Individualism-collectivism, Horizontal individualism (HI), Vertical individualism (VI), Horizontal collectivism (HC), Vertical collectivism (VC), Organizational individualism (OI), Organizational collectivism (OC), Business process outsourcing (BPO),

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in the effects of gender equality legislation on employment outcomes among female and male workers in industries with different intensity of foreign investment (namely, foreign direct investment (FDI)-intensive industries and non–FDI–intensive industries). The specific employment outcomes that were studied to compare the effects of the legislation are the working hours, employment opportunities, and wages of female and male workers in Taiwan. Design/methodology/approach Using data from the annual Manpower Utilization Survey, the authors applied a differences-in-differences-in-differences estimation method to test the effect of gender equality legislation on employment outcomes. By using multinomial logit, the authors measured the effect of the legislation on employment opportunities. To correct for simultaneity and selectivity problems/biases, the authors adopted Heckman two-stage selection procedures. Likewise, the authors used weighted least squares to solve heteroskedasticity in the wage and working hour equations. Further, the instrumental variable (IV) method was used to correct for simultaneity bias in the equation on working hour. The authors applied three stages estimation method following Killingsworth’s (1983) approach to measure the effect of the legislation on wages and working hours. Findings The authors found the restrictions enforced by the gender equality legislation (namely the Gender Equal Employment Act (GEEA), enacted in 2002) in Taiwan to have made certain impact on the workers’ working conditions in FDI-intensive industries. The major finding indicated that in a country like Taiwan, where the legislature tried tilling the perpetual gender gap in its labour market, by passing a law to counter inequality, could finally narrow the gender gap in wages among workers in the FDI-intensive industries. Although initially after the enactment of the GEEA (between 2002 and 2004), the gender gap in part-timers’ wages has widened, yet over a period of time the gap in their wages too has narrowed down, particularly during 2005-2006. The legislation, however, could not improve the job opportunities for full-time female workers’ in FDI-intensive industries. Besides, post 2002, the female workers were found to have worked for shorter hours than male workers, which according to us, could be largely attributed to the enforcement of the GEEA. Practical implications An in-depth analysis of the labour market effects of gender equality legislation should be useful to policymakers, especially those interested in understanding the impact of legislative measures and policy reforms on labour market and employment outcomes across industry types. If enforcement of a gender equality legislation has succeeded in reducing the gender gap more in one set of industries than the others (e.g. foreign owned instead of domestic industries), as the authors noticed in this study, then the same should have a bearing on revamping of future enactment and enforcement too. Originality/value Current study findings would not only provide the broad lessons to the policymakers in Taiwan, but the results that have emerged from a country case study could be referred by other growing economies who are enthusiastic about improving female workers’ working conditions through legislative reforms.

Citation: SARKAR, S. and CHARLWOOD, A., 2014. Do cultural differences explain differences in attitudes towards unions? Culture and attitudes towards unions among call centre workers in Britain and India. Industrial Relations Journal, 45 (1), pp.56-76. AbstractThis article adds to the literature on worker attitudes towards unions by investigating the impact of cultural attitudes and the call-centre labour process on union attitudes among call centre workers in Britain and India. It is hypothesised that workers with egalitarian and collectivist cultural attitudes will be more likely to have pro-union attitudes than other workers, although if the impact of cultural attitudes is mediated by history and institutions, it might be expected that this relationship is stronger for British than Indian workers. Conversely, if union attitudes are largely a function of the call-centre labour process, we would expect union attitudes to be similar among workers in both countries. Our results only partially support our hypotheses. Collectivist attitudes are only weakly related to union attitudes among the British sample, but are more strongly related in the Indian sample. There are significant differences between union attitudes among our British and Indian samples. The article concludes that relationship between cultural attitudes and union attitudes are heavily dependent on institutional context. Cultural attitudes are unlikely to be either a constraint or a facilitator of union efforts to organise workers.

The transformation from industrial social work to corporate social responsibility points out a definite shift in the realm of social work vis-à-vis goal, objective and priorities of business. Over the past several decades social workers around the world have successfully been able to integrate with the modern production and business processes, particularly in addressing the emergent needs of the industrial population like those arising out of the psychosocial impact of workforce alienation, over-specialization, competitiveness, and stress and fatigue on their life. Over all these years, as there has been a major transformation in defining human beings in the context of business from human resource to human capital, the corporate has also been restructuring its role in revitalizing its human resources alongside taking care of the vast external stakeholders (customers) through its new slogan of 'corporate social responsibility'. But this new configuration lends itself to the process of self-examination and the litmus test remains: Is corporate social responsibility a new area structured to delineate the corporate's idea of greater variety of social services for humankind; or just one more catchphrase used to establish the fact that business houses are doing 'a lot more' than mere expansion of industrial social work; or has there been a change in the principal objective and priority of the corporate at the back of starting these programmes-from curbing loss to 'just making profit'?

Purpose -To measure the effects of work-sharing arrangements on participants' subsequent labor market outcomes in Taiwan such as full-time employment rates, working hours of women and men and the difference in scale effect and effect of substitution between hours and employment for women and men. Design/methodology/approach -Using the data from Manpower Utilization Survey, we applied the differences-in-differences estimation method to test the effects of work-sharing arrangements on working hours, wage and employment. Multinomial logit was used to measure the effects of work sharing on full-time employment. In order to correct the simultaneity and selectivity problems, we followed the Heckman two-stage selection procedures to solve the selection bias, and used weighted least squares to solve heteroskedasticity in the wage and hour equations. The instrumental variable (IV) method was used to avoid simultaneity bias in the hour equation.Findings -This paper found the restrictions enforced by law on working hours have negative effects on employees' working conditions in certain industries in Taiwan. After controlling the working hours, we found the wages paid to women and men have increased subsequent to the enforcement of law. However, compared to men the net wage earned by women has increased to a lesser extent. It was further observed that with enactment of work-sharing law, the employment rate of women has considerably declined since 2001. Main findings assimilating the results for hour, wage and full-time employment suggest that a country like Taiwan (with work-sharing arrangements implemented by law) has witnessed a smaller gap between women's and men's working time and wages during