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Sunday, April 30, 2006

Franklin, Blogger

April 30th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the Boston Globe

I hear that a group of school children are trying to persuade the state legislature to appoint Ben Franklin as the official State Inventor.

I think that this is inappropriate. His inventive period began after he left Boston for Philadelphia. However his career as a writer began at his brother's printing press in Boston. I suggest he be officially declared the State's First Blogger.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Republicans and Oil Proces

April 28th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the New York Times

Really these Republican Senators are flip-floppers of the first water (GOP Senators Hurry to Quell Furor over Gas, New York Times, April 28, 2006, page: A1).  For years they have been preaching the virtues of the discipline of the free market.

Now that the free market in energy has reared up and bitten them, they are singing a different tune: roll back or suspend gasoline taxes, government checks to consumers, and drilling in the miniscule oil reserves in the Arctic Refuge.

Unfortunately they do not propose repeal of the market distorting subsidies to oil companies, nor do they support better market distorting subsidies like those for the development of sustainable energy or improvements in mass transportation.

If we are to have market distortion, let us at least have the right kind of market distortion!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

 Understanding Labor Turnover: The role of Labor Stability

   (Published in Jigyasa (New Delhi), 22006)                     

Martin G. Evans

Abstract


In nearly all of the research on labor turnover there has been little or no focus on a second aspect of worker mobility: labor stability.  By labor stability we mean the proportion of workers who have remained with the organization for a given period of time (usually one year). In this paper we show how different combinations of stability and turnover can co-exist and that turnover has quite different causes and consequences depending on the labor stability of the organization or its sub-units.

A major human resource management problem faced by many organizations is that of understanding and managing labor turnover. There are two diagnostic questions that a manager needs to ask in order to develop a program of turnover control: how high is labor turnover; and what kinds of people are leaving? Most research has focused on the former question (and this paper adds a further consideration, labor stability, to the issue); the second question has only recently come under consideration (e.g., Staw, 1983; Dalton et al 19xx)

In most of the discussions of labor turnover (e.g. Mobley, Griffeth, Hand, & Meglino, (1979)) there has been little consideration about the pattern of turnover within an organization. Pfeffer (1983), with his focus on organizational demographics, has asked whether or not turnover is spread evenly across people with different lengths of tenure or whether turnover is spread evenly across all departments in the organization. This is based on some earlier work (cited in Van Der Merwe & Miller (1973) that examined survival curves in organizations (Brissenden & Frankel, 1922; Greenwood, 1919; Lane & Andrew, 1955))

One metric that helps to identify turnover in different parts of the organization or at different stages of tenure is the measure of labor stability.  Labor stability is usually defined as the proportion of workers (in a particular category or in the firm as a whole) who remain for one calendar year in the organization:                                                                                

                            # employed on both Jan 1st. and on Dec 31st.                     

        Stability = ___________________________________________ X100   

                            Average number employed during year                               

      

Similar indices could be developed for different time periods. Whether or not turnover is concentrated in a few positions or spread widely throughout the organization has quite important implications about the causes and consequences of labor turnover. Pfeffer (1983) has argued that tenure distributions may be quite important to organizations for understanding turnover. McCain, O'Reilly, & Pfeffer (1983) found that in a university setting turnover was associated with quite uneven distributions of tenure. It is likely that socialization and attachment will be equally difficult in other organizations with similar gaps in demographic continuity between organizational members. A newcomer entering the organization who is the first newcomer for five or six years (characterized by high prior labor stability) will have difficulty in identifying with her/his fellow workers and therefore have little attachment to the organization.


Combinations of stability and turnover

These examples indicate that the role of labor stability in understanding labor turnover and its causes and consequences is not trivial. Across different situations, labor stability may differ markedly: such differences are associated with quite different types of labor turnover, and require quite different managerial responses. 

There are three extreme types (1): a) high stability, low turnover; b) high stability, high turnover; c) low stability, high turnover. The fourth combination (low stability, low turnover) cannot occur, except in organizations which are expanding rapidly: in the more typical situation if turnover is low then stability, by definition, is high. The opposite is not true: high stability can be coupled with high or low turnover.

                  

Three combinations of stability and turnover

High stability, low turnover. (2) This is perhaps the most desirable condition; although some turnover is often beneficial in terms of weeding out deadwood and introducing new ideas to the organization (Staw, 1983). In this situation, only a few positions are implicated, few vacancies occur in each. In this case, there is no crisis. It is this steady state that organizations strive to achieve and of which organizational researchers strive to understand the causes. 

High stability, high turnover (3). Here most positions in the organization are filled with experienced people. Nevertheless in a few positions it is almost impossible to retain an employee. No sooner is the position filled than it is vacated; it is then refilled, but the new employee does not stay; and so the process continues. The crisis is that of socializing newcomers. The long tenure people seem committed to the organization; the newcomers are not.

This pattern of stability and turnover seems to have been ignored by both managers and researchers. They implicitly assume that there is a negative correlation between turnover and labor stability. The existence of this stability/turnover pattern would upset such a simple relationship. Clearly we should be alert to its possible occurrence. I have stated that in this condition there is an organizational crisis. Clearly this is an overstatement. A pattern of this type could be developed through a conscious organizational strategy. If the position is one in which a) highly skilled personnel are required, and b) learning time is brief, but there is c) little intrinsic interest in the work and d) little opportunity for advancement, the organization may wish to staff the organization with what a colleague once called "bright young birds of passage." Here high turnover is accepted as a cost of staffing. However, if this is not the result of a deliberate strategy, the organization has to focus on the problems of selection and socialization (see below).          

Low stability, high turnover.(4) In this condition, many positions are becoming vacant; many hires are being taken on each year. The whole organization is in a state of flux.  Turnover is spread over many positions, quite likely people at all stages of tenure will be leaving the organization.  Thus the organization is facing two crises. The first is the crisis of retaining people with experience and high tenure.  The second crisis is that of selecting, socializing and retaining new hires into the organization.

                                     

Implications

When turnover is narrowly concentrated in a few positions (and hence among those with low tenure) the problem faced by the organization in identifying those who may leave is a different problem from that faced by the organization when turnover is spread more broadly among high and low tenure employees. In the first case, the focus is on new hires. The problem is to identify the factors that increase or reduce their commitment to the organization. In the second case, the problem is more complex: the focus has to be both on new hires and on long tenure employees.

This is not the place to go into an exhaustive treatment of the factors that differentiate attraction to the organization for short and long tenure employees. Clearly such differences do exist. The basis for commitment to the organization of short tenure workers and long tenure workers is quite different. For persons with short tenure, commitment is a function of the nature of the initial decision to join the organization (Salancik, 1977; O'Reilly & Caldwell, 1981). When individuals had many choices, selected the alternative with few external pressures (high volition), and made irreversible decisions then commitment to the organization would be high. When these factors were absent (i.e. few choices, severe pressure, and a lack of irreversibility) then commitment would be low. A low level of commitment coupled with good opportunities for alternative employment would result in high levels of turnover among the recently entered group.

On the other hand, commitment by long tenure employees is based upon a whole stream of prior commitments made: the extent to which the person has developed firm-specific knowledge and skills including 'local' knowledge of the organization itself (when this is high, the decisions become irrevocable), the extent to which the person is locked in by non-portable compensation plans, and the extent to which current rewards and benefits are in line with aspirations, though this may always be high as aspirations adjust to jibe with the rewards and benefits available. 

A number of researchers have found that different factors affect turnover at different levels of job tenure. Werbel and Gould (1984) have argued that organizational commitment is unrelated to turnover at the earliest stages of tenure (less than one year). In addition, the role of job characteristics (Katz 1978), the type of need sought, (Hall and Nougaim (1968), the role of the work group (Feldman, 1976) all differ in their association with attraction at different levels of tenure in the organization. Turnover research needs to take very seriously  these different relationships.  As a start a closer integration between the socialization and turnover literatures would be appropriate.

Not all turnover is alike. Staw (1983) has alerted is to the functional aspects of turnover: opening up positions so that new people with new ideas can enter the organization. This paper points to different causes for high turnover. These different causes can be easily identified by considering the level of labor stability:

- if stability is high; problem is in socializing newcomers

- if stability is low, problem is with the commitment of existing members of the organization

          Footnotes

1The data described here are provided as illustrations of the phenomenon. They are not viewed as representative of the current state of labor turnover or stability. Nevertheless, the suggestions made for managing turnover in these different situations are sound. The organization will need to undertake its own diagnosis of its current situation to determine what the appropriate course of action should be. 

                                    References

Brissenden, P.F., & Frankel, E. (1922). Labor turnover in industry: A statistical Analysis. New York: Macmillan.

Dalton, D. R., Krackhardt, D. M., & Porter, L. W. (1981). Functional turnover:an empirical assessment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 66, 716-721.

Evans, M.G. (1963). Supervisory attitudes: A case study from the packaging industry, with an evaluation of the method used.  Unpublished M.Sc.Tech. Thesis. Department of Industrial Administration, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.  

Evans, M.G. (1965) Supervisors' attitudes and departmental performance. Journal of management studies, 2, 174-190.     

Feldman, D.C. (1976). A contingency theory of socialization.  Administrative science quarterly, 21, 433-452.

Greenwood, T.F. (1919). Problems of industrial organization. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 82(2), 186-221.

Hall, D.T., & Nougaim, K. (1968). An examination of Maslow's need hierarchy in an organizational setting. Organizational behavior and human performance, 3, 12-35.             

Katz, R. (1978). Job longevity as a situational factor in job satisfaction. Administrative science quarterly, 23, 204-223.

Lane, K.F., & Andrew, J.E. (1955). A method of labour turnover analysis. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 118(3), 296-323.

McCain, B.E., O'Reilly, C.A., III, & Pfeffer, J. (1983). The effects of departmental demography on turnover: The case of a university. Academy of management journal, 26, 626-641.

Mobley, W.H., Griffeth, R.W., Hand, H.H., & Meglino, B.M. (1979). Review and conceptual analysis of the employee turnover process. Psychological bulletin, 86, 493-522.

Pfeffer, J., (1983). Organizational demography. In L.L. Cummings & B.M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior Volume 5, Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 299-357.

O'Reilly, C.A., & Caldwell, D.F. (1980). The commitment and job tenure of new employees: Some evidence of post-decisional justification. Administrative science quarterly, 26, 597-616.

Salancik, G.R. (1977). Commitment and the control of organizational behavior and belief. In B.M. Staw & G.R. Salancik (Eds.), New directions in organizational behavior. Chicago: St Clair Press, 1-54.

Staw, B.M. (1980). The consequences of turnover. Journal of occupational behavior, 1, 253-273. ?1983?


Rice, A. K., Hill, J.   M. M., & Trist, E.  L. (1950) The representation of labour turnover as a social process; studies in the social development of an industrial community (the Glacier Project). II. Human Relations, 3, 1950,  349-370.

Werbel, J.D., & Gould, S. (1984). A comparison of the relationship of commitment to turnover in recent hires and tenured employees. Journal of applied psychology, 69, 687-690.



 1. These extremes are not just logical constructions. They really have been observed. In my first piece of organizational research (Evans, 1963, 1965),1 I investigated turnover in a northern plant of a British paper packaging company (1700 employees).  Although turnover was associated with managerial practices (Evans, 1965), there were also some interesting demographic effects.  Turnover was in general confined to very specific groups of employees: young women with very short tenure in the organization. There were also some marked inter-departmental differences.  

Overall, the establishment studied had an annual turnover rate of 63%. At that time, in the early 1960s, unemployment in the UK hovered at about 2.5% so the probability of a leaver obtaining another job was quite high. On the other hand, in the year studied, a surprising 70% of the work force present at the end of the year had also been present at the beginning of the year. In other words, labor stability was also very high. Most positions were filled with experienced people but 30% of the positions exhibited very rapid turnover: 200% per year!


2. In the Evans (1963) study, one department exhibited this pattern: labor stability was about 87% for both male and female employees; labor turnover was about 18% which was low for this organization at this time. 


3. A second department from our early study (Evans, 1963) illustrates this situation. The labor stability of the male employees was 60%, yet labor turnover was 76%.  This meant that for each of the 40% of positions at risk during the year about two employees had to be hired to keep the department fully staffed. Similar results were found for the female employees in the department (stability 71%, turnover 80%; so that 29% of the jobs were at risk, and each had to be filled by four persons during the year).  


4. One of the departments studied (Evans, 1963) was in this position: it had a labor stability of 37% for its female work force, yet the labor turnover was 128%. This meant that for each of the 63% of positions at risk, two persons had to be hired during the year in order to keep the department fully staffed.  

The Futility of Illegal Rendition

April 27th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the New York Times

Some aspects of the US War on Terror really are counterproductive.
The use of illegal rendition ( European Inquiry Says C.I.A. Flew 1,000 Flights in Secret, New York Times, April 27, 2006) is one of the most costly and ineffective weapons in our arsenal against terrorists. It has had three major costs that, as far as we can tell, outweigh the benefits.
First America has lost the moral high ground that it once had. Friend and foe alike are now unmoved by our appeals to the preservation of human rights around the globe. Furthermore, America has turned its staunchest friends and allies into countries that are at best neutral. A large number of our allies are embarrassed by what we have done on their soil and are taking steps to ensure that such activities are prevented in the future. Finally, over the last eight months since the revelations of illegal rendition, most European countries have undertaken investigations as to how, when, and where illegal renditions took place within their borders. This has diverted skilled investigators from the important task of investigating, infiltrating, and breaking terrorist networks. We can never recover those lost person-hours.
As many commentators have argued, the way to beat terrorism is to win the hearts and minds of the populations in which terrorist cells subsist. The outrage across the world caused by American use of illegal rendition means that those cells may thrive in the future.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Cambridge Call for Redistricting

April 26th. 2006
Published in the Cambridge Chronicle

In early May, the State Senate and House of Representatives will sit together as a Constitutional Convention.  Several contentious issues will come before that session. It is to be hoped that the rancor caused by the disputed issues does not mean that important but less controversial issues do not get considered.
Common Cause, Massachusetts, of which I am a Board Member, is proposing a Bill (Senate Bill 12) to adopt a program of fair redistricting. Essentially this means having a independent commission (with representation from the political parties) draw the boundary maps rather than the State Legislature doing so. This would avoid powerful legislators using the process to reward friends and punish enemies and would prevent mid-term redistricting as happened in Texas. It would require the map drawers to create compact districts that respected the boundaries of towns and cities and met the constraints of equal size and adherence to the Federal Voting Rights Act.
The present districting situation in Cambridge means that our town is represented by no less that three State Senators and by six State Representatives. On average, our Senators represent 3.7 towns in addition to Cambridge. Each State Representative represents on average one other town. Their attention is scattered between our town and Boston, Somerville, Arlington, Belmont and Watertown.
Last Fall, Common Cause and its allies gathered 60,000 signatures from across the state in support of Bill 12.  In addition it has strong bi-partisan support from Legislative leaders and Gubernatorial candidates.But the job is not yet done, the proposal is coming before the legislature in the Constitutional Convention on May 10th. We need 101 votes to keep it moving (a second legislative vote next year and a ballot item in 2008).
To find out more go to the Common Cause web site for additional information:
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=192849.
or read my op-ed of last August in this newspaper: http://www.townonline.com/cambridge/opinion/view.bg?articleid=310370
If you agree with the need for redistricting reform please contact your State Senator and State Representative at the State House and ask them to vote for this important measure. You can find out who they are here: http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=252081
With the help of us all, this important reform can be accomplished. Contact the Legislature now!

Friday, April 21, 2006

MAD won't work o n US

April 21th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the New York Times

I was almost ready to endorse Leonard Greene's suggestion (Letters, New York Times, April 21 2006, page A22) of a "Mutually Assured Destruction" Pact to deter a nuclear first strike until its major flaw struck me.
As far as I know, the only nation considering a pre-emptive nuclear strike at present is the United States. I really cannot see countries like Britain, France, India, and Pakistan or Israel (if it has them) or Russia and China unleashing nuclear missiles on Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.
It is just not plausible. So MAD may work for deterring small states but not for deterring the US.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Too Late, the Generals

April 14th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the New York Times

Secretary Rumsfeld didn't practice groupthink; he didn't even want to hear what his General Officers wanted to say. It is time for him to go.

But, what can we say about these retired Generals who are now coming out of the shadows to say that the war in Iraq was and is being mishandled? Where were they before the war when General Shinseki told his superiors that it would take several hundred thousand troops to pacify Iraq once the war was over? That courageous stand resulted in Shinseki's career being over.

Where were they just two years ago when retired General Zinni told as that "everyone knew" that General Shinseki was correct in his assessment? Zinni waited until he retired before criticizing the Secretary, these new General-critics have also waited until their retirement.

These men put their careers ahead of their responsibility for the troops who served them and trusted them. A concerted "No!" early on to Rumsfeld's inept tactics might have changed the course of the war -- many lives might have been saved, and many of those with terrible injuries might be hale and hearty today.

How terrible.

Romney's Health Care Veto

April 14th. 2006
Published in the Boston Globe

Governor Romney has vetoed key provisions of the health care bill (Boston Globe, April 13th, 2006: A1). Why would anyone trust or believe him again? A carefully crafted compromise was created between the Governor, the House, and the Senate. What is there about making a deal that that the Governor does not understand?
On the merits of the case: why veto the Employer mandate. What is it that the Governor does not understand about "free riders?"  If we are to have employer mandates, then all employers should make a contribution, personally I would prefer to see health care funded through the general revenues, but employment based health insurance is the way it is done here, so all should contribute to the pool of funds.
The Governor's veto has signalled his untrustworthiness, as did his flip flop on abortion. Why should Republican voters trust him in the future?

Friday, April 7, 2006

Belive Scooter Libby

April 7th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the Boston Globe

I find it difficult to believe Scooter Libby's claim that President Bush declassified the previously classified information that he passed on to various journalists.
Can you imagine that George Bush, a president of unimpeachable integrity who has been absolutely forthright in all his dealings with the public; can you imagine that George Bush would stand before the public and say that he wanted to get to the bottom of the question and that anyone involved in the leaks of classified information would be fired if he had already declassified that information?
Can you imagine that George Bush, a pillar of fiscal responsibility would stand before the public and allow an expensive investigation unfold if he knew, having declassified the information that no classified information had been passed on.
Can you imagine that George Bush, a man who is loyal to a fault to the people who work for him, would have put his subordinates through the wringer of a criminal investigation?
Actually I can imagine all of these. Bush lacks integrity, he lacks fiscal responsibility, and his loyalty is the kind that keeps people on because he cannot stand face to face conflict.
So, I guess I can believe Scooter Libby after all.

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

The Governor and the Phone Company

April 5th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the Boston Globe

Steve Bailey (Globe, April 5th., C1) is naive if he thinks Governor Romney will put pressure on AT&T to keep jobs in Massachusetts.
The governor needs cheap telephone connections for his presidential campaign so he is unlikely to do anything that would upset the phone company.