Insider trading and the public enforcement of private prohibitions: some complications in enforcing simple rules for a complex world

Accepting the argument made by Manne, Epstein and others that firms wishing to allow their employees to insider trade should be permitted to do so, this article shows that there is still a crucial role for government in regulating insider trading. In particular, allowing employees to profit by insider trading is a form of employee compensation that, in contradistinction from conventional forms of equity compensation, results in unknowable and effectively unlimited costs to the company. Since providing employee compensation in this form causes the company to lose control of its compensation expense, even if insider trading were legal, virtually every company would rely on conventional forms of employee compensation and prohibit its employees from insider trading. But, pace Manne, Epstein and others, companies lack the means to detect insider trading by their employees, and even when they do catch employees insider trading, companies can impose only mild contractual sanctions, generally not exceeding disgorgement of profits and dismissal. As a result, although an efficient agreement between a company and its employee would prohibit the employee from insider trading, this prohibition cannot be effectively enforced by the company. Government, with its usual law enforcement powers, is better able to detect insider trading and can impose more severe sanctions on violators, including criminal penalties. Government should thus enforce a ban on insider trading in those instances, which will be virtually all instances, in which a company prohibits its employees from insider trading. The efficient solution is thus a hybrid system of private prohibition and public enforcement. Such a system is not unusual but the norm. Employers prohibit employees from embezzling their money and stealing their property, and employees are subject to contractual sanctions and dismissal for violating these prohibitions, but we still need statutes against theft to generate an optimal level of deterrence. This is all the more true when the employee misappropriates information, which is much harder to detect than a theft of money or property.

     

Take this job and shove it: An exploratory study of turnover intent among jail staff

The success of any organization usually rests on the shoulders of its employees. As such, voluntary personnel turnover presents administrative challenges that have substantial and far reaching effects. Understanding the factors that lead to staff turnover intentions can assist organizational leaders in possibly altering the work environment to address employee concerns. Among correctional organizations, the few studies that have been conducted on turnover intent have focused, as most correctional research in general, on prisons. The exclusion of jail turnover intent is puzzling given the unique challenges that jail staff face. The current study attempted to fill this empirical void by using survey data to examine the antecedents (i.e., personal characteristics, perceptions of the work environment, and job attitudes) of turnover intent among staff at a large southern jail. Based on a multivariate analysis, the most powerful predictors of jail staff turnover intent were job attitudes (i.e., job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment). The findings suggested that administrators should concentrate on improving the work environment to boost employee job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.     

Voluntary turnover of field operations officers: A test of confluency theory

This article explores classic and contemporary explanations for voluntary police turnover in one of the largest police departments in the Southeast—the Birmingham (Alabama) Police Department (BPD). It specifically tests confluency theory and eight variables associated with job satisfaction as predictors of turnover among field operations officers. Confluency theory, an untested theory, attributes police turnover to an absence of preemployment job awareness and to incongruencies between job expectations and job realities. Results from a survey of 232 current officers and 60 former officers disagreed with conventional wisdom and the majority of turnover research findings. Former BPD officers were generally more satisfied with their jobs in BPD than current officers. Logistic regression further indicated that confluency theory and the job satisfaction variables investigated are poor predictors of field operations officers who leave the BPD.     

Fairnes issues and job satisfaction among korean employees: The significance of status value and procedural justice in work orientation

This study investigates how justice or fairness issues such as procedural justice, distributive justice, and status equity affect job satisfaction among Korean employees. Incorporating cultural values and social norms salient in Korea, the study hypothesizes that perceptions of procedural justice enhance more job satisfaction than perceptions of distributive justice among Korean employees. Another hypothesis, based on Korean employees' aspiration for higher occupational status, predicts that perceptions of status equity, i.e., occupational prestige of their current jobs relative to their human capital, also increase job satisfaction more than perceptions of distributive justice. These two hypotheses were tested with a sample of 501 full-time employees in Korea. Supporting the hypotheses, the results indicated that (i) perceptions of procedural justice produce more job satisfaction than do perceptions of distributive justice; and (ii) perceptions of status equity are the most important factor predicting job satisfaction among the three fairness issues. Cross-cultural implications of these findings are discussed in more detail.The author thanks Professor Hyunho Seok and the Korean Social Science Council (KSSC) for their 1990 national survey data sets.     

Predicting Customer Service Employees’ Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions: The Roles of Customer Interactional Injustice and Interdependent Self-Construal

Research has primarily examined supervisors and coworkers as sources of unfair interpersonal treatment (i.e., interactional injustice) in the workplace. Unfair treatment, however, can also originate with customers. Using a cross-sectional, correlational research design (N = 172), we examined the associations among customer injustice, employee job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Drawing on relational theories of fairness, we also examined whether employees who more strongly define themselves through their interpersonal relationships (i.e., those with stronger interdependent self-construals) would exhibit stronger injustice-attitudes associations. Results showed that, overall, greater injustice was associated with lower job satisfaction but not greater turnover intentions. Moreover, as expected, the strength of employees’ interdependent self-construals moderated the injustice-attitudes relations: Relationship-oriented employees showed significant associations between injustice and both job satisfaction and turnover intentions, whereas those with weaker relationship orientations did not. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The Effects of Attribution of Responsibility and Work History on Perceptions of Reasonable Accommodations

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must provide employees with disabilities reasonable accommodations that will enable them to perform job duties, as long as the accommodations do not financially burden the organization. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether disability origin and/or prior work history impermissibly influence the granting of reasonable accommodations under the ADA. In both studies, participants granted more accommodations for employees whose disability was caused by some external factor than for those whose disability was caused by the employee's own behavior. In Study Two, participants also granted more and costlier accommodations for an employee with an excellent work history than for an employee with an average work history. Implications of the use of extralegal factors in accommodation decisions are discussed.     

The role of procedural and distributive justice in organizational behavior

To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.     

Rethinking retirement-age policy in the United States and Canada

More than legislation, the recent amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act also symbolize a growing interest in the older working population, both in the United States and Canada, particularly the question of their "failing" job skills and the effects of retirement age on the economy. Sociologist Rix examines this issue in terms of demographic, economic and biomedical factors, discussing their implications for management, employee counselors, insurance and pension planners, the tax payers and employees of all ages.     

中国政府雇员制下的工作满意度分析——基于对上海市公安文职人员调查的实证研究

自政府雇员制在我国施行以来，学界对其在实践中所出现的问题进行了大量的讨论。但这些讨论大都缺少实证材料支撑。本文在对上海市公安文职制度调查的基础上，建立了关于公安文职人员工作满意度的回归模型。用以分析影响政府雇员制的诸多因素。模型结果表明：雇员工作的制度设置、薪酬设定、晋升制度以及与公务员的待遇差距等因素影响工作满意度的变量显著。因此，在提高政府雇员制功效的问题上。应主要改善这些受到显著影响的制度设置，以提高雇员工作满意度。进而保障政府雇员制功能的发挥和高效运行。     

Employee assistance programs: an employer's guide to emerging liability issues

Increasing numbers of employers are implementing employee assistance programs (EAPs) designed to assist employees with personal issues that affect their work performance. Studies show that EAPs can dramatically increase employee productivity, but the benefits from EAPs have been accompanied by a less welcome development: lawsuits filed against employers by employees who allege that they suffered harm in the course of obtaining services through their employers' EAPs. Although the potential for liability will always exist, the employer that adheres to certain guidelines will be able to minimize its risk and make its EAP well worth the investment.     

公司内部举报制度研究

公司内部举报制度是公司内部控制制度的重要部分,其本质是一种信息披露行为,激励公司员工作为社会公众的代表监管公司行为,以有效保护股东利益,防范公司经营风险,提高内部控制制度的有效性.因此,应重视公司内部控制制度中员工举报的重要作用,对私营部门举报的立法应聚集于公司内部员工,鼓励公司建立内部举报制度,加大对举报人的外部激励...     

Communicating company objectives

Knowing and understanding company objectives will not help employees solve every work-related problem, but, in the long run, such knowledge will contribute to more efficient and productive operations.     

The Future of Work and U.S. Public Opinion on Noncompete Law: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Although policymakers have recently shown a keen interest in noncompete reform, a gap exists in the literature concerning what the U.S. public's preferences are regarding noncompetes. Therefore, this article presents the empirical findings of a nationally-representative survey of the American public on the noncompete law governing employees. Based on the results of a conjoint experiment within the survey, this article finds that the U.S public prefers that noncompetes be used to protect any types of confidential information, rather than simply customer lists or employee training investments. Additionally, the findings do not show clear support either for or against noncompete exemptions based on an employee's earnings level. However, this article finds that the U.S. public prefers a noncompete exemption for physicians, a shorter maximum duration for the noncompete period, and a legal mandate that departing employees subject to noncompetes receive some compensation from the employer during the noncompete period. Consequently, this article argues that employers should engage in greater self-regulation if they would like to mitigate the risk not only that legislators will respond to public sentiment favoring more employee-friendly policies by enacting a total or near-total ban on noncompetes, but also that judges will find the noncompetes to be unreasonable.     

Taking action to contain health care costs: Part 1

Health care is one company expenditure that can definitely be cut and controlled. Part I of this two-part study focuses on what major corporations have been doing to keep their costs down and their employees healthy--practices which will work within most existing corporate structures.     

Insider Privatisation and Restructuring Incentives

In the literature on privatisation and restructuring it is a generally held belief that manager owned firms will be restructured more rigorously than worker owned companies. This gives the clear recommendation that property rights and control rights should be allocated to managers in the process of (insider-) privatisation. One of the implied arguments is, that managers' career concerns will make them eager to prove their ability by improving company efficiency. The present model shows that in the transition context managers' career concerns might result in the opposite effect. If the bulk of job opportunities are in worker controlled firms, the managers of the few manager controlled firms will want to appear soft on excess labour capacity – hence, restructure less harshly – in order to improve their career opportunities.     

The effects of job-related stress and job satisfaction on probation officers’ inclinations to quit

Current research indicates that job-related stress and job dissatisfaction are serious employment concerns among probation officers. In other employment domains, job stress and job satisfaction are commonly associated with employee turnover. Moreover, job turnover among probation officers is a serious but understudied problem. Survey data from a random sample of Florida correctional probation officers indicate moderately elevated levels of job-related stress and job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction was significantly and inversely related to probation officers’ inclinations to quit, while job-related stress was indirectly related to such inclinations. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Worker responses to workplace hazards

Recent policy initiatives in occupational safety and health have emphasized strategies that provide workers with information about workplace exposures. It is not clear, however, what effect this new information has had or will have on worker self-help initiatives. This paper analyzes individual and collective worker responses to information on job hazards using five sources of data on workers and industries in the United States. Levels of expressed dissatisfaction, discharges for cause, and strike frequencies are found to be significantly higher in hazardous jobs than in safe jobs. Individual quit strategies are not consistently found to be associated with higher hazard levels. These findings have potentially important implications for the design of future information-oriented health and safety policies.     

Title VII retaliation claims

Section 704(a) protects employees who engage in activity aimed at remedying employment practices they believe to be unlawful. Such activity may take the form of participation in governmental investigations or proceedings, or expressing opposition to an employer's practices through internal complaints to management, circulating petitions among employees, directly challenging an employer's affirmative action plan, etc. As the Ninth Circuit's recent Crown Zellerbach decision demonstrates, employers must proceed with caution before taking disciplinary action against an employee who engages in arguably protected 704(a) activity. The following article discusses employee activity protected by section 704(a) and examines various employer defenses and concerns in a retaliation case.     

The Job of Representation in Congress: Public Expectations and Representative Approval

Few concepts are more central to democratic theory than that of representation. Theories of representation are commonly premised on the belief that citizens' expectations of their representative are politically consequential, yet we know little about the nature of these expectations and precisely how they matter. Using individual‐level data from a recent national survey, we investigate the influence of constituents' job expectations on their approval of their representative in Congress. We find that citizens' job expectations condition the effects of members' legislative activities on their job approval.