Documents Michelotti, Marco 6 results

"How relevant are human resource (HR) practices in economies undergoing significant economic transition from a command to a market-based system? Using data drawn from a large sample of Chinese establishments, the authors investigate the spread of a range of Western-style HR practices in China and estimate the relationship between the adoption of these practices and three organizational outcomes: sales per employee, total labor costs, and unit labor costs. They find a mixed result for the relationships between labor management practices and establishment productivity. While the introduction of a number of HR practices was also associated with significantly higher labor costs, the results indicate a more mixed result for the relationship between these practices and unit labor costs. Their findings further the understanding of the relationship between work practices and organizational outcomes, and they help clarify the effects of the changing economic context on HR management in China."

"The primary objective of this study is to intervene in the debate on methods to measure and compare legally mandated employment conditions by applying a recently devised numerical instrument to Federal labour standards in Australia in two points in time. In order to achieve this aim, non-parametric absolute indexes are generated for 1979 and 2000 to measure the strength of labour standards and associated changes over time. The numerical results suggest that two of the 10 standards measured, workers? compensation and collective bargaining, diminished while the indexes for equal employment opportunity/employment equity, unjust discharge, occupational health and safety and large-scale layoffs increased. The central tenet of the paper is that although the numerical data provide useful information, they should be interpreted in light of broader regulatory and policy developments that substantially reshaped the features of the Australian employment protection regime during the period considered. This is necessary because the method utilised is highly sensitive to the nature of the regulatory sources that are adopted to construct the statistical indexes."

"Many scholars and policy-makers argue that advanced market economies are converging towards a neoliberal labour market model with diluted labour standards. However, others insist that `capitalism allows variety'. The primary purpose of this article is to provide empirical evidence that supports the latter position, by comparing legally mandated labour standards in Italy through 1979—2003 and by juxtaposing the results against OECD panel data which allegedly show a decline in labour standards. This comparison suggests that a more complex regulatory transformation occurred than is allowed for by the OECD: indeed, labour standards for core workers in Italy were actually strengthened. This discrepancy reflects the limited focus of the OECD data."

"Recent research in the domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has underlined the importance of moving away from an institutional perspective of CSR towards research at the micro-level. Such calls have insisted on the necessity of a developing a deeper, and more nuanced understanding of its impacts and mechanisms at the individual level. This paper addresses this issue by focusing on the nexus between how employees judge their companies' actual CSR performance and how that judgement can affect individual, micro-level outcomes such as job satisfaction and turnover intentions. We study this by a consideration of how perceived fit between employees and their organization mediates the relationship between perceived corporate social performance (CSP) on the one hand, and job satisfaction and turnover intentions on the other.

While there is a notion, commonly embraced in the literature, that corporate social performance can have beneficial effects on individual employee outcomes, there have not been many empirical studies looking into the mechanisms by which this occurs. Through a survey of 317 young employees from differing company sizes and sectors in Europe and Asia, we find that positive assessment of CSP does not have a direct influence on job satisfaction and turnover intention, but is mediated by person-organization fit. The latter, in turn, has a positive effect on job satisfaction and reduced turnover intention.

The implications of these findings are that the achievement of efficient and effective performance in social and environmental terms reinforces the perception of employees that their values fit with those of the organization. This process then creates value in terms of increased job satisfaction and reduced employee turnover intentions. We note also that simply improving CSP objectively, without involving and raising awareness among employees, will not necessarily lead to improved perceptions of how the employee fits within the organization and the potential positive knock-on employee outcomes."

"The economic reforms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have fundamentally reshaped ownership and governance of economic production, notably through the privatization of former state-owned enterprises. These reforms were expected to transform management practices by displacing ‘cradle-to-grave' welfare arrangements administered by state-owned enterprises. Using data drawn from two large samples of Ukrainian establishments, we investigate, in two different time points, the relationship between non-wage benefits and firm performance during the period of transition to a market economy (1994–2004). We found that non-wage benefits continued to be a critical feature of HRM practices in Ukraine during this period, and were positively associated with firm performance. "