This paper examines changes in skill requirements for production jobs in 93 manufacturing establishments between 1978 and 1986 and clerical jobs in 211 firms between 1978 and 1988. The unique data set allows an analysis not only of changes in the distribution of employment across jobs-the usual...

The authors of this study investigate the determinants of union contract ratification votes by analyzing plant-level data relevant to the 1982 and 1984 auto industry agreements with the UAW. The results strongly suggest that the more vulnerable workers are to layoff, the more likely they are to...

The authors develop a model in which the extent of use of a grievance system is determined by wage premiums and alternative job opportunities. Specifically, they hypothesize that when workers enjoy comparatively high wages or are faced with poor alternative job opportunities, they are less...

This study examines data from a 1985 survey of employee attitudes at an airline that had introduced a merging (or temporary) two-tier pay plan the year before. The authors find, contrary to popular wisdom, that lower-wage `B' tier workers felt significantly more satisfied with their pay, work,...

Studies of how different work practices affect organizational performance have suffered from methodological problems. Especially intractable has been the difficulty of establishing whether observed links are causal or merely reflect pre-existing differences among firms. This analysis uses a...

The author investigates the reasons for the diversity in concession bargaining experience among plants in the meatpacking and tire industries. In 1981 negotiations, about one-third of the plants in each industry engaged in concession bargaining and the others did not. The author hypothesizes...

Using data from surveys of employees and their supervisors in eight companies in 1992, the authors examine how each of two forms of employee involvement affected an important dimension of individual performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), defined as individual discretionary...

Franchise jobs are often viewed as epitomizing a "low-road" employee-management approach characterized by high turnover and several practices that are deemed unsophisticated, such as low investment in training, deskilling of work, and little encouragement of employee involvement. Research on...