Suchergebnisse

Labour MP Sue Moroney's Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months' Paid Leave) Amendment Bill to extend paid parental leave (PPL) to 26 weeks by 2014 was drawn from the Member's ballot in April and made it past its first reading in July, with all parties except National and Act indicating their support. One of the objectives of this bill, according to its sponsor, is to bring New Zealand in line with the rest of the industrialised world. In many industrialised countries, however, in the absence of any statutory entitlement, collective bargaining has played a crucial role both in determining PPL policies and in shaping legislative initiatives (Gregory and Milner 2009; Baird and Murray 2012). This article considers the role of collective bargaining in PPL policy in New Zealand.

Innovation in Australia has become the top national priority in strengthening competitiveness of firms and generating strong economic development. This paper investigates the building of workforce innovation capacity through human resource management (HRM) practices to foster innovation in Australia. Two HRM strategies are identified as having operated in Australia over 40 years. One is a 'soft' HRM strategy based on greater worker autonomy; a strategy which dominated in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is a 'hard' HRM strategy based on routine worker performance measurement which has increasingly become more relevant since the 1990s and into the 21st Century as the basis for stronger competitive advantage. A dynamic discrete choice model is developed to provide a method for capturing and explaining variations in the relationship between the two strategies and innovation. This approach reframes the economics of innovation using a unique 'containment of structure and contingency of agency' spectrum to explain innovation-successful HRM practices which can account for both internal firm management policies and external-to-the-firm effects of government economic policies. For this reason, this study provides a historical understanding that links effective HRM strategy to building innovation capacity from both firm and government levels. Such experience can assist building a stronger Australian Innovation System so often demanded.