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In the UK the management and organisation of the public sector has been undergoing dramatic changes for over a decade now. The organisational change processes include privatisation (eg. of what were the public utilities), deregulation (eg. of bus transport), competitive tendering (for both professional and non‐professional services), the creation of internal markets (eg. within the National Health Service), and managerial devolution (eg. Local Management in Schools, the Executive Agencies). Among the new management practices which have been actively promoted we can include profit centre management, performance management, quality assurance, business planning and ‘culture management’.

Presents initial findings from research undertaken in 1996 for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation into the internal governance of further education corporations, housing associations and training and enterprise councils. Discusses the relationship between board members and senior officers in these organizations by focusing on the distinctions drawn between strategy, policy and operations. Argues that the language of policy has increasingly been replaced by the language of strategy and that this corresponds to the evacuation of policy questions from the local public sphere. Advances four hypotheses to explain this rolling back of the frontiers of politics: a reassertion of the power of chief executives/managers linked to a new generation of social entrepreneurs; the emergence of a new generation of élite volunteers who restrict their activities to vision and strategy; a response to a rapidly changing economy, society, politics and environment in which speed of decision is of the essence; and increasing centralization. Concludes that a combination of internal and external pressures has reinforced the move towards the new governance.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodology for critical welfare practice research, “recollection-as-method”, and to use this to demonstrate the social relations of social welfare institutions.

The paper analyses a series of personal recollections from the author’s experiences of academic life and welfare work to establish a methodology for critical welfare practice research. This uses concepts memory, dirty work, shame and complicity, and is grounded in critical feminist and critical race work, and psychosocial and socio-cultural approaches to governance.

The paper establishes a methodology for critical welfare practice research by demonstrating the significance of using an ontologically driven approach to governance, to achieve a realistic and complex understanding of statutory welfare work.

Recollections are post hoc narrations, written in the present day. The ethics and robustness of this approach are deliberated in the paper.

The focus of the paper is on statutory welfare practice that involves the assessment and regulation of homeless people. Principles and arguments developed in this paper contribute to reflective and reflexive debates across “front-line” social welfare practice fields in and beyond homelessness. Examples include assessment of social groups such as unemployed people, refugees and asylum seekers. Arguments also have application for criminal justice settings such as for prison work.

This foregrounds practitioner ambivalence and resistance in order to theorise the social relations of social welfare institutions.

The recollection-as-method approach provides a methodology for critical practice research by demonstrating an alternative way to understand the realities of welfare work. It argues that understanding how resistance and complicity operate in less conscious and more structural ways is important for understanding the social relations of social welfare institutions and the role of good/bad feeling for these processes. This is important for understanding interventions required for anti-oppressive social change across the social worlds of policy-practice life.

I want to suggest that as important as the number of jobs in the future is the type of those jobs, and I want to look a little more broadly at what is still the physical place of work for most of us — the organization — be it factory, office, or shop, places which I think are changing with all manner of unsuspected consequences even while we talk. If you even half believe me it adds up to quite a change; to put it more evocatively we are living through a social revolution, but what keeps one awake at night is the fact that half the people have not noticed and the other half do not seem to give a damn. Sometimes I think that the British people actually prefer to stumble backwards into the future, because that way they delude themselves that things are not changing too much after all.

This paper aims to describe the origins of the concept of a psychologically informed environment (PIE), as now adopted and applied in homelessness resettlement, placing this in the context of work recently carried out under the aegis of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Centre for Quality Improvement to recognise and promote “enabling environments” in all areas of social practice.

This paper gives an historical account of the contemporary development of new thinking and practical applications for enhancing community mental health and well‐being.

The concept of an enabling environment (EE) arose out of efforts to up‐date for the twenty‐first century the post‐war concept of a therapeutic community, for all services working with the same basic core values and psycho‐social awareness. The EE approach now applies this framework more flexibly, yet with a clear operational focus in each sector, to a wider range of organisational contexts, social practice and agencies outside the therapy and care services world. From the outset, homelessness resettlement and social housing practice was seen as a key part of the overall ambition.

Understanding the values base behind social‐psychological approaches in social practice environments helps to translate these ideas into service‐led improvements in actual frontline services practice. In particular, the enabling environments approach offers a handy tool for self‐assessment and service improvement, which is fully compatible with the PIE's philosophy.

The concept of a PIE is currently acquiring momentum within homelessness resettlement work in the UK. In helping to establish the underlying values framework for psychologically‐informed services; and also provide tools for such services to use, this paper makes a contribution to help inform developing practice.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

Sexuality is complex, concerning concepts such as power relations, sensuality, personal integrity, capacity to consent, decision making, identity and self‐awareness, intimacy and relationships. Despite this complexity, it is an integral part of every human being, affected by race, socio‐economic status and intellectual ability. However, the expression of the sexuality of people with learning disabilities is denied and rarely facilitated. Often the importance of gender identity is ignored and this is reflected, for example, in how women with learning disabilities see their own bodies. Explanations include historical beliefs like eugenics, service principles such as normalisation, economics and an over‐riding concern to protect women and men with learning disabilities from abuse. Acknowledging that such factors play an important role in preventing the facilitation or expression of sexuality by men and women with learning disabilities, this paper focuses on the development of the criminal law, the role and potential of current sexual offences and the Home Office Report Setting the Boundaries.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

This study aims to focus on the accountability of organizations to multiple stakeholders with differing interests and power, where there is an absence of accountability towards shareholders.

Longitudinal field study via participant‐observation.

The study focuses on the relations between the subsidiary and the parent boards and how a governance improvement plan affected the internal dynamics of the organization and helped to clarify the demands of multiple stakeholders. A stakeholder‐agency model is developed which emphasises the role of governance, the importance of structure and process, and the culture or ethos of boards in which multiple stakeholders may have compatible rather than competing interests.

The paper focuses on the quasi‐public sector and develops stakeholder‐agency theory by identifying governance at the centre of differing relationships with stakeholders with unequal salience where there is both an economic concern with efficiency and a broader social concern.

This monograph contains abstracts from the 2005 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, 6‐7th September 2005