British Journal of Industrial Relations最新文献

The effects of trade union membership on wages and job satisfaction have been studied extensively. Arguably, life satisfaction serves as a more comprehensive measure of the benefits of union membership and warrants closer examination. Using all relevant waves from the German Socio-Economic Panel between 1985 and 2019, we find a negative correlation between trade union membership and life satisfaction in OLS and FE specifications. The association may arise because union members are more concerned about their job and the economic situation and less satisfied with their work. Social capital and wages also perform as channels between membership and life satisfaction. The negative correlation is more pronounced in settings in which trade unions are relatively weak.

This article investigates worker voice as a dimension of job quality and examines its link with job-related outcomes. We refine and test a multi-measure concept of the ‘voice gap’ to capture how much influence workers expect to have compared to what they actually have on a set of work-related issues. Analysing a survey of 1307 American workers, we find that workers distinguish between a voice gap on issues related to their own interests (‘worker-issues voice gap’) and those related to their employing organization's interests (‘organizational-strategy voice gap’). Even after controlling for other dimensions of job quality, a larger voice gap is statistically associated with lower job satisfaction and well-being, as well as higher levels of burnout and turnover intention. Additionally, we find that worker-issues voice gap has a stronger and more significant effect than an organizational-strategy voice gap. Based on these results, we recommend incorporating the voice gap measure in future worker voice research and as a practical tool for evaluating voice as a dimension of job quality.

This study investigates how the quality of performance appraisals influences perceptions of merit pay − whether it is viewed as motivating or divisive − and its impact on achieving performance objectives. Using longitudinal survey data collected from classroom teachers in England and Wales between 2014 and 2018, and employing an instrumental variable approach, the analysis reveals that the effectiveness of merit pay in improving employee performance is closely tied to the quality of appraisal processes. Procedural fairness emerges as a key factor in fostering both motivational and divisiveness attitudes, whereas poorly designed or disengaging appraisals tend to amplify divisiveness rather than motivation, undermining the achievement of performance objectives. These findings highlight the need to carefully weigh both the potential benefits and drawbacks of merit pay systems.

While it is well-known that employees with disabilities have significantly more negative work experiences compared to other employees, research geared towards understanding how employers could improve some of these experiences is still underdeveloped. To advance this research agenda, this study investigates links between five distinct types of discretionary arrangements (work discretion, scheduling discretion, part-timing, homeworking and pay for individual performance), and outcomes related to work experiences and the wellbeing of employees with disabilities (job satisfaction, perception of fairness, recognition, motivation, engagement, work stress and work-life interference). To explore these links, we use data from the European Working Conditions Survey (2015). We find that not all work arrangements that increase discretion at the workplace have a positive impact on employees with disabilities and that some can be especially detrimental. By unpacking the multiple ways in which various types of discretion at the workplace affect employees with disabilities, this study not only makes a theoretical contribution but also provides employers who aim to improve the working experiences of employees with disabilities with some empirical evidence to help them take more inclusive actions.

This article examines the impact of corporate financialization on the labour share using data for publicly listed non-financial corporations across 14 European countries. We test hypotheses derived from industrial relations literature on financialization against competing explanations for the labour share decline based on technological change and market concentration. Our findings show that increased dividend and interest payments, as well as financial profits, are associated with a fall in the labour share. These results support theories linking corporate financialization to rising overhead costs, shareholder-value orientation and increasing exit options for capital. We find no evidence that technological progress drives the decline in the labour share. While market concentration negatively correlates with the labour share, concentration has decreased during our sample period, suggesting that ‘superstar firms’ are also not the primary driver of changes in functional income distribution.

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between financialisation and functional income distribution. To this end, we empirically analyse the relationship between financialisation, the real wage level and the rate of profit in the US (1955–2019) using structural vector autoregressive modelling. According to our results, while an increase in financialisation leads to changes in the rate of profit with ambiguous signs and unclear statistical significance, financialisation has a clear, negative and persistent effect on the real wage level. We conclude with a reconsideration of the role of financialisation in shaping functional income distribution, as it appears to contribute directly to restraining real wage levels rather than directly impacting profitability.

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the political and structural determinants of social dialogue in 25 European countries between 1980 and 2018 using a measure of social dialogue based on an original survey of industrial relations and social policy experts. We assess hypotheses on the role of structural (unionisation, employer organisation) and political (government partisanship, government strength) factors on the extent of cooperation between governments, trade unions and employers in public policymaking. We find a declining trend in the overall extent of social dialogue in the countries surveyed. Using panel regressions, we show that higher levels of social dialogue are more prevalent among governments where there is a balance of power between right-wing and left-wing parties, and thus where unions and employers can act as ‘brokers’ between left and right parties. We find no association between most structural factors (unionisation, collective bargaining coverage, employer organisation) and levels of social dialogue.