Evidence from 1992 to 2019 on the dynamics of managerial authority and CEO remuneration during company crises

We investigate the dynamics of two governance constructs, management influence over the board of directors and CEO remuneration, in enterprises in crisis from 1992 to 2019. Data reveal a strong trend of improving governance over time, which confounds the conclusion concerning the impact of distress on governance. Using a bias-corrected matching estimator to control for secular trends, we find that distressed businesses cut management board appointments and CEO compensation, deepen managerial incentive alignment, and increase CEO turnover. The performance-related component of CEO remuneration accounts for the majority of changes in CEO compensation in troubled businesses, which is consistent with the "shareholder value" perspective on CEO compensation.

‘It’s Not a Lot of Boring Old Gits Sitting about Remembering the Good Old Days’: The Heritage and Legacy of the 1987 Caterpillar Factory Occupation in Uddingston, Scotland

This paper examines the construction of a factory occupation’s ‘usable past’. It analyses how the political culture of the multinational ‘branch plant’ has combined with the optics of class and nation that predominate in accounts of Scottish deindustrialization. During 2017, the Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group commemorated the occupation of Caterpillar’s tractor plant in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, thirty years earlier. The occupation endured for 103 days, becoming a labour-movement cause célèbre. Commemoration included workforce reunions, museum exhibitions, drama performances and an anniversary debate in the Scottish Parliament. Legacy Group members archived the occupation ‘from below’, including by recording oral testimonies. The occupation was rooted in a tradition of ‘rank-and-filist’ factory trade unionism and sustained by a left-wing activist infrastructure which shaped the dispute’s contemporary framing and historical legacy. A culture of radical labourism that rejected managerial authority and profit-making as the factory’s basis for operation enthused the occupation’s defence of the right to work. These actions now form the basis for embedding a political and cultural ‘working-class presence’ long after Caterpillar departed from Uddingston. The (co-) production of labour-movement heritages is a complex process, shaped by enduring activist repertoires as well as dominant public memories.

The Lie of the Land: Decadence, Ecology, and Arboreal Communications

Focusing on Vernon Lee's and Algernon Blackwood's portrayals of forests, this article argues that decadent ecology questions the privileging of humans over other sentient beings in relation to the moral conscriptions intending to channel attachments and desires toward productivist purposes. It addresses the ways in which these authors undermine human assumptions of self-control and managerial authority by encouraging an opening up to the affective communications of ecosystems. Raising questions central to eco-studies in general, Lee's and Blackwood's works challenge ideas of human communicative superiority and extensionism through representations of humility, trepidatious veneration, and a sense of the imagination as a potential channel for affection across species.

Under capital’s thumb: longitudinal associations between relational social class and health

BackgroundWe used a relational social-class measure based on property ownership and managerial authority to analyse the longitudinal relationships between class, self-rated health (SRH) and mental illness. To our knowledge, this is the first study using a relational social-class measure to evaluate these relationships longitudinally.MethodsUsing Panel Study of Income Dynamics data from 1984 to 2017, we first assigned respondents aged 25–64 to the not in the labour force (NILF), worker, manager, petit bourgeois (PB) or capitalist classes based on business ownership, managerial authority and employment status. Next, using Cox models, we estimated the confounder-adjusted associations between 2-year-lagged class and incidence of poor/fair SRH and serious mental illness. We also tested whether the associations varied by gender, whether they persisted after more-fully adjusting for traditional socioeconomic-status measures (education and income) and how they changed temporally.ResultsWe identified large inequities in poor/fair SRH. NILFs had the greatest hazard, followed by workers, PBs, managers and capitalists. We also identified large inequities in serious mental illness; NILFs and workers had the greatest hazard, while capitalists had the lowest. Class inequities in both outcomes lessened but remained considerable after confounder and socioeconomic-status adjustment, and we found some evidence that the class–SRH relationship varied by gender, as being NILF was more harmful among men than women. Additionally, class inequities in the outcomes decreased somewhat over time.ConclusionWe identified substantial class inequities in SRH and mental illness. Our findings demonstrate the importance of using relational social-class measures to deepen understanding of health inequities’ root causes.

Physician managers in Hong Kong public hospitals

PurposeExamining the self-identification of physician managers with their manager and clinician roles, and its impact on the state and professional powers in healthcare governance.Design/methodology/approachWith purposive sampling, a total of 15 frontline clinical department managers (mainly principal consultants) and directorial managers (mainly Hospital Chief Executives) were recruited to elite interviews. The themes for data collection and analysis were based on a systematic scoping review of previous empirical studies.FindingsPhysician managers maintained respective jurisdictions in policymaking and clinical governance, as well as their primary self-identification as rationalizers or protectors of medicine, according to their managerial roles at a directorial or departmental level. However, a two-way hybridization of physician managers allowed the exchange of clinical and managerial authority, resulting in cooperation alongside struggles among medical elites; while some frontline managers were exposed to managerial values with the awareness of budget and organizational administration, some directorial managers remained aligned to a traditional mode of professional communication, such as persuasion through informal personal networks and by using clinician language and maintaining symbolic contact with the clinical field.Originality/valueThis study identifies the inconsistency in physician managers’ identity work, as well as its patterns. It goes beyond a dichotomized framework of professionalism versus managerialism or an arbitrarily blurred identity.

The Politics of Intimacy

Anxieties about the loss of integrity – the quality of having strong moral principles and the state of being undivided – are compounded by the increased intimacy between Chinese foremen and female members of the local community. Sexual relations, in particular, threaten to annul the carefully maintained distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Instances of sexual intimacy prompt Chinese managers to define notions of race and racial difference, and to reestablish their reputation as morally upright. What happens at night-time is consequential for the daytime encounters on the construction site. Sexual intimacy filters into management–labor relations and challenges the social distance set up between Chinese management and Ethiopian rank-and-file workers, on which the managerial authority and racial disparities of the corporate hierarchy depend.

Strikebreaking and Anti-Unionism on the Waterfront: The Shipping Federation, 1890–1914

This article examines the policy and strategies of the Shipping Federation, which was the most aggressive employer association in the United Kingdom during the pre-war period. Using a vast array of sources, including several series of minutes and the financial records and ledgers of the association of shipowners, this article provides a number of insights into the Federation’s organizational and operational structure, the subcontracting of labour replacement to professional or commercial strike-breaker agencies as well as the delegation of protection tasks to vigilante groups. It looks at the transnationalization of its anti-labour schemes and the formation of an international body of strike-breakers, the International Shipping Federation, to deal with the question of maritime labour at home and abroad. The article emphasizes the shipowners’ propositions to form their own private security organization in response to the Liberal government’s assertion of neutrality in labour disputes. It shows their determination to use violence, including the presence of firearms, to suppress efforts by unions to achieve recognition and the monopoly over the supply of labour and hiring procedures. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the inclination of certain sectors of British industry to employ violent, illegal and inherently subversive means to protect their managerial authority from both the opposition of trade unions and the increasing encroachment of the state into industrial matters.

Death of the Ex-Policeman

Chapter 5 shows that lower-level actors within firms have much to teach us about the gendered and classed impacts of regulation. The chapter analyses how staff working in commercial bingo experienced the shift from ‘command and control’ style regulation, underpinning the 1968 Gaming Act, to the current risk-based regime in the 2005 Gambling Act. Seeking to contribute a gendered angle to scholarship on the consequences of regulatory reform for occupational status and autonomy, the chapter examines the impact of self-regulation on commercial bingo hall managers—a mostly male, non-professional group of workers whose claims to status have relied heavily on state licensing procedures. By analysing the changing rules, practices, and feelings involved in personnel licensing within bingo halls, the chapter makes two interlinked claims. First, as the state stepped back from assessing and authorizing employee expertise, managerial authority, status, pay, and working conditions were all reduced. Second, the chapter identifies a classed and gendered desire for a return to command-and-control-style regulation.

The separation of directors and managers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contrast the historical rise of the managerial function and its reception in law. It thus contributes to the debates on the separation of ownership and control, by showing that managers were never recognized in law. As a result, the managerial function was not protected in law.Design/methodology/approachThis paper brings together management history and the history of UK company law to study the emergence of management in the early twentieth century and the law’s response. The authors bring new historical evidence to bear on the company law reforms of the second half of the twentieth century and, in particular, on the changes inspired by the Cohen Committee report of 1945.FindingsScientific progress and innovation were important rationales for the emergence of managerial authority. They implied new economic models, new competencies and wider social responsibilities. The analysis of this paper shows that these rationales have been overlooked by company law. The lack of conceptualization of the management in law allowed reforms after 1945 that gave shareholders greater influence over corporate strategy, reducing managerial discretion and the scope for innovation.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focuses on the UK. Further research is needed to confirm whether other countries followed a similar path, both in terms of the emergence of management and in terms of the law’s approach.Originality/valueThis paper is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to examine the law’s historical approach to management. It calls for a reappraisal of the status of managers and the way corporate governance organizes the separation of ownership and control.