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After two years of operation on a national scale, the New Deal Welfare to Work (WtW) programme for young people aged 18‐24 (New Deal for Young People, NDYP) – a flagship scheme and key element in New Labour’s general lifelong learning policy for post‐compulsory education and training – has been extensively evaluated both by official government and independent researchers. This research is analysed within the framework of policy analyses of the key aims of the New Deal and associated lifelong learning objectives, and the main findings are examined against the background of a case study of the operation of the NDYP in the West Midlands region. By way of a conclusion, a contrast between the (generally favourable) quantitative outcomes of WtW and the (partly unfavourable) qualitative studies is drawn in terms of short‐ and long‐term aims for unemployment relief and the reform of vocational education and training in the post‐school sector.

Idiosyncratic deals are personalized employment conditions individual workers have negotiated. This study aims to investigate influences on supervisors' authorization of i‐deals and their evaluation of these arrangements.

Structural modeling was used to analyze survey data from n=263 supervisors managing telecommuting employees in the German public administration.

Supervisors differentiated among i‐deals regarding development, flexibility, and workload reduction. Their authorization of developmental i‐deals was influenced by employee initiative. Supervisors viewed these i‐deals to have positive implications for employee motivation and performance. Flexibility i‐deals were influenced by structural conditions such as the type of work the employee performed. Supervisors viewed these i‐deals to enhance work‐life benefits. Supervisors tended to grant workload reduction i‐deals in the context of unfulfilled organizational obligations towards employees.

Relying on single‐source cross‐sectional data, our results provide a managerial perspective on i‐deals. Conclusions regarding implications for employees are tentative. Recommendations for future study designs are discussed.

Managers need to better recognize that i‐deals take different forms, and these forms are associated with different outcomes. I‐deals provide a way to experiment with innovative human resource practices.

This is the first study to examine i‐deals from a supervisor perspective. It is the first to identify differential circumstances and consequences managers associate with authorizing three distinct forms of i‐deals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations operate in the absence of a clear regulatory authority in a self-regulating environment. Significant moves towards self-regulation by various political administrations, together with successive waves of deregulation raise questions about the ability and effectiveness of industries and markets to regulate their own behaviour. This is a topical political and social concern with governments often appearing to favour self-regulation as opposed to the constitution of an official regulator. The absence of a regulator and the possibility of voluntary compliance raise a number of issues for the way in which organizations operate and the consequences, both intended and otherwise for organizations and society at large.

Empirically the authors explore the case of an industry leader within the Passive Fire Protection industry, as it adjusts to an increasingly self-regulated market environment. The authors document how organizational members make sense of the regulatory environment and the behaviour of actors within it.

The authors find that discourses of enterprise that underpin self-regulation permit actors a choice between compliance and non-compliance. Whilst also noting the prevalence of notions of morality in terms of how actors make sense of both compliant and non-compliant behaviour. Despite common sense notions that morality is seldom clear cut or unambiguous, the case study reveals that frameworks for understanding behaviour allow participants within the industry to make very clear demarcations between moral (compliant) and amoral (non-compliant) behaviour.

The authors learn how those that are compliant within the industry come to question the effectiveness of the regime to which they comply, thus ultimately undermining the integrity of the regime. In the absence of a strong regulatory regime, some agents draw upon notions of enterprise to justify an individualist, economic and pragmatic approach that makes non-compliance permissible. Thus the discourse of enterprise is present in the justification of both “moral” and “amoral” behaviour, this leads the authors to question the wisdom of policy that promotes the idea of enterprise as effectively ensuring compliance.

Employing a feminist relational lens, the purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life balance experiences of black migrant women entrepreneurs, examining the relationship between macro, meso and micro levels of business activity. The paper examines the obstacles raised and opportunities enabled by the confrontation and negotiation between the private and public space.

Qualitative methods are used and the paper draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 black women business owners in the legal and black hairdressing sectors in London. The analysis of the paper is informed by a relational approach that recognises the embedded nature of business activity in differing levels of social action.

The analysis reveals that ability of the women in the study to manage their work-life balance was shaped by power relations and social interactions between and within cultural, structural and agentic dimensions of small business ownership.

This paper contributes to the literature on business and entrepreneurial behaviour of women by embedding work-life balance experiences of black migrant women in context of relations between and within macro, meso and micro levels. It conceptualises the behaviour of the women in the study in terms of confrontations, negotiations and dialogue between notions of motherhood, femininity, family and entrepreneurship at the societal, institutional and individual levels. In so doing the paper expands the literature on minority entrepreneurship and underscores the interconnected nature of these three levels to produce unique experiences for individual migrant women.