The purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.
Design/methodology/approach
Places unions in their current context and discusses how they have responded to the challenge of declining membership.
Findings
With declining membership levels and the lack of a “silver bullet” solution, unions continue to face many challenges, although there is some light at the end of the organising tunnel.
Originality/value
This paper introduces the special issue which reflects on 150 years of the TUC.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a broad practitioner’s overview of recent trade union history in the UK, and to investigate organised labour’s prospects in the decades…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a broad practitioner’s overview of recent trade union history in the UK, and to investigate organised labour’s prospects in the decades ahead.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a review of relevant literature and trade union documentation from the period 1964 to 2014.
Findings
This paper concludes that the past 50 years has been a period of change and turbulence for the movement, and suggests that this is likely to remain the case in the decades to come. Although external political and economic factors will have a significant bearing on unions’ prospects, the paper argues that unions remain powerful agents of change in their own right and that a revival of organised labour is not beyond question.
Originality/value
The paper is written with unique practitioner insight from the UK’s trade union centre.
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Water‐borne coatings Increasing use of water‐borne emulsion coatings for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and product finishes is requiring greater efficiency in…
Abstract
Water‐borne coatings Increasing use of water‐borne emulsion coatings for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and product finishes is requiring greater efficiency in coalescing‐aid solvents, an Eastman Chemical Co. representative said at a recent Chicago Society for Coatings Technology meeting. Eastman's Ronald K. Litton said emulsions designed for OEM and industrial applications have higher glass transition temperatures than emulsions used in architectural paints. That requires higher levels of coalescing aid to achieve good film formation. As a result, coalescing‐aid efficiency with a given emulsion system is a key factor, both from environmental (lower‐volatile organic compound (VOC)) and economic standpoints. Several properties should be examined when a coalescing aid is selected for water‐borne emulsion industrial coatings. The formulator should consider the evaporation rate and solubility parameter of the coalescing aid, along with its distribution pattern in a specific emulsion system. Those properties are important in defining the efficiency of a coalescing aid in terms of its ability to lower the minimum film‐forming temperature (MFFT) of an emulsion system. The coalescing aids also must be hydrolytically stable to provide minimum loss of efficiency due to ageing, Litton said. He showed several charts designed to assist formulators in the selection of optimum coalescing aids for emulsion systems. At the same conference, James T.K. Woo of The Glidden Co. discussed the grafting of high‐molecular‐weight epoxy resins with styrene‐methacrylic acid monomers, producing a water‐reducible copolymer. Grafting takes place at the aliphatic carbons of the epoxy resin, according to carbon‐13 NMR spectroscopy. The study was a follow‐up to a paper presented 14 years ago. Woo said recent research indicates that five grafting “peaks” were identified on a 400 megacycle carbon‐13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy instrument. The paper provided several theoretical calculation on grafting. Three of the graft peaks resulted from grafting at the secondary methylene carbons ‐CH2‐ and two resulted from grafting at the tertiary carbon ‐CH‐. The ratio of grafting at ‐CH2‐ to ‐CH‐appears to be 2.7:1 — lower than the 4:1 ratio of protons present on the aliphatic carbons that are susceptible to hydrogen abstraction leading to grafting. That indicates that the tertiary hydrogen is somwhat more susceptible to grafting than the methylene hydrogens, he said.
John P. Nowak, Thomas A. Zaccaro and Katherine K. Solomon
The purpose of this article is to highlight a recent settlement by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) in which it alleged that a regulated entity…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to highlight a recent settlement by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) in which it alleged that a regulated entity failed to supervise a representative principally because the entity did not establish clear guidance as to how its personnel should investigate red flags of a representative’s potential misconduct (e.g., how to follow up on the red flags and define the scope of any inquiry).
Design/methodology/approach
This article provides an overview of failure-to-supervise liability for broker-dealers and investment advisers, and highlights key takeaways from the SEC’s recent enforcement resolution that may be applied in establishing compliance procedures relating to internal investigations going forward.
Findings
The article concludes that the SEC appears to expect regulated entities to implement procedures guiding employees on “how to investigate” suspicious activity. Companies, however, should define such procedures in general terms to allow for flexibility in investigations, which can present unique or unforeseen situations. Internal procedures must also account for and preserve attorney-client privilege and attorney work product protections.
Originality/value
This article provides expert analysis and practical guidance from experienced lawyers in the Investigations and White Collar Defense and Securities Enforcement practices
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In the final quarter of the twentieth century, organizational management had been rocked by a theory more powerful than anything since the days of Taylor's theory of scientific…
Abstract
In the final quarter of the twentieth century, organizational management had been rocked by a theory more powerful than anything since the days of Taylor's theory of scientific management. The new theory was called Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM has largely been eclipsed by other management fads since such as Sigma 6 but none had such an explosive effect on business, schools, and government agencies as TQM (Juran, 1995). The gurus of TQM included J. M. Juran (2003), P. B. Crosby (1995), and even the sage of organizational theory, Peter Drucker (2008). No one, however, stood as tall among this class of gurus as did the notable W. E. Deming (1982). TQM has often been criticized over the years for failing in practice. Deming and his followers retort that it is because organizations seldom incorporated the entire 13 point program. The part so often left out were points that implicitly reflected moral commitments Deming thought organizations ought to have. What Deming relegated to matters of team spirit and other psychological commitments are accommodated in the most scientific sense by recent developments in biology and economics showing that there is an instinct driving evolution among herd animals such as humans to cooperate. This focus on instinct is captured in the most practical sense for organizational analysis in the present author's work on moral architecture. The concept of moral architecture will be sketched as a means for understanding and strengthening, schools, law enforcement agencies and prisons, and other correctional facilities.
A. Nicolet, F. Drouart, G. Renversez and C. Geuzaine
This paper concerns the study of non‐linear effects in optical fibres with a core made of a Kerr type medium. The aim is to propose an algorithm to find spatial solitons, i.e…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper concerns the study of non‐linear effects in optical fibres with a core made of a Kerr type medium. The aim is to propose an algorithm to find spatial solitons, i.e. solutions with a harmonic behaviour in time and along the fibre but with a field distribution in the cross‐section corresponding to a self‐trapped propagation of the electromagnetic field.
Design/methodology/approach
The field is supposed to be harmonic in time and along the direction of invariance of the fibre but inhomogeneous in the cross‐section. This modifies the refractive index profile of the fibre (a step‐index one in this study). A scalar model of the fibre, together with the finite element method (that is well suited to deal with inhomogeneous media), is used and a new iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain the non‐linear solutions. An adaptive meshing is necessary to guarantee the accuracy of the model.
Findings
The new algorithm converges to self‐coherent solutions that are different from those obtained via a fixed power algorithm. The equivalents both of a fundamental mode and of a second order mode are studied.
Originality/value
The approach acknowledges the findings of the previously known spatial solitons (with a slight modification of the algorithm) together with a new family of solutions. It opens a new field of investigation to understand this whole family of non‐linear solutions as it shows that only a small part of them was known up to now.
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To date, many environmental policy discussions consider inequalities between groups (typically by comparing the average or aggregate resource use of one group to another group)…
Abstract
To date, many environmental policy discussions consider inequalities between groups (typically by comparing the average or aggregate resource use of one group to another group), but most ignore disproportionalities within groups. Disproportionality, as discussed in a small but growing body of work, refers to resource use that is highly unequal among members of the same group, and is characterized by a positively skewed distribution, where a small number of resource users create far more environmental harm than “typical” group members. Focusing on aggregated or average impacts effectively treats all members of a group as interchangeable, missing the few “outliers” that actually tend to be responsible for a large fraction of overall resource use. This chapter offers reasons why we should or should not expect disproportional production of environmental impacts (from both mathematical and sociological perspectives), looks at empirical evidence of disproportionality, and offers a framework for detecting disproportionality and assessing just how much difference the outliers make. I find that in cases where the within-group distribution of resource use is highly disproportionate (characterized by extreme outliers), targeting reduction efforts at the disproportionate polluters can offer opportunities to decrease environmental degradation substantially, at a relatively low cost.
A long-standing question is how group perception, which is the perception of a whole group, becomes an exaggerated perception of the individuals who comprise the group. The…
Abstract
Purpose
A long-standing question is how group perception, which is the perception of a whole group, becomes an exaggerated perception of the individuals who comprise the group. The question receives scant attention within computer-mediated communication (CMC), which is increasingly a communication mode for groups and a research tool to study groups. I address this gap by examining bias in group perception when rating copresence, which is the sense of being together, with the group.
Methodology/approach
I model bias as occurring when perceivers differentially weigh ratings of individual group members on a variable while rating the whole group on the same variable. I analyzed how the degree of bias in participants’ ratings of copresence with a status-differentiated group varied by the availability of visual cues during CMC in an experiment. I also examined how the group’s status hierarchy impacted bias.
Findings
Bias increase as the availability of visual cues decreased and ratings of middle status members were weighed more in group perception than ratings of other members.
Research limitations
Middle status was based on possessing inconsistent statuses. Inconsistency, and not status position, may have rendered these members more salient than others.
Social implications
Interventions that target group perception may benefit from targeting the group’s middle status members. Researchers and practitioners can minimize bias in group perception through increasing the availability of visual cues in CMC.
Originality/value
The findings illustrate the underpinnings of copresence with an entire group. This is important because copresence shapes several group processes during CMC.
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Linda I. Nowak and Judith H. Washburn
The purpose of this study was to ascertain the existence and strength of the relationship between proactive environmental policies and brand equity for the winery. Results of this…
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to ascertain the existence and strength of the relationship between proactive environmental policies and brand equity for the winery. Results of this study suggest that consumer perceptions about product quality, consumer trust, consumer perceptions about pricing, and positive expectations for the consequences of the winery's actions undertaking the pro‐environmental policies, all have strong, positive relationships with the winery's brand equity. Trust in the winery and brand equity for the winery increased significantly when the winery in this study adopted proactive environmental business policies.