Beliefs and Realities of Indian Contingent Workers in the UK - Evidence from Experiences in the IT Industry

The subject of this article is trade union strategies for contingent workers. On the assumption that trade unions’ strategic responses vary in accordance with their national institutional contexts, we compare Austria and the UK in the area of further education. In both countries, we found various trade union strategies for dealing with the growing heterogeneity of members and potential members of trade unions in further education. From a cross-country perspective, however, we found some evidence that the spread of contingent work might lead to a convergence of union strategies and a reduction of the influence on their behaviour of national institutions.

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Women Returners in the UK IT Industry

Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-815-4.ch203 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 1292-1296

Author(s):

Niki Panteli ◽

Despina Cochliou ◽

Evangelia Baralou

Keyword(s):

High Tech ◽

Prospective Students ◽

Specific Group ◽

It Industry ◽

Future Developments ◽

Steady Growth ◽

It Workforce ◽

The Future ◽

Working Practices ◽

The Uk

IT is a sector that incorporates the newest industries, consisting mainly of young firms and relatively freshly constituted forms of working practices. Despite this, several studies exist to-date that show that opportunities are limited for those women who aspire to have a career in IT. Recent research in the UK has revealed that between 1999 and 2003 the proportion of women in the UK IT workforce fell by almost 50%, from 21% to 12.5%, following steady growth (Platman & Taylor, 2004). The focus of the article is to examine a specific group of female IT staff: women returners. The work presented here explores the factors that often constrain women returners to the IT industry and discusses the findings in relation to the characteristics of the industry; it is part of a bigger study that looks at advancing women in high-tech industries1. If women are not found in positions of influence in the IT industry, one of the most growing industries, then what image is being given to prospective students, their parents and careers advisers? What influence will women have on the future developments within the discipline, hence on the industry itself?

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The potential link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness: evidence from IT firms in the UK

Journal of Knowledge Management ◽

10.1108/jkm-10-2019-0590 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (5) ◽

pp. 965-983 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Arun Sukumar ◽

Vahid Jafari-Sadeghi ◽

Alexeis Garcia-Perez ◽

Dev K. Dutta

Keyword(s):

Critical Role ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Current Debate ◽

It Industry ◽

Common View ◽

Content Type ◽

Thomson Reuters ◽

Potential Link ◽

And Performance ◽

The Uk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough empirical investigation of the potential link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness in the context of the UK IT industry. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a panel of 216 UK IT firms for the period from 2000 to 2016. The sample data for this study were extracted from the Worldscope, extracted from the Datastream database from Thomson Reuters. For the analysis of the data, the generalised method of moments model is applied. Findings The results of this study provide empirical evidence that there exists a strong, positive link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness. Such evidence further reinforces the common view in the current literature of strategic management that because of the nature of their business, firms in the IT industry need to enhance their innovative capacities on a continual basis because of their critical role on these firms’ success and survival. Also, it is found that when the proxies for corporate innovations are lagged by two periods, their impact on corporate competitiveness becomes relatively more significant. However, when they are further lagged, i.e. by three periods, such an impact turns out to be relatively less pronounced. Research limitations/implications The data gathered for this paper was restricted to IT-oriented firms in the UK. Using a secondary database (Datastream), the paper considered the period of 2000-2016. Originality/value The research makes a significant contribution to the current debate on the relationship between information technology, innovation and performance, referred to in the literature as the productivity paradox, by studying the problem in the IT industry. It supports organisations from the sector in their efforts to deal with the dynamic nature of technological innovations and of the context where they operate. Methodologically, the way the study has measured the concepts of innovation and performance and the lessons learned from their analysis has also brought value to the research.

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