Clive Hicks and Rory Gear
The Environment Agency needed to identify key areas of its communication processes for improvement in order to engage employees in major change. Summit‐IMM senior consultants Clive…
Abstract
The Environment Agency needed to identify key areas of its communication processes for improvement in order to engage employees in major change. Summit‐IMM senior consultants Clive Hicks and Rory Gear explain how simplifying processes and introducing workshops helped align service strategy with the wider organizational focus.
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The average job description for a senior HR professional has changed dramatically over the past few decades. No longer the bastion of transactional processes and employee…
Abstract
The average job description for a senior HR professional has changed dramatically over the past few decades. No longer the bastion of transactional processes and employee administration, the responsibilities of the director or VP of HR are markedly different
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The purpose of this paper is to rationalise the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so doing addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to rationalise the continued conceptual utility of social exclusion, and in so doing addresses the prevailing question of what to do with it. This is relevant from social exclusion’s declining relevance in contemporary UK social policy and academia, where its consideration as a concept to explain disadvantage is being usurped by other concepts, both old and new.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses criticisms of limitations of social exclusion which have typically centred on the operationalisation of the concept, but the author will argue that there are distinctive operationalisation and conceptual strengths within social exclusion which make it value-added as a concept to explain disadvantage. Specifically, there will be an analysis of both New Labour’s and the present Coalition government’s conceptualisation of the term in policy in relation to work.
Findings
The analysis highlights the significant difference that a focus on processes rather than outcomes of social exclusion can make to our understanding of inequality and social injustice, and locates this difference within an argument that social exclusion’s true applied capabilities for social justice requires a shift to a conceptualisation built on the processes that cause it in the first place.
Originality/value
The paper acts as a rejoinder to prevailing theoretical and political thinking of the limited and diminishing value of social exclusion for tackling disadvantage. In particular, the paper shows how social exclusion can be conceptualised to provide a critical approach to tackling inequality and social injustice, and in doing so foregrounds the truly applied capabilities of social exclusion for transforming social justice.
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Down my way in October there was the “unique event of a Trade Union leader being inslalled by his boss” as the TU leader so described it.
Many scholars have noted that, since at least 1790, U.K. economic fluctuations have seemed to reach major peaks every 7–10 years. Keynes (1936, ch.18) used the elements of his…
Abstract
Many scholars have noted that, since at least 1790, U.K. economic fluctuations have seemed to reach major peaks every 7–10 years. Keynes (1936, ch.18) used the elements of his theory to explain non‐periodic economic fluctuations. His explanation of periodic fluctuations, i.e. cycles, appears in Chapter 22 of the General Theory. As is well known, he believed that fluctuations in “animal spirits” (that were often only loosely connected with the cost and the real rate of return on capital) led to oscillations in investment which, combined with the durability of capital goods, caused the duration of modern major cycles; fluctuations in liquidity preference and the propensity to consume played lesser roles. Bowing to Jevons (1964), Keynes also noted that unstable agricultural inventories could have been a source of waves in the early 19th Century when agriculture was relatively more important in the U.K. But Keynes did not demonstrate just how his investment theory implied a definite cycle period, because he did not merge his multiplier with the accelerator principle to provide an endogenous explanation of periodic turning points in output. Consequently, as Hicks (1950, p. l) notes, Keynes did not demonstrate how investment and income could peak every 7–10 years; his was really a theory of nonperiodic waves.
In 1933 two books on competitive structure were published. One, extracted from a Harvard PhD filed six years earlier, dealt with the workings of the competitive process. Seeking…
Abstract
In 1933 two books on competitive structure were published. One, extracted from a Harvard PhD filed six years earlier, dealt with the workings of the competitive process. Seeking not to supplant, but to supplement Marshall, this book by E. H. Chamberlin focused on an effort involving the use of a diagrammatic apparatus to highlight certain fundamental relationships between variables in the competitive process. It did not analyse real firms but nor did it attempt to pretend that such were irrelevant, and to concentrate on positions of competitive equilibrium only. It dealt with problems of arrival at equilibrium, false trading, and a whole variety of issues relevant to an actual competitive process. Supervised by Allyn Young, it drew on a wide range of references and showed evidence of the kind of thorough scholarly preparation which has always been characteristic of the best American PhDs.
“Guantánamo lawyers” are a variegated group of lawyers from diverse practice settings, backgrounds, and beliefs. Drawing from interview and archival data, this chapter explores…
Abstract
“Guantánamo lawyers” are a variegated group of lawyers from diverse practice settings, backgrounds, and beliefs. Drawing from interview and archival data, this chapter explores why these lawyers have mobilized to work on Guantánamo matters. What processes engender “heterogeneous mobilization” (i.e., mobilization from different practice settings, and diverse professional, as well as political backgrounds, and beliefs) of lawyers? What are the impacts of such mobilization on the work of lawyers? Adopting a social movement lens and a contemporary historical perspective, this chapter identifies lawyers’ perceptions of their role vis-à-vis the “rule of law” as the most significant cross-cutting motivation for participation. The overlap in human rights orientation of legal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the legal academy, and the corporate pro bono practice at top law firms, facilitates collaborative lawyering between lawyers. Despite some potential limitations of such collaborations, heterogeneous mobilization appears to contribute, at least in the case of Guantánamo, to a greater likelihood of resistance by lawyers to the retreat from individual rights in the name of national security.
Clive Savory and Joyce Fortune
The purpose of this paper is to explore, through a case study, and using Pawson and Tilley's notion of context-mechanism-outcome configurations, how a sectoral innovation system…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore, through a case study, and using Pawson and Tilley's notion of context-mechanism-outcome configurations, how a sectoral innovation system (SIS) for health technologies has developed.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study data were collected as part of a large study that looked at technology innovation and adoption in the UK's National Health Service and were collected using an interpretive case study methodology. Primary data came from interviews and secondary data from published sources, including articles authored by members of the innovation team.
Findings
The paper identifies three specific configurations of context, mechanism and outcome that were important in the case and discusses how these contribute to a broader understanding of a healthcare services SIS.
Research limitations/implications
Research conducted through a single case study is open to the criticism that its findings are not generalisable but it has offered an economical way of gaining a deep description of a situation and an understanding of the contextual factors affecting a phenomenon. The paper presents a refined model for understanding SISs that though primarily rooted within the healthcare care sector has potential for application in other sectors, especially those that encompass a significant public-sector component.
Practical implications
The paper's findings and conclusions have relevance to healthcare service innovation policy development. The findings will also be useful to professionals responsible for innovation projects and their support within the sector.
Originality/value
The paper makes an important contribution to the understanding of a SIS for healthcare services as well as refining a general model of SISs.
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Louise Boulter and Clive Boddy
The purpose of this paper is to better comprehend the subclinical psychopath's intra and interpersonal moral emotions in the context of their natural habitat, the workplace…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to better comprehend the subclinical psychopath's intra and interpersonal moral emotions in the context of their natural habitat, the workplace, alongside implications for employees and organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on affective events theory (AET) to illuminate this dark-side phenomenon. Thematic analysis is used to identify themes from qualitative data collected from a small sample of interviews conducted with human resource management (HRM) directors and other managers.
Findings
The findings show that the subclinical psychopath is agentic, being unfettered by intra self-directed conscious moral emotions. The predominant moral emotion directed at employees during interpersonal workplace exchanges is typically anger. However, it appears likely the subclinical psychopath fakes this moral emotion as a smokescreen for manipulative and exploitative gains. The predominant moral emotion directed by employees towards the subclinical psychopath is fear. Employees resort to avoidance and withdrawal behaviour and intentions to quit become a reality.
Practical implications
The signalling quality of employees' moral emotions and subsequent dysfunctional avoidance and withdrawal behaviour can provide valuable information to HRM professionals in the detection of subclinical psychopaths which is acknowledged as notoriously difficult.
Originality/value
This study contributes new knowledge to subclinical psychopathy and makes novel use of AET to explore this personality type as a driver of employees' negative workplace emotions, the impact on employees' behaviour alongside implications for organisational effectiveness.
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Shops and shopkeepers are a British tradition. More than 150 years ago, we were a nation of shopkeepers, and the picture of shops and the shopping public seemed unchanging. There…
Abstract
Shops and shopkeepers are a British tradition. More than 150 years ago, we were a nation of shopkeepers, and the picture of shops and the shopping public seemed unchanging. There were, of course, the early departmental stores, the co‐operative societies, the multiple shops, the chain‐stores, but the position was much as it had always been and the greatest proportion of retail trade was still in the hands of the traditional type of shopkeeper. The two Wars changed many things, but it was not until after the last War that retail trade really began to change and looking at it objectively and at the food trade particularly, it has become a revolution.