Patrick McGovern

'High-performance' Management Practices, Working Hours and Work-Life Balance

The effects of selected high‐performance practices and working hours on work–life balance are analysed with data from national surveys of British employees in 1992 and 2000. Alongside long hours, which are a constant source of negative job‐to‐home spillover, certain ‘high‐performance’ practices have become more strongly related to negative spillover during this period. Surprisingly, dual‐earner couples are not especially liable to spillover — if anything, less so than single‐earner couples. Additionally, the presence of young children has become less important over time. Overall, the results suggest a conflict between high‐performance practices and work‐life balance policies.

Soft and Hard Models of Human Resource Management: A Reappraisal

Two of the most widely adopted models of human resource management are the hard and soft versions. These are based on opposing views of human nature and managerial control strategies. The hard model is based on notions of tight strategic control, and an economic model of man according to Theory X, while the soft model is based on control through commitment and Theory Y. We argue that because these assumptions are so divergent, they cannot both properly be incorporated within a single model of human resource management. Eight in-depth case studies were carried out, involving questionnaires, interviews and focus groups in order to find out whether organizations were practising either form of HRM. We found that no pure examples of either form existed. The paper concludes that the rhetoric adopted by Ae companies frequendy embraces the tenets of the soft, commitment model, while the reaUty experienced by employees is more concerned with strategic control, similar to the hard model. This distinction between rhetoric and reality needs to be taken into account in conceptualizations of human resource management.

Bad Jobs in Britain Nonstandard Employment and Job Quality

The rapid growth in nonstandard forms of employment toward the end of the 20th century has fuelled claims about the spread of “bad jobs” within Anglo-American capitalism. Research from the United States indicates that such jobs have more bad characteristics than do permanent jobs after controlling for workers’ personal characteristics, family status, and occupation. We apply a version of the bad characteristics approach to British data and find that despite some institutional differences with the United States, (notably, in employer welfare provision), the British case also supports the hypothesis that nonstandard employment (part-time, temporary, and fixed term) increases workers’ exposure to bad job characteristics.

Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects

In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoretically significant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour and labour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homo economicus personified, I argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the influence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. Having identified a number of empirical anomalies that contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful.

Globalization or internationalization? Foreign footballers in the English league, 1946-95.

This article challenges the idea that globalization is an inexorable free market process that fundamentally changes the nature of economic competition. Using evidence on hiring practices from the English football league (1946-95) it presents a case study of a labour market where globalization might reasonably be expected. In finding that the market is characterized by a process of internationalization, the article goes on to show how this process is influenced by a range of economic, social and political factors that have distinctly national or British origins. More specifically, it argues that the recent expansion in overseas recruitment is shaped by the risk averse way in which employers deal with that which makes labour unique as a commodity: its variability and plasticity. Consequently, English clubs tend to draw heavily on those foreign sources that most resemble local sources in terms of climate, culture, language and style of football (for example, Scotland, Ireland, Australia and northern Europe, especially Scandinavia). Accordingly, the article concludes that radical notions of labour market globalization are fundamentally flawed since they fail to account for the ways in which labour market behaviour is socially embedded.

Comparing Immigration Policies: An Overview from the IMPALA Database

This paper introduces a method and preliminary findings from a database that systematically measures the character and stringency of immigration policies. Based on the selection of that data for nine countries between 1999 and 2008, we challenge the idea that any one country is systematically the most or least restrictive toward admissions. The data also reveal trends toward more complex and, often, more restrictive regulation since the 1990s, as well as differential treatment of groups, such as lower requirements for highly skilled than low-skilled labor migrants. These patterns illustrate the IMPALA data and methods but are also of intrinsic importance to understanding immigration regulation.

Measuring and Comparing Immigration, Asylum and Naturalization Policies Across Countries: Challenges and Solutions

Academics and policy makers require a better understanding of the variation of policies that regulate global migration, asylum and immigrant naturalization. At present, however, there is no comprehensive cross-national, time-series database of such policies, rendering the analysis of policy trends across and within these areas difficult at best. Several new immigration databases and indices have been developed in recent years. However, there is no consensus on how best to conceptualize, measure and aggregate migration policy indicators to allow for meaningful comparisons through time and across space. This article discusses these methodological challenges and introduces practical solutions that involve historical, multi-dimensional, disaggregated and transparent conceptualizing, measuring and compiling of cross-national immigration policies. Such an approach informs the International Migration Policy and Law Analysis (IMPALA) database.

Richard Hyman: Marxism, Trade Unionism and Comparative Employment Relations

Richard Hyman has been a hugely influential figure in the field of industrial relations for the best part of four decades. At a time when the future of the very subject has been questioned, we highlight three areas of Hymans work that we believe provide fertile territory for future research. The first concerns the importance of theory and the continuing need to broaden the subject of industrial relations so that it is treated as an area in which we can examine wider questions about ‘the political economy of waged labour’. The second area is the changing nature of employee representation which, for much of Hymans career, was synonymous with the analysis of trade unions under capitalism. The third area is one of the more striking recent successes within the subject, namely the study of comparative industrial relations. Each of these areas reveals Hymans talent for identifying and clarifying a set of issues around the politics of work that will endure regardless of whether the subject is known as industrial relations, employment relations or human resource management.

Management Gurus: The Secret of their Success?

This article reports further work on the validity and value of “guru” theories, using Peter Scott-Morgan’s ‘The Unwritten Rules of the Game’ as a case study. The author argues that explanations of the popularity of the management gurus should recognise the value of the substance of their theories – and not attribute their popular success merely to style or context. He discusses the flaws in the ‘Unwritten Rules’ approach and argues that these are, paradoxically, interrelated with the very characteristics of those ideas which managers find most attractive.

Rational choice theory, the "new economic sociology" and functionalism

conomic sociology has been undergoing a dramatic revival in recent years, partially because American sociologists, in particular, have begun to produce innovative studies of market behaviour, but also because sociologists on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to engage with the aggressive claims made by economic models of social behaviour. It is somewhat ironic to note that as neo-classical economics began to move increasingly towards mathematical models of economic behaviour in the middle of the last century, sociologists gradually realized that their empirical skills equipped them to study that which economists were leaving behind, namely real-life markets. Traditionally, only economists were considered capable of addressing the intricacies of market exchange while sociologists had to make do with residual cases, such as labour market institutions, or the ‘black box’ of business administration, both areas where sociology subsequently thrived. Furthermore, it was generally, though not universally, assumed that market exchanges were essentially economic processes and that there was relatively little to be added to general models of market behaviour by examining their social aspects.