Thesis (MEd)--University of South Australia, 1997

In this thesis the positive relationship between firm size and wages is investigated through the application of hierarchy theories. Many different explanations have been proposed for this relationship, but have met only limited success at best. The strongest finding to date is that unobserved ability is a significant factor. The question of interest here is ???why do wages increase as the size firm increases???? Hierarchy theories take a different approach towards the analysis of firms in comparison to the alternate theories which have dominated previous investigations. As a result of their focus on the organisational relationships within a firm???s internal structure, hierarchy theories offer certain insights to the size-wage relationship which to date have been unnoticed. An empirical investigation into the size-wage differential incorporating structural considerations into an augmented wage equation offers strong support for the propositions of hierarchy theories. I find that half of the firm size effect for workers can be explained by controlling for some aspects of management structure, and that span of control has a discontinuous effect on wages. These results are completely consistent with the existing findings on unobserved ability and have the added attraction of providing economic as well as statistical explanatory power.

This is an interdisciplinary thesis in women's and gender studies combining legal analysis with archival research. It traverses Australian women's struggle for equal pay and pay equity from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twenty-first. It recounts and analyses women's activism through campaigns targeting state and federal politicians, prime ministers, premiers and state and federal ministers for labour and industrial relations; engagement in the industrial arena; and through women's organisations and work with the trade union movement. The thesis analyses achievements and setbacks through the federal industrial arena, and references, too, major state industrial cases and legislation. It analyses women's intervention and impact in the Equal Pay, Minimum Wage, Basic Wage and National Wage Cases. Through archives, original letters, articles, pamphlets, books, interviews and other sources, the thesis recounts women's agreements and disagreements on how the struggle would be won, and the solid campaigning in which women engaged from the late years of the nineteenth century, through every decade of the twentieth, and in the first years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. It covers a span of over one hundred years, during which the claim was characterised as one for equal pay, the rate for the job and, more recently, pay equity. Looking at the past and the present, the thesis concludes that women's direct engagement with the industrial system and parallel working within women's organisations and trade unions has been central to gains in equal pay and pay equity. Apart from women's and men's earnings in Scandinavia, relativities between women's and men's wages and salaries in Australia have been -- despite the disparity - the most approximate of all OECD countries. The thesis posits that it is only with a return to centralised wage fixing, with women's organisations intervening and bringing their own experts to educate industrial commissions, employers and unions, that the value of women's work will be recognised as equal to the value of men's work, and equal pay, the rate for the job, or pay equity will be achieved.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-123). Available online via OhioLINK ETD.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Laura O. Taylor, committee chair; H. Spencer Banzhaf, Susan K. Laury, Mary Beth Walker, Kenneth E. McConnell, committee members. Electronic text (177 p. : ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 7, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-176).

Univ., Diss.--Paris.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Laura O. Taylor, committee chair; H. Spencer Banzhaf, Susan K. Laury, Mary Beth Walker, Kenneth E. McConnell, committee members. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 7, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-176).