Paul Willman

Personality and domain‐specific risk taking

The concept of risk propensity has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigation, but with little consensus about its definition and measurement. To address this need, a new scale assessing overall risk propensity in terms of reported frequency of risk behaviours in six domains was developed and applied: recreation, health, career, finance, safety and social. The paper describes the properties of the scale and its correlates: demographic variables, biographical self‐reports, and the NEO PI‐R, a Five Factor personality inventory (N = 2041). There are three main results. First, risk propensity has clear links with age and sex, and with objective measures of career‐related risk taking (changing jobs and setting up a business). Second, the data show risk propensity to be strongly rooted in personality. A clear Big Five pattern emerges for overall risk propensity, combining high extraversion and openness with low neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. At the subscale level, sensation‐seeking surfaces as a key important component of risk propensity. Third, risk propensity differs markedly in its distribution across job types and business sectors. These findings are interpreted as indicating that risk takers are of three non‐exclusive types: stimulation seekers, goal achievers, and risk adapters. Only the first group is truly risk seeking, the others are more correctly viewed as risk bearers. The implications for risk research and management are discussed.

Safety at work : the limits of self-regulation

An attempt to provide a theoretical and practical analysis of the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 in the UK, and its central ideas of self-regulation and workforce involvement. The development and impact of the legislation and its practice in industry is examined.

Online social networking and trade union membership: what the Facebook phenomenon truly means for labor organizers

Union membership has declined precipitously in a number of countries, including in the United States, over the past fifty years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This article argues that union voice is a positive attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature and that, unlike the costs of unionization, can be discerned only after exposure to a union. This makes the act of ‘selling’ unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) difficult. Supportive social trends and social customs are required in order to make unionizations hard-to-observe benefits easier to discern. Most membership-based institutions face the same dilemma. However, recent social networking organizations such as Facebook have been rather successful in attracting millions of active members in a relatively short period of time. The question of whether the union movement can appropriate some of these lessons is discussed with reference to historical and contemporary examples.

The Car Industry: Labour Relations and Industrial Adjustment

possible consequences for gains (or gaps) of a longer or shorter horizon over which union objectives (whatever they might be) are maximized. One consequence of this theoretical reticence is that in estimating wage gaps the personal characteristics of individuals, and even their industry, are taken into account, but not the characteristics or the identity of their unions. In this book, all unions are treated as though they had the same effect on gains and gaps. 3. Finally, Lewis has studied the effect of unions on the relative wages of union and nonunion workers, but he has not attempted to investigate the effects of unions on the relative shares of labor and non-labor income. The general decline of research attention to this once fashionable topic is due, at least in part, to the influence of Lewiss work. It is not lack of appreciation of the merits of this work that leads me to hope that its influence will not preclude serious study of what may be unmeasurable at present but is, nonetheless, of abiding interest.

The Comparative Advantage of Non‐Union Voice in Britain, 1980–2004

Non-union direct voice has replaced union representative voice as the primary avenue for employee voice in the British private sector. This study explains this development by providing a framework for examining the relationship between employee voice and workplace outcomes. Voice is associated with lower voluntary turnover, especially in the case of union voice. However, union voice is also associated with greater workplace conflict. We argue changes in voice in Britain are not best understood using a simple union/non-union dichotomy. Union effects on workplace outcomes and the incidence of human resource management hinge on whether it coexists at the workplace with non-union voice in what we term a “dual” system. In the first part of the 21st century, these dual voice systems were performing at least as well as non-union only regimes, suggesting that the rise of non-union regimes is attribu` to something other than clear comparative performance advantages over other forms of voice.

60 years of Human Relations

Human Relations was founded in 1947 as a collaborative transatlantic project between the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London and the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its objective was to encourage theoretical and methodological contributions to the social sciences and to promote their practical application to solve community problems. This article traces the development and evolution of the journal and seeks to assess its contribution to social science research. It examines the intellectual role of the Tavistock Institute and the tensions and pressures that the journal has faced over the past 60 years as it has sought to fulfil its mission and achieve its academic goals.

A Segmented Model of Union Participation

This article presents and explores a model of union participation using union orientation as a segmenting criterion. Union orientation is shown to have a strong relationship with participation rates. The relationship between union segmentation, social networks, and political socialization is explored. The implications of this approach for union policy are explored.

The Union of the Future and the Future of Unions

The results of a repeat survey on the financial performance and management of TUC affiliated unions are reported. Data are available for 1989 and 1993, covering income, expenditure, the management of investments, and wealth. Unions remain in a precarious financial position, dependent on subscription revenue and the threatened check-off mechanism to deliver it. The management of expenditure is still a critical issue, since the net worth of many unions is small. Financial management is becoming more important and more sophisticated. Unions continue to centralize resource management, but many changes remain constrained by the political nature of financial management within voluntary organizations.

Look Who's Talking: Sources of Variation in Information Disclosure in the UK

The article examines the correlates of variable levels of information disclosure by management to employees in the UK. It develops several hypotheses that are tested using 1998 and 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey data. The results show that managerial perceptions of goal alignment by employees and the existence of direct participation mechanisms are positively associated with disclosure at both dates. The size of the workplace has a generally negative relationship at both dates, but less so in 2004 than in 1998. Other variables such as financial distress and the presence of trade unions and joint consultation have more complicated relationships over the two time periods. The article discusses theoretical and policy implications of the findings.

Antecedents and outcomes of information disclosure to employees in the UK, 1990—2004: The role of employee voice

We map changes in the pattern of information disclosure by management to employees over 14 years in the UK, using the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) panels for 1990—8 and 1998—2004. We use time-lagged probit regression to explore antecedents and outcomes of disclosure over the two periods, focusing on the effects of voice mechanisms on disclosure and on the impact of disclosure on performance.The results show a significant increase in disclosure over the first period but a levelling off in the second. Neither union recognition nor direct participation had a significant impact on disclosure in either period. Joint consultation did, however, have a significant positive effect on disclosure, but more so in the first than in the second period. In addition, prior disclosure had a positive effect on subsequent disclosure. An explanation of trends in terms of lock-in and institutional decoupling is developed. Disclosure has a positive effect on financial performance.