LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY, WORK FLEXIBILITY, AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION IN HOTELS

酒店的劳动生产率、工作灵活性和国际移民

• 批准号: ES/K00655X/1
• 负责人: Allan Williams
• 金额: $ 25.23万
• 依托单位: University of Surrey
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FK00655X%2F1
• 关键词: LABOUR; PRODUCTIVITY; WORK; FLEXIBILITY; INTERNATIONAL

There has been a longstanding concern to understand the UK productivity gap, that is, why its economic performance lags behind that of many leading international competitors. Initially, an undue focus on manufacturing at the expense of the service sector limited the ability of researchers to address this question. Although this has been partly rectified by recent research on services, some sectors continue to be neglected including hotels, even though they account for significant shares of UK jobs and output. This project focuses specifically on labour productivity, and aims to analyse the extent to which this is determined by flexible work practices within hotels, and the employment of migrant workers, both of which are important and contentious areas of policy and business practice in the UK. We also examine the extent to which there is a relationship between work flexibility and the employment of migrants, and how the interaction between these influences firm performance. Much of the existing research on productivity has been constrained by the limitations of secondary data. This has been problematic given that researchers increasingly emphasise that the key to the productivity gap is to be found not in sectoral averages, but in 'heterogeneity' or the variance between establishments. While recent research on hotels has focused more on individual establishments, their findings have still been limited by data constraints: a lack of data at the departmental level within hotels; reliance on annual or, at best, monthly data that fail to capture seasonality, weekday/weekend and other temporal variations; and reliance on perceptions of performance rather than actual measurements of inputs and outputs. Even where more objective data are available, these often tend to be for financial measures of outputs, rather than physical outcomes (rooms let and serviced, meals served etc) which is a critical weakness in an industry characterised by strong, and potentially distorting, pricing practices. This project benefits from privileged access to a unique data base for three large companies, with some 80 hotels, which provide data not just at the hotel level, or even at departmental level, but at individual employee level. Data is recorded on an hourly basis for different types of labour inputs (part time, contracted, seasonal etc) over a continuous five year period. Outputs are measured in both physical and financial terms, while the availability of data for 2007-12 also allows analysis of how firms have responded to a changing operating environment through the current economic crisis.In addition to its academic contribution, the project will contribute to policies and practices seeking to enhance hotel performance, by identifying key intervention points in relation to work flexibility and migrant employment, in a sector with a poor and uneven productivity record. This will be maximized by working closely with the companies included in the data set, while also engaging with industry-wide bodies throughout the research. The research is timely because of the insights it will provide into some of the key determinants of productivity in an important sector at a time when prolonged economic crisis has highlighted issues relating to UK economic competitiveness. It is also timely because it will be able to provide exceptionally detailed analyses of migrant employment and flexibility, and the relationships between these at a highly disaggregated scale, and to model how these are related to labour productivity. These issues have been prominent in a range of policy discourses covering migration, supply side policies, and industrial relations in the UK.

长期以来，人们一直关注英国的生产率差距，即为什么其经济表现落后于许多领先的国际竞争对手。最初，以牺牲服务业为代价的对制造业的过度关注限制了研究人员解决这一问题的能力。尽管最近对服务业的研究在一定程度上纠正了这一点，但包括酒店在内的一些行业仍被忽视，尽管它们在英国的就业和产出中占很大比例。该项目特别侧重于劳动生产率，旨在分析这在多大程度上是由酒店内的灵活工作方式和移民工人的就业决定的，这两者都是英国政策和商业实践的重要和有争议的领域。我们还研究了工作灵活性和移民就业之间的关系，以及它们之间的相互作用如何影响企业绩效。现有的许多关于生产率的研究都受到二手数据的限制。这是有问题的，因为研究人员越来越强调，生产率差距的关键不在于部门平均水平，而在于“异质性”或企业之间的差异。虽然最近对酒店的研究更侧重于个别机构，但其研究结果仍然受到数据限制：缺乏酒店内部部门一级的数据;依赖年度或最多每月数据，无法捕捉季节性、工作日/周末和其他时间变化;依赖对业绩的看法，而不是对投入和产出的实际衡量。即使有更客观的数据，这些数据往往是对产出的财务衡量，而不是实际结果（客房出租和服务，餐饮服务等），这是一个以强大且可能扭曲的定价做法为特征的行业的一个关键弱点。该项目受益于三家大公司的独特数据库的特权，这些公司拥有约80家酒店，不仅提供酒店一级的数据，甚至提供部门一级的数据，而且还提供员工个人一级的数据。数据是在连续五年期间按小时记录不同类型的劳动力投入（兼职、合同、季节性等）。产出是从物质和财务两方面衡量的，而2007- 2012年的数据也可以分析公司如何应对当前经济危机中不断变化的经营环境。除了学术贡献外，该项目还将通过确定与工作灵活性和移民就业有关的关键干预点，在一个生产率记录不佳且不平衡的行业。通过与数据集中包含的公司密切合作，同时在整个研究过程中与全行业机构合作，将最大限度地发挥这一作用。这项研究是及时的，因为它将提供一些重要部门的生产率的关键决定因素的见解，在长期的经济危机突出了与英国经济竞争力有关的问题。它之所以及时，还因为它将能够以高度分类的方式，对移民就业和灵活性以及两者之间的关系提供极为详细的分析，并建立这些与劳动生产率之间关系的模型。这些问题在英国的移民、供给侧政策和劳资关系等一系列政策论述中都很突出。

项目成果

Performance, labour flexibility and migrant workers in hotels: An establishment and departmental level analysis

酒店绩效、劳动力灵活性和外来务工人员：机构和部门层面分析

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.07.003
• 发表时间: 2015
• 期刊: International Journal of Hospitality Management
• 影响因子: 11.7
• 作者: Yaduma N

Demand fluctuations, labour flexibility and productivity

需求波动、劳动力灵活性和生产率

• DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2016.04.006
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: Annals of Tourism Research
• 影响因子: 13.2
• 作者: Park S