John Leopold

From Gods to goddesses: Horai management as an approach to coordinating working hours

Flexibility in working time arrangements may lead to heterogeneity of working-time patterns. Drawing on the societal perspective, we consider three interrelated spheres of: professional relations, organizational, and domestic space. Greek mythology assists us to contrast chrono management and Horai management. Case analyses of France, the UK, and the Netherlands are presented within the context of EU Directives. By introducing Horai management we try to find an expression for the dialectical interplay between the temporalities of the home and the workplace, while including developments in the wider societal context. Horai management helps us reach beyond the logic of time-economy to improve the coordination of multiple temporalities.

Trade Unions, Political Fund Ballots and the Labour Party

The Trade Union Act 1984 required trade unions to reballot their members on continuation of their political funds. All unions voted for retention. A second wave of balloting has now taken place: the results are broadly similar to those in 1985/6. This paper examines the outcome of the 1994/6 voting, compares the results with those from 1985/6 and considers the implications of the results on the relationship between unions and the Labour Party. The distancing of the relationship between unions and Labour is related to the political fund campaign which stressed union rights to campaign politically rather than their specific political links with the Labour Party.

Decentralization of collective bargaining : an analysis of recent experience in the UK

List of Tables - Acknowledgements - List of Abbreviations - Introduction - The Rise and Decline of National Bargaining - The Hosiery and Knitwear Industry: Coats Viyella - Local Government - Retail Food Industry - The Steel Industry - The Water Industry - The Experience of Decentralisation: The Case Studies Explored - Bibliography - Index

The Dynamics of Modernization and Job Satisfaction in the British National Health Service

The U.K. government is seeking to transform the quality of the National Health Service (NHS) through a process ofmodernization. It is generally thought by government and managers within the service that improving the job satisfaction of employees is an important mechanism for delivering modernization. On the basis of job satisfaction surveys carried out within 2 NHS hospitals, this article suggests that instead of being a driver for improvement, employee perception of job satisfactionmay be acting as a barrier tomodernization. The article then discusses the possibility that there may be structural tensions between the imperatives of modernization and the wish to improve job satisfaction.

Time and management: the need for hora management

Working time patterns are moving away from the traditional pattern of regularity, standardisation and co‐ordination to a new triptych of individualism, heterogeneity and irregularity. Seeks to make sense of these changes through the concept of hora management as an approach to manage the interface between temporally asymmetric domains of organisational and domestic space mediated through the space of professional relations. Drawing on the societal approach, defines the three spaces – professional relations, organisational and domestic – and builds a model of their inter‐relationship that incorporates the supranational impact of the European Union. Organisational citizenship will require managers to pursue family‐friendly policies and recognise that time spent in one domain cannot be equated with time spent in another. Hora management offers a way of managing these tensions and contradictions.

Managing employment on greenfield sites: attempts to replicate high commitment practices in the UK and New Zealand

Greenfield sites have been seen as the most favourable setting for the adoption of HRM-style high-commitment work practices. We present a comparative study of Scottish and New Zealand greenfield employers’ attempts to replicate a high-commitment philosophy. After outlining the proprietary recipes of the organisations, we analyse a number of factors that threatened or undermined the practice of the philosophy and show how managers continued to rely on the language of high-commitment by repackaging and re-presenting the same philosophy.

An awkward partner? Britain's implementation of the Working Time Directive

The dominance of member states in the field of social policy has been traditionally depicted as one of the main hurdles facing the development of a European social policy. Resistance by national government to the transfer of influence and control over social policy to the European level has been particularly true for Britain. Opposition to various initiatives, such as the Social Charter and Social Chapter has demonstrated this. It is in this context that this article examines Britains implementation of the Working Time Directive, this being demonstrative of the distinction between member states and the EU in the social policy arena. In this sense, the Working Time Directive is significant not just because of the provisions it brings to British employees, but because it demonstrates the changing nature of the relationship between member states and the EU in the realm of social policy.

Guest editorial - Time and management

Introduces the special issue on time and management which draws together analyses of these issues from across the European Union.