Employment Negotiations Research Articles

Negotiating Exclusion and Precarity: Marginalised Urban Youth, Education, and Employment in Delhi

This paper examines the predicament of educated youth belonging to socially marginalised groups in realising their aspirations in the city of Delhi. It critically foregrounds the potentials of education and urban location and analyses the educational and employment negotiations and outcomes of the urban youth living at the margins. It is based on a qualitative field study in a settlement predominantly inhabited by Dalits and other backward classes. The paper argues that the local aspirations amid neo-liberal economic expansion in a metropolitan city, alongside the long-cherished dream of respectable jobs, place an enormous hope on pursuing higher education and advanced skills. However, the nature and quality of education and skills that are accessible to these youths hardly enable them realise stable white-collar jobs. Armed with educational degrees, they join and shift between low-end precarious jobs while waiting for stable employment. Gender relations preclude some of these precarious possibilities for female youths who negotiate terms of patriarchal norms to gain economic autonomy. Overall, this paper identifies and elaborates on how urban structural conditions and individual negotiations combine to reproduce social inequalities through a process of socio-economic mobility which is adverse and rarely upwards.

The Impostor Phenomenon as an Antecedent to Employment Negotiations

The impostor phenomenon (IP) refers to high-achieving individuals’ feelings of intellectual fraudulence and fear of being exposed as impostors. While the IP has been examined in the psychology field using student samples, research on implications of this phenomenon for working professionals and work-related outcomes has started only recently. Across two samples of full-time employees, this research explored gender differences in the IP and its implications for job negotiations. Study 1 found that women experience impostorism more than men, and only women’s propensity to negotiate a job offer was affected by the IP. Study 2 identified perceptions of their negotiation counterpart’s competence as the underlying mechanism in the IP and negotiation propensity relationship. Higher levels of IP are associated with lower negotiation propensity. This is the first known research that identifies the IP as an antecedent to the initiation of negotiation and competence perceptions of the counterpart as a psychological mechanism.

Fiduciary Duties and Moral Blackmail

AbstractIn meeting legal or professional fiduciary obligations, a fiduciary can sometimes come to share a special moral relationship with her beneficiary. Special moral relationships produce special moral obligations. Sometimes the obligations faced by a fiduciary as a result of her moral relationship with her beneficiary go beyond the obligations involved in the initial fiduciary relationship. How such moral obligations develop is sometimes under the control of the beneficiary, or of an outside party. As a result, the fiduciary can be the target of a distinctive kind of moral manipulation; it is sometimes possible to force a fiduciary to perform a particular act by placing her into circumstances under which she is morally obliged to perform it, because all her other options are morally unacceptable. This is moral blackmail. Moral blackmail is a powerful force within many sorts of human interactions. By understanding the ways in which fiduciaries become vulnerable to moral blackmail, we can better understand the pressures faced by fiduciaries in keeping their personal and professional lives separate, the dynamics of certain kinds of employment negotiations, and the injustice that results when women take on the bulk of the work within caring professions.

Unite and (Plea) Bargain: On the Credibility of Threats in Sequential Negotiations

Principals use threats to make agents accept their demands. But what if agents outnumber threats? When negotiating with agents sequentially, a principal may have to forgo some agents to make threats against others credible. This paper examines a fundamental choice that such a principal faces: to divide agents and threats or to unite them. Using plea bargaining between limited-resource prosecution (principal) and offenders (agents), we show that by avoiding division the prosecution may boost - and never weaken - the credibility of its threats. We discuss the implications of this result for federalization of crime, employment negotiations, and formation of military alliances.

Economic analysis of job-related attributes in undergraduate students’ initial job selection

Economic tradeoffs students place on location, salary, distances to natural resource amenities, size of the city where the job is located, and commuting times for their first college graduate job are estimated using a mixed logit model for a sample of Texas A&M University students. The Midwest is the least preferred area having a mean salary premium of $15,230 necessary to locate in this area relative to a job in Texas. States bordering Texas had the smallest salary premium at $6388. Students also value shorter commute times and shorter distances to natural resource amenities. Job recruiters and students can use knowledge of the magnitude of these economic premiums associated with these job attributes as the basis for employment negotiations. Further, companies may consider including descriptions of the area's opportunities in commuting time and distance to natural resource amenities in their interactions with potential new hires.

Adults With Down Syndrome

Adults With Down Syndrome

Performing Bilingualism: An Ethnographic Analysis of Discourse Practices at a Day Labor Center in the Southwest

This ethnographic research examines the social implications of the ethnolinguistic contact that occurs in the U.S.-Mexico border region at a day labor center in Tucson, Arizona. I discuss the multiple values of English and Spanish in this setting and how individuals interpret and negotiate these values in the construction and performance of identity. More specifically, I analyze how discourses of linguistic capital shape the organization of this community and influence the dynamics of employment negotiations. The research setting includes immigrant day laborers (primarily from Mexico and Central America), employers who contract workers, and bilingual volunteers who act as language brokers between workers and their employers; all of whom use language to interactively negotiate their social status as they construct identities vis-a-vis other members of the community. My analysis reveals a discourse that places a high level of linguistic capital on Spanish-English bilingualism in the economic market. Although I have not found evidence that this linguistic capital has a real exchange rate into dollars, my data demonstrates that immigrants rapidly acquire and contribute to this locally constructed discourse. I explore the techniques that workers use to exploit and promote their language abilities through ‘performances’ of bilingualism that are realized not only to secure employment, but also for social positioning within this community of practice. Language, then, is one of the many tools that both workers and employers use in the construction of interpersonal relationships and social hierarchies. In addition, I analyze gatekeeping encounters focusing on the rapid employment negotiations that occur between day

Employment, Capital and Productivity Dynamics: Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector in Uruguay

Using a sample of Uruguayan establishments we analyze employment, capital and productivity dynamics over a period with changes in trade policy and in the institutional setting of employment negotiations. Firms performed a technological conversion towards more capital intensive technologies. This brought an increase in labor and total factor productivity. Creation and destruction rates were relatively high and pervasive over time, sectors, size and age. Exits explain a sizeable part of destruction rates. Most of the excess reallocation was due to movements within rather than between sectors. Thus, high reallocation rates were probably linked to establishment level heterogeneity rather than aggregate shocks.

Trust and Employment Negotiations: The Importance of Feeling in Control

Two studies examined the effects of open communication and perceived control on interpersonal trust in employment negotiations. In a simulated negotiation, participants adopted the role of job applicant and encountered a series of offers (concessions) from their prospective manager. Information disclosed by their prospective manager varied creating different degrees of openness. As well, in Study 1 participants evaluated each offer (or concession) and their level of trust in their prospective manager at each stage of the bargaining process creating an impression of control; in Study 2 participants made these assessments after the negotiation. Taken together, the results of these studies showed that perceived process control was more important than information disclosure, in the formation of trust in negotiations. Moreover, trust was contingent upon evidence of process control despite the manager's openness, or willingness, to share information with the applicant. Furthermore, the more trust was attributed to the manager, the more likely the applicant was to find the job offer attractive and subsequently accept the job offer. The implications of these findings for negotiation theory and research are discussed.

The Political Lacuna in Participatory Systems Design

This paper critiques three prominent information systems (IS) contributions to the development of social (work) systems, namely ETHICS, UTOPIA and Multiple Perspectives. They are based on the socio-technical Quality of Working Life and generally rely on systems design for improving working conditions by allowing employees to appreciate a holistic work experience, instead of being treated as a cog in the profit-making machinery of capitalism. However, this paper argues that ETHICS and Multiple Perspectives in fact shy away from the ideo-political differences that cause workplace conflict in the first place. Their pluralist means of resolving workplace conflicts through discussion and negotiation fail to problematize the colonizing or hegemonic influence of economic rationalism in obscuring the feasibility of alternative modes of workplace relations. They play down the asymmetrical power relations that perpetuate the exploitation of weaker stakeholders in real-life employment negotiations. Hence, political quietism in social IS approaches fail to acknowledge the ideological causes of conflict, that is the pursuit of profit at any cost, as opposed to a more sustainable and ethical approach to workplace relations. This paper presents a study of an organizational accounting IS system and uses it for illustrating the ideological roots of differences in employee–employer needs and priorities and revealing how reflexive decision makers are alienated when they attempt to distance themselves from the myopic ethos of economic rationalism. Despite these criticisms, the paper concludes on a relatively positive note. It argues that, since the Brundtland Commission report Our Common Future was released in 1987, there has been increased awareness that organizations cannot continue to exploit our resources (and ourselves) blatantly in the name of profit maximization. This process of redefinition opens the door for more realistic and politically challenging systems approaches.

Don’t Be Too Polite Girls, Don’t Be Too Polite: Kindergarten Teachers and Employment Contracts

Kindergarten teachers have experienced significant changes in their employment contracts since 1992. In 1996 the New Zealand political environment of an upcoming MMP election combined with the issues of women, women’s work and the discourses relating to kindergarten teaching and teachers. The outcome of this combination was a regaining of some previously lost employment conditions, as well as improvements “against the odds”. This article discusses the historical struggle for employment conditions in the kindergarten service and the events of the 1996 employment negotiations.

'For the Sake of the Children' as the Worth of the Teacher? The Gendered Discourses of the New Zealand National Kindergarten Teachers' Employment Negotiations

Within the texts from the 1992 National Kindergarten Teachers' Collective Employment Contract Negotiations, using Foucault's interpretation of 'discourse', dominant discourses were identified. Two of these discourses illustrate the gendered nature of the position of kindergarten teachers in New Zealand, which I have called 'Children First' and 'For the Sake of the Children'. These discourses can be seen to be used tactically to affect the outcomes of the negotiations, and have 'their' view accepted as 'reality'. Each sited teachers in a powerless position for negotiating wages and working conditions, but presented different possibilities outside of the negotiating setting. This paper addresses these two discourses, which most clearly illustrated the gendered nature of the position of New Zealand kindergarten teachers.

Far Pavilions?: Cricket Migrants, Foreign Sojourns and Contested Identities

This research probes the more recent features of the long term migration phenomenon with particular reference to the overseas migrant in English cricket. This migration is part of a broader process of sports labour migration. The rules and regulations governing migrant access to English cricket were investigated and the extent and form of overseas migration established. The range of donor countries reflects both the spread of cricket and the strong British colonial influence. Interviews with a sample of players focused on personal and professional objectives, their employment negotiations and conditions, their personal and professional adjustments and their sense of cultural and national identity. English cricket is the 'global finishing school'. Migration was viewed as a logical step for professional development. Loneliness and insecurity figured highly. Questions of attachment to place, notions of self identity and allegiance to a specific country emerged as important elements in the experience of cricket migrants. The paper concludes with a more detailed discussion of the issue of identity, cricket and sports labour migration.

Wage and Employment Negotiations between a Union and a Firm in a Dynamic Context

The traditional analysis of union-firm interaction has focused on two static models -the Monopoly Union Model (with its equilibrium on the labor demand curve) and the Efficient Contract Model (with its equilibrium on the efficient contract curve).1 Espinosa and Rhee [3, 565-88] reconcile these two approaches within the context of a repeated game framework. They show that repeated sequential bargaining (between a union and a firm with the union moving first) may generate the efficient outcome if the firm is sufficiently far sighted. However, if the firm is short sighted, it may unilaterally deviate from the cooperative agreement, to take advantage of a one-period gain. On the other hand, being the first mover, the union never unilaterally deviates from cooperation. This paper argues that in certain situations the union may also have the incentive to unilaterally deviate from the cooperative outcome. In reality the firm's position is often less flexible than that assumed by Espinosa and Rhee [3]. Based on the long term trust that the union and the firm develop, the firm may undertake commitments in the form of consumer orders, large fixed capital expenditures, expenditures on raw materials and other inputs, and similar other inflexibilities. The union, being aware of the firm's inflexibilities, may hold the firm to its surprise demands for a one-period gain, provided that it is sufficiently short sighted. Therefore, this paper analyzes a simultaneous move, repeated game model where both the union and the firm have the power to deviate.2 We analyze the implications of such deviations on the equilibrium paths of wage and employment. The paper shows that cooperation is much harder to sustain when both the union and the firm can deviate as compared to the case where only the firm can deviate. In fact some cooperation is not guaranteed. Cooperation completely breaks down over large ranges of the discount factor and the two parties choose the one-shot non-

THE STRATEGIC USE OF INVENTORIES IN AN INFINITE HORIZON MODEL OF WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT BARGAINING

Inventories strengthen a firm's bargaining position in wage and employment negotiations. The model isolates this strategic motive for holding inventories. In a steady state, employment and output are lower, but not necessarily wages. Welfare effects are ambiguous: compared to a set-up where inventory accumulation is not possible, steady state union utility is lower, but if the firm starts from a zero level of inventories, then the union may be better off. Steady state profits may be higher or lower, and the firm may be better off or worse off if it starts from zero inventories. Copyright 1993 by Scottish Economic Society.

In-Patient Nurse Practitioners

An increasing number of nurse practitioners are employed in in-patient settings, including emergency rooms, medical, surgical, OB-GYN and critical care units, and nursing homes. This trend poses special problems and opportunities for the in-patient practitioner in educational preparation, credentialing, employment negotiations, prospective reimbursement, hospital privileges and relationships with nurses and physicians. The differences for in-patient practitioners in these areas as opposed to those in ambulatory practice are discussed, and suggestions are made for anticipating and dealing for them.