Nola Agha and David Berri
This chapter undertakes a comparison of pay in women's basketball with an emphasis on its inception in North America. Through a quantitative approach, we find players are…
Abstract
This chapter undertakes a comparison of pay in women's basketball with an emphasis on its inception in North America. Through a quantitative approach, we find players are undervalued in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) compared to men's basketball, men's soccer, and women's basketball in Europe and Asia. By comparing leagues at the same period in their life cycles, we show that women are underpaid even after accounting for the age of the league. The relatively low pay in the WNBA, even when compared to the identical formative time period in the men's professional league, led 48% of American WNBA players to seek employment in basketball leagues in Europe and Asia in 2019. In these leagues, players receive much higher salaries. We explain these wage inequities based on business structure and economic theory. In sum, both the WNBA and National Basketball Association (NBA) are primarily profit-maximising leagues, but NBA players have always been paid a higher percentage of league revenues than the women of the WNBA. This was even true when the NBA had a much lower level of revenue. Salaries in the WNBA are then further depressed by a league that seems to prioritise short-run profit maximisation over long-run investment, thus continuing to delegitimise the WNBA. Ultimately, the constraints to pay derive from not only gendered systems but also the structure of profit-maximising leagues and teams in the United States.
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Daphne Berry and David Fitz-Gerald
Carris Reels, a reel-manufacturing company headquartered in Vermont, had long-standing goals of being employee owned and governed. They also had a strong organizational…
Abstract
Synopsis
Carris Reels, a reel-manufacturing company headquartered in Vermont, had long-standing goals of being employee owned and governed. They also had a strong organizational (ownership) culture. The Corporate Steering Committee (CSC), a committee composed of representatives from management and non-management employees, and the board of directors had a decision to make about adding two new members to the board. With these new members, the board of directors would be made up of both members of management and non-management employees. Was Carris forfeiting wiser outside counsel in favor of company insiders? What about for the future of the company?
Research methodology
The data for this case were collected from discussions and informal interviews with Carris Reels employees, and archival data from the company intranet which includes an archival of company newsletters, meeting minutes and announcements. Information on the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), board of directors, the CSC, and ESOP trustees from these sources were also used.
Relevant courses and levels
This case is suitable for strategic management, and social responsibility and social enterprise-focused courses for upper-level undergraduates and MBA students.
Theoretical bases
The sources, development, and outcomes of a strong organizational culture are important to this case. Schein (1989) and others (Harris and Ogbanna, 1999) address the role of a company’s founder in development of the company’s culture. Research addressing ownership and participation in the context of an ownership culture indicates positive outcomes to employees and to their companies (Logue and Yates, 2005; Ownership Associates, 1998).
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Daphne Berry and David Fitz-Gerald
This case explores the context in which decisions related to the composition of the board of directors are made at a company with a strong, participatory culture and strong values…
Abstract
This case explores the context in which decisions related to the composition of the board of directors are made at a company with a strong, participatory culture and strong values of accountability, responsibility, and community.
This case study seeks an in-depth understanding of a 100% ESOP company’s (Carris Reels, Inc.) values, culture, and processes related to broad-based employee participation in decision-making and governance of the company. Data were collected from formal and informal interviews and discussions with Carris Reels’ employees, observation, and company archival data, including newsletters, meeting minutes, and announcements.
Goals may be sufficiently different at highly participatory, majority employee-owned ESOP companies such that regulatory guidelines for board structure for public or privately held companies that are not employee-owned should be evaluated in the context of that company’s stakeholders.
A trend toward external members for boards of directors should be given careful consideration in the case of majority ESOP companies whose employee-owned and governed status is central to the company’s vision.
This case study provides an in-depth look at a company’s board of directors’ composition-related decision-making in the context of broad-based participatory processes and the desire to maintain a profitable and fully employee-owned and governed enterprise.
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For a variety of reasons, both ordinary citizens and political leaders have failed since 1914 to be passionate and imaginative enough in the pursuit of peace. As technological…
Abstract
For a variety of reasons, both ordinary citizens and political leaders have failed since 1914 to be passionate and imaginative enough in the pursuit of peace. As technological advances have made it possible to kill increasing numbers of people and put civilians increasingly at risk, our moral development has lagged far beyond. We need to emulate Gandhi more, whose moral passion and non-violent resistance tactics have inspired other seekers of peace like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Although political leaders have different responsibilities than ordinary citizens, they too can be ardent and imaginative peace seekers, as the examples of West Germany’s Willy Brandt, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, and U.S. President John F. Kennedy (during the last year of his life) demonstrate. At present, the Ukrainian Crisis cries out for just such leadership, but heretofore has not been forthcoming.
This paper examines some of the ethical problems involved in undertaking Internet research and draws on historical accounts as well as contemporary studies to offer an analysis of…
Abstract
This paper examines some of the ethical problems involved in undertaking Internet research and draws on historical accounts as well as contemporary studies to offer an analysis of the issues raised. It argues that privacy is a misleading and confusing concept to apply to the Internet, and that the concept of non‐alienation is more resourceful in addressing the many ethical issues surrounding Internet research. Using this as a basis, the paper then investigates the Free/Libre and Open Source research model and argues for the principles of “open source ethics” in researching the online world, which includes a participatory and democratic research method.
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The more recent history of the National Health Service, especially the Hospital Service, has been in the nature of a lumbering from one crisis to another. From the moment of its…
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The more recent history of the National Health Service, especially the Hospital Service, has been in the nature of a lumbering from one crisis to another. From the moment of its inception it has proved far more costly than estimated and over‐administered, but in the early years, it had great promise and was efficient at ward level, which continued until more recent times. As costs increased and administration grew and grew, much of it serving no useful purpose, there appeared to be a need for reorganisation. In 1974, a three‐tier structure was introduced by the establishment of new area health authorities, the primary object of which was to facilitate — and cheapen — decision making; to give the district bodies and personnel easier access to “management”. It coincided with reorganisation of Local Government, which included the transfer of all the personal health services and abolition of the office of medical officer of health. At the time and in looking back, there was very little need for this and reviewing the progress and advances made in local government, medical officers of health who had advocated the transfer, mainly for reasons of their own status, would have achieved this and more by remainining in the local government service; the majority of health visitors appear to have reached the same conclusion. They constitute a profession within themselves and in truth do not have all that much in common with day‐to‐day nursing. The basic training and nursing qualification is most essential, however. It has been said that a person is only as good a health visitor as she is a nurse.
In these days of jargon and slang, to the purist it must seem that little is described by its real name, that is, during conversation. Most people refer to the city as “the smoke”…
Abstract
In these days of jargon and slang, to the purist it must seem that little is described by its real name, that is, during conversation. Most people refer to the city as “the smoke” and the city‐dweller's pseudonym for the country is “out in the sticks”, which, of course, could mean that “the sticks” are kindling to a fire that has not been lit, with the city “smoke” as the end‐product of the fire that is burning up those who rush hither and thither in its bedlamite streets and ugly office blocks. The cottage, the church and inn no longer completely fill the lives of the villagers; they now have piped water supplies, electricity and telephones; deep freezers, colour television and cars; they have moved closer to the city standards of comfort and convenience without losing any of the enduring qualities which make them different. And the countryman is very different to the town‐dweller—in outlook, habit and countenance. Even the villager who works in the town and city, and nowadays there are many of them, would not change his home in the country for a flat or terrace house in a mean street, despite the long journeying to and fro. At one time, it had to be a special type of girl who chose a home in these rural settings, with few or perhaps no neighbours and no corner‐shop, but now more and more are realizing that life in a village is easier on the whole family.