Raymond Harbridge and Pat Walsh
The labour markets of Australia and New Zealand have been regulated in similar ways, through industrial conciliation and arbitration, since the early 1900s. Globalization and…
Abstract
The labour markets of Australia and New Zealand have been regulated in similar ways, through industrial conciliation and arbitration, since the early 1900s. Globalization and market deregulation generally have led to intense pressure for greater labour market flexibility in both countries. In New Zealand, flexibility was achieved by a radical dismantling of the industrial relations system. What had been essentially a multi‐employer bargaining system was replaced with a system that supported individual employment contracting. In Australia, conciliation and arbitration remained protected by the constitution; however, industrial relations reforms aimed at severely weakening the system were implemented in the 1990s. This paper compares various labour market outcomes across both countries. The trends in both countries are similar despite maintaining different systems. Collective bargaining coverage has dropped. Collective bargaining outcomes have seen reductions in benefits, and significant changes in working time arrangements. Union density has dropped, as also has public sector employment.
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Cameron Allan, Peter Brosnan, Frank Horwitz and Pat Walsh
A critical labour market issue in all developed economies is the growth of non‐standard forms of labour such as temporary, part‐time, casual work, fixed term contracts…
Abstract
A critical labour market issue in all developed economies is the growth of non‐standard forms of labour such as temporary, part‐time, casual work, fixed term contracts, sub‐contracting, homeworking, agency labour and so on. This paper provides survey evidence of employers’ past, present and intended usage of non‐standard forms of labour in three countries: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Our results indicate that non‐standard forms of employment do represent an important feature of the contemporary workplace, to varying degrees, in these three countries. However, our findings also show that standard, full‐time, permanent employment still remains the dominant form of employment in all three countries.
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Cameron Allan, Peter Brosnan and Pat Walsh
In the post‐Second World War period, working and social life has been organised around the concept of a standard day and week with premium payments for work undertaken during…
Abstract
In the post‐Second World War period, working and social life has been organised around the concept of a standard day and week with premium payments for work undertaken during unsocial hours. In recent years, this standard model for organising working‐time has been placed under pressure from a range of supply‐ and demand‐side factors. Greater female and student participation in the labour force has led to a fragmentation of working‐time preferences on the supply side. Employers, on the demand side, have also sought to dismember the standard working‐time model to eliminate premium payments for unsocial work and to achieve greater control and flexibility in the allocation of non‐standard working hours. Employer demand for this type of labour flexibility has been one of the central rationales for the decentralisation of industrial relations systems in Australia and New Zealand. This paper seeks to assess whether employers in the more deregulated New Zealand system have instigated a vastly different non‐standard working‐time regime from their Australian counterparts. The article concludes that there are only minor differences in the distribution of non‐standard working hours in Australia and New Zealand. This finding challenges the notion that the arbitration system is a major impediment to the organisation of working‐time. Rather, it appears that production and operational demands are the central imperative in the structuring of working‐time within firms.
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My first scheduled meeting with June ended up with my not meeting her at all! But the circumstances of this occasion do provide the opportunity to give a flavour of this…
Abstract
My first scheduled meeting with June ended up with my not meeting her at all! But the circumstances of this occasion do provide the opportunity to give a flavour of this extraordinarily talented woman that we have sadly lost. It was August 1993 and I was an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she spent the last seven years of her busy and highly successful life. She was at this time on the staff of Victoria University in Wellington. I was invited to present a paper to the Department and gladly accepted since this would have given me an opportunity to meet June who had first come to my attention through her work on developing a theoretical framework for public sector accounting. On my arrival in Wellington I received a note from June to say that sadly, and with immense regret, she couldn't be at the seminar since she had to attend an important meeting with the Auditor General of New Zealand, which, despite her wish to meet me, was a commitment she just couldn't avoid. In fact, as I discovered, she had just started a two‐year secondment to the New Zealand Audit Office reporting directly to the Auditor General with a major policy brief that transpired to be highly influential to New Zealand Government thinking.
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To provide comment on June Pallot's contribution to public policy debate in New Zealand.
Abstract
Purpose
To provide comment on June Pallot's contribution to public policy debate in New Zealand.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of June's CV, interview and discussions with former colleagues from Wellington, and personal recollections of discussions.
Findings
Provides information about the manner in which public policy development and debate occurs in New Zealand, June's sustained efforts to contribute, and the contrast with her efforts at international level.
Originality/value
This paper points out that although this prominent international academic was marginalised and ignored in her own country, she continued trying to contribute to public policy development in her own country as well as internationally.
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Tassilo Henike and Katharina Hölzle
Great uncertainty accompanies entrepreneurs’ processes of designing promising business models (BMs). Therefore, stabilising factors act as important means in this process. In this…
Abstract
Great uncertainty accompanies entrepreneurs’ processes of designing promising business models (BMs). Therefore, stabilising factors act as important means in this process. In this study, we examined the impact of cognitive dispositions and visual BM frameworks on the BM process and outcomes. By using partial-least-square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and an experimental setting, our results show that the stabilising function of BM frameworks depends on entrepreneurs’ cognitive dispositions. This finding contributes to the cognitive BM perspective and explains how cognitive dispositions and visual framing effects act as boundary conditions for the theory of stabilising factors. This also has important implications for applying frameworks in practice.
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Mark S. Rosenbaum, Carolyn Massiah and Richard Wozniak
This article seeks to illustrate how social commonalities between employees and their customers often result in customers believing that they are entitled to discounts in retail…
Abstract
Purpose
This article seeks to illustrate how social commonalities between employees and their customers often result in customers believing that they are entitled to discounts in retail settings.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs survey methodology to reveal the extent to which various social commonalities between customers and service providers encourage customers to believe that they are entitled to financial discounts.
Findings
The findings show that commonalities may cause customers to adhere to narcissism – that is, many customers may expect discounts even when they know that employees may jeopardize their jobs by providing them.
Research limitations/implications
Customer relationships dramatically change with commonalities, as customers believe that social relationships propel them to “best customer status” and that they are entitled to discounts.
Practical implications
Customers who become increasingly connected with employees expect relational benefits that usually require time to develop. Retailers that encourage their employees to develop social media bonds with their customers must realize that customers desire to be financially rewarded for maintaining these linkages.
Originality/value
This work reveals that customers who maintain social commonalities with employees expect to receive some type of financial benefit from doing so.
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Chris G. Collins and Pauline Joyce
The purpose of this paper is to summarise the recent debates and issues on the healthcare system in Ireland, which have come to the fore through media exposure. The implications…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to summarise the recent debates and issues on the healthcare system in Ireland, which have come to the fore through media exposure. The implications for these debates on quality are suggested and questions are raised to stimulate further debate.
Design/methodology/approach
Recent reports and media opinion articles are reviewed in the light of the health reform programme and the increased prosperity due to the Celtic Tiger era in Ireland.
Findings
The Health Service in Ireland is not what it should be. Progress has been made but resistance at all levels is significant due to the mistrust and miscommunication between the managerial and clinical personnel which have built up during the past number of years. The trust of the public is at an all‐time low. However, once patients are within the system they are satisfied with their care.
Originality/value
This is a discussion paper which raises more questions than answers and is timely with the focus on quality in healthcare, particularly now as Ireland prepares for a general election for a new government with healthcare a priority issue.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the enactment of a pragmatic inclusionary strategy and related tactics as a form of feminist activism in one university.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the enactment of a pragmatic inclusionary strategy and related tactics as a form of feminist activism in one university.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses analytic autoethnography.
Findings
It shows how it is possible for a feminist activist to create limited change in what is typically seen as an intractable indicator of gender equality, i.e. gender parity at full professorial level.
Research limitations/implications
Analytic autoethnography as a method has considerable methodological limitations although it also offers insights into insider strategies and tactics.
Practical implications
The identification of such a strategy and tactics may be useful to activists, decision-makers and policy makers with an interest in tackling any source of inequality.
Social implications
The identification of such a strategy and tactics may be useful to activists, decision-makers and policy makers with an interest in tackling any source of inequality.
Originality/value
Five tactics, reflecting a pragmatic inclusionary strategy are identified, i.e. provocative misbehaviour; individualised managing management; perverse alignments; resisting silencing and gaining legitimacy; activating latent social movement ties to change national policy.
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Less than half a century ago almost the entire population of the United States lived upon food that was home‐grown and home‐prepared. With the exception of a few articles…
Abstract
Less than half a century ago almost the entire population of the United States lived upon food that was home‐grown and home‐prepared. With the exception of a few articles requiring a different climate than our own for their production, such as coffee, tea, sugar, spices, and chocolate, the inhabitants of the country lived exclusively upon food of their own producing, while the dealers of the city were supplied with the products of the neighbouring farms. Provisions of all kinds were supplied in an unprepared condition, and their preservation or preparation for the table was accomplished at the home.