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.
Measuring individual modernity: a near myth.
A variety of scales of individual modernity have been developed to measure a universal set of attitudes and behaviors which presumably better fit men for life in modern society. The present study attempts to assess empirically the equivalence reliability and validity of four such scales constructed by Smith and Inkeles Kahl Schnaiberg and Armer. Data were collected from multiple-wave interviews of a sample of lower-to-middle class ethnically heterogeneous married males in the Uptown area of Chicago. The results indicate that the scales (a) are moderately equivalent (intercorrelations range from .40 to .64) despite differences in dimensions items and scale construction procedures (b) have moderately high internal consistency (r alpha = .56\quadto .76) and test-retest (r tt = .66\quadto .81) reliabilities and (c) have low discriminant validity with respect to anomia alienation and to a less extent socioeconomic status. Low construct validity persists when corrections or tests are made for attenuation due to unreliability acquiescent response and other possible interpretations. In short the modernity scales tend to predict scores on anomia alienation and socioeconomic status about as well as they predict other measures of modernity. Conversely measures of anomia and alienation appear to predict modernity scores almost as well as do the modernity scales. The findings call into serious question the meaningfulness of the construct and/or measurement of modernity. (authors)