Conference papers (ICM/IKL)
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Danish Foundations, CSR Legislation, and how Tradition Facilitates Compettive AdvantageBlom, Karen Sofie; Kaus, Kristine; Biering-Sørensen, Anna Sophie; Tackney, Charles T. (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: In stark contrast to other national settings, the commercial foundation is a rather common form of ownership of enterprises in Denmark. Today, there are around 1,300 Danish commercial foundations. Familiar foundations include AP Møller Mærsk, Carlsberg, Egmont, and Novo Nordisk. Our paper aims to facilitate an understanding of this unique Danish tradition and explore its profound contemporary relevance.The significance of Danish commercial foundations, their societal and compassionate role, has manifested itself through philanthropic projects for centuries. We explore the dual identities that inhere in contemporary Danish commercial foundations, and how these impact contemporary society. There are also challenges and opportunities for such foundations in light of recent Danish corporate social responsibility (CSR) legislation. We explore these through a contextual analysis of legal structures that govern Danish commercial foundations. Extended Foundational Corporate Citizenship (EFCC) is presented in the paper as a communications model or tool to help resolve the inherent tension between a commercial foundation’s contemporary business and philanthropic units, offering an aid to strategic advantage identification. The EFCC model and associated modes of communication proposed may further serve to manage legislative pressures presented to commercial foundations. Moreover, the traditional commercial foundation structure, coupled with EFCC model deployment, appears theoretically and strategically anticipatory of emerging Danish legislative obligations. Isomorphic processes within commercial foundations shed light on the links between the internal communicative challenge and CSR legislation. Such isomorphism appears between the business - philanthropic configuration and the company - CSR configuration. These processes aid recognition of the potential benefit of the inherent structure of a commercial foundation in relation to the emerging focus on CSR legislation. An additional purpose of illustrating the isomorphic processes was to facilitate clarification of a potential strategic advantage of commercial foundations, indicating how such traditional foundations may not only exist in society but operate “ahead of” emerging CSR legislative reporting obligations. The contemporary proliferation of CSR, as a legal matter, is a potent source of consumer interest. It is also a research field that provides commercial foundations with a number of opportunities to explore. Legislative obligations may appear to be little more than a reporting obligation for commercial foundations’ business units. Yet, our research suggests the structure of a commercial foundation already contains a latent communicative advantage for the good, not only of commercial foundations, but also contemporary society. We believe that our research findings in the Danish case of foundation organization and management theory may be of interest to an international audience. Within the structure of a commercial foundation one may find inherent notions of compassion coupled with authentic commercial and profit-making intentions. Indeed, we hope the results offer a path to successfully anticipate current, as well as future, stakeholder and public expectations for an organizational form of historical interest and future merit. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8612 Files in this item: 1
Tackney_2012_1.pdf (541.6Kb) -
Cultural Cognition and U.S. Labor RelationsTackney, Charles T.; Sato, Toyoko (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Our study explores cultural cognition in comparative U.S. – Japan employment relations through interdisciplinary analysis of Japanese Supreme Court regulation of the post-World War II lifetime employment system and the latest data available on Japan's collective bargaining-based approach to employee participation in managerial prerogative. The comparative social policy aim is to examine and account for observed employment relations variance in the U.S. and Japan, given their similar labor legislation. Japan’s Supreme Court recognizes lifetime employment as an institutionalized practice and we report all 236 references to the term “lifetime employment” in Japanese case law: 178 regional cases, 43 regional superior cases, and 15 Supreme Court cases. Quantitative analysis of Supreme Court cases contextualizes these references in post-World War II history; qualitative analysis focuses on the Court's discourse. Causally related to this recognition, management councils (a form of employee participation in managerial prerogative) are also a defining feature of Japanese employment relations at the enterprise level. Despite unionization rate declines in both nations, the persistence of Japan's participatory employee relations system contrasts sharply with recent U.S. state-based legislative assaults on long-standing collective bargaining, particularly for public sector unions. The concept of cultural cognition, recently deployed in legal studies to account for domestic U.S. risk, public policy and voting preferences, offers theoretical grounds for better understanding of the observed comparative variance in employment practices. We conclude with proposals for organized labor in the U.S. to strengthen prospects for informal network proliferation and employee participation, with the goal of enhancing national competitiveness. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8613 Files in this item: 1
Tackney_2012_2.pdf (531.3Kb) -
Adaptive Appropriation in Japanese Labor Law and the Roman Catholic Social QuestionTackney, Charles (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
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Tackney, Charles T. (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This is an exploration, using Japanese language primary sources, of management policies and relat-ed industrial sector ecology of the post-World War II machine tools industry. From postwar devas-tation to global leader in worldwide market share by the mid-1980s, remarkably little is know of the factors that contributed to this sucess. Paralleling Max Holland’s 1989 Burgmaster case study method of the U.S. firm’s and industry failure, this study examines the history of Okuma Corpora-tion, an Aichi Prefecture machine tools producer. The role of management leaders and government support for viable firms is shown to provide the necessary industrial ecology for machine tools pro-ducers to recover, innovate, deal with successive oil shocks, and achieve a leadership role in the machine tools sector. Comparative reflections on the parallel decline of the U.S. machine tools in-dustrial sector conclude the paper. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8614 Files in this item: 1
Tackney_2012_3.pdf (505.2Kb) -
The case of municipal parking officesDahl, Dorte Boesby (Frederiksberg, 2012)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: This paper is about the work and management of parking patrol officers in a Danish municipal department responsible for parking law enforcement. The job as a parking officer is un-skilled and fairly light in terms of physical demands, but quite demanding in terms of contact and coping with disgruntled car-drivers. In recent years the municipality has developed a strict policy in regard to parking, increasing both the enforcement of parking rules and the prices for parking. Alongside this development, the municipal department has become renowned for management’s active and ambitious work to improve the working environment for parking officers, and to employ diversity management. Regarding parking officers as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 2010), the paper addresses the characteristics of their work and the challenges posed to the individual employee and manager. Becoming a parking officer is not only a matter of being able to cope with people on the street, but also being able to cope with colleagues and managements’ particular expectations to your personality. Since the department of parking is part of a public organisation these expectations become all the more complicated (Hoggett 1996). They rely not only on the revenue from parking tickets and organizational credibility, but also on the availability of unskilled work for job-seekers and integration and retention efforts in staff-management. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8605 Files in this item: 1
Boesby_2012.pdf (229.1Kb)
