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This paper examines the development of an antecedent model of social partnership, the social “accord” employed by the Labor Government in Australia during the period 1983‐1996. The specific focus of the paper is upon the implementation of the Training Reform Agenda (TRA) in Australian manufacturing. The TRA was designed to provide for the upskilling of existing employees and the enhanced vocational preparation of new employees. This was a joint objective of government, business and union policy and one designed to encourage the growth of high‐wage, high‐skill industries. The achievement of this objective was, however, limited. Social partnership, in the case of the TRA, proved to be a way of legitimating a work change process which delivered greater gains to employers than it did to unions and employees. The partnerships formed under the aegis of the TRA had a limited lifespan and represented a contingent form of relationship between the partners, rather than a seachange in relations.

This paper explores the theoretical implications of empowered self‐management as a teamwork design concept. It explores the multiple definitions of empowerment and self‐management that have been used in the design of work teams and it attempts to locate empowered self‐management within the relevant traditions of work design. The paper provides a critical appraisal of empowered self‐management as a team design concept arguing that its unique contribution to the work design literature, has been the development of concepts that focus upon task enlargement as the basis of enhanced role accountabilities within teams. Empowered self‐management as a team design concept has little to say about employee or group autonomy but in fact reflects the design of teams to provide for the normative self‐regulation of employees within management directed systems of control.

This paper sets out to test the claim made in the lean production literature that the lean production system is universally applicable. The proponents of the lean production model insist that it will supersede both mass production and specialised batch production; but this paper argues that, whilst lean production practices have been adopted and adapted by many producers, batch production has an enduring value from both a work design and a manufacturing process design perspective. The paper reviews the evidence for the persistence of batch production and of craft work methods in both luxury vehicle manufacture and specialty component manufacture and highlights the conditions under which batch production remains viable.

Although typologies of violence have become more common, relatively little attention has been given to Donald Black’s (1983) distinction between moralistic and predatory violence. Moralistic violence is rooted in conflict; predatory violence is rooted in exploitation. We elaborate Black’s typology and show how it is similar to, but distinct from, other typologies of violence. We also address the criteria by which typologies of any kind might be judged. Borrowing from the literatures on typologies and on standards of scientific theory, we argue that explanatory typologies should be evaluated according to four criteria: the degree to which they are powerful, theoretical, general, and parsimonious. Applying the criteria to Black’s typology, we argue that the distinction between moralistic and predatory violence is an important contribution to the arsenal of the student of violence.

Town Clerk's Office, Town Hall, Bethnal Green, E. 18th November, 1916. To the Chairman and Members of the Public Health Committee. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, At a recent meeting of the Public Health Committee, the Chief Sanitary Inspector reported upon legal proceedings which had been unsuccessful owing to the case of “Hunt v. Richardson” decided by a King's Bench Divisional Court of five Judges on the 2nd June, 1916, and I then reported upon the legal aspect of the case.

Terrorism has much in common with genocide and sometimes may even be a form of genocide. In this chapter I systematically compare these two phenomena.

Drawing mainly from Donald Black’s work on terrorism and my own work on genocide, I examine the conceptual and theoretical overlap between terrorism and genocide.

Terrorism and genocide are similar and sometimes overlapping, and they occur under similar social conditions – in response to conflicts between socially distant and unequal groups. Conceptually they differ mainly in that terrorism is covert and carried out by civilians, and genocide may not be. The main theoretical difference is that terrorism tends to be upward – against more powerful targets – while genocide tends to be downward – against less powerful targets. Terrorism tends to be less effective than extreme genocide, then, and the most extreme cases have death tolls much lower than the most extreme cases of genocide.

This analysis draws from previous theories of terrorism, genocide, and social control to better place terrorism in a broader sociological context. In doing so it highlights and explains key features of terrorism, and it even helps us to speculate about the future of terrorism. That is, technological advances might in the long run destroy the social conditions conducive to terrorism, thus leading to terrorism’s ultimate demise, but in the short run they might allow terrorists to more effectively kill, leading terrorism to resemble extreme genocide in its deadliness.