The impact of union presence and strategic human resource management on employee voice in multinational enterprises in Australia

In this article, we examine the use and character of employee voice mechanisms of foreign-owned multinational enterprises operating in Australia, as well as the influence of a strategic human resource management approach and union presence. Findings indicate that foreign-owned multinational enterprises are high-level users of the full range of employee voice mechanisms, with the exceptions of use of employee suggestion schemes, trade union recognition and the use of joint consultation committees across all sites. Using logistic regression analysis, findings show that trade union presence, a strategic human resource management approach, greenfield site and country of origin impact the employee voice approach adopted. High trade union presence is associated with an indirect employee voice approach. A low trade union presence is associated with a direct or a minimalist approach to employee voice. Moreover, a strategic human resource management approach is associated with both direct and dualistic approaches to employee voice. Implications are drawn for theory and practice. © Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA) SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC.

Student teachers' experiences of initial teacher preparation in England:Core themes and variation

Drawing on data generated via large-scale survey and in-depth interview methods, this article reports findings which show that being a student teacher in early-twenty-first-century England is a demanding personal experience which requires considerable engagement and commitment in the face of built-in challenges and risks, and which engenders, for many, highly charged affective responses. Student teachers are centrally concerned during this time with their (changing) identities, their relationships with others and the relevance of course provision. Findings also indicate that, in some respects, student teachers’ accounts of their experiences are systematically differentiated according to a number of factors, notably the initial teacher preparation route being followed, their age, and their prior conceptions and expectations of teaching and of learning to teach. These findings are situated in the broader literature on teacher development and some implications for teacher educators are discussed. © 2008 Taylor & Francis

Student Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of their Initial Preparation

What influences how well-prepared student teachers feel towards working in schools upon completion of their initial teacher preparation (ITP)? In order to investigate this question, we used a path analysis using data from a longitudinal study investigating the experiences of trainee and early career phase teachers in England. The data were generated via self-complete questionnaires and follow-up telephone interviews with 1,322 trainees. Those on undergraduate or school-based programmes felt better prepared to work as teachers than one-year postgraduate trainees, perhaps because the former give higher ratings of the quality of assessment of, and feedback received on, teaching practice, and because of the clarity of theory-practice links in programmes. Across different kinds of ITP programme, good relationships with school-based mentors significantly boosted trainees' confidence that their ITP had effectively prepared them for teaching. Trainees' motives for entering the profession and their initial concerns about and expectations of ITP also affected their perceptions of its effectiveness, by shaping the way they experienced aspects of their courses. Implications of these findings for policy and practice in teacher preparation are discussed. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Victims and Transitional Justice: Voice, Agency and Blame

This article explores the construction of victimhood in transitional societies. Drawn from fieldwork in a dozen jurisdictions as well as elements of criminological, feminist, sociological, philosophical and postcolonial literature, the article focuses in particular on how victimhood is interpreted and acted upon in transitional contexts. It explores the ways in which victims’ voice and agency are realised, impeded or in some cases co-opted in transitional justice. It also examines the role of blame in the construction of victimhood. In particular, it focuses upon the ways in which the importance of blame may render victimhood contingent upon ‘blamelessness’, encourage hierarchies between deserving and undeserving victims and require the reification of blameworthy perpetrators. The article concludes by suggesting that the increased voice and agency associated with the deployment of rights discourses by victims comes at a price – a willingness to acknowledge the rights and humanity of the ‘other’ and to be subject to the same respectful critical inquiry as other social and political actors in a post-conflict society.

How Does Justice Sound? Enunciative Modalities, Law’s Logos and Woman’s Voice

In the throes of her mimetic exposure of the lie of phallocratic discursive unity in 'Speculum of the Other Woman', Irigaray paused on the impossibility of woman’s voice and remarked that ‘it [was] still better to speak only in riddles, allusions, hints, parables.’ Even if asked to clarify a few points. Even if people plead that they just don’t understand. After all, she said, ‘they never have understood.’ (Irigaray 1985, 143).

That the law has never understood a uniquely feminine narrative is hardly controversial, but that this erasure continues to have real and substantive consequences for justice is a reality that feminists have been compelled to remain vigilant in exposing. How does the authority of the word compound law’s exclusionary matrix? How does law remain impervious to woman’s voice and how might it hear woman’s voice? Is there capacity for a dialogic engagement between woman, parler femme, and law?

This paper will explore these questions with particular reference to the experience of women testifying to trauma during the rape trial. It will argue that a logically linked historical genealogy can be traced through which law has come to posit itself as an originary discourse by which thinking is very much conflated with being, or in other terms, law is conflated with justice. This has consequences both for women’s capacity to speak or represent the harm of rape to law, but also for law’s ability to ‘hear’ woman’s voice and objectively adjudicate in cases of rape. It will suggest that justice requires law acknowledge the presence of two distinct and different subjects and that this must be done not only at the symbolic level but also at the level of the parole, syntax and discourse.