Contingencies of contingent employment: psychological contract, job insecurity and employability of contracted workers

Drawing on psychological contract literature, the present study examines the emerging contingent employment relationships, which involve the contracted workers, the employment agency and the client organization on whose premises these employees work. This sample includes eighty-eight white-collar employees working for four Portuguese agencies. The results suggest that the perceived fulfilment of client?s obligations relates positively to the perceived fulfilment of agency?s obligations and that these constructs are independent of one another. Furthermore, as expected, we have found that the perception of job insecurity relates negatively to the fulfilment of agency?s obligations. No relationship was found between employability and the perceived fulfilment of client?s obligations. The results have implications for practitioners and future research.

Nepotism and turnover intentions amongst knowledge workers in Saudi Arabia

This chapter discusses how international assignment was used as tool to expand knowledge within the organisation using the example of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we focus in particularly on the case of repatriation and problems with subsequent staff turnover, among repatriates in Saudi Arabia’s private sector. Before doing so, the chapter provides a background to the Saudi labour market and the impact of Saudization policies that aimed to reduce relying on foreign labour. Following this, the chapter discusses the Saudi government attempt create a national knowledgeable labour force through international assignment. Finally, using the example of an organisation in Saudi Arabia, this chapter illustrates the possible role of Wasta - a prevalent form of nepotism that permeates organizational life in Saudi Arabia - in repatriates managers turnover intention. Our focus is on unravelling the impact of Wasta on HRM practices with a particular focus on the management of the repatriation process of Saudi employees upon their completion of international assignments.

Ungulate behavioral responses to the heterogeneous road-network of a touristic protected area in Africa

Understanding how wildlife responds to road and traffic is essential for effective conservation. Yet, not many studies have evaluated how roads influence wildlife in protected areas, particularly within the large iconic African National Parks where tourism is mainly based on sightings from motorized vehicles with the consequent development and intense use of roads. To reduce this knowledge gap, we studied the behavioral response and local spatial distribution of impala Aepyceros melampus along the heterogeneous (with variation in road surface type and traffic intensity) road-network of Kruger National Park (KNP, South Africa). We surveyed different types of roads (paved and unpaved) recording the occurrence of flight responses among sighted impala and describing their local spatial distribution (in relation to the roads). We observed relatively few flight responses (19.5% of 118 observations), suggesting impalas could be partly habituated to vehicles in KNP. In addition, impala local distribution is apparently unaffected by unpaved roads, yet animals seem to avoid the close proximity of paved roads. Overall, our results suggest a negative, albeit small, effect of traffic intensity, and of presence of pavement on roads on the behavior of impala at KNP. Future studies would be necessary to understand how roads influence other species, but our results show that even within a protected area that has been well-visited for a long time, wildlife can still be affected by roads and traffic. This result has ecological (e.g., changes in spatial distribution of fauna) and management implications (e.g., challenges of facilitating wildlife sightings while minimizing disturbance) for protected areas where touristic activities are largely based on driving.

A Romano-British settlement with ovens and field system at Theobalds Road, Wivelsfield, East Sussex

Excavation west of Wivelsfield, East Sussex, revealed part of an early Romano-British settlement. One of the round-houses may have had a non-domestic, possibly ritual, function. The settlement appears to have been subsequently incorporated within a rectilinear arrangement of field/enclosure ditches. Along the edge of one of these ditches were built a series of features interpreted as ovens, of varying form and likely use, from which charred waste from cereal processing and charcoal from coppiced woodland were recovered.

Stigma and risky behaviors among male clients of sex workers in the UK in 2001

This paper builds on existing theoretical work on sex markets (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, and Strøm, 2009a). Using data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey, we aim to replicate the analysis of the demand for paid sex previously conducted for the US (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, Shima and Strøm, 2009b). We want to test formally the effect of attitudes, risky behaviors and personal characteristics on the demand for paid sex. Findings from empirical studies of clients suggest that personal characteristics (personal and family background, self-perception, perceptions of women, sexual preferences etc), economic factors (education, income, work) as well as attitudes towards risk (both health hazard and risk of being caught where sex work is illegal), and attitude towards relationships and sex are all likely to affect demand. Previous theoretical work has argued that stigma plays a fundamental role in determining both demand and risk, and that in particular due to the presence of stigma the demand for sex and for paid sex are not, as has been argued elsewhere, perfect substitutes. We use data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey of 2001 to test these hypotheses. We find a positive effect of education (proxy for income), negative effects of professional status (proxies for stigma associated with buying sex), positive and significant effects of all risky behavior variables and no significant effects of variables which measure the relative degree of conservatism in morals. We conclude with some policy implications.

Coordination, inclusiveness and wage inequality between median and bottom income workers

What explains cross-national variation in wage inequality? Research in comparative political economy stresses the importance of the welfare state and wage coordination in reducing not only disposable income inequality but also gross earnings inequality. However, the cross-national variation in gross earnings inequality between median and low income workers is at odds with this conventional wisdom: the German coordinated market economy is now more unequal in this type of inequality than the UK, a liberal market economy. To solve this puzzle, I argue that non-inclusive coordination benefits median but not bottom income workers and is as a result associated with higher – rather than lower - wage inequality. I find support for this argument using a large N quantitative analysis of wage inequality in a panel of Western European countries. Results are robust to the inclusion of numerous controls, country fixed effects, and also hold with a sample of OECD countries. Taken together these findings force us to reconsider the relationship between coordination and wage inequality at the bottom of the income distribution.