Valerie Antcliff, Sue Baines and Elizabeth Gorb
The purpose of this paper is to offer an employer perspective on the value of degree apprenticeships (DAs) less than a year after the first apprentices commenced their studies for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer an employer perspective on the value of degree apprenticeships (DAs) less than a year after the first apprentices commenced their studies for a bachelor’s degree in September 2015.
Design/methodology/approach
This case focusses on one of the first DAs in the UK. It draws on evidence from interviews with HR professionals responsible for the DA in two contrasting companies, an international PLC and a smaller, fast growing enterprise.
Findings
Both employers consider that the DA meets recruitment needs in ways that other options do not. They particularly value the ability of apprentices to make an immediate contribution in the workplace. For the smaller employer the university support structures are a significant advantage. Only the larger employer formally input into the curriculum prior to validation but both feel they can tailor content to suit their needs. Both see investing in the DA as excellent value for money.
Practical implications
The value of strong relationships, trust and ongoing dialogue between partners emerges as a key component in fulfilling the need of employers.
Originality/value
The DA model recasts employers as the purchasers of higher education and affords them a key role in developing provision tailored to their needs. Implications of this new model for employers, universities and learners are potentially profound and hard to predict. This case study is based on part of the early stage of a three-year research programme. It provides a unique, early insight into two employers’ rationales for engaging with the DA programme and their initial experiences.
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Sue Baines and Liz Robson
The government wants more people to start up new small enterprises. In practice, this is likely to mean more sole traders without employees, a heterogeneous group sometimes…
Abstract
The government wants more people to start up new small enterprises. In practice, this is likely to mean more sole traders without employees, a heterogeneous group sometimes identified with, and sometimes distinguished from, small enterprises. In this paper, we confront that contradiction, drawing upon academic and policy‐oriented writing on small firms and upon a wider literature on labour markets and employment trends. Being self‐employed is not synonymous with being enterprising, but most self‐employed people will need skills associated with enterprise to survive. We overview the cultural sector, which has been identified as a key growth sector for jobs and one in which very small businesses and self‐employed individuals predominate. We explore in depth the “enterprising” behaviour of a subgroup of the cultural sector, people offering creative services to the print and broadcast media on a self‐employed basis. Our particular focus is upon how they form and manage working relationships. The expectation was that, while few would formally become employers, collaborative, colleague‐like working patterns would be adopted to avoid isolation and overcome the vulnerability of small size. This was true, but only for a very small group. For the most part, links with other self‐employed people were tentative and fraught with suspicion. Distrust was pervasive and often coexisted painfully with a desire to form new links for information seeking, sociability and to combat the commercial disadvantages of working alone. Typically, the most important working relationships were with employees of client companies, and many were determined to see these links as longterm, personal and not purely commercial. There was a marked lack of skills in negotiating and marketing.
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Sue Baines, Mike Bull and Ryan Woolrych
The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical overview of claims and counter claims around increased expectations that the third sector organisations (TSOs) will compete for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical overview of claims and counter claims around increased expectations that the third sector organisations (TSOs) will compete for contracts to deliver public services. It does this through the lens of contested notions of being “businesslike” and “entrepreneurial” across the public and third sectors. Then it assesses how some of these tensions are currently played out between public sector commissioners and third sector service providers.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on a one‐year project funded under the ESRC Business Engagement Opportunities scheme (2009‐2010) in which the authors are working with NHS Manchester (responsible for commissioning and directing NHS funds into a wide range of services for communities across the city) and local third sector delivery and infrastructure organisations. The project consists of a set of knowledge exchange activities (scoping, workshops, placements and an on‐line tool) intended to help NHS Manchester reshape its local provider profile through market making and commissioning new service contracts from TSOs, especially social enterprises. Preliminary findings are reported from the review of academic and policy literature that formed the scoping stage of this project.
Findings
Public sector commissioners and TSOs often struggle to make sense of each others' world views and working assumptions. This cannot be easily overcome but ways of improving dialogue are proposed through exploration of third sector outcomes and entrepreneurial language, practices and mindsets.
Originality/value
This paper offers a new, grounded reflection on the nexus of public sector contracts, entrepreneurship and third sector values.
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Pam Seanor, Mike Bull, Sue Baines and Rory Ridley‐Duff
In response to calls to critically analyse and conceptually advance social enterprise, the purpose of this paper is to examine narratives and models representing a spectrum of…
Abstract
Purpose
In response to calls to critically analyse and conceptually advance social enterprise, the purpose of this paper is to examine narratives and models representing a spectrum of social enterprise from the “social” to the “economic”. The paper tests these against the experience of practitioners who were either employees in social organisations or support workers tasked with promoting social enterprise. This is timely against a background of imperatives from central governments for social organisations to compete for the delivery of public services and become more “entrepreneurial”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reports qualitative research in which participants were invited to draw lines and arrows onto spectrum models to illustrate the social and economic contexts they perceived themselves to be working within. The data comprise interviews and drawings, combined with verbal descriptions of the drawings and reflections on their significance.
Findings
The paper shows how participants interpreted the “social” and “economic” of social enterprise in pictures and words. The research suggests that social enterprise can not be told as a single narrative but as a set of little stories showing oscillations, contradictions and paradox.
Research limitations/implications
Understanding of social enterprise can be much improved by giving greater recognition to ambiguities and compromises within the lived experience of contemporary practice.
Originality/value
The article offers new reflection on widely used images that represent social enterprise along a dichotomous, polar spectrum from social to economic.
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Eric Emerson, Gyles Glover, Sue Turner, Rob Greig, Chris Hatton, Susannah Baines, Alison Copeland, Felicity Evison, Hazel Roberts, Janet Robertson and Victoria Welch
The purpose of this paper is to describe the first 15 months of operation of an innovative specialist national public health observatory for intellectual disability.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the first 15 months of operation of an innovative specialist national public health observatory for intellectual disability.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides a narrative account of aims and achievements of the service.
Findings
In the first 15 months of operation the observatory has: made available to those involved in commissioning health and social care services, a wealth of information on the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities; identified specific improvements that could viably be made to increase the quality of future information; and begun working with local agencies to support them in making the best use of the available information.
Originality/value
People with intellectual disabilities experience significant health inequalities. This paper describes an innovative approach to helping local agencies make the best use of available information in order to commission services that may reduce these inequalities.
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C. B. Crawford and C. Sue Strohkirch
As we move rapidly into the 21st century leaders face the challenge of being effective in a global knowledge environment. Now, more than ever, leaders must play the key role in…
Abstract
As we move rapidly into the 21st century leaders face the challenge of being effective in a global knowledge environment. Now, more than ever, leaders must play the key role in helping organizations cope with the challenges they face from expanding knowledge and knowledge systems. Leaders must guide changes in a climate of increased competition to fill customer demands. This paper addresses the nature of the rapidly changing knowledge organization through an exploration of the traditional leadership paradigms, an examination of current trends in knowledge management and the learning organization, and by finally considering the role of leaders and leadership education in the emerging knowledge organization.
Sue Mesa and Lorna G. Hamilton
A key development in early adolescence is the active construction of individual identity; for autistic young people, integrating the idea of “being autistic” forms part of this…
Abstract
Purpose
A key development in early adolescence is the active construction of individual identity; for autistic young people, integrating the idea of “being autistic” forms part of this process. The purpose of this paper is to explore identity development from a contextualist perspective, foregrounding young people’s experiences within mainstream educational settings.
Design/methodology/approach
A longitudinal, qualitative methodology was used: semi-structured interviews were conducted annually with 14 autistic young people, their parents and teachers between school years 6 and 9.
Findings
Young people felt different from their neurotypical peers and their acceptance of their diagnosis changed over time as they managed their developing personal and public identities. In pursuit of being treated “normally,” many camouflaged their differences at school, which sometimes involved opting out of school-based support. Adults described their own understandings of autism and discussed the responses of others in the school environment to autistic differences.
Originality/value
The influence of sociocultural discourses of autism on young people’s identity development is discussed and implications for both school based and post-diagnostic support for young people and their families explored.
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The purpose of this paper is to study women’s entrepreneurship from the family-firm context and radical subjectivist (RS) economics. While women’s entrepreneurship is a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study women’s entrepreneurship from the family-firm context and radical subjectivist (RS) economics. While women’s entrepreneurship is a long-standing topic of research interest, there have been calls for more theory-oriented research and research which takes context factors in women’s entrepreneurship seriously. The paper responds to this by using an RS’s view of economics as a theoretical lens to consider women’s entrepreneurship in family firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper briefly reviews the potential of the family-firm context for examining women’s entrepreneurship in a non-reductive fashion, then outlines radical subjectivism (RS). The three main elements of RS’s “entrepreneurial imagination” are explained, then linked with other theories of family-firm behaviour and applied to casework on women entrepreneurs in family firms.
Findings
Each element of the entrepreneurial imagination, empathy, modularity and self-organization, generates new research questions which contest previous apparently settled views about women entrepreneurs. Protocols for investigating the questions are suggested. The third element, self-organization, while more difficult to operationalize for empirical testing, suggests how women’s entrepreneurship might generate new industries.
Research limitations/implications
While this is primarily a conceptual study, its case studies invite further exploration of both women entrepreneurs and family firms. The RS perspective could also increase understanding of shared leadership and innovation in family firms. Specific research questions and protocols for investigating them are offered.
Practical implications
Insights from the research have practical implications for entrepreneurship education, for understanding entrepreneurship at the level of society, the firm and the individual.
Social implications
The importance of both family firms and women entrepreneurs to society makes it important to understand both of them better. The RS perspective can help.
Originality/value
The paper highlights the value of combining attention to entrepreneurial context (family firms) and theory (RS) to reinvigorate some old research questions about women entrepreneurs. The combination of family firms and RS is also novel.