New Article: Benjamin, Negotiating Job Quality in Contracted-Out Services

Benjamin, Orly. “Negotiating Job Quality in Contracted-Out Services: An Israeli Institutional Ethnography.” In The Post-Fordist Sexual Contract: Working and Living in Contingency (ed. Lisa Adkins and Maryanne Dever; Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 149-69.

 

 

Extract

I forward an analysis of the process of preparing contracts themselves prior to service operation, and the negotiations between various public sector administrators that shape employees’ job quality. I make use of Dorothy Smith’s (2005) methodology of institutional ethnography for the purpose of understanding how job quality is shaped for both certified and uncertified employees in the social services commissioned by the Israeli Welfare, Education, and Health ministries.

 

 

 

New Article: Segev et al, Corporate Social Responsibility: Cleaning Services Procurement in Israel

Segev, Galit, Sarit Nisim, and Orly Benjamin. “Corporate Social Responsibility as Shaped by Managers’ Role Dissonance: Cleaning Services Procurement in Israel.” Journal of Business Ethics 130 (2015): 209-21.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2213-9

 

Abstract

Public procurement provides an excellent window into the shaping of corporate social responsibility of companies contracted by the government. To this emerging scholarly realization, we want to add that public procurement provides also the opportunity to examine corporate social responsibility as practiced by public sector organizations. This opportunity enables the investigation of the conditions under which public sector organizations endorse CSR guidelines, adherence to which demonstrates accountability for their service providers’ legal, employment-related practices. Our study examined the possibility that public sector organizations’ CSR is enhanced by maintenance managers’ role dissonance emerging in response to an ethical mismatch between them and their organizations’ official stance concerning whether unethical employment practices of service providers should be sanctioned. We analyzed interviews with 13 managers in charge of contract administration in the area of cleaning and maintenance. Our findings suggest that the role dissonance that emerges in cases of mismatch in ethical orientation rarely enhances more responsible treatment of cleaning employees. We introduce a model indicating the conditions supporting this incident.

 

 

New Article: Waichman et al, Reciprocity in Labor Market Relationships

Waichman, Israel, Ch’ng Kean Siang, Till Requate, Aric P. Shafran, Eva Camacho-Cuena, Yoshio Iida, and Shosh Shahrabani. “Reciprocity in Labor Market Relationships: Evidence from an Experiment across High-Income OECD Countries.” Games 6.4 (2015): 473-94.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/g6040473

 

Abstract

We study differences in behavior across countries in a labor market context. To this end, we conducted a bilateral gift-exchange experiment comparing the behavior of subjects from five high-income OECD countries: Germany, Spain, Israel, Japan and the USA. We observe that in all countries, effort levels are increasing while rejection rates are decreasing in wage offers. However, we also find considerable differences in behavior across countries in both one-shot and repeated relationships, the most striking between Germany and Spain. We also discuss the influence of socio-economic indicators and the implications of our findings.

 

 

New Article: Ida and Talit, Migrant Workers’ in the Construction Sector

Ida, Yoram and Gal Talit. “Regulation on Migrant Workers’ Employment in the Israeli Construction Sector.” International Migration (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/imig.12194

 

Abstract

This article deals with a reform in the regulation on employment of migrant workers which was implemented in the Israeli construction industry from 2005. This corporations-based arrangement replaced a restrictive employment arrangement which tied the employee to a specific employer. The new regulation of work conditions and wages, coupled with a significant reduction in the number of work permits issued to construction, has improved work conditions and wages paid to migrant workers, and made their employment less attractive to employers. The reform also included elements designed to reduce the illegal employment phenomenon and to encourage migrant workers to leave the country at the end of their contracts. However, the new arrangement still restricted the mobility of migrant workers to some extent and had negative consequences such as a significant rise in the broker fees demanded of workers.

New Article: Kemp and Raijman, A Meso-Level Analysis of Labor Trafficking in Israel

Kemp, Adriana and Rebeca Raijman. “Bringing in State Regulations, Private Brokers, and Local Employers: A Meso-Level Analysis of Labor Trafficking in Israel.” International Migration Review (early view).

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imre.12109/abstract

 

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of state policies, private brokers and local employers that fuels trafficking practices and forced labor of legal labor migrants. Focusing on the Israeli case of labor migration, we offer a meso-level institutional analysis of the modes by which private brokers’s actions combine with state regulations and policies in creating labor trafficking. More specifically, we stress the active role official labor migration schemes play in the growth of a private brokerage sector driven by profit considerations and in the privatization of state capacities regarding migration control and management. Our analysis demonstrates how systemic features – and not necessarily or solely criminal activities – catalyze trafficking practices taking place first and foremost within the realm of legal migration.