Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
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ItemIndustrial relations reform: who are the pro-reformers( 2003-04)There have been considerable changes in the industrial relations landscape in Australia over the past 15 years. This paper utilises a recent survey of large Australian organisations to investigate the characteristics of the organisations that have embraced the industrial relations reform agenda. We find evidence that certain industries, such as Mining, have embraced the reform agenda. We also find that organisations who have embraced the reform agenda tend to have rather different human resource management practices to those who have not
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ItemConflict inflation: estimating the contributions to wage inflation in Australia during the 1990s.( 2003-03)One of the major emerging macroeconomic problems during the century has been the tendency for inflation to accelerate under prolonged periods of full employment. According to Isaac (1977) and Kaldor (1996, 5th Lecture), this arises from the process of wage determination common to most western economics. They argue that there are three major objectives of wage earners that are in competition with one another. First, the desire to maintain relativities; secondly, the desire to have a 'fair' share of companies profits; and thirdly, a reluctance to allow any encroachment on achieved standards due to unfavourable (exogenous) events. If companies have differing rates of profit then the first objective will conflict with the second. If there are adverse changes the terms of trade, then the third objective will cause inflation. This paper tests how well the three objectives of wage earners cited above in the context of their power to effect these objectives, explains wage inflation in Australia using a times series of micro wage rate rates for detailed occupations and industries for the period 1989 to 2000. We find that wages are sensitive to the three major objectives, but not occupational unemployment rates.
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ItemIndustrial relations reform at the enterprise and workplace( 2003-03)This paper compares attitudes and perceptions to industrial relations reform between senior management at large Australian organisations on the one hand, and their associated workplace managers on the other. We find that significant differences exist in the opinions and policies of workplaces and enterprises. In particular, marked differences exist in the attitudes towards human resource management and industrial relations reform. These results suggest that we may conclude that in terms of human resource management and industrial relations it appears there is no corporate culture that is carried over from head office to the workplace
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ItemFactors affecting return to work after injury: a study for the Victorian WorkCover Authority( 2002-12)Speedy and efficacious return to work of recovered or recovering workers is a central objective of workers compensation authorities. However, many of the factors that facilitate return to work are not well understood. This paper aims to shed light on these issues by utilizing a sample from the administrative records of workers compensation claimants in Victoria for the financial years 1993/94 to 1997/98. We separately model payments made as pensions (weekly payments) and payments made as lump sums to meet medical purposes (non-weekly claims). Two part model specifications are employed to model both the incidence of a payment and the duration or amount of that payment. The results show that claimant characteristics, characteristics of the accident, industry, employer and insurer characteristics influence the incidence, duration and cost of workers compensation claims.
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ItemAre pro-reformers better performers?( 2002-09)There appears to be widespread consensus in industry and government that a switch from centralized bargaining to an enterprise based system benefits productivity. However, research suggests that the link between bargaining structures and worker productivity is dubious and that empirical research has been unable to discover a relationship between them. In this paper we use data from Australian companies at the enterprise level and examine the links between performance and a range of human resources, industrial relations and management variables to determine whether bargaining structures do impact on performance. In particular, we investigate whether organisations that have incorporated aspects of the industrial relations reform agenda have outperformed organisations that have not. The results from the application of a treatment effects regression model show evidence that organisations adopting the industrial relations reform agenda report significantly higher levels of self-assessed labour productivity relative to their competitors, even after controlling for a number of different factor
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ItemA Model for Ordered Data with Clustering of Observations( 2000-01)There is no qualitative dependent model that can simultaneously account for data sets in which the variable of interest has both a multi-modal distribution and is potentially ordered. Such a multimodal distribution may be the result of individuals being captive to particular choices. Such a case arises when there is digit preferencing (particular numbers, such as 0, 5 and 101 are often favored in many survey-based data sets). This paper introduces a new discrete choice model, the Digit Ordered Extreme Value (DOGEV), that does account for both ordering and digit preferencing in the data, and applies it to an Australian Inflationary Expectations data set.