Announcement Of Closure Research Articles

Intergenerational Learning and Place-making in a Deindustrialized Locality: “Tracks of the Past” in Lanarkshire, Scotland

AbstractThis paper contributes to scholarship on the long experience of deindustrialization. It emphasizes contemporary place-making in navigating the much-changed socioeconomic landscapes that the closure of mills, mines, shipyards and factories have left behind. The ‘half-life of deindustrialization' suggests these experiences have been received through understandings of labour and community with origins in the industrial era. ‘Tracks of the Past' was a school-based education project themed around workers' occupation of Caterpillar's earth-moving machinery plant in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The occupation was a response to Caterpillar's shock closure announcement and the loss of 1,200 jobs. It lasted 103 days between January and April 1987 when closure was reluctantly conceded. A Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group (CWLG) commemorated the occupation's thirtieth anniversary. During 2018, academics collaborated with the CWLG to develop a curriculum for a local high school class. ‘Tracks' produced lessons where students engaged with archival sources and physical objects, interviewed members of the CWLG and conducted online research. The ‘learning journey' montages that the students produced combined conversations in 2018 with sources from three decades earlier, often reflecting on the occupation as a historical episode in a highly localised context. Others implicated the closure within an international pattern, linking Caterpillar’s divestment to the actions of multinationals in the contemporary global economy. In neither case did the invocation of the occupation lead to a straightforward translation of the occupation into contemporary workplace justice issues as the CWLG had hoped. However, these results did suggest a creative deployment of the past that rationalised the occupation with reference to contemporary deindustrialized contexts. These findings demonstrate the utility of the half-life through a lingering industrial past, but also demonstrate the need to conceptualise agents or custodians of labour history and challenge the linearity of passing time that an incrementally receding industrial era implicates.

Announcement of closure

Announcement of closure

The Graduate Medical Education (GME) Gold Rush: GME Slots and Funding as a Financial Asset.

The unprecedented displacement of more than 550 trainees that occurred because of the closure of Hahnemann University Hospital has demonstrated that the medical education community, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education were unprepared for a graduate medical education (GME) crisis of this scale. The authors offer a first-hand perspective of the chaotic environment that ensued following the announcement of the hospital's closure and of the challenges faced by trainees and program leadership looking to ensure trainees found a landing program that was a good fit for them. The authors review the complexity of GME funding and how the owners of Hahnemann University Hospital leveraged this in an attempt to offset debt. The lessons learned from the authors' experience can help inform the medical education community's response to this type of crisis in the future.

General Motor Holden's closure in Playford, South Australia: Analysis of the policy response and its implications for health

AbstractDeindustrialisation and the closure of automotive manufacturing can differentially affect the socioeconomic prospects of workers and their communities, and contribute to social and health inequity. We used Bacchi's problematisation approach to examine the South Australian (SA) Labor government's policy responses to the General Motors Holden (GMH) Elizabeth plant closure announcement. We focused on the way that these policy responses framed the ‘problem’ of this major economic shock, particularly the extent to which potential social and health equity consequences were addressed. We found a narrow focus on economic strategies, neglecting the compounding impact of poverty in Playford, which may exacerbate health inequity. The community effects from the GMH closure remain uncertain and may be delayed for several years. SA requires better integrated social and economic policies to minimise social and health inequalities, as the consequences of the car manufacturing loss are realised.

The Effect of Announced Downsizing on Workplace Performance: Evidence from a Retail Chain

We estimate the effect of downsizing announcement on workplace performance using data from a German bakery chain of 193 shops. Faced with intensified competition, the firm decided to sell or close down 57 of its worst performing shops. We identify the effect of downsizing from a plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of the sale or closure announcement in the individual shops. We find that the announcements of the shop being sold to a new owner and being closed down reduce sales by six and 21 percent, respectively. The negative effect of downsizing increases with the share of workers with a permanent contract, even though permanent workers faced a much lower unemployment risk. We relate our findings to the literatures on downsizing and psychological contract.

‘Where Men Fail, Women Take Over’: Inanda Seminary's Rescue by its Own

In December 1997, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa and Inanda Seminary's Governing Council decided to close southern Africa's oldest and once most prestigious school for black girls. The school survived colonialism and apartheid. Yet, after providing 128 years of quality Christian education, the Seminary could not survive South Africa's new democratic dispensation. After hearing the Council's announcement of closure, the school's alumnae (‘Old Girls’) resolved to save the Seminary. The wider church and the Council, under whose auspices and weak leadership the Seminary operated poorly, rescinded its earlier decision, relinquished control and agreed to allow the Old Girls to administer the school independently. The former students inherited an almost hopeless task. Deep infrastructural, administrative and financial rot permeated the school rendering it profoundly dysfunctional. Though the alumnae averted the school's permanent closure in 1997, the Seminary teetered within a ‘critical care’ state for the remainder of the decade. Only in the new millennium did the Seminary fully recover and again become a school of excellence. This article chronicles the crisis from 1997 to 1998 that led to the school's survival.

Facility closure management: the case of Vauxhall Motors Luton

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to present the findings of a study of factory closure management. It details the sequence and the results of the key strategic manufacturing management decisions made from the time of the announcement of the plant closure to the cessation of operations. The paper also includes an analysis of the human resource management (HRM) actions taken during this same time period and their consequences upon all those involved in the closure management process.Design/methodology/approachThe case study methodology consisted of two initial site visits to monitor closure management effectiveness (adherence to plan and the types and frequency of closure management communications). During these visits, documentary evidence of the impact of the closure decision upon production performance was also collected (manufacturing output and quality performance data). Following plant closure, interviews were held with senior business, production and HRM managers and production personnel. A total of 12 interviews were carried out.FindingsThe case study findings have informed the development of a conceptual model of facility closure management. Information obtained from the interviews suggests that the facility closure management process consists of five key management activities. The unexpected announcement of a factory closure can cause behavioural changes similar to those of bereavement, particularly by those employees who are its survivors. In addition, similar reactions to the closure announcement may be displayed by those who choose to remain employed by the factory owner throughout the phased closure of the plant.Originality/valueFacility closure management is an insufficiently researched strategic operations management activity. This paper details a recommended procedure for its management. A conceptual model has also been developed to illustrate the links between the key facility closure management tasks and the range of employee changes of behaviour that can be induced by their execution.

A holistic approach to the productivity paradox

Both the public and private sectors have since the 1980s relentlessly cut the size of their workforces. The downsizing has regularly been reported to lead to closure of a whole or a part of a corporation or organization. Some studies which have analyzed the closures have reported that remarkable, counterintuitive improvements in labor productivity occurred during the time-period between the closure announcement and the final working day. Testing an elaborated cybernetic model on a Swedish case study, and on an exploratory basis, this paper proposes a holistic approach to generate a better understanding of this phenomenon. The main holistic pattern is a new order where management control is replaced by more “Self-management” on the plant level, and very strong psychological reactions based on feelings of unfairness.

An exploratory study of changing occupational injury risk during the closure of industrial operations.

Companies go out of business on a regular basis, and industrial plants close as a result. Various social, economic and interpersonal dynamics accompany such events. Environmental health and safety (EH&S) aspects are not exempt from those dynamics during a programmed closing of a manufacturing operation. How does this condition fit the industrial hygiene paradigm of anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control? This paper describes an exploratory enquiry into the nature of risk to human health and safety associated with the planned closure of a manufacturing operation. As a starting point, the recognition of risk was explored using a qualitative opinion survey of a group of independent EH&S professionals. The survey, reflecting what is often referred to as the 'art' of industrial hygiene, gathered professional impressions of change in potential risk of injury during a hypothetical plant-closing. The results suggested that a plant-closing might be considered a real issue by most EH&S professionals, and pointed specifically to management of personnel behavior, employee satisfaction and outside influences as primary potential sources of increased risk of injury during this final phase of a plant's life. Next, a specific real-world example was considered to evaluate actual change in injury statistics. For this, compensation claim records were examined for a malt beverage manufacturer before and after an official announcement of closure for four geographically distinct North American plants. Risk was evaluated first in terms of the one-monthly and three-monthly rates of injury incidence and then in terms of severity (expressed as cost), based on data derived from compensation claim records as of the month of plant closing. The rate of injury incidence appeared to have increased during plant-closing for one of the plants, but the results were equivocal for the other three plants. On the other hand, when the results were transformed so that the injury incidences were weighted with respect to the cost, the effective impact on the injury rate appeared to increase for three of the plants. Most importantly overall, this paper identifies-for the first time-that there is the potential for increased injury risk during a plant closure phase, and so poses an alert for EH&S professionals and management to implement possible preventative control options in such situations.

Effects of job insecurity from a workplace closure threat on fatigue and psychological distress.

The aim of this study was to prospectively investigate the effect of potential workplace closure, an externally attributed form of job insecurity, on fatigue and psychological distress. In April 1999, the minister responsible announced that a governmental agency would close down one of its two locations. Baseline data from the employees were available before the closure announcement (n = 574) because they were enrolled in the Maastricht Cohort Study on "Fatigue at Work." In the closure group, the relative risk for becoming a psychological distress case was 1.61 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.27-2.05) during 13 months after the closure threat. Within the closure group, a difference in relative risk for psychological distress was observed between employees who self reported an increase in job insecurity (relative risk = 1.85; 95% CI = 1.41-2.42) and employees who did not report an increase in job insecurity (relative risk 1.14; 95% CI = 0.58-2.24)

Contagion in banking due to BCCI's failure: evidence from national equity indices

AbstractWe examine whether the failure of the multinational banking group BCCI caused contagion effects in the banking sectors of four countries where BCCI had established operations, namely the UK, the US, Spain and Switzerland. We find evidence of contagion effects in the UK and Spain which appear to have registered several months before the eventual closure announcement. There is no evidence of contagion effects in the US and Switzerland. Our results have implications for the stability of the European banking sector, as banks licensed anywhere in the EU will be able to set up branches in other EU countries without needing to obtain further authorization. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The United Kingdom's Small Banks' Crisis Of The Early 1990s: What Were The Leading Indicators Of Failure?

The announcement of BCCI's closure on 5 July 1991 rapidly accelerated the withdrawal of wholesale funds from small and medium-sized UK banks. Within three years, a quarter of the banks in this sector, had in some sense, failed. This study employs a logit model to analyse at two points prior to the crisis the distinct characteristics of the banks that failed compared with those that survived. Perhaps not surprisingly, a number of measures of bank weakness - low loan growth, poor profitability and illiquidity - are found to be good short-term predictors of failure, as are a high dependence on net interest income and low leverage. The best longer-term leading indicator of future failure, however, is rapid loan growth at the peak of the previous boom.

Announcement of closure

Announcement of closure