Airline Pilot Unions in Australia, Japan and the United States : A Test of Cross-National Convergence
There is a general proposition that common, advanced technologies similarly deployed in countries with different histories, cultures and industrial relations systems will tend to generate similar outcomes cross-nationally. Airlines operating identical aircraft in Australia, Japan and the United States provide an opportunity to test this convergence hypothesis. Despite very different normative industrial re lations systems in these three countries, pilots of Boeing 747 aircraft havefashioned pay schemes and union structures that are far more alike cross-nationally than those that generally characterise employees in other occupations and industries in the same national context. Airline pilots have, in effect, become partners with employers in sharing benefits of increased productivity of the larger or faster aircraft they fly. While acknowledging factors other than common technologies, this study supports the general convergence hypothesis when applied to an industry level. It does not support those 'post-industrial society' theorists who see the overwhelming influence of technology as eroding social and occupational distinctions between and among different classes of workers.
Democracy in the Work Place
difficult to understand for anyone who has not been exposed to "modern finance". This exposure could, however, merely be a one or two week executive programme on capital markets and portfolio analysis taught by a competent instructor. At the same time, I would recommend the volume highly to anyone wi th an interest in modern finance, for no other reason than to understand better what is the nature of recent share market research.
Automatisation et légitimité de l'entreprise capitaliste
Les debats sur la «nouvelle classe ouvriere » ont ete generalement menes en supposant que l'automatisation entrainait par elle-meme de nouvelles orientations ouvrieres a l'egard de la legitimite du pouvoir dans l'entreprise capitaliste. La validite d'un tel raisonnement ne peut cependant etre demontree que si l'on parvient a etablir que les effets de la technologie sont identiques quel que soit le contexte socio-culturel. ; En comparant les opinions ouvrieres dans deux raffineries britanniques et deux raffineries francaises , l'auteur etablit que ce n'est aucunement le cas. La similitude technologique n'empeche pas les ouvriers d'admettre bien davantage la legitimite du pouvoir dans les premieres entreprises que dans les secondes. Les differences dans les structures d'autorite et l'institutionnalisation des conflits sociaux ont une influence beaucoup plus considerable que la technologie.