Particular Piece Of Legislation Research Articles

Conformance or evasion

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how resort managers respond to employment legislation (Law No. 02/2008).Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative case study data from seven self-contained tourist resorts in the Maldives were used to investigate the managerial responses to employment legislation.FindingsResort managers’ responses ranged from passive compliance to active resistance, with decoupling through opportunism as the dominant strategy used to circumvent the legislation. Some human resource management (HRM) practices emerged from resort managers’ interactions with external stakeholders and employees. Strategic responses and HRM practices were driven by a search for legitimacy or efficiency and sometimes both. The findings show that there are differences between strategic responses and HRM practices by organisational subfield, local resorts and international hotel chains. The resorts’ market orientation also influenced resort managers’ responses and HRM practices.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this paper have limitations because it was limited to a single industry/sector and to a particular piece of legislation. However, it demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between institutional context and HRM.Originality/valueThis paper shows that responding to employment legislation entails a high level of interplay between the institutional environment and HR actors, and between stakeholders (e.g. employees) and HR actors. It demonstrates the difficulty of reconciling institutional requirements with the preferences of different stakeholders and organisational interests. HR actors actively make sense of institutional requirements and modify HRM practices to accommodate stakeholders’ varying perspectives and preferences. This suggests that in countries such as the Maldives, uneven institutional coverage (e.g. incomplete employment legislation) allows room for organisations to innovate – for better or worse.

The conundrum of legislating risk reduction through financial regulatory reform

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the legislative process, in order to determine the likely effectiveness of financial reform efforts in the USA.Design/methodology/approachCase study of the legislative process, particularly the less visible parts such as rule making, that shaped the passage and implementation of the Dodd‐Frank Act and the failed Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) reform.FindingsIt is found that the process of financial reform legislation is structured in such a way as to thwart major reform, at least in the short run.Practical implicationsThe passage of a particular piece of legislation may be the least important element in the process of reform. Rule making and the decisions as to how a law will be implemented, can advance or significantly defeat the quest for change.Social implicationsMuch of what occurs in the legislative process is invisible, or appears arcane, to the ordinary citizen but can have major impact on their lives.Originality/valueThe paper provides a road map to understanding the least visible parts of financial reform efforts and suggests ways of achieving reform outcomes.

Researching Initiatives and Referenda: A Guide for Maine

SUMMARY This article discusses the history of the initiative and referendum processes in Maine, including the steps needed to get an initiative or referendum on the State ballot. Part II of this paper discusses the early history of the initiative and referendum processes in Maine. Part III discusses recent use of initiatives in Maine. Part IV discusses the basics of the initiative and referendum processes in Maine, including a discussion of the differences between the People's Veto and a referendum, both used in Maine as mechanisms for the people to vote on whether a particular piece of legislation should take effect. Part V provides a detailed bibliography of research materials on the Maine initiative and referendum processes.

Time to Get Real

Last year saw the passing of the Communications Act, a measure which is likely to change the face of broadcasting in Britain quite as drastically, perhaps even more so, than the Broadcasting Act 1990. The enactment of this particular piece of legislation was the culmination of a lengthy process which kicked off in 1998 with the publication of the Green Paper Regulating Communications, which was followed in 2000 by the White Paper A New Future for Communications. The Draft Communications Bill was published in 2002; this was then subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of the two Houses, chaired by David Puttnam, which published its report later in the year. As a result, the Bill was partially re-drafted; it was then presented to Parliament, which passed it in 2003. As someone who was involved, at that time as a media journalist, in the battles around the Broadcasting Bill in the late 1980s, I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu (or, rather, deja lu), when Regulating Communications appeared in 1998. Now, though, I was back in academia, but still equally concerned with matters of media policy and regulation, and keen to involve myself in the processes of consultation and lobbying which I knew lay ahead. However, over the next five years, it was not primarily as an academic that I found myself involved but, rather, as the Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and thus, in turn, as part of a loose alliance of NGOs and trade unions opposed to the Bill’s neo-liberal thrust. Fellow media academics were conspicuously thin on the ground, and of the tiny handful who poured enormous effort into trying to influence the Bill’s contents, the majority, in my view, did their most effective work under the auspices of bodies such as the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, the Campaign for Quality Television and the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Project. And now it’s consultation time yet again, with the run-up to BBC charter renewal and Ofcom consulting in all directions. Once more the

The classical model of the Spanish-American colonial city

From the sixteenth century onwards, a unique pattern is used in the layout of cities in Spanish-America: the chessboard plan. The uniformity and extent of the model's use, from California to the Straits of Magellan, has been attributed to the provisions of the 'Laws of the Indies', specifically the Charter of 1523, from the Emperor Charles V. The paper proposes that the chessboard model derives, not from a particular piece of legislation dictated a quarter of a century after the first Spanish-American city was founded, but from the 'idealised image' of Santo Domingo, a city founded by Nicolas de Ovando in 1502. Its regular plan, so markedly different from the contemporary experience of the mediaeval town and, in the specifically Spanish case, intricate arabic patterns, became the paradigmatic example of 'the new city in the New World'. Santo Domingo was, in the early sixteenth century, the administrative capital of that world. Every captain, or plain soldier, in search of fame and fortune - or more precisely gold - arrived in and departed from Santo Domingo, the new and extraordinary modern city with wide and straight streets, an experience unknown to the average person of the sixteenth century. Thus the extended and idealised image of the chessboard represented, apparently, by this city, became the 'modern way' for the lay out of cities in Spanish America.

The regulation of electronic commerce: learning from the UK's RIP act

National governments have a legitimate rôle to play in the development of national strategies to support electronic commerce. It is not always clear, however, what any electronic commerce legislation should incorporate or how regulation of electronic commerce should be implemented. This paper explores the strategic issues that underlie national electronic commerce strategies by following the passage of a particular piece of legislation (the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000) through Parliament. In identifying some of the arising strains with the interests of industry and civil society, this paper will discuss some of the legal, technological, economic, and political issues that may arise in other countries as they consider the policy habitat of electronic commerce.

A Panel Probit Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Roll-Call Votes

Despite numerous analyses of the relationship between campaign contributions and the roll-call voting behavior of members of Congress, we still lack definitive answers to longstanding questions about whether contributions affect votes. Part of the reason for this is that it is methodologically difficult to account for members' predispositions to vote in favor of PACs' interests. This article seeks to advance our understanding of the relationship between campaign contributions and voting behavior by using method for panel data that overcomes the problem of accounting for voting predispositions. This method enables us to account for individual specific effects, such as the predisposition to vote for or against particular piece of legislation, which are too costly or impossible to measure. Applying this method, I find that contributions do not have consistent effects that would indicate that PACs are significantly biasing congressional decision making in their favor. he influence of in politics is perennial concern of those who seek to reform the political system in the United States. One way that special interests are perceived to have an undue influence is through campaign contributions. Efforts to reform campaign finance laws have been motivated in part by the belief that campaign contributions have pernicious effect on the behavior of politicians. A recent Gallup survey found that 53 percent of individuals thought that campaign contributions influenced the policies supported by elected officials a great deal and 76 percent and 81 percent favored placing limits on contributions from labor and business groups, respectively (Saad 1997). Researchers have devoted substantial amount of effort and resources to systematic analysis of campaign finance in order to uncover the relationship between campaign contributions and political decision making. One of the key questions that researchers have asked is Do campaign contributions by political action committees (PACs) influence the roll-call voting behavior of members of Congress? Despite numerous published analyses of contributions and votes, this question remains unsettled because of the conflicting answers that these analyses have produced.' Some studies have found no relationship between votes and contributions, while others have found the kind of relationship that reformers worry about. Part of the reason for these mixed results is that methodological problems have hampered attempts to assess accurately the degree to which PAC contributions affect voting. One of the most vexing problems is that it is difficult to untangle the effect of contributions from the effect of member's predisposition to vote one way or another. That is, PACs contribute to members of Congress who are likely to vote the way the PACs favor even in the absence of contributions. A PAC donation to friendly member might be misconstrued as

Book review: Goal-Based Decision Making: An Interpersonal Model by Stephen Slade (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)

This is a mesmerizing book, containing many interesting and provocative ideas about decision making as a general process as well as decision making in both a private and a public group context. Specifically, it concerns the decision making process of individual members of Congress in the United States House of Representatives as they decide to vote for or against a particular piece of legislation. Members of Congress must make their decisions subject to conflicting pressures from constituents, lobbyists, other Washington, D. C. actors (e.g., how will the Supreme Court view the constitutionality of this legislation? what does the President of the United States want done? what actions will Senators from my state take?), all under intense media scrutiny while needing to explain, to influence, to justify, and to seek re-election. While Slade's book does not (necessarily!) treat all facets of the problem, he has made a valuable first step in explicating the process used.