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Exploring efforts to integrate women into combat forces in the military, we investigate how resistance to equity becomes entrenched, ultimately excluding women from being full participants in the workplace. Based on focus groups and surveys with members of Special Operations, we found most of the resistance is rooted in traditional gender stereotypes that are often bolstered through organizational policies and practices. The subtlety of these practices often renders them invisible. We refer to this invisibility as organizational obliviousness. Obliviousness exists at the individual level, it becomes reinforced at the cultural level, and, in turn, cultural practices are entrenched institutionally by policies. Organizational obliviousness may not be malicious or done to actively exclude or harm, but the end result is that it does both. Throughout this Element we trace the ways that organizational obliviousness shapes individuals, culture, and institutional practices throughout the organization.
Although the literature on multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainability has grown in recent years, it is scattered across several academic fields, making it hard to ascertain how individual disciplines, such as business ethics, can further contribute to the debate. Based on an extensive review of the literature on certification and principle-based MSIs for sustainability (n = 293 articles), we show that the scholarly debate rests on three broad themes (the “3Is”): the input into creating and governing MSIs; the institutionalization of MSIs; and the impact that relevant initiatives create. While our discussion reveals the theoretical underpinnings of the 3Is, it also shows that a number of research challenges related to business ethics remain unaddressed. We unpack these challenges and suggest how scholars can utilize theoretical insights in business ethics to push the boundaries of the field. Finally, we also discuss what business ethics research can gain from theory development in the MSI field.
We study the implications of predictability on the optimal asset allocation of ambiguity-averse long-term investors and analyze the term structure of the multivariate risk–return trade-off considering parameter uncertainty. We calibrate the model to real returns of U.S. stocks, long-term bonds, cash, real estate, and gold using the term spread and the dividend–price ratio as additional predictive variables, and we show that over long horizons, the optimal asset allocation is significantly influenced by the covariance structure induced by estimation errors. The ambiguity-averse long-term investor optimally tilts his or her portfolio toward a seemingly inefficient portfolio, which shows maximum robustness against estimation errors.
Unlike previous research that has largely focused on the influence of nationalinstitutions on human resource management practices in China, our study tapsinto the role of sub-national institutions. We demonstrate, via a qualitativeconfigurational analysis, that foreign subsidiaries of multinationalcorporations still adapt HQ compensation practice to the local context despitelow regulatory pressure and low mobility of skills at the sub-national level.This adaptation is facilitated by a decentralized structure in the multinationalcorporation. Our study also shows that high regulatory pressure and highportability of skills at the sub-national level alone are sufficient to inducelocal adaptation of compensation practice. Our explanation points to thesignificant role played by sub-national institutions in large and rapidlychanging emerging economies and contributes to research on local adaptation ofHRM practice in China. It offers an insight into forms of institutional agencyby political and economic actors at local levels of governance as they attemptto influence the skills and human resources available for MNCs throughregulatory means.
The transformation of global retail that has taken place over the past three decades is associated with changing gendered patterns of work. The previous two chapters explored this transformation empirically, fleshing out the commercial dynamics of global retailers and their supply networks as well as the role fragmented work plays in facilitating global value chains. Global retail expansion has fed on and fuelled the changing role of women who constitute the majority of their customers and increasingly juggle paid work with household responsibilities. Global sourcing provides the channel through which a wide range of goods is available at reasonably affordable prices on a JIT basis. Hundreds of millions of workers, a significant proportion female, are now deployed in labour-intensive global production, mainly in emerging and low-income countries.
This chapter focuses on the analytical dimension of the global retail transformation and associated changing gender patterns of work. The rise of global retail value chains challenges the underlying assumptions of much conventional analysis of markets, labour and gender. Prevailing analyses of production and trade have largely assumed that exchange takes place through markets within and between countries. Yet in global value chains, lead firms govern their supply chains without ownership, and coordinate production and trade across suppliers spanning multiple countries.
Prevailing analysis of labour has largely assumed the predominance of an employer–employee relationship regulated within national labour markets. Yet in retail value chains, lead firms that operate outside the national legal jurisdiction of suppliers and their workers can also influence supplier employment relations. Prevailing analysis of gender tends to assume a division of labour between the productive sphere of paid work and the reproductive sphere of unpaid work. Yet in retail value chains, the commercialization of household consumer goods and the feminization of employment are blurring the boundaries between productive and reproductive labour, as well as paid and unpaid work.
This chapter analytically addresses the core questions of this book: How are global retail value chains shaping gender patterns of work, and what are the gendered outcomes for workers? I draw on a combination of analytical approaches to investigate this question.
The rise of global retail has transformed the production, distribution and sale of food and consumer goods with significant consequences for the gender profile of work in the Global South. Global retailers play a key role in the provision and global sourcing of a wide range of consumer goods across national borders through global value chains (Coe and Wrigley 2009; Hamilton, Petrovic and Senauer 2011). Global value chains are summed up as ‘the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the different phases of production (involving a combination of physical transformation and the input of various producer services), delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use’ (Kaplinsky and Morris 2002, 8). Well established in North America and Europe, global retail is rapidly becoming more prevalent in emerging and lower-income economies (Reardon et al. 2003).
Women are drawn into global value chains as farmers, wage-workers, employees, buyers and customers (Dolan and Sorby 2003; Hale and Wills 2005). As retailers expand their market scope, they are commercializing many unpaid activities previously undertaken by women within households. Global retail and sourcing generate paid work for hundreds of millions of workers in emerging and low-income countries, drawing in a significant proportion of women with limited previous labour market access (ILO 2015b). Often they are involved in producing goods women had made or prepared in the home. Retail value chains link firms at each stage from production through distribution to final retail and final consumers (Kaplinsky and Morris 2002). A key argument of this book is that their growth has been based on commercialization of many activities previously undertaken, unpaid, by women in the home, helping to draw women into fragmented paid work in their production. They therefore blur traditional gendered boundaries between paid work in commercial production and unpaid work within households.
These processes play out differently across geographical locations, where gender norms shaping the division of labour and women's participation in productive and reproductive activities can vary greatly. Often, retail can disrupt long-established gender norms, but the outcomes for promoting gender equality appear mixed both across sectors and locations. Women workers are largely concentrated in low-wage, labour-intensive production.
The rise of global retail value chains has played an important role in changing patterns of trade in traditional agricultural commodities such as tea, coffee and cocoa. However, the process of change has been complex and varied between products and countries, especially where smallholders play an important role in production. The world of large-scale retail, processing and agribusiness that dominate the commercial operation of global value chains is far removed from the reality of smallholder production characterized by low incomes, poverty, hardship and lack of resources. Significant tensions prevail between the commercial dynamics of processing, manufacture and distribution and retail, versus the societal dynamics of smallholder farming and rural communities that are deeply embedded in traditional norms and practices shaped by diverse local cultures and customs. Gender plays an important role in these tensions. Gender norms in traditional agriculture largely relegate women to a subordinate position. It has long been argued the important role women play in smallholder agricultural production is insufficiently recognized (Boserup 1970; Carr 2004; World Bank 2009; Quisumbing et al. 2014).
These tensions have intensified since the implementation of structural adjustment policies introduced by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s that liberalized trade and disbanded government agricultural support programmes in many developing countries. These facilitated increasing concentration among a small group of international food manufacturers and processors, while fragmented smallholders have struggled with the vagaries of international markets, declining agricultural prices, lack of resources and poor livelihoods (Robbins 2003; Oxfam 2018).
Problems have been coming to a head since the 2000s, with rising concerns whether the supply of quality agricultural commodities would be sufficient to meet rising global demand and future sustainability of small-scale agriculture. Researchers and policymakers have paid increasing attention to the challenges of incorporating smallholders in global value chains and strategies that can enable their participation (Dolan and Humphrey 2000; Gibbon and Ponte 2005; Vorley et al. 2007; Lee, Gereffi and Beauvais 2010; Reardon, Timmer and Minten 2010). International food manufacturers and processors that once relied on markets to generate some agricultural commodities are now increasingly engaged in sustainability initiatives that extend across their value chains to support small-scale farmers. Some incorporate a gender dimension, as recognition of women's contribution to quality production has grown (Utz 2009; Chan 2010; Fairtrade 2015).
This chapter focuses on discussing the concepts of workflow analysis and job analysis. It discusses the significance, purpose, and steps involved in workflow and job analysis. Furthermore, it carries out a discussion on the shift in concept and practice from traditional job analysis to strategic job analysis. Themes such as dejobbing, strategic job modelling (SJM), and competency mapping are discussed in the light of strategic job analysis.
Learning Objectives
To get familiarized with the concepts of workflow analysis and job analysis
To develop an understanding of the need, significance, purpose, and outcomes of workflow analysis and job analysis
To understand the rationale of why and how traditional job analysis has evolved into strategic job analysis
To understand concepts such as dejobbing, SJM, and competency mapping in the light of strategic job analysis
OPENING STORY
The Future of Work
The world of work is undergoing a major process of change. There are several forces transforming it, from the onward march of technology and the impact of climate change to the changing character of production and employment, to name a few. In order to understand and to respond effectively to these new challenges, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has launched a ‘Future of Work’ initiative. The ILO understands the need to respond effectively to the world of work and ongoing changes in order to be able to advance its mandate for social justice.
The Future of Work initiative is the centrepiece of the ILO's activities to mark its centenary in 2019.
Future of Work initiative timelines
2016: A broad framework is needed to give the Future of Work initiative the necessary structure and focus for concrete results to be obtained. In 2016, all ILO member states are invited to undertake national ‘Future of Work’ dialogues structured around four ‘centenary conversations’:
• Work and society
• Decent jobs for all
• The organization of work and production
• The governance of work
2017–2018: In 2017, a high-level Global Commission on the Future of Work will be established. Its purpose will be to examine the output from the national dialogues and other input it may consider necessary. The commission will publish a report and recommendations in the course of 2018.
This chapter discusses the concept of strategic human resource (HR) evaluation. It identifies the need for measuring human resource management (HRM) activities and taking informed business decisions. Various approaches and techniques of HR evaluation are discussed. Methods of evaluation of an individual HRM subsystem as well as an HRM system as a whole are discussed in detail. The concept of HR analytics and its use in strategic HR evaluation is also highlighted at the end of the chapter.
Learning Objectives
To understand the concept of strategic HR evaluation
To identify the various approaches and techniques of HR evaluation
To understand the metrics and methods of evaluation of individual HRM practices as well as the HRM system
OPENING STORY
HR and Finance—Marriage on the Clouds
The changing business environment is making cross-functional collaboration more important than ever before. However, no partnership could have a more immediate impact on corporate performance than finance and HR departments working together. Traditionally, the two have not really worked together. The fact is many HR professionals do not necessarily appreciate a balance sheet or hard accounting data. Finance professionals may not really understand the value of things like motivation and soft skills.
However, things are changing. With the digitization of the economy and the emergence of analytics, finance and HR managers are coming together. With an eye on business transformation, both are now focusing on using business metrics and analytics to contribute to the bottom line. They are coming out of their cocoons and working in tandem. Just as the chief finance officer (CFO) helps the chief executive officer (CEO) lead the business by allocating financial resources, the chief human resources officer (CHRO) should help the CEO by building talent. The link between financial numbers and the people who provide productivity to reach those numbers should be inseparable. CHROs need to understand finance, and CFOs need to be more people-centric. When CFOs and CHROs work together, they can significantly impact the business.
An Ernst & Young survey shows companies with high collaboration between HR and finance experience an increase in topline revenue, an increase of 10 per cent or more in operational cash flow, and an increase in employee productivity and engagement.
Books are often the product of a long journey, and this one is no exception. In the 19901990s, much was being made of the ‘Chilean economic miracle’ resulting from trade liberalization implemented under the Pinochet dictatorship. As a postgraduate student of international trade and development with an interest in gender and labour in Chile, I wanted to examine the costs of this ‘miracle’ in the fruit export sector for the large female temporary labour force (las temporeras) employed each season. As part of this research, I undertook focus group discussions with groups of women fruit workers in the lower reaches of the Andes north of Santiago. This encounter dispelled many naïve assumptions I had started out with and highlighted the complexities of globalization for women workers.
Unsurprisingly, I found that, during the fruit season, las temporeras endured exceptionally long hours, with poor pay and few rights. In my discussions with workers, I enquired about their ‘bad’ experiences working in multinational and domestically owned export companies. However, I soon learnt from workers that, despite many problems, the work also provided them with economic independence relative to their previous situation. I met some very forthright temporeras, one of whom forcefully said, ‘We have always worked hard. NOW we are being paid for it.’ They preferred working for multinationals because they offered better pay and conditions than domestically owned companies. From then on, I have been more careful in my research to investigate both the challenges and opportunities for women working in global export production.
This same research also opened my eyes to the changing dynamics of trade, which conventional economics and political economy at the time were not addressing. This came about initially through a misunderstanding. My learnt Castilian was a potential barrier to comprehending the local dialect of workers. A couple of times in one focus group, workers mentioned ‘la visita de tesco’. When I enquired what ‘tesco’ meant, I was met with disbelief and laughter—they were referring to the UK supermarket Tesco. I was amazed that temporary workers in the foothills of the Andes were aware of a UK supermarket located on a different continent.
The transformation of global retail value chains since the 1990s has been associated with significant changes in how people shop and goods are sourced. Women constitute the majority of retail customers purchasing many goods critical to household and family welfare. Gender norms have long shaped women's primary role as in the home, including the unpaid production of food and clothing for household consumption. However, as more and more women have entered the labour force, they have combined paid work with household and caring roles. Global retailers have facilitated these changes by expanding the availability of a wide array of commercially produced consumer goods at affordable prices. These include processed foods, ready-made garments and other household convenience items. Trends that first developed in North America and Europe have subsequently been replicated in middle- and lower-income countries.
Underpinning these changes has been a revolution in the operations of global retailers, with increasing dominance by a smaller number of companies. They monitor and help shape changing consumer trends through the application of information technology (IT) and marketing. They control and coordinate global value chains from the point of production through distribution to final consumers, facilitating supply of a vast range of goods cheaply on a just-in-time (JIT) basis. This has involved a transformation in global sourcing, changing how goods are produced, procured and distributed globally. Global sourcing has expanded production of manufactured and food products within many developing countries. This has generated a large feminized labour force to facilitate low-cost commercial production of consumer goods retailed. Trends in the Global North are increasingly replicated in the Global South.
This chapter provides an overview of changing gender patterns of work as well as dynamics of global retail value chains in the post-World War II period. It examines how global retail expansion has adapted to and helped shape changing gender patterns of work. It explores the retail revolution and global sourcing that underpins the provision of affordable commercially produced goods. Finally, it examines the commercial mantra of cost, quality and speed of delivery as key requirements of supply and purchasing practices of global retailers. This informs an examination in the next chapter of the implications for the feminization and fragmentation of work in production of consumer goods and gender profile of work across retail value chains.