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Strategic formulation is a management tool for measuring negotiated performance targets. It is a freely negotiated performance agreement between the government, acting as the owner of public agency on one hand, and the management of the agency on the other hand. The County government strategies are anchored on the Kenya Vision 2030. In revising their strategies, the County government needs to employ participatory approach, relying on the consensus of stakeholder groups, including civil society, the private sector and donor partners. The study focused on Isiolo county government. This is because the county government has been formulating and implements their strategies for the period of 3 years. The study involved all the management employees who include head of department of the county government. There were 63 managerial staff who were involved in the study. The study adopted descriptive research design. The study adopted a census sample design since the target population was manageable and the respondents were within systems that can be accessed easily hence the sample size which was 63 respondents. The questionnaire was used to collect the data from the sample. Descriptive statistics which includes frequencies and percentages were used. Pearson correlation was used in hypothesis testing. The analyzed data was thereafter be presented for better comparison using tables. The study concludes that successful formulation of strategic plan has taken root among the County governments. The study concluded that there no leadership training that equips leaders on strategic plans formulation. The study recommends that the leadership should provide the required support to ensure that strategic plans formulated influences the county government performance. JEL: D73, H83, J88

Strategic formulation is a management tool for measuring negotiated performance targets. It is a freely negotiated performance agreement between the government, acting as the owner of public agency on one hand, and the management of the agency on the other hand. The County government strategies are anchored on the Kenya Vision 2030. In revising their strategies, the County government needs to employ participatory approach, relying on the consensus of stakeholder groups, including civil society, the private sector and donor partners. The study focused on Isiolo county government. This is because the county government has been formulating and implements their strategies for the period of 3 years. The study involved all the management employees who include head of department of the county government. There were 63 managerial staff who were involved in the study. The study adopted descriptive research design. The study adopted a census sample design since the target population was manageable and the respondents were within systems that can be accessed easily hence the sample size which was 63 respondents. The questionnaire was used to collect the data from the sample. Descriptive statistics which includes frequencies and percentages were used. Pearson correlation was used in hypothesis testing. The analyzed data was thereafter be presented for better comparison using tables. The study concludes that successful formulation of strategic plan has taken root among the County governments. The study concluded that there no leadership training that equips leaders on strategic plans formulation. The study recommends that the leadership should provide the required support to ensure that strategic plans formulated influences the county government performance. JEL: D73, H83, J88 Article visualizations:

Following the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history, Bangladesh Government has been getting external pressure to amend and properly implement its "Workplace Safety Laws". Garment factories like the ones in Rana Plaza (the collapsed building in Savar) are large organizations. Along with the large companies, there are a significant number of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Bangladesh which are employing more than 31 million people. Obviously, workplace safety should be a matter of concern for their employers, or is it? Why are they reluctant about it? What is being done to ensure safety? Are they getting pressures or motivated by externalities? Safety measures if taken, is it enough? What else can be done to improve workplace safety? The purpose of this research paper is to find out and analyze the answers to the above questions concerning workplace safety in the MSMEs of Bangladesh. A blend of secondary sources and primary sources (survey amongst a significant number of owners of various MSMEs and observation of a few organizations) of data were used from which both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out for the purpose of exploring the unknown. The results show a rather reluctant approach by the owners regarding this issue. However, it was also found that the government has taken a lot of initiatives to minimize workplace safety hazards and is on the verge of implementing them. Thus, a few alternatives that involve lobbying and use of marketing activities to create greater awareness were recommended. JEL Classifications Code: J81, J88

The diversity of the labour market in the Visegrad Group countries is presented in the article from an institutional perspective. Institutions such as different tax and transfer policies, employment protection legislation, or active and passive labour market policies can affect not only the effectiveness of the economy from a macro perspective, but they can also be crucial in determining the system of rules and incentives for earning money. The institutional conditions of the labour market directly affect the behaviour of labour market participants, their incomes, and therefore income inequalities. To asses and compare the situation between the Visegrad group countries, a synthetic measure of labour market institutions is calculated. A taxonomic analysis is done to group the V4 countries against other selected European Union countries, which enables the assessment and comparison of similarities and differences across the Visegrad countries. Finally, the trade-offs between a synthetic measure of labour market institutions and income inequalities are analysed. The Pearson correlation coefficient and, additionally, the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient are applied. The analysis is done for 2016, as it was the most recent data available while writing the article. The results from such an analysis can help to answer the question of the state's role in limiting income inequalities through labour market institutions and to identify the policies which are the most effective in this field.

This paper proposes a theory of why the state enacted social policy that regulated the length of the working day in 19th century industrial England. This paper will argue that, far from being capable of self-regulation, the capitalist labor market during Britain's industrial revolution is best conceptualized as consisting of two major social coordination problems resulting from conflicting interests between and within capital and labor. Left unregulated, this dual social coordination problem caused the overexploitation of labor, with dire consequences for both the capitalist and working classes. The reason why this coordination problem could not self-correct was because the wage-labor bargain contained the externality of unwaged household labor. The existence of this externality became deleterious to firms' profitability and workers' survival, especially given the high levels of female labor force participation. This social coordination problem justified and required state regulation into industrial relations. By conceptualizing protective policy as the solution to a dual social coordination problem caused by conflicting interests among heterogeneous firms and workers, this paper extends the Polanyian framework with an explicit theory of exploitation based on the classical theory of competition and a feminist emphasis on social reproduction and unwaged labor.

The Spanish 2nd Republic (1931-1936) witnessed one of the fastest and deepest processes of popular mobilization in interwar Europe, generating a decisive reactionary wave that brought the country to the Civil War (1936-1939). We show in the paper that both contemporary comment and part of the historiography makes generalizations about the behaviour of the working classes in the period that stress idealistic, re-distributive and even religious motives to join movements of protest. In some other cases, state repression, poverty, and deteriorating living standards have been singled out as the main determinants of participation. This paper uses collective action theory to argue that key institutional changes and structural changes in labour markets were crucial to understand a significant part of the explosive popular mobilization of the period. We argue first that, before the second Republic, temporary migrants had been the main structural limitation against the stabilization of unions and collective bargaining in agricultural labour markets and in several service and industrial sectors. We then show how several industries underwent important structural changes since the late 1910s which stabilized part of the labour force and allowed for union growth and collective bargaining. In agricultural labour markets or in markets in which unskilled temporary workers could not be excluded, unions benefitted from republican legislation restricting temporary migrations and, as a consequence, rural unions saw large gains membership and participation. Historical narratives that focus on state repression or on changes in living standards to explain collective action and social conflict in Spain before the Civil War are incomplete without a consideration of the role of structural changes in labour markets from 1914 to 1931.

The analysis of interaction of flexibility and precariousness of work shows that the more flexible employment, the more it is precarious. For this purpose, two families of indices, of flexible work and of precarious work, are defined basing on the Fourth European Survey of Working Conditions 2005 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (2007a). Two methodologies of constructing composite indicators are applied, of the Hans Böckler Foundation, and of the OECD. Both methodologies give very similar results. After the indices have been constructed, the dependence between flexibility and precariousness of work is established by regression analysis with statistical certainty. Besides, it is revealed that the institutional regulation of employment does not necessarily imply the adequate factual effect. For instance, Turkey and Greece with a very strict employment protection legislation have a high labour market flexibility due to a large fraction of employees who work with no contract. Among other things, it is shown that the employment flexibility has the strongest negative effect on the employability. It implies serious arguments against the recent reconsideration of the function of social security attempted by the European Commission within the flexicurity discourse. The suggested shift from income security towards a high employability cannot be consistently implemented. Our study provides empirical evidence that a high employability can be hardly attained under flexible employment.

The paper contains both critical remarks on and constructive suggestions to Green Paper: Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century of the European Commission (2006a) which promotes flexicurity policies, that is, relaxing the employment protection legislation while providing advances in employment and social security for flexible workforces, like fixed-term, part-time and agency workers, or self-employed. The default assumption, that relaxing labour laws can be compensated by these advances, is criticised. These measures are regarded as too vague and insufficient, as also demonstrated in our previous study with empirical evidence. Therefore, some additional measures are proposed to counterbalance the actual flexibilization of employment relations, including (1) flexinsurance, a kind of progressive flexibilization tax, meaning that the employer's contribution to social security should be proportional to the flexibility of the contract/risk of becoming unemployed, (2) elements of the basic minimum income model, (3) constraining financial markets, as well as (4) developing adequate policy monitoring/evaluation instruments. It is argued that all of these meet interests of social partners and solve contradictions between such European policies as flexicurity, make work pay, welfare-state policy, and civil-society policy. Finally, we provide specific thoughts to 14 questions posed by the Green Paper.

Perhaps no other country in recent years has witnessed greater change in its collective bargaining framework than the UK. This paper describes the dramatic developments and their consequences. Like Gaul, it is in three parts. The first part charts the six major pieces of legislation – conventionally described as ?anti-union? – that were enacted by successive Conservative administrations between 1980 and 1993, and links them to the subsequent decline in unionism and to improvements in firm performance and that of the macro economy. The second part examines the accession of ?New Labour? and reviews its domestic reform agenda, today largely in place. That agenda comprises two general pieces of employment and employment relations law plus a new national minimum wage. At first (and second) blush these changes do not return Britain to the mid-1970s even if they do imply an increase in union membership and rising costs for business. For evidence of more profound change one has to turn to the third part of our story: the social policy agenda of the European Union. Almost immediately upon taking office, New Labour signed up to the social chapter. This means that a slew of new legislation seeking to regulate the employment relation (mostly decided by qualified majority) is now in immediate prospect. Europe is therefore set to impact the theory and practice of British industrial relations. We provide a brief review of recent and prospective legislation.

It is empirically shown that the more flexible employment, the more it is precarious. For this purpose, two families of indices, of flexible work and of precarious work, are defined basing on the Fourth European Survey of Working Conditions 2005 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Two methodologies of constructing composite indicators are applied, of the Hans Böckler Foundation, and of the OECD. Both methodologies give very similar results. After the indices have been constructed, the dependence between flexibility and precariousness of work is established by regression analysis with statistical certainty. Besides, it is revealed that the institutional regulation of employment does not necessarily imply the adequate factual effect. For instance, Turkey and Greece with a strict employment protection legislation have a high labour market flexibility due to a large fraction of employees who work with no contract. Among other things, it is shown that the employment flexibility has the strongest negative effect on the employability. It implies serious arguments against the recent reconsideration of the function of social security attempted by the European Commission within the flexicurity discourse. The suggested shift from income security towards a high employability cannot be consistently implemented. Our study provides empirical evidence that a high employability can be hardly attained under flexible employment.

The notion of flexicurity was introduced in the late 1990s. It promotes the idea of compensation of deregulation of labour markets (= flexibilization) by advantages in employment and social security, in particularly for flexibly employed (other than permanent full-time, called also atypically employed). This paper suggests an operational definition of flexicurity, taking into account different views of liberals and trade unions. The corresponding flexicurity indices are derived from (a) data on the dynamics of employment types, (b) scores of the strictness of employment protection legislation provided by the OECD, and (c) qualitative juridical data on social security. To convert the latter into numbers, eight employment types (permanent full-time, fixed- term part-time, etc.) in 16 European countries are ranked with respect to their eligibility to five social security benefits (unemployment insurance, public pensions, etc). To avoid known shortages of ranking, the Method of Total Ranks is proposed. The ranks replace continuous variables as index entries, and a dedicated model estimates the total index error which results from such an 'ordinal rounding' of the index input. The flexicurity indices are calculated for 16 European countries for the years 1994-2003. Contrary to theoretical opinions, the current deregulation of European labour markets is not compensated by improvements in the social security. If the flexicurity advantages/disadvantages are accounted proportionally to the size of affected groups then the factual trends are negative even from the viewpoint of liberals, to say nothing of trade unions. The reciprocity of the advantages/disadvantages turns out to be illusory, because gains are smaller than losses and winners are fewer than losers. Thereby the study warns against promoting flexicurity policies with no operational control and empirical feedback.

The paper develops a negotiation model for flexicurity-relevant collective bargaining. Flexicurity is a European labour market policy which should compensate the ongoing flexibilization of employment relations by advances in employment security and social security. Flexibility is promoted by employers, whereas trade unions are concerned with security. First, the opposite interests of negotiating sides are expressed by indicators which evaluate flexibility and security aspects of a collective labour agreement (CLA). A fair agreement should have 0-balance, by analogy with credit-debit 0-balance in finances. Since the flexibility and security indices are expressed in different scales ('in different currencies'), the substitution rate ('exchange rate') should be determined. In our case it is done by regression analysis of flexicurity-relevant CLAs from the past practice. The data are taken from the Dutch computer archive of about 5400 CLAs in years 1995 - 2007. For a given CLA, a positive deviation from the flexibility-security 0-balance means that flexibilization issues are well compensated by security measures (better than on the average). A negative deviation means that flexibility prevails over security, implying that trade unions are disadvantaged. The model outputs tables and graphics and can be regarded as a kind of interactive check-list. It shows shortages and advantages of a given collective agreement with several indices, and displays its relative position with regard to all reference CLAs considered, to those of the given year, to those within the branch, or within the branch in the given year. Finally, the total evaluation of the CLA is made in terms of so called flexicurity balance. This approach can be easily extended to issues beyond flexibility and security. Besides pragmatic goals, the study provides empirical evidence of increasing flexibility at the price of security. This is a serious warning against improper implementation of flexicurity and one-sided use of this policy in favor of employers. The computer tool developed is just aimed at enhancing the position of trade unions to the end of surmounting this negative trend.

Como respuesta al antiagrarismo, que se vertebra a una política económica antipopular y de profunda carestía, organizaciones independientes de campesinos se movilizan y levantan la bandera de las protestas; estratos populares y de trabajadores organizados, ganan la calle, recurren a la gran medida revolucionaria de la huelga general y manifiestan también su inconformidad. Pese a todo, prosiguen las medidas equivocadas que establece el gobierno para "revitalizar" la economía (capitalista financiera) propiciando el estancamiento de la actividad productiva y la carestía que golpea a las mayorías de la población nacional. Una profunda crisis corroe el capital, al régimen de explotación y a la política económica dependiente; los trabajadores, campesinos e indígenas, debemos prepararnos para la gran defensa de nuestros intereses, para tomar mayor injerencia en la conducción económica de las empresas, en forma de cogestión; para organizar la economía colectiva dependiente en el campo y la ciudad, para cerrar filas organizadamente en torno de los grandes ideales revolucionarios e intentar una y otra vez, insistentemente hasta el infinito, la democratización de la vida política y económica de la nación.

The notion of flexicurity was introduced in the 1990s to promote a better job security and social security of atypically employed (other than permanent full-time). The given paper suggests an operational definition of flexicurity which implies the corresponding flexicurity index. For analytical purposes two other indices, the Norm-security of 'normally', i.e. permanent full-time, employed and the All-security of all, i.e. both 'normally' and atypically employed, are defined. The indices are derived from qualitative juridical data. For this purpose, employment groups in different countries are ranked with respect to five partial criteria: the eligibility to public pensions, to unemployment insurance, etc. Due to the specificity of criteria, the ranking is generally possible and is not that confusing as the task of numerical evaluation. A dedicated mathematical proposition estimates the error in the index which results from 'ordinal rounding' of the input variables comparing to using the 'exact' variable values. Thus even if the 'exact' (latent) variables are not known then the rank-scaled input is sufficient to approximate the index which otherwise could not be obtained at all. The index is calculated for 16 European countries for the years 1990-2003.

In 2007 the Commission proposed a Directive aimed exclusively at third-country nationals moving to Europe for the purpose of highly qualified employment that would set up a harmonized entry procedure, lay down common residence conditions and facilitate mobility through Europe. The Directive, named Blue Card, was meant to make Europe more attractive for highly qualified migrants by offering a fast-track entry procedure and social benefits in the EU. The Commission, despite the reluctance of Member States, managed to push through the Directive, which was finally approved in 2009. In the first three years since the Blue Card first entered into force in the majority of Member States in 2012, no more than 30,352 cards have been issued, of which about 26,200 by a single Member State. Why? Through a detailed analysis of the conditions set by the Directive and their comparison with the ones posed by the national labour migration schemes - in particular in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands -, this paper aims to demonstrate that the causes of failure are not to search in the Blue Card instrument per se, but rather in the ways this has been implemented in the single Member States.