Showing papers on "Remuneration published in 1992"

Corporate Governance and Disclosure Quality

Abstract: The effectiveness of control exercised over executive remuneration and the quality of information disclosed in financial statements have given rise to concern and have led to proposals for the reform of corporate governance. A model of the optimal disclosure decision is presented in terms of managerial incentives and the impact of corporate governance structures. An investigation into the quality of share option disclosure in financial statements is used as the basis for testing hypotheses derived from the model and for assessing alternative policy options. The results support the need for guidance on the duties and responsibilities of audit committees and non-executive directors but fall short of providing a basis for deciding whether regulatory action is required. The evidence also supports the view that a threat to monitoring quality exists where the roles of chief executive and chairman are combined.

Working in Hotels and Catering

Abstract: 1. Sociology, work and the hospitality industry 2. Getting there: How to become a hospitality industry employee 3. Being there: pay and remuneration in hospitality services 4. Staying there? Organization, status and conflict in hotel and catering work 5. Occupations in the hospitality industry 6. Personnel management, labour turnover and the role of trade unions 7. De-skilling and work flexibility 8. International trends in employment 9. The future of hospitality work References Name Index Subject Index

Construction operative motivation and productivity

Abstract: The early results of the construction productivity research undertaken at Loughborough University indicated that there was a distinct relationship between remuneration, motivation and site efficiency∗. Consequently, observations taken on late site visits were used to quantify this relationship and determine the relevance of the major motivation theories to the construction industry. Dr Price recalls the work which was the subject of Science and Engineering Research Council contracts.

Profit sharing in the british retail trade sector: the relative performance of the john lewis partnership*

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of profit-sharing on wages and employment by comparing the labour market behaviour of the John Lewis Partnership with that of four main competitors. The John Lewis Partnership employs around 30000 workers, who since 1970 have been paid between 13 and 24 per cent of workers' income in the form of a profit-related bonus. The empirical works suggests that profit-sharing in the John Lewis Partnership may be associated with greater levels of employment but does not significantly affect the level of remuneration. IN RECENT years, a growing proportion of employment contracts in Britain have linked pay with the fortunes of the firm, see for example Blanchflower and Oswald [1988]. This trend has been stimulated by the British government's introduction of tax relief for profit related pay (PRP), first in 1987 and extended in 1991. Weitzman [1984] argues that profit-sharing will stabilize employment, reduce unemployment and increase wage flexibility. The possibility of these externalities from profit-sharing on wider economic performance has been used to justify policy interventions. This paper reports empirical tests of wage determination and employment creation effects, based on a comparison of the labour market behaviour of the John Lewis Partnership with that of four important competitors in the British retail sector. We find some evidence that profit-sharing enhances employment

Remuneration systems for labour-intensive investments: Lessons for equity and growth

Abstract: This article focuses on the remuneration systems 1 used in infrastructure projects, and their potential role in promoting economic growth and social protection in periods of economic decline. There has been a tendency to marginalize such project initiatives, viewing them as special programmes falling outside the scope of a country's mainstream remuneration policies and legislative safeguards. Mainstream policies are often felt to provide a higher level of social protection to workers in the so-called formal sector than special remuneration arrangements applied in a project setting. However, this article will show that for an increasing number of the least developed countries, which are currently undergoing chronic economic, political and institutional decline, top-down legislative safeguards provide little immediate protection for workers, and that they do not contribute significantly to improving basic welfare, human rights and employment opportunities. In fact project-level remuneration systems have frequently been shown to be more advantageous to workers, at least for the foreseeable short-term future, than those applied at national level. By looking at remuneration systems from a field perspective, it is hoped that this article will contribute to a debate on the practical complementary measures which can be taken now to improve employment and working conditions in an unfavourable socio-economic environment. All the projects analysed used labour-intensive technologies, were implemented by host -governments, but were funded by various external donors and received technical advisory services provided by the ILO. They had the double goal of creating basic infrastructure and employment for the local community. Though all involved some form of remuneration, in most cases these projects were of immediate benefit to the worker-beneficiaries and hence lay outside the scope of national labour legislation. Many did in fact apply the official minimum wage rates for government workers involved in similar construction and maintenance activities; however, contractual employment relationships were seldom established. 2

Forensic Accounting in the Curriculum

Abstract: Makes the case for inclusion of forensic accounting in the 150‐hour accounting training role in the USA. Practitioner roles are as fraud examiner, litigation consultant and expert witness for which need is expanding and remuneration considerable and stable. Makes detailed recommendations for integrating forensic skills training into the curriculum.

Creating the global company : successful internationalization

Abstract: The global business environment operating in a global environment global operation and HRD strategy evaluating international opportunities international organization skills and competencies for international operation culture and cross-cultural communication labour markets and international operations international recruitment and retention international remuneration international mobility preparation for international operation internationalization - achieving the transition internationalization - supporting technology and networks internationalization - new approaches to learning sources of information.

How much is a doctor worth

Abstract: Despite radical reform in the NHS and the creation of purchaser-provider contracting, the pattern of doctors’ remuneration remains largely unaltered. Doctors are the key agents in access to the health care system, and the services they control determines who survives and who lives in pain and discomfort. Does the present system of doctors’ payment reflect their worth and produce efficient medical practice and good patient care? General practitioners are paid a target income of £40,010 p.a. which is partly made up of capitation payments (about 60% of total income) and fees per item of service. The cost effectiveness of many of the GP services rewarded by fees is unproven. Hospital consultants are paid a salary (£37,905 to £48,945 p.a.) and as many as one in three also receive a distinction award at varying levels, the top grade of which (£46,500) can double a consultant’s salary. Hospital specialist services appear to be organised in an anachronistic fashion (in medical and surgical “firms”) of unproven cost effectiveness. The allocation of distinction awards is covert and, like the salary, does not efficiently relate workload and quality to rewards. In addition to their salary and distinction awards, some 12,000 consultants have private practices and earn from this source alone an average of £40,000 per year. Could this be time for NHS Trust managers to reform payment methods so that efficiency is rewarded appropriately? The US Medicare doctor remuneration system has been reformed so that fees are related to the work spent by doctors on particular services, in particular the time input and intensity of activity, with an allowance for practice costs. This method of relating pay to careful measurement of workload effort has led in the US to enhanced fees for family physicians and lower payments to some surgeons and radiologists and pathologists, i.e. rewards are targeted more appropriately. Ideally pay should be related to the outcome achieved, in terms of improved health. In the absence of measures of outcome, managers in the NHS could experiment with some UK variant of the new US remuneration system. If this alternative is not adopted, some other way of determining the worth of doctors must be found if efficient practices are to be rewarded and the providers of poor quality care penalised. The present system of remunerating doctors in the UK is an inefficient product of history and trade union (British Medical Association) power. Its careful reform, if evaluated thoroughly, is an essential element in the development of a more efficient and user friendly NHS.

The Price of Peace. The Structure and Process of Physician Fee Negotiations in Canada

Abstract: Canadian provincial governments and medical associations engage in periodic negotiations to determine how much will be available each year for fee payments to physicians and under what conditions those payments will be made. Collectively these negotiations determined the allocation of $250 per Canadian in 1989/90; in some provinces this represents nearly a quarter of all government health care expenditures. We know little about the negotiating structures and processes used to determine this large allocation of public funds. Neither has there been any systematic appraisal of how different provinces have adapted these negotiations to the changing context of health care policy since the inception of Medicare twenty years ago. This study synthesized the information from: interviews with over fifth individuals involved with fee negotiations in seven of Canada’s provinces; numerous studies, newspaper articles, reports, contracts, and legislative statutes concerning physician-government relations; and comparative physician utilization and cost data, to describe the existing fee negotiation structures and processes, and trace their evolution since the start of Medicare. The desire of governments to move the focus of negotiations from medical prices (fees), to average incomes (the product of fees and the quantity of services), and finally to total medical expenditures on physician’s services (the product of average incomes and the number of physicians) has been the most persistent and pervasive influence on negotiations. The response in the provinces to this, and the other issues in negotiations, has been strongly mediated by whether they adopted a model of bargaining which was adversarial, mutually accommodative or Gallic (Quebec’s more technical variant of mutual accommodation). By 1992 all the provinces has significantly increased the complexity and formality of their structures and processes. However, only those from a mutual accommodation approach (maritime provinces, Saskatchewan, and the recent converts of Ontario and Alberta) were negotiating both remuneration and related medical policy issues in a cooperative fashion. In Quebec, where ongoing negotiations are maintained, physician payment is resolved comprehensively and cooperatively by somewhat isolating it from the broader medical policy issues that may be contentious. Finally, in Manitoba and British Columbia an adversarial model appears to be driving the government toward legislated rather than negotiated solutions, and to be entrenching the medical associations within an industrial relations model of confrontational political and public bargaining. These observations on structure and process may, of course, be unrelated to the satisfaction of either or both parties with the outcomes of fee negotiations – outcomes were not the focus of this study. Nevertheless, each provincial chapter does include time series and comparative data on fee levels, total medical expenditure, utilization rates, and other indicators. These provide a context in which to evaluate changes in process and structure. The emerging approach of most provinces is to embed periodic fee negotiations in a larger web of ongoing consultations on broader issues. This is designed to accommodate the increasingly complex and interrelated issues which are encroaching upon fee negotiations. In the next few years these structures and processes will potentially have to absorb and resolve such contentious matters as: physician supply and distribution controls; equitable limits on the earnings of high-income physicians; the implementation of alternate methods of payment, as well as the ongoing negotiation of remuneration levels, benefit packages, working conditions, and so on for these methods; potential decentralization of physician expenditure budgets to devolved local authorities; assessment of, and action on, areas of poor quality or inappropriate care; and reflection of quality of car and clinical effectiveness concerns in the relative value and/or even the deinsurance of specific fee items. Failure to resolve these issues amicably is likely to lead to a return to the atmosphere of the mid-1980s, when important issues in the overall management of the health care system were displaced and neglected in many provinces by an all-consuming search for ways to manage the more narrow ongoing but unavoidable physician-government relationship.

The Inclusion of Fringe Benefits in Estimates of Earnings Loss: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract: Over the last few decades fringe benefits have become an increasingly important component of employee remuneration. From 20 % of total employee compensation in 1966 they have grown to a current share of nearly 30%. (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 2319, 1988) This growth has been attributed to many factors; most prominently mentioned has been the preferential treatment given non-wage benefits under state and federal laws (See Rhine, 1987). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) explicitly recognized the significance fringe benefits in employee compensation when it began publication of the Employee Cost Index (ECI) in 1976. This allowed researchers to gauge temporal changes in wages and salaries and fringe benefits. However, this series did not reveal the dollar cost of the fringe benefits. Accordingly, the relative importance of fringe benefits in the total compensation package could not be estimated from this data. In 1987, the BLS remedied that problem by making available quarterly information on the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC). Data on total employee compensation is now published for the entire civilian nonfarm economy, excluding the federal government. Future developments call for an increase in the number of published series and an expansion of coverage to include the federal government (BLS Bulletin 2285, 1988). Given the importance of fringe benefits in employee compensation it is essential that they be properly valued in estimates of lost earning capacity in personal injury and estimates of lost support to survivors in wrongful death. Incorrect omission of some benefits may underestimate damages while the incorrect inclusion of others may double count losses and result in exaggerated claims. Unfortunately, opinions on which benefits should be included and how those benefits should be valued have often differed. The primary purpose of this paper is to review and discuss those opinions. This review will then provide the background for a suggested alternative approach.

A balanced performance

Abstract: Asks whether performance‐related pay can be compatible with TQM and examines the opinions of leading “gurus” on the subject. Looks at examples of good practice in performance management in the United Kingdom and at the practical issues involved for an organization using TQM. Indicates how remuneration can be linked to several aspects of performance, both individual and in groups. Contends that if an organization is willing to invest money in a quality programme then it seems sensible to “link pay to the practices and process associated with organizational success”.

Fairness in hierarchical and entrepreneurial firms

Abstract: Discussions of fairness in the workplace are built on assumptions about the organization of work and about fairness. Writers on business ethics have not appreciated that work is often organized differently in different stages of the life cycle of a firm. In this paper it is argued that the conceptions of fairness applied to a mature firm are often not applicable to a fledgling one. In a mature firm authority and responsibility are typically delegated and divided into specific jobs with relatively rigid boundaries. Thus, it has been argued that fairness in hiring requires specific job descriptions, fairness in remuneration requires standardized and graded salaries, and fairness in due process requires peer review. However, in the formative stages of a corporation, there may be very little differentiation or specialization. There is a continual re-definition of individual tasks through interaction with others as knowledge about products, production, and consumer demand are acquired by trial and error in the marketplace. Fairness takes a different form in this firm. The principle that similar people are to be treated similarly and different people differently can be operationalized in two ways. The mature firm typically focuses on differences; a fledgling, entrepreneurial one on similarities. How some of the issues of fairness in hiring, pay, and due process need to be reformulated once they are placed within the context of an entrepreneurial firm with its emphasis on similarity are then discussed.

Thinking through a salaried service for general practice.

Abstract: ledged. The basic design was simple but was augmented in several detailed ways that many ofthose working with medical audit advisory groups could find confusing. Nevertheless, this should not deter them from seeking to understand the conclusions. As the doctors in the groups were trainers it is reasonable to question whether the findings are generalisable to all general practitioners. The study, however, began an eventful 10 years ago, and today's practitioners have had ample time to catch up. Further reports from the study should help to clarify the difficulties encountered by the groups in devising standards. We need to understand how the groups agreed and accepted the use of standards in daily practice and how much support and training the group members required. Improvement in outcome was confined to one condition, recurrent wheezy chest. The absence of any demonstrable effect on outcome for the other conditions is understandable given the chosen conditions. Acute episodes of cough or vomiting in children are most commonly caused by self limiting illnesses. Itchy rash and bedwetting are also symptoms rather than diagnoses, and for both the connection between care and its outcome is tenuous. Assessment of outcome is notoriously difficult, and its inclusion in audits of other than the simplest clinical procedure is unusual. Rather than regarding the study as a definitive assessment of the role of audit in improving outcome it should be seen as encouraging further research. All methods that are used to improve the quality of care must be subjected to critical evaluation of their effects on outcome, and audit can be no exception. Audit has progressed since this study was planned in 1982, and it would be unwise to assume that feedback is relatively ineffective because the receipt of information about group performance did not lead to improvements. Recent work has shown that feedback of information about performance can facilitate change.5 During the past decade audit has also been brought closer to the place of work, the focus having changed from doctors meeting together in peer groups outside their practices to the incorporation of audit into the daily management of practice teams. Several reports have shown the value of audit in this context, when it is seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.67 The lessons from this study, however, still apply to standard setting in teams and to the attempts of medical audit advisory groups to initiate projects involving groups of practices. This study gives helpful advice about implementing audit. Setting standards can improve the performance of the participants in terms of process and probably also of outcome. It is essential that those who use the standards have accepted them and the need for change. Standards that were received without these steps were not followed by improvements. Members of medical audit advisory groups and those leading practice teams will have to design their audits to ensure that participants have the opportunity to claim the standards as their own. RICHARD BAKER

Future Directions in Remuneration Management

Abstract: The paper outlines the current situation in remuneration management particularly in relation to the two key areas of job evaluation and performance-based reward It proposes that the moves towards microeconomic reform will have a considerable impact on how we currently view remuneration, and suggests a model to identify reward options in the future particularly encompassing skill-based pay, team-based pay and variable reward Finally, the paper suggests that in the 1990s there will be increasing emphasis on who decides how much executives should be paid, and that increased flexibility in remuneration will be used to help meet broad family obligations.

Leading a Company with Vision

Abstract: Discusses the thesis that self‐knowledge is a prerequisite for functioning in a service company (such as insurance) in such a way that the individual is wholly involved, feels a unity and is innovative. This benefits the company. Urges the value of reviewing personal performance, of integrating remuneration policy and training and of clearly structuring information systems. Accurate observation is then required of management to ensure no experience is neglected. Self‐knowledge is essential in managers if they are to think clearly about and be aware of relations – the insurance business is about relations.

The Evolution of Public Management: Concepts and Techniques for the 1990s

Abstract: Part 1 Policy and reform: concepts and assumptions of public management, R.H. Parry regulation and public sector management, P.H. Bowers private money in public expenditure, N.G. Terry Part 2 Functional perspectives: managing quality in public services, J.L. Rees marketing and public services, N.S. Alexander model building and decision making, J.J. Glen competitive tendering and bidding, L.C. Thomas investment appraisal - cost benifit analysis, J.N. Crook social accounting techniques, G.F Harte remuneration and motivation, C. Duncan stress management in caring services, T.J. Newton Part 3 Case study - NHS in crisis: the flawed debate roots of crisis and reform prospects, C. Duncan, K.I. Sams, P.J. White.

Minimum Wages and the Labour Market – Recent and Contemporary Issues in the British Hotel Industry

Abstract: The radical revision of the wages council system in the mid‐1980s in the claimed interests of increasing labour market flexibility was a controversial measure. Against this background, a study of minimum wages and conditions and other related matters was undertaken in the hotel industry in 1989 in the North West region and among the major national companies. Findings from this study about remuneration and employment practice in regard to young workers and adults are discussed in the context of labour market developments of the 1980s in the hotel industry. Such developments include trends in employment, minimum pay and earnings. Some future issues in relation to minimum wage‐fixing are also mentioned.

Investment and factor remuneration in small-scale fisheries

Abstract: Investment behaviour is a complex process which plays a major role in fisheries dynamics because it determines the size of the fishing fleet. The purpose of this paper is to examine the consequences of the main characteristics of fishing activity on investment. The theoretical dynamic model of a fishery shows us the "bang­ bang" pallern of investment. Furthermore, fishing activity has a high intrinsic variability. Thus, the system in which income is shared between the crew and the ship owner is also considered as a way of sharing risks and so reducing the variability ofinvestment return. Finally, the type of investment financing (subsidies, loans) can strongly stimulate fisheries dynamics but can also have some undesirable effecl'>.

INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONGST FARM LABOUR MANAGEMENT VARIABLES AND FACTORS AFFECTING FARM LABOUR REMUNERATION / Interafhanklikheid tossen arbeidsbestuur en faktore wat arbeidsvergoeding beïnvloed

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exploratory analysis of certain observable measures associated with farm labour management and to examine factors affecting farm labour remuneration. Data were collected in the Lions River, Lower Tugela and Elliot magisterial districts during January 1987. A principal components analysis extracted a factor common to measures of positive farmer attitude, called a “progressive labour management index”, which implied that farmers who use labour training facilities also provide incentive schemes, give generous leave allowances and would consider employing an African farm manager. A regression analysis is used to determine factors affecting remuneration levels. A principal component which extracts 67.4% of variation in remuneration is used as the dependent variable. Variables tested included labourer training, years work experience, farmer's attitude and farm type. Training and years work experience were significant in all three areas and positively correlate...

Remuneration and Motivation

Abstract: Labour represents the chief resource for many public sector organisations, especially in public services where pay costs typically range from sixty to eighty per cent of total current expenditure. Effective service delivery thus depends crucially upon successful methods of managing, rewarding and motivating human resources. This chapter assesses the implications for public managers of pay reforms pursued during the 1980s, which entailed a sustained challenge to traditional public sector pay principles and associated motivational assumptions. The discussion begins by outlining the pay and motivational features of the ‘old model’ of postwar public sector industrial relations, and the key role of pay comparability in this system. The challenge to the system during the 1980s is then described, and some observations made concerning the durability of the old model. The next section describes the features of a new system that was evolving during the later 1980s, which provides opportunities for restoring public sector pay stability and improving staff morale. Some difficult issues and problems that confront public managers in adjusting to and operating the new system are then discussed.

Taking local management responsibility for NHS pay.

Abstract: An extract from the Payfolio series published by North West Thames Regional Health Authority′s Pay Unit which guides managers of local units on decisions which will have to be made on remuneration issues that were previously taken centrally. Identifies the need for both a new management structure to reflect these new responsibilities and a strategic review as prerequisites. The constraints on change include the capacity of the personnel function, the inadequacy of information on labour costs, the assimilation costs of moving to new pay and conditions, the contractual entitlements of individual employees, the continuation of national pay determination, and the attitudes of staff and their representatives. Makes suggestions about making the transition to a local pay strategy in a way which is incremental yet strategic, so that change to new payment systems, structures, grading and staff groups are achieved gradually over time in a way which flows as smoothly as possible from the status quo.

The 1992 Institute of Physics Remuneration Survey

Abstract: Early this year all members of the Institute of Physics resident in the UK – 12000 of them – were sent a questionnaire about their employment and remuneration. Just over 42% of them replied. This is a rather lower percentage than for similar surveys in 1990 and 1988, but nevertheless allows some useful analysis to be performed.

Quality assurance in ambulatory care. Viewpoint of the forensic expert for concentrated action in public health

Abstract: FUNDAMENTALS Assuring the quality of medical care is a self-imposed obligation on the part of the profession and, at the same time, a legal obligation. MAIN TOPICS On the way to implementing this requirement, the following points must be taken into account: the measurability of the quality of medical care, establishment of the quality of structure, treatment and results, aids for the determination and documentation, remuneration, and the motivation for implementing quality control. CONCLUSIONS A further development of present day approaches to quality assurance resulting in returning to the physician more responsibility while putting on him the onus of proof, would be desirable.

Performance-Related Pay for Teachers: A Policy Prognosis

Abstract: This article explores the concept of performance-related pay for teachers. Performance-related pay (PRP) can take a number of forms, but is essentially a system of remuneration based fully or partially on the assessment and measurement of an employee’s productivity, performance, or skills. In 1992 a number of references to the introduction of PRP were made by New Zealand Government Ministers and the Education Forum1 indicating that performance-related pay for teachers may be on the Government’s industrial relations agenda.This article reviews the recent reforms of educational administration and education sector industrial relations and argues that the introduction of performance-related pay for teachers is ideologically consistent with these reforms, particularly the devolution of staff management to school level and the introduction of the bulk funding of teachers salaries. While performance-related pay may appear to be a perfectly sound concept, overseas experience indicates that there are problems in its application to the teaching profession. These problems are elaborated on in the discussion that follows.The article concludes that performance-related pay for teachers is unlikely to be introduced without the full implementation of the bulk funding of teachers’ salaries and further devolution of staff management responsibilities to boards of trustees.

Managing Fragmented Pay Bargaining: Some UK Evidence

Abstract: Conventional wisdom is that decentralized bargaining, performance pay and individualized remuneration schemes enable managers to utilize human resources more effectively. Examines employers’ recent experiences of such arrangements by drawing on data on company pay policies. Argues that moves to fragment bargaining and individualize reward systems have created new difficulties and problems in the management of pay, and that such initiatives can have costly consequences for employers.