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.
Exploring the interaction of firm-level change and national institutional environments in shaping employment and union relations: a comparative case study of four European airlines
Abstract Drawing on the example of the airline industry, this paper explores in a longitudinal comparative case study the question of how firm-level changes and national institutional environments interact in shaping employee and union relations. Adding to previous research in comparative institutional analysis and comparative employment relations, we illustrate that the way in which industry pressures and national-level effects play out to influence employee and union relations depends on firm-level changes, mainly in the form of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries. We show in particular that depending on firm-level changes, the very same firm might engage differently with a given institutional context at different points in time. Hence, our work illustrates the importance of firm growth, acquisitions and the foundation of new subsidiaries in explaining the shifting interaction between the firm and its institutional environment, and its implications for changing employee and union relations within firms.
Measuring Modernism: Theoretical and Empirical Explorations
Among the many unresolved issues in the theoretical and empirical study of modernization is that of the unity of the modernizing process. This paper focuses on the coherence of the behavioral and attitudinal characteristics of individuals who have been exposed to modernizing influences such as urban residence and education. Six measures of modernism are used, and the analysis attempts to determine the overlap of each of these measures in the same individual. Using data from married Turkish women in Ankara city and four villages, it appears that each of the measures of modernism represents a distinct behavioral sphere, so that individuals may be modern in one sphere and traditional in another. A common denominator among the measures appears to lie in an "emancipation" complex, consisting of participation in mass media consumption and an egalitarian nuclear-family structure. When dealing with particular subpopulations or specific behavioral spheres, it may be necessary to treat modernism as a multifaceted phenomenon.