Private equity, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and other private pools of capital form part of the growing shadow banking system in the United States; these new financial intermediaries provide an alternative investment mechanism to the traditional banking system. Private equity and hedge...

Targets of private equity usually have faster job growth than other companies before they are taken over. On average they also have higher rates of profitability. The claim that private equity mostly helps struggling companies is not borne out by the facts. Moreover, the investors who provide...

This paper examines three questions: 1) How and why have financial models of doing business emerged in the last three decades? 2) What new forms of financial capitalism have become important in the current period? 3) How do new financial intermediaries, such as private equity, and the financial...

This study examines the relationship between informal training and job performance among 2,803 telephone operators in a large unionized U.S. telecommunications company. The authors analyze individual-level data on monthly training hours and job performance over a five-month period in 2001 as...

The author analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Total Quality Management and Self-Managed Teams, as compared to mass production approaches to service delivery, among customer service and sales workers in a large unionized regional Bell operating company. Participation in self-managed teams...

This paper, drawing on a 2003–2006 establishment-level survey of 1,819 call centers in 15 countries, examines effects of industrial relations institutions and employer strategies on wage variation across coordinated, liberal, and emerging market economies. The authors find several...

This introduction to the special issue on the globalization of service work provides an overview of the call center sector and its development in coordinated, liberal market, and emerging market economies. The introduction's authors situate this research in literature on the comparative...

The author analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Total Quality Management and Self-Managed Teams, as compared to mass production approaches to service delivery, among customer service and sales workers in a large unionized regional Bell operating company. Participation in self-managed teams...

This study examines factors related to within-occupation wage inequality among service and sales workers in the telecommunications industry. The author draws on a 1998 survey of a nationally representative sample of 354 service and sales centers in the industry to examine the importance of...

This case study of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) demonstrates the value of resource dependence and contingency organizational theories—two branches of organization theory, which has most commonly been used to interpret firm behavior—for analyzing union revitalization....