...February 24th 2014 Textbook chapter 13 Case Analysis: WORKING HOURS – A TEST CASE FOR FLEXIBILITY Questions 1- The Financial Times described British lobbying of the EP against the end of the opt-out in the working Time Directive as ‘a strategic defense of the UK’s liberal economic vision for Europe’ (FT, 12 May 2005, p.3) Explain and analyze this statement. How do you interpret this statement in terms of contrasting economic models in Europe and of the debate over labour market flexibility? I agree with the reasoning of having enough productive working hours. For instance the French 35 hours a week is a good example of how a society could be organized with less working time and still be productive. Quantity is not the key but quality is. It doesn’t matter how hard a country works for instance, most of the Chinese in foreign countries with business, work every holiday they don’t close their business. However Chinese economy is one of the most impressive economies now a day because of its fast growing. Conversely French’s economy has been a steady economy for years and they do work a lot less than the Chinese. 2- At the time of writing, agreement on the review of the working time directive has not been reached. Find out whether the review has been concluded. What does the struggle over the directive tell us about attitudes towards labour market flexibility? It tells us that there are different point of views and differences. Not everybody agrees with the...
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...FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE: Comparing flexible policies in Sweden, Australia and the UK. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………3 2. DEFINING WORKING-TIME FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE………………………………3 3.1 FLEXIBILITY: EMPLOYERS´ APPROACH…………………………………………….……………………..4 3.2 WORK-LIFE BALANCE: EMPLOYEES´ APPROACH…………………………..………………………..6 3.3 TYPES OF FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE……………….……….…………………………7 3. ANALYSING FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN THREE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES: UK, SWEDEN AND AUSTRALIA…………………………………………….….……………………………………8 4.4 EVOLUTION OF TRENDS IN FLEXIBILITY………………………………………………………………….9 4.5 THE REGULATORY AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP……………………………………………………………………………………………………..12 4. MANAGING FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE: CULTURAL FACTORS AN HR MANAGER NEEDS INSIGHT INTO, IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE FLEXIBILITY AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE TRADE-OFFS THAT ARE PREFERRED IN ANY PARTICULAR COUNTRY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16 5. GIVEN THE IMPERATIVES OF MODERN CAPITALISM, IS IT LIKELY TO SEE CONVERGENCE ACROSS COUNTRIES OR AT LEAST CONVERGENCE ACROSS THE NATIONAL OPERATIONS OF MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES?................................................................................18 6. CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………………….……………………………..19 7. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………19 1. INTRODUCTION ...
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...Workplace Flexibility, Work Hours, and Work-Life Conflict: Finding an Extra Day or Two E. Jeffrey Hill, Jenet Jacob Erickson, and Erin K. Holmes Brigham Young University Maria Ferris IBM Global Workforce Diversity | Problem/ Solution | Content/ Reference | Work-life conflict | The reciprocal influence between the microsystems of work and life compose what is called the work-life mesosystem. When the boundaries be- tween these microsystems are permeable, characteristics associated with the work and life domains influence each other. Work-life conflict is identified as the linking mecha-nism through which work and life are related to one another and to individual and work outcomes.Work-life conflict consists of a cognitive appraisal of inter-role conflict in which individuals feel that the demands of paid work and life roles are incompatible. Incompatibility is experienced as participation in either paid work or life roles is made more difficult because of the demands of the other role.A plethora of studies have found that work hours are associated with greater work-family conflict and that workplace flexibility is associated with less work-family conflict.Judge, Boudreau, and Bretz (1994) found a strong relationship betweenthe number of paid work hours and work/family conflict, especially for those with preschool children.In an interesting twist, Jacob et al. (2008) found that the frequency of missed evening family meals because of work mediated the negative relationship between...
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...Flexibility in Marketing Key words: Flexibility in Marketing, Marketing strategy, Adaptability, Flexibility Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to understand issues related to flexibility in marketing with broader context of its significance and advantages in the marketing domain. There exists a significant line of difference between adaptability, innovation and flexibility. The ever increasing competition along with unforeseen advance in the communication and information technology has empowered the customers. As a result, with improved mediums of communication and dynamic access to data and information, consumers have become more knowledgeable and can relate more to the dynamic market environment. With rapid application of information technology and modeling in decision making, marketing strategy needs to respond to the changes in environment, competition, technology, social norms and buyer behavior dynamically. With organization becoming flatter, decentralization of marketing processes has become a necessity. This paper explores the approaches, guidelines and the criticality of building in flexibility in marketing strategy. It also looks at the advantages of the same. Authors: Chaudhry H. and Chauhan A. References Ahmed, P.K. (1998), “Culture and climate for innovation”, European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 30-43. Barney, J.B. (1991), “Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage”, Journal of Management, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp...
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...Flexibility is a critical component used largely for workplace effectiveness. Organizations are using it as a tool to improve recruitment and retention, management of workload, and employee diversity. Providing flexibility also shows improvement in employee engagement, job satisfaction, and stress reduction. Employers, who not only encourage but also empower their employees to use flexible work schedules as well as simultaneously affording the opportunity to advance in the company, employees, and employers gain a predisposition to profit. Human Resources are using flexibility as an organizational strategic asset. This provides a considerable competitive advantage to companies who are aware they need to adopt rapidly to market changes. A flexible organization uses a specific or a combination of available scheduling strategies. “In May 1997, more than 27 percent of all full-time wage and salary workers in the United States – about 25 million – had flexible work schedules that allowed them to vary the time they began or ended work. The proportion of workers with such schedules was up sharply from the 15 percent recorded when the data were last collected in May 1991 and from the 12.5 percent tallied in 1985. The increase in flexible work schedules was widespread across demographic groups, occupations, and industries, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor (1998, June 1)”. Flexible work arrangements originally...
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...PRICE FLEXIBILITY For coordination of activities to be preserved (or restored) when the economy is disturbed by changes in these determinants, something still more is required: each separate price must move in a direction that will restore equilibrium. This necessity for prices to adjust in certain directions may be expressed as a communications requirement. To put it in somewhat extreme form: for a given economic unit to plan its activities so that they will “mesh” with those of others, it must have information about the intentions of everyone else in the system. When one of the determinants underlying market supplies and demands changes so as to disequilibrate the system, ensuing price movements must communicate the requisite information to everyone concerned. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/178486/economic-stabilizer/57935/Price-flexibility DISRUPTING SUPPLY AND DEMAND The determining of market prices through the dynamic interaction of supply and demand is the basic building block of economics. Consumer preferences for a product determine how much of it they will buy at any given price. Consumers will purchase more of a product as its price declines, all else being equal. Firms, in turn, decide how much they are willing to supply at different prices. In general, if consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for a product, then more manufacturers will try to produce the product, will increase their production capacity, and will conduct research to improve...
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...BSHS/345 Week 5 Flexibility Paper Stopping Invidious comparison As we know, comparing one person with others according to their class, race, sex or religion is invidious comparison. It can have negative effect on both the people involved in this act. So, how can we stop this? The foremost thing to do is to understand the fact that everyone is different and accept it. There are always smart, strong and eye-catching people covering the others who are not healthy, rich, less attractive, less able or obese. We should look at people’s strengths rather than their weaknesses. No one is perfect. Comparing yourself with others diverts your own path or even stops it. Rather, you should be looking at your goals and achievements and try to help yourself in getting in a better position. Strategies to avoid vicarious traumatization As human service providers, we always encounter people who suffer and struggle with different problems. Some of the people’s conditions worse than others. When you care about certain people and their problems and feel you could do something, you get caught in vicarious trauma. This is mainly caused by several factors: • Encounter with trauma stories, • Urge of changing or solving someone’s problematic condition, • Absence of signs of progress in a service worker’s client, • Overly identifying with trauma survivors, • The thought of being capable of solving a survivor’s problems...
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...The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism discusses the effect of the flexible capitalist economy on the lives of workers during the 1990s. * Chapter 3 focuses mainly on flexibility. Sennett compares the flexibility of a human being to that of a tree, whereby, the tree has the capacity both to yield and to recover, from both the testing and the restoration. * Theoretically, a flexible person ought to have the same tensile strength as the tree. That is, the person should be able to adapt himself to changing circumstances and resist to tension. Sennett states that routine is an evil of the old capitalism, and that in recent times, the workplace has been made "flexible" by means of the restructuring of time (flex time, part time jobs, increased use of swing and graveyard type shifts, etc.). However, in practical and in today’s society, the practices of flexibility focus mainly on the forces that bend people. (Today, “Flexible capitalism” describes the goal of most modern companies, to be able to continuously change to fit the market. Companies no longer provide job descriptions or long term contracts, but rather an opportunity to compete in a winner-takes-all market.) * Many modern philosophers such as Locke and Hume have associated the bending aspect of flexibility with a person’s self powers of sensations. These sensations come from events happening in the world outside that elicits different responses, and hence bend the self from one way to another...
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...2008-06791 Flexibility is a measurement of how a company adjusts with its internal and external environment. There are two ways to adjust. One is to adopt the standards or norms of the industry and the other is to deviate from them. For Zara, obviously, it was the latter. I thought Zara’s rapid fire supply chain management was a bold move, cost and effort-wise, and was unconventional with relation to its peers, but it has given the company its competitive advantage. Yes Zara acted against the normal production cycle, but the good thing was that the company sustained this supply chain system, definitely made adjustments to it through the years, and now the company is reaping its benefits. Flexibility is not all about adjustment. It is how a company manages the trade off between quality and speed. Personally, these two ideas come to my mind whenever I hear business flexibility. At first, I was worried that the quality of the products would dwindle as it only took Zara 15 days to design a product then display it in stores. However, having three parallel but operationally distinct clothing departments enabled the company to achieve this quick span of production and maintain superior quality of its products. Thus, highly flexible companies make it seem as if there is no trade-off and undoubtedly, Zara is as such. Further, the fashion industry would sap the life out of any ordinary company with its ever-changing consumer preferences and continuously evolving clothing trends...
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...Structural Analysis III Chapter 3 – Characteristics of Structures Chapter 3 - Characteristics of Structures 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 2 3.1.1 Background .................................................................................................... 2 3.2 Basic Statical Determinacy ................................................................................. 5 3.2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................... 5 3.2.2 Plane Beams and Frames ............................................................................... 6 3.2.3 Plane Trusses ............................................................................................... 15 3.3 Stability ............................................................................................................... 20 3.3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................. 20 3.3.2 Exceptions to Basic Rule ............................................................................. 21 3.3.3 Examples...................................................................................................... 23 3.4 Further Statical Determinacy .......................................................................... 25 3.4.1 Internal and External Determinacy ...........................................
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...Strategies of change management in implementing new technologies | Email | bg34jh@student.sunderland.ac.uk | Introduction Authors and researchers have spent considerable time trying to find better ways of addressing organisation’s change management in the flexibility of software and the performance of the project. Somewhere along the way, these professionals were guided by innovations and knowledge from prior research and some adopted the standards as stipulated by the researchers and made alterations to the practices where it deemed important. This paper therefore, will present a comparative literature review of two sources by Liu et al. (2008) and Wang et al. (2008) by examining the literature review, hypothesis that were stated, the methods used for collection and analysing data, the findings of the case studies and finally the relevancy or merits of the theories which were investigated in the two papers. The hypothesis stated by Liu et al. (2008) focused on the inter-linkage between the standardisation of software process, flexibility of software and the performance of the project, while the study by Wang et al. (2008) examined the relationship between change in control mechanisms, the review by management and the flexibility of the software. However the methods used by both authors for collecting and analysis data in the case studies were just similar and involved questionnaire surveys and tests. The findings of these studies proved a positive relationship between the constructs...
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...An Exploration of Stretching in Dancers This essay discusses three concepts that are relevant to my dissertation inquiry, ‘The Effects of Dynamic Stretching versus Static Stretching in Relation to Hamstring Flexibility’. The dissertation will focus on dance students as they process the attributes required for the stretching tasks and it will require the dancers to participate in a four week stretching plan. During this essay the concepts to be discussed are the physiology of stretching the hamstrings, flexibility and types of stretching techniques. It involves a definition of each term and references to other expertise in that particular field. Each concept will conclude with a critical discussion of different aspects of the topic that could be of interest towards my dissertation research. The physiology of stretching the Hamstrings. The hamstrings are one of the largest muscle groups, containing three muscles that line the back of the leg and when working together they flex the knee (plié,...
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...upon is child labor controversy. It has been widely known for years that different corporations use labor provided by other countries, because it is cheap and provides the most amount of profit to the company involved. This leads to the idea that corporations are deceptive, have a reckless disregard for people, fail to abide by social norms, and are incapable of experiencing guilt. The movie views child labor and a corporation's disregard for people as an epidemic because it is such a common method for producing products. My review of the corporate documentary film will be on the topic of labor. Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, MIT, discussed about Labor Market Flexibility. She commented about the features of contemporary economic systems is on imposing flexibility in labor markets. When labor market flexibility is achieved, the corporation achieved efficiency. But this comes with a cost of mental illness due to insecurity. I agree generally in theory where Firms' ability to make changes to their workforce in terms of the number of employees they hire and the number of hours worked by the employees. A theory stated a flexible labor...
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...Work-Life Balance Work-life balance is a term which includes the proper prioritizing between the working life such as career and ambition, and lifestyle such as family, leisure, health and spiritual development. It is also very important to employee job satisfaction as most companies today are having difficulties to attract and retain their workers especially in the Millennial and Y generations. It is largely due to the dissatisfaction towards the lack of work-life balance as they prefers flexibility in where, when and how they work, even to the stage where they are willing to have a pay cut or forgo a promotion in order to manage their work-life demands better (Schulte, 2015). Therefore, it is necessary for the organizations to provide support to their employees such as flexible working arrangements, dependent care and personal or family leave in order to retain and attract their workers. Besides that, lack of work-life balance provided by the organization will also affect the company itself as employees who are constantly attached to their jobs would deal with the symptoms of burnout and stress and more likely to suffer health problems which then appears to take sick leaves more often, and less efficient, less sociable and overall harder to work with. Therefore, it is best for the both employer and employee to avoid such factors through smart human resource management, as with most things in life, moderation is key to success (Boundless, 2015). There are several...
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...Flexicurity Student name Course code Course name Date Flexicurity refers to an European policy agenda, which seeks to increase flexibility and security in labor markets nationally. Much as it is a different approach from one centered solely on flexibility, flexicurity has been highly opposed right from its onset. Now it is being reviewed in light of the crisis that occurred in 2008 (Marsden and Hugh, 2008). Apart from letting go of this agenda, the European Commission announced a “second phase of flexicruity’, though it was highly suggested that flexicruity needed to be re-made independent of the crisis. Nevertheless, flexicruity envisages changing the work life and lifestyles of Europeans, and much as it is justified by the needs of the workers, it is void of a clear and democratic justifiable idea to back up its impact on the society. This report explains how flexicruity can be applied in the labor market and social policy. With reference to the European Commission (EC) (cp. 2007a, 7), flexicurity may contribute to the restoration of competitiveness in European economies and the maintenance of the European social model, both of which are perceived to be under immense pressure. On the contrary, this reform has been greatly countered from its onset with the criticism gaining momentum after the crises in 2008. Nonetheless, the European Commission has relentlessly affirmed its determination to pursue the flexicurity objective (Marsden and Hugh, 2001)...
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