scholarly journals Contraction and Expansion: The Divergence of Private Sector and Public Sector Unionism in the United States

1988 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B Freeman

The institutional structure of the American labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s. What explains the decline in union representation of private wage and salary workers? Why have unions expanded in the public sector while contracting in the private sector? Is the economy-wide fall in density a phenomenon common to developed capitalist economies, or is it unique to the United States? To what extent should economists alter their views about what unions do to the economy in light of the fact that they increasingly do it in the public sector? To answer these questions I examine a wide variety of evidence on the union status of public and private workers. I contrast trends in unionization in the United States with trends in other developed countries, particularly Canada, and use these contrasts and the divergence between unions in the public and private sectors of the United States to evaluate proposed explanations.

Author(s):  
May Chien Chin ◽  
Sheamini Sivasampu ◽  
Nilmini Wijemunige ◽  
Ravindra P Rannan-Eliya ◽  
Rifat Atun

Abstract In Malaysia, first-contact, primary care is provided by parallel public and private sectors, which are completely separate in organization, financing and governance. As the country considers new approaches to financing, including using public schemes to pay for private care, it is crucial to examine the quality of clinical care in the two sectors to make informed decisions on public policy. This study intends to measure and compare the quality of clinical care between public and private primary care services in Malaysia and, to the extent possible, assess quality with the developed economies that Malaysia aspires to join. We carried out a retrospective analysis of the National Medical Care Survey 2014, a nationally representative survey of doctor–patient encounters in Malaysia. We assessed clinical quality for 27 587 patient encounters using data on 66 internationally validated quality indicators. Aggregate scores were constructed, and comparisons made between the public and private sectors. Overall, patients received the recommended care just over half the time (56.5%). The public sector performed better than the private sector, especially in the treatment of acute conditions, chronic conditions and in prescribing practices. Both sectors performed poorly in the indicators that are most resource intensive, suggesting that resource constraints limit overall quality. A comparison with 2003 data from the USA, suggests that performance in Malaysia was similar to that a decade earlier in the USA for common indicators. The public sector showed better performance in clinical care than the private sector, contrary to common perceptions in Malaysia and despite providing worse consumer quality. The overall quality of outpatient clinical care in Malaysia appears comparable to other developed countries, yet there are gaps in quality, such as in the management of hypertension, which should be tackled to improve overall health outcomes.


Author(s):  
Sofia Calsy ◽  
Maria J. D'Agostino

In the public and private sectors, women continue to address multiple hurdles despite diversity and equity initiatives. Women have made tremendous strides in the workforce but are still a minority in leadership positions worldwide in multiple sectors, including nonprofit, corporate, government, medicine, education, military, and religion. In the United States women represent 60% of bachelor’s degrees earned at universities and outpace men in master’s and doctoral programs. However, a significant body of research illustrates that women’s upward mobility has been concentrated in middle management positions. Women hold 52% of all management and professional roles in the U.S. job market, including physicians and attorneys. Yet women fall behind in representation in senior level positions. In the legal profession, for example, women represent 45% of associates but only 22.7% are partners. In medicine, women represent 40% of all physicians and surgeons but only 16% are permanent medical school deans. In academia, women surpass men in doctorates but only 32% are full professors. Furthermore, only 5% of chief executive officers (CEOs) in Fortune 500 companies and 19% of the board members in companies included in Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Composite 1500 Index are women. Progress is even more elusive for women of color despite making up 38.3% of the female civilian labor force. Only two women of color are Fortune 500 CEOs and only 4.7% of women are executive or senior level official managers in S&P 1500 companies. There are more women in leadership positions in the public sector than in the private sector. In 2014, 43.5% of women between the ages of 23 and 34 were managers at public companies, compared to 26% in similar positions in the private sector. In 2018, 127 women were elected to the U.S. Congress and 47 of those serving in 2018 were women of color. In addition, the first Native American woman, first Muslim woman, and Congress’s youngest woman were elected in that year. However, there is still progress to be made to close the gap, especially in senior-level positions. The significance of these statistics is staggering and confirms the need for attention. The percentage of women holding leadership positions in the public and private sectors, especially in business and education, has grown steadily in the past decade. However, subtle barriers like bias and stereotypes unfavorably encumber women’s career progression and are often used to explain the lack of women in leadership positions.


Author(s):  
Ghiyath Nakshbendi

The world has been experiencing a change in water and sewage infrastructure ownership and management. At one end, the public sector in developing countries has been moving towards engaging the private sector in the management and operation of water and sewage sectors. In the United States, the trend is catching up, even though there has been a mixed experience in the involvement of the private sector. While most urban facilities are owned by the public entities of the concerned urban centers, striking up a balanced involvement of both sectors is gradually taking shape. The paper focuses on financing urban water and sewage sectors in selected areas of the United States. An attempt is made to assess the viability and suitability of utilizing some of these methods in the Sultanate of Oman. The distribution system in the Sultanate of Oman is managed by the public sector; like in other countries, the private sector is getting involved on a gradual basis. There is more reliance on the private sector to manage the water sector worldwide. Can this happen in the Sultanate of Oman? The method will rely on analysis of the available data and the researcher’s work experience in the financial sector. 


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moumita Acharyya ◽  
Tanuja Agarwala

PurposeThe paper aims to understand the different motivations / reasons for engaging in CSR initiatives by the organizations. In addition, the study also examines the relationship between CSR motivations and corporate social performance (CSP).Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from two power sector organizations: one was a private sector firm and the other was a public sector firm. A comparative analysis of the variables with respect to private and public sector organizations was conducted. A questionnaire survey was administered among 370 employees working in the power sector, with 199 executives from public sector and 171 from private sector.Findings“Philanthropic” motivation emerged as the most dominant CSR motivation among both the public and private sector firms. The private sector firm was found to be significantly higher with respect to “philanthropic”, “enlightened self-interest” and “normative” CSR motivations when compared with the public sector firms. Findings suggest that public and private sector firms differed significantly on four CSR motivations, namely, “philanthropic”, “enlightened self-interest”, “normative” and “coercive”. The CSP score was significantly different among the two power sector firms of public and private sectors. The private sector firm had a higher CSP level than the public sector undertaking.Research limitations/implicationsFurther studies in the domain need to address differences in CSR motivations and CSP across other sectors to understand the role of industry characteristics in influencing social development targets of organizations. Research also needs to focus on demonstrating the relationship between CSP and financial performance of the firms. Further, the HR outcomes of CSR initiatives and measurement of CSP indicators, such as attracting and retaining talent, employee commitment and organizational climate factors, need to be assessed.Originality/valueThe social issues are now directly linked with the business model to ensure consistency and community development. The results reveal a need for “enlightened self-interest” which is the second dominant CSR motivation among the organizations. The study makes a novel contribution by determining that competitive and coercive motivations are not functional as part of organizational CSR strategy. CSR can never be forced as the very idea is to do social good. Eventually, the CSR approach demands a commitment from within. The organizations need to emphasize more voluntary engagement of employees and go beyond statutory requirements for realizing the true CSR benefits.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S328-S357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudine Kearney ◽  
Robert D. Hisrich ◽  
Bostjan Antoncic

A model is proposed that tests the antecedents and the mediating effect of corporate entrepreneurship on the external environment-performance relationship within private and public sector organizations. Hypotheses were tested using data from a sample of chief executive officers in 51 private sector organizations in the United States, 141 private sector organizations in Slovenia and 134 public sector state and semi-state enterprises in Ireland. Data was analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that dynamism and munificence effects on performance are mediated by an organization's corporate entrepreneurship in the private sector and munificence effects on performance are mediated by an organization's renewal in the public sector and that renewal must be in place to maximize the effect of munificence on performance. The results support a model that incorporates an extensive and diverse literature into a single model and helps illuminate similarities and differences of corporate entrepreneurship between the private sector and the public sector. The study shows that an integrative model and the interplay among the constructs yields new insights unavailable to single and focused approaches. It offers new insights about corporate entrepreneurship, not only as a discrete pursuit, but also as a construct that shapes and extends organizational performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  

Purpose The authors assumed PSM would be higher in the public sector, but they set up a trial to find out if this was the case. Design/methodology/approach To test their theories, the authors conducted two independent surveys. The first consisted of 220 usable responses from public sector employees in Changsha, China. The second survey involved 260 usable responses from private sector employees taking an MBA course at a university in the Changsha district. A questionnaire was used to assess attitudes. Findings The results found no significant difference between the impact of public sector motivation (PSM) on employee performance across the public and private sectors. The data showed that PSM had a significant impact on self-reported employee performance, but the relationship did not differ much between sectors. Meanwhile, it was in the private sector that PSM had the greatest impact on intention to leave. Originality/value The authors said the research project was one of the first to test if the concept of PSM operated in the same way across sectors. It also contributed, they said, to the ongoing debate about PSM in China.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-142
Author(s):  
Park Y. J.

Most stakeholders from Asia have not actively participated in the global Internet governance debate. This debate has been shaped by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) since 198 and the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since 2006. Neither ICANN nor IGF are well received as global public policy negotiation platforms by stakeholders in Asia, but more and more stakeholders in Europe and the United States take both platforms seriously. Stakeholders in Internet governance come from the private sector and civil society as well as the public sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Michael Lee Humphrey

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.


Author(s):  
Satinder Bhatia

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects have been gaining in popularity in many developing countries along with developed countries. While there has been sufficient research on private sector capacity to make the partnership successful, not much research exists on the importance of the financial health of the public sector in PPP projects. The premise of the current research is that strong public sector finances instil confidence in the private sector of governments’ ability to honour PPP commitments and that, in turn, increases the attractiveness of PPP projects. Through a number of case studies relating to government finances of Indian states and other countries, it is seen that governments which have checks and balances to issuance of guarantees and other forms of indirect support for PPP projects are actually able to attract higher levels of PPP investment.


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