significantly more important than the deployment of expatriates, and expatriation is significantly more important for transferring knowledge than for other motives suggested in the literature. In VC firms, investment committees play a key role in international decision-making, which allows them to manage challenges that otherwise would require deployment of expatriates. Implications of these results for future IHRM research and for the management of venture capital firms are discussed. "

" One feature of the global economy in recent years has been the increasing number and importance of new investment funds (private equity (PE), hedge funds (HFs), and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)), which are sometimes referred to as alternative investment funds (AIFs). This increase has paralleled fundamental changes in financial markets and has generated heated debates on the impact of these funds on restructuring practices, employment levels and industrial relations. This report present the results of a project that brought together researchers from several European countries to assess the effects of investment funds on labour outcomes."

"The unprecedented geopolitical shift resulting from Brexit reflects deep socio-economic fault lines within and beyond the UK. In many ways foreshadowing the US presidential election of Donald Trump, Brexit brought to the surface and gave a public voice to socio-economic divisions that were deeply embedded, sometimes illogical, but until now had either been ignored or hushed out of ‘respectable' public debate. This Discussion Forum emanates from a spontaneous seminar organized 2 days after the Brexit vote on June 25, 2016 as part of the SASE conference held in University of California–Berkeley and followed by an open call for papers by Socio-Economic Review. The papers here draw attention to the origins of the Brexit vote in deep-seated socio-economic divisions (O'Reilly), widening differences in economic performance across sectors and regions of the UK (Froud, Sukhdev and Williams) and the growth of poor quality jobs (Warhurst). Meanwhile, the political dynamics of the Brexit vote were also shaped by the fractured nature of UK business elites (Morgan), divisions between locals and cosmopolitans (Grey) and creative but muddled actions of elites that arguably generated consequences they themselves failed to fully anticipate (Wood and Wright). From the perspective of Europe, Brexit reflects a history of dysfunctional economic policy in Europe that prioritized market competition in ways that neglected and ultimately undermined solidarity (Boyer). Here, Brexit reflects a political strategy to both renationalize and recommodify solidarity in the face of fears over migration, and which are likely to have major consequences for social solidarity in Europe more generally (Frerichs and Sankari). However, Brexit is unlikely to provide a durable social and political solution to the wider tensions between globalization and democracy, which also affect all countries throughout Europe (Rona-Tas). Ultimately, the Brexit vote underlines social divisions that combine class inequalities with regional ones, not just in Britain but throughout Europe (Le Galès)."

"This article reviews evidence of the impact of entrepreneurship on job creation, gender and race discrimination, university spin-offs, growth, economic geography, finance and the public sector. It defines entrepreneurship, corrects some conventional wisdoms about it and discusses policy implications of the evidence on its determinants and effects. The article suggests that the distinctive nature of entrepreneurship raises theoretical, empirical and policy issues that the existing literature has not even begun to address to date."