bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Predictors of Older Adults’ Capacity for Medication Management in a Self-Medication Program
Authors: Maddigan Sheri L. , Farris Karen B. , Keating Norah , Wiens Cheryl A. , Johnson Jeffrey A.
Published: June 2007

Objectives: The aim of this project was to identify variables that predicted older adults’ ability to manage medications. Methods: The study used a retrospective cohort design and was set in a self-medication program within a rehabilitation hospital. A random sample of charts from 301 participants in the self-medication program was reviewed. Results: Logistic regression models accounted for 26.7% and 55.8% of the variance in the probability of making one or more self-medication errors during the initial and final weeks of the program, respectively. The importance of cognition in predicting medication management capacity was seen in bivariate and multivariate analyses and through a number of interactions with other predictors. Statistically significant predictors in one or both analyses included medication regimen complexity, Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) score, duration of institutionalization, depression, and interactions between (a) medication regimen complexity and MMSE score and (b) ability to cook and MMSE score. Discussion: The direct effects of cognition and medication regimen complexity were important predictors of medication management capacity.
Collaborating for Usable Knowledge: A Work in Progress by the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund
Authors: Schuman Cinthia H. , Abramson Alan J.
Published: June 2007

In response to the persistent gap between scholarly research and “real world” practitioners in the nonprofit sector, the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund (NSRF) of The Aspen Institute launched a series of practitioner-researcher collaborations aimed at producing more usable research. This article provides an overview of NSRF’ scoll aborative programs in the areas of research agenda-setting, grant making, the conduct of research, and dissemination of research findings. It also discusses how NSRF came to adopt this approach, the benefits and challenges presented by collaboration, and ways to overcome these challenges. The authors conclude that despite the difficulties surrounding the collaborative process, collaboration should be attempted in research because it taps the knowledge and experience of both scholars and practitioners to help ensure that research is focused on issues of concern to nonprofit managers and leaders, is methodologically sound, and produces findings that reach appropriate audiences.
Lessons Learned from a Practitioner-Academician Collaboration
Authors: Macduff Nancy , Netting F. Ellen
Published: June 2007

The authors, a practitioner and an academician, report on their collaboration over a 4-year period as opportunities arose in which it was important to draw from one author’s vast practical experience and the other author’s academic expertise. Beginning with a historical view of collaboration grounded in the literature, the authors focus on factors to consider in dealing with collaboration and models of collaboration. After describing three of their collaborative opportunities, they conclude that there are fundamental organizational and institutional issues that need to be considered, even in successful collaborations in which personal and professional differences between the practitioner and academician are not prominent.
Charity Begins at Home: Family Firms and Patterns of Community Involvement
Authors: Litz Reginald A. , Stewart Alice C.
Published: June 2007

Research on philanthropy has made major advances in recent years; however, one issue remains largely unaddressed: the relationship between intraorganizational family-based relatedness and firm philanthropic involvement. The authors seek to remedy this gap by offering and testing the proposition that family firms are more likely to pursue philanthropic involvements. Using a recent typology of family firms, the authors report on the community involvement activities of more than 300 small community hardware stores. Given the small, informal nature of operation and community activity, the authors explore not only their philanthropic activity but also broader community involvement in such areas as business, youth, religious, and service organizations. An interesting trend emerges; firms reporting greater levels of family involvement report greater levels of community involvement than firms identifying themselves as nonfamily enterprises. The authors conclude by reflecting on what this finding suggests for future philanthropy research.
Members, Volunteers, and Donors in Nonprofit Organizations in Spain
Authors: García-Mainar Inmaculada , Marcuello Carmen
Published: June 2007

In general terms, participation in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) generates social benefits, raising human capital through the transfer of knowledge and interpersonal trust through the interaction of NPO members while at the same time encouraging political involvement. People’s relations with NPOs take a variety of forms: The authors could distinguish members, participants, donors, and volunteers. In this article, the authors examine the personal decision to become involved in or collaborate with an NPO from a general approach: (a) What is the relationship between the decisions to participate, become a member, make donations, and become a volunteer? (b) Are there any differences between the various types of NPOs? and (c) Is there any relationship between the relative income inequality of the Spanish regions and the level of citizen collaboration?
The Philanthropic Giving Index: A New Indicator of the Climate for Raising Funds
Authors: Keirouz Kathryn S. , Grimm Robert T. , Steinberg Richard
Published: June 2007

In January 1997, the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy initiated work on a semiannual study of the climate for philanthropic gifts and fund-raising in the United States. This study led to the semiannual publication of the Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI). The PGI measures the climate for philanthropic giving in much the same way that the Consumer Confidence Index assesses the environment for consumer purchases. The PGI focuses on current and expected donor behavior. The authors believe that the PGI will make an important contribution to the field by focusing on current and expected donor behavior. Other available major sources of information on giving focus on past donations, involve significant time lags, and do not attempt to tie donative behavior to solicitation strategies. This research details the methods used to construct the PGI, to select our expert panel, and to form the various subindexes. Next, the potential uses for PGI in research studies is described.
The Determinants of Labour Market Transitions: An Exploration of Contrasting Approaches
Authors: Ashton D. N. , Sung J.
Published: June 2007

This article reports the results of an event history analysis of the determinants of job transitions among a sample of young adults (18-24 year olds). It contrasts the status attainment model with a model of a segmented labour market and compares the utility of both in an attempt to explain the direction of job movement. The results show that the variables which affect the direction of job transitions operate in different ways across the various segments and so highlight the utility of the model of a segmented labour market. Educational qualifications which are accorded a central role in the status attainment model are found to have a reduced and variable influence on the direction of job transitions within the labour market. By contrast, the structural factors and work experience variables which are more central to the segmented labour market model are found to play a significant part in influencing the likelihood and direction of movement in all segments
`The Figures, the Personality and the Bums': Service Work and Sexuality
Authors: Filby M. P.
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the role of sexuality in the labour process in a case study drawn from the off-course betting industry, as a contribution to the discussion of forms of service work. It draws on ethnographic research in three betting shops of a major bookmaking company. Echoing recent studies of sexuality and work, the paper argues that sexuality represents a strong undercurrent in organizational power relationships, and in the tacit expectations of employees. Such expectations, often codified in terms of ambiguous references to `personality', impact on both recruitment processes and authority and peer relations in the organisation of work. If such expectations of necessity remain implicit, sexuality is also shown to be an unstable managerial resource which can emerge as a problematic area of social relations in work
Employment Flexibility and Human Resource Management: The Case of Three American Electronics Plants
Authors: Geary John Francis
Published: June 2007

This paper critically examines management's recruitment of temporary labour at three U.S. electronics firms operating in the Republic of Ireland. Recent discussions around the flexible firm and human resource management models would suggest that the recruitment of a secondary labour force is a strategic and advantageous practice. This paper is critical of these assumptions. It was found that management's reliance on temporary employees gave rise to a number of contradictions and tensions, and in the end was considered to be disadvantageous. This paper is also critical of the flexibility literature's neglect of employees' response to these initiatives. This paper corrects this shortcoming. The counterposing of `flexibility' and `rigidity' as opposites is also criticised.
Professional Knowledge and Social Mobility: Postwar Changes in the Knowledge-Base of Management Accounting
Authors: Armstrong Peter
Published: June 2007

The mutation of professional knowledge is a neglected issue in the sociology of the professions. Through an historical study of the qualification requirements of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), this paper argues that upward social mobility for the subordinate managerial professions creates a tendency for their knowledge bases to expand into a common ground associated with senior management practice. The by-product is a tendency to abandon the function-specific knowledges associated with subordinate status. From the point of view of capitalist control techniques, there is a consequential tendency towards stagnation in the immediate means of labour process control. For the professions themselves, upward mobility involves a number of dilemmas. Firstly it implies that their knowledges will tend to overlap in the area of corporate management. Thus the managerial credibility of a professional knowledge is in tension with its secure possession. Secondly the inherent credentialism of professional mobility projects may be counter-productive in the context of a pragmatic management culture. Initially, CIMA sought to overcome the first dilemma by creating an elite grade of membership qualified to practice management accounting, whilst retaining the practice of cost accounting for the main grade. This attempt to divide the knowledge base of the profession failed because it involved the introduction of an examination which threatened the status of existing senior members. Subsequently the Institute has had to manage the tension between managerial credibility and distinctiveness within a single body of knowledge. In the sense that the Institute is now a large body with members in senior managerial positions, its collective mobility project has been a success. In the process, however, the distinctive features of its knowledge base have been eroded. Because of this and because the knowledges required of senior managers may be about to change, the Institute now feels itself to be under threat.
Modernisation, Culture and Part-Time Employment: The Example of Finland and West Germany
Authors: Pfau-Effinger Birgit
Published: June 2007

The paper discusses how differences between European countries in the rate of part-time employment among women can be explained. In contrast to the usual explanations, the paper emphasises the importance of cultural specificities in the respective countries with respect to the gender contract on the main family and integration model to which individuals as well as institutions refer in their orientations and behaviour. The differences are explained socio-historically by the specificities in the process of modernisation when transforming from an agrarian to an industrial society, showing why in each country a different family and integration model developed. Questions as to the form in which industrialisation occurred, which societal class dominated the transformation process culturally, and whether there was a cultural continuity or discontinuity, are important for cross-national differences in the family model and for the labour market behaviour of women today.
Life History Meets Economic Theory: The Experiences of Three Working-Class Women in a Local Labour Market
Authors: Watson Ian
Published: June 2007

Life history methodology has undergone a major revival in the last two decades but its impact on economic theory has been minimal. The dominance of quantitative methodologies within economics has precluded the contribution which qualitative approaches, such as life history method, can make to questions of human agency and individual decision making. Three case studies of working-class women in a local labour market are used to explore these themes, and to argue for the importance of incorporating social and historical contexts into our analysis of economic processes.
Construction Skill and Skill Construction
Authors: Steiger Thomas L.
Published: June 2007

Despite considerable refinement in scientific concepts of skill, common sense concepts of skill prevail in the workplace. This paper examines common sense notions of skill and craft in United States building construction workplaces, focusing on the informal designations of construction labour (the `good craftsman,' `specialist,' and `jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none') and formal designations of union and non-union labour, using data drawn from empirical investigation. This skill ideology is examined for its role in social closure as well as contradictory aspects that may undermine collective interests. Further research on ideological discourses justifying pay, power and privilege is called for.
Professional, Participative and Managerial Unionism: An Interpretation of Change in Trade Unions
Authors: Heery Edmund , Kelly John
Published: June 2007

This paper argues that the `servicing relationship' between trade unions and their members has passed through three phases in the postwar period. These are termed `professional unionism', characterized by membership dependence on a cadre of expert representatives; `participative unionism', in which union officers facilitated self-reliance among union members; and `managerial unionism', in which members are viewed as reactive consumers who must be attracted by a well-researched and promoted servicing package. Evidence is presented from a range of sources to support this interpretation, though the argument is qualified in recognition of variation between unions, the use of hybrid approaches to servicing and the necessary limits to the complete adoption of each of the three servicing relationships. The paper concludes by reviewing the implications of the argument for theories of union government and makes a case for a cultural account of change in trade unions to supplement existing systems, contingency and conflict theories.
Disciplinary Practice: A Study of Railways in Britain, 1860-1988
Authors: Edwards Paul K. , Whitston Colin
Published: June 2007

Does disciplinary practice by employers evolve over time? Not only conventional analyses of discipline but also Foucauldian theories assume that it does. Three features may be tested: the rate of discipline (which should fall); the types of behaviour punished (which should reflect the maintenance of routine); and the dynamics of the process (which should indicate a rationalised approach and the absence of disciplinary purges). Yet there are very few studies of the process. One previous study of the US textile industry found a remarkable continuity between the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. The present analysis confirms this finding in the very different context of British railways: though types of behaviour subject to discipline were as expected, the rates of action in the late twentieth century were similar to those of the nineteenth, and the dynamics of the process in both periods contradicted an image of rationalisation. The paper also examines links between formal rules and workplace practice. Some findings, for example the particular ways in which rules and practice were connected, are specific to railways. Others, notably the unchanging dynamics of discipline, have a more general relevance and challenge evolutionary assumptions.
Shifting Spheres: The Work and Family Life of Japanese Female Graduates
Authors: Bonney Norman , Stockman Norman , Xuewen Sheng
Published: June 2007

Women occupy a subordinate and peripheral place in the Japanese paid workforce and most women experience a considerable interruption to their employment history while they have young children. This is especially true of university graduates, who are less likely than average to continue in paid employment. This paper draws on the Sino-Japanese Survey of Working Women's Lives to provide insight into that minority of women who continue in paid work in this phase of life. The data confirm the general picture of the female workforce, but make it possible to highlight a sub-group of graduates who have secured a foothold in primary sector employment and whose domestic life exhibits a shift away from the sharp gender division typical of Japanese households. It is suggested that the life courses of Japanese women show signs of increasing differentiation.
System, Society and Dominance Effects in Cross-National Organisational Analysis
Authors: Smith Chris , Meiksins Peter
Published: June 2007

Current cross-national organisational theory remains tied to stark polarisation between convergence and divergence, universal and relative, frames of analysis. Attempts at synthesis between these forces allow for, but do not always explain, why the organisation of work should be constantly pressured to conform to one particular `best practice'. Our approach examines three sources of external influence on work organisation practices: (i) the economic mode of production; (ii) national legacies and institutional patterns; and (iii) `best practice' or universal modernisation strategies generated and diffused by the `society-in-dominance' within the global economy at a particular period of time. In other words, the influences upon work within a particular country are the result of a three-way interaction of what we call system effects, societal effects and dominance effects. All societies are marked by these three influences, although the order of influence varies historically and between societies.
South Africa's Segmented Labour Markets: Skill Formation and Occupational Mobility Under Apartheid, 1979-1993
Authors: Kraak Andre
Published: June 2007

This article examines the changing basis of South African labour market and skill formation in the late Apartheid `reform' era of 1979-1993. It does so by arguing for the adoption of a `macro-institutional' model which focuses on the impact of both `macro' and `micro' processes on labour market formation. This is best achieved by combining the contributions of the American `segmented labour market' school, the British `Cambridge labour market' school and the more recent labour market insights emanating from the debate on post-Fordism. The article concludes by examining the extent to which Apartheid's labour market policies may constrain social and economic reconstruction in the post-Apartheid era. Affirmative Action strategies and post-Fordist macro-economic policies are specifically examined. The analysis suggests that these post-Apartheid policies carry the great risk of increasing rather than diluting racially discriminatory labour market segmentation.
A Cross-National Analysis of the Wages of Part-Time Workers: Evidence from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia
Authors: Gornick Janet C. , Jacobs Jerry A.
Published: June 2007

We analyse wage differentials between part-time and full-time workers in four English-speaking countries, using cross-nationally comparable data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). An analysis of gross wage gaps (that is, unadjusted for human capital- and job-related differences) reveals that women part-time workers earn significantly less per hour than do their full-time counter-parts in all of these countries. In an analysis of net wage gaps (wage gaps adjusted for a range of explanatory variables) we assess the extent to which wage differentials can be explained by measurable differences in human capital-related attributes, and in occupational and industrial variables. Findings indicate that part-time workers are positioned differently within the labour markets of these countries, and that cross-national differences in part-time versus fill-time wages cannot be explained fully by inter-country differences in the degree of wage dispersion. Finally, we discuss policies and institutions that contribute to different outcomes across countries.
Employment after Childbearing: A Survival Analysis
Authors: Macran Susan , Joshi Heather , Dex Shirley
Published: June 2007

Longitudinal data from two cohorts of women born in 1946 and 1958 are used to describe the break in employment experienced by women after childbearing. This is reducing in length. The decline in the employment gap, observed for women born in 1958 has largely been confined to those women who delayed their childbearing until their late twenties and early thirties and women who were more highly educated. What seems to be occurring is a polarisation between mothers in the more and the less privileged social groups, in terms of their ability to enter and stay in paid employment once they have responsibility for children. Although mothers at both ends of the social scale have to balance the dual demands of paid and domestic work, older and better educated mothers are more likely to be in higher status occupations, to earn adequate income to pay for childcare and to be better placed to take advantage of any changes in employer provisions for working mothers.
Welfare Dependency, the Enterprise Culture and Self-Employed Survival
Authors: MacDonald Robert
Published: June 2007

New right discourses about a welfare underclass advance the idea that a significant proportion of the long-term unemployed prefer benefit dependency to working for a living. The alternative to this `dependency culture' is the `enterprise culture', the most tangible manifestation of which is the rapid growth in self-employment and the number of new, small firms in the UK over the past fifteen years. Whilst sociologists have engaged with debates abut the `underclass', surprisingly few studies have examined the motivations, values and experiences of those who appear to have moved out of `benefit dependency' into self-employed enterprise. Qualitative research explored the experiences of working-class people in Teesside who attempted to `become their own boss'. It follows the progress of `young entrepreneurs' over several years into the mid-1990s and complements this with an investigation of adults in business. The realities of survival self-employment developed in the face of permanently high rates of local unemployment do not accord with notions of an `enterprise culture', nor of a `dependency culture', but are better understood as part of a growing culture of informal and risky work.
The Professional Blind in Spain
Authors: Garvia Roberto
Published: June 2007

The professional blind (people who use their blindness as a source of income) occupy a special place in Spain. The case shows how social conditions and self-organisation can allow disadvantaged groups to escape from a welfare dependency which is sometimes seen as inevitable. In most western countries, the blind beggars of the middle ages have become today's welfare clients. In Spain, the blind control their own national lottery and thereby have a standard of living higher than many non-blind groups. This outcome reflected a long historical process. During the nineteenth century, the inability of State or Church to provide welfare encouraged the blind to develop their own organizations. These organisations were strengthened during the Franco period. The focus on the lottery stemmed from particular features of the lottery system in Spain.
Employment Systems in Transition? A Comparative Analysis of Britain and Australia
Authors: Walsh Janet
Published: June 2007

This paper seeks to broaden the scope of internal labour market analysis by investigating changes in the character of company employment systems in a cross-national context. Taking Britain and Australia as the point of reference, the aim is to ascertain whether there are common trends emerging in the character of internal labour markets despite national variations in employment regulation and labour market policy trajectories. Through an analysis of matched organisations in the banking and postal service industries, as well as macro labour market trends, the study finds that comparable forms of employment flexibility, such as part-time working, have developed in both Britain and Australia. At the same time, however, important divergencies have emerged in the structure of pay, largely due to the distinctive impact of national regulatory systems. It is argued that sectorally specific imperatives, such as competitive and technological pressures, and the state and regulatory frameworks, have been simultaneously influential in the restructuring of employment systems in these two countries.
Women, Resistance and Care: An Ethnographic Study of Nursing Auxiliary Work
Authors: Lee-Treweek Geraldine
Published: June 2007

Paid care work has traditionally been marginalised within the sociology of work. This paper argues that this absence needs to be addressed and redressed as paid care is an increasingly important source of employment for women in Britain. Ethnographic material from a study of the labour of auxiliaries in a nursing home is used to illustrate how paid care is affected by factors similar to those which are salient in other forms of work. Like workers in non-care occupations, paid carers use resistance as an everyday strategy to get through their work. This paper argues that ethnographic approaches, favoured by sociologists who studied factory labour in the 1970s and 1980s, may prove to be crucial in revealing that care work is real work.
`The Differences between Women are more Marginal'... Catholic and Protestant Women in the Northern Ireland Labour Market
Authors: Heaton Norma , Robinson Gillian , Davies Celia , McWilliams Monica
Published: June 2007

Despite the high degree of interest in inequality between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, public policy and academic debates alike have focused largely on men's employment and unemployment. The paper suggests a number of reasons for this and analyses the nature of gender segregation in the Northern Ireland labour market, identifying the differences in the employment position of Catholic and Protestant women. Clear contrasts in the labour market position of the two sets of women with respect to unemployment are also demonstrated. The paper makes reference to certain alternatives to conventional measures of participation and underlines the importance of adjusting industrial and occupational categories so as better to reveal the patterns of women's employment. In Britain as a whole, there is increasing interest in a reconceptualisation of women's employment in order to acknowledge and to integrate more fully the specific experience of diverse groups. It is equally important for Northern Ireland, where debates about the changing labour market can all too easily proceed without reference to women at all.
Dualism, Flexibility and Self-Employment in the UK Construction Industry
Authors: Nisbet Peter
Published: June 2007

The rise in the number of self-employed workers in the UK has been paralleled by increasing concern that the use of such `peripheral' labour may result in the operation of a dual-labour market acting to reinforce segregation between `good' core employment, characterised by higher pay, fringe benefits and job security, and `bad' peripheral employment with adverse characteristics. In contrast, using evidence gained from a survey of workers in the UK construction industry, this paper shows that, for any occupation/level of skill, there are discrete advantages and disadvantages in both direct and self-employment. It is, therefore, argued that worker preference for a particular mode of employment is the key criterion which determines the case for either relative advantage or disadvantage. In particular, the evidence shows that the large majorities of both direct and self-employed workers who prefer their existing mode of employment undermines dualist conclusions of relative disadvantage arising from self-employment per se.
Checking Out Service: Evaluating Excellence, HRM and TQM in Retailing
Authors: Rosenthal Patrice , Hill Stephen , Peccei Riccardo
Published: June 2007

We evaluate a number of the claims made in the debate between the prescriptive and critical literature that surrounds `excellence', with a particular focus on human resource and quality management. The critical literature contains two positions, broadly a traditional control perspective and the other concerned with the structuring of meaning. The empirical basis of the paper is an investigation of an HRM and quality initiative in a leading supermarket company. The initiative embodies many of the prescriptions of the gurus of excellence. We present both qualitative and quantitative data collected from shopfloor and managerial staff. Our findings lend little support to the traditional criticism that, if management objectives are realised, they are achieved through some combination of sham empowerment, work intensification and increased surveillance. Our evidence lends more support to the optimistic view that modern techniques of quality and human resource management can benefit employees. We suggest that the alternative concern with the way meanings are constructed has more plausibility, because the new managerial discourse of quality has affected the attitudes of a significant number of employees towards customer service. However, there was considerable variation in how employees received the programme's message and thus its effects are by no means uniform. Moreover, we encounter an unanticipated and previously unremarked consequence of managerial discourses, that employees use these as resources in their struggles with managers in order to bring managers into line with workforce expectations.
Youth, Gender and Part-Time Work-Students in the Labour Process
Authors: Lucas Rosemary
Published: June 2007

In the UK increasing proportions of male and female students in filfltime education are working in marginal, flexible, part-time service jobs. This contemporary labour process centres on age being used to control labour, a process that is interwoven with a repertory of other control strategies concerned with minimising costs and maximising flexibility. Contrary to the assertions of some, this labour process is also gendered. Coupled with the fact that such `stop-gap' jobs do not predict future patterns of labour force involvement, this labour process is unlikely to contribute to a more general erosion of gender segregation in employment. Resistance strategies also take on a variety of forms, with low paid work providing legitimation for `leisure' activities and for the advancement of students' own interests.
The Autonomy of Teams in the Car Industry a Cross National Comparison
Authors: Murakami Thomas
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the autonomy of manufacturing teams at final assembly in the car industry in European and Japanese final assembly plants. The central question of the paper is: `What degree of autonomy is given to teams to influence decisions in their work area'. In order to evaluate the level of autonomy nine key `task-areas' of decision-making have been identified using Gulowsen's (1979) measurement. The following study is based on empirical research in 19 automobile plants.
Privatisation in Turkey: Employees' Views on Privatisation in the Turkish Cement Industry, and Some Comparisons with Britain
Authors: Nichols Theo , Sugur Nadir , Demir Erol , Kasapoglu Aytul
Published: June 2007

In the 1980s privatization was resorted to by governments world-wide. Very little comparative research has been conducted into what this has meant for employees in companies that were privatised in either developed or developing countries. This paper examines the views of employees in privatised cement companies in a developing country, Turkey, and systematically compares their views to those of employees whose opinions were examined in a previous study in Britain. The paper amply confirms that the occupationally stratified response to privatization already found in Britain also applies in Turkey. However, it also suggests that there is generally less hostility to privatization among employees in Turkey than in Britain and that this difference is to be attributed to specific historic and institutional differences between the two countries and in particular to the origin, representation and functioning of their public sectors.
A Return to Contract? Performance Related Pay in a Public Service
Authors: Heery Edmund
Published: June 2007

Performance related pay (PRP) schemes, which link salary to the results of an individual performance assessment, have spread rapidly through the public services in recent years and are often regarded as indicators of a fundamental shift in the employment relationship. This article tests the latter claim by considering evidence on the purposes and effects of PRP in local government. It seeks to determine whether PRP represents a `return to contract' in public service employment, characterised by a precise specification and monitoring of the wage-work bargain by management. The conclusion is that, while some aspects of PRP conform to the contractual model others do not and the study attests to the ability of public sector organisations to absorb, deflect and modify new management techniques transposed from the private sector.
Self-Employment and Home Ownership after the Enterprise Culture
Authors: Burrows Roger , Ford Janet
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the relationship between patterns of self-employment and patterns of home ownership in England in the 1990s. It does this via a secondary analysis of the Survey of English Housing. It argues that for many of the self-employed both the housing boom and the economic boom of the 1980s and the housing and economic recessions of the 1990s have been mutually constitutive. The growth and sustainability of self-employment and of home ownership are two sides of the same socio-political coin. In the 1980s they both boomed and in the early 1990s they both bust. For the future, after the enterprise culture, the two forces are likely to pull in opposite directions, with increasing reliance on self-employment but with housing constituting both a constraint and a risk. Owner occupation is unlikely to offer the means for small business growth that it did in the 1980s, but equally, will make financial demands that the self-employed may find hard to meet. The extremes of boom and bust may be avoided towards 2000, but the livelihoods and homes of self-employed mortgagors are still likely to be precarious.
White and Ethnic Minority Self-Employment in Retail Pharmacy in Britain: An Historical and Comparative Analysis
Authors: Hassell Karen , Noyce Peter , Jesson Jill
Published: June 2007

Despite having opportunities to enter retail or clinical practice, Britain's ethnic minority pharmacists display disproportionately high levels of self-employment within the distinctly entrepreneurial business sector of the pharmacy profession. This paper sets out to describe ethnic minority involvement in the profession of pharmacy, and highlights the role that preference plays in their decision to go into independent proprietorship. The study argues that while racism plays a small part, personal choice, available resources, and structural opportunities for business development within the profession largely account for the different work patterns found among white and ethnic minority pharmacists.
Dreams and Designs on Strategy: A Critical Analysis of TQM and Management Control
Authors: Knights David , McCabe Darren
Published: June 2007

Any management discourse, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), has power effects that can transform individuals into subjects who secure some sense of their own identity through participating either as managers or employees in the practices it embraces. The central argument of this paper, however, is that despite these power effects, TQM is not nearly as effective or rational in controlling employees as its gurus exhort or its critics fear. These arguments are explored empirically through a case study of a major UK retail bank. In particular we illustrate how power and identity relations can intervene to undermine feedback to employees and prevent the upward flow of information to management necessary to ensure that TQM operates effectively. These dynamics are seen to reflect the cost conscious and short-term profit demands endemic within British industry. Just as these `bottom line' considerations have limited the effectiveness of management innovations in the past, they have also created problems for the TQM programme in our case study here. No doubt this will continue to be the case with future management innovations not least because organisational life is always `messy', given its political character. In the form of both career competition and opportunities for resistance to the totalising demands of TQM this paper provides further evidence of the political obstacles to effective innovation.
Class and the Changing Nature of Work: Testing Hypotheses of Deskilling and Convergence among Swedish Employees
Authors: Jonsson Jan O.
Published: June 2007

The changing nature of work is often supposed to be of consequence for interest formation and political alliances between social classes. Three hypotheses are tested: classes converge due to the deskilling of white-collar work or the upskilling of blue-collar work; lower white-collar workers essentially share the conditions of manual workers; the gender dimension cross-cuts the class dimension. Empirical analyses are carried out on the Swedish Level of Living Surveys in 1968, 1974, 1981 and 1991. The major trend is towards an upskilling, though jobs have not become less monotonous. There are signs of class convergence, e.g., in wages and authority, but sharp differences remain. While class divisions exist for both men and women, gender differences within classes are substantial for physical working conditions and market capacity. For several indicators, lower white-collar workers are exposed to similar conditions as manual workers while men in the highest stratum stand out as the consistently most privileged.
Regulation of Work in Small Firms: A View from the Inside
Authors: Moule Chris
Published: June 2007

Participant observation was undertaken at Button Co., a small manufacturing firm operating in the clothing sector. The paper explores the impact of external structures on shopfloor control and the ways in which skilled dyers, and less skilled despatch workers, were able to shape the effort bargain and practise fiddles. It shows a particular varient of small firm dynamics. Large retailers were important to the success of Button Co. but its broad customer base and niche market meant that it was not subject to a simple large/small firm dependency relationship. Control was fluid rather than imposed. Relations with large firms did impact upon the shopfloor, but not in a determinate way. Informal negotiation between directors and workers over throughput and quality occurred on a daily basis: as such, it provides some support to the view that the process of negotiating orders described by Ram (1994) is not ethnically specific.
Autonomy-Freedom and Deliberation
Authors: Bavetta Sebastiano , Guala Francesco
Published: June 2007

Recent attempts to model and measure freedom in the Freedom of Choice Literature (FCL) have focused on the range of opportunities enjoyed by individuals. In this article we focus instead on the range of autonomous choices available to individuals. We illustrate how this approach differs from traditional proposals in FCL and discuss a metric that captures the autonomy aspect of freedom of choice.
Celestial Choirmaster: The Liturgical Role of Enoch-Metatron in 2 Enoch and the Merkabah Tradition
Authors: Orlov Andrei A.
Published: June 2007

This article investigates the roots of Enoch-Metatron’s liturgical office of celestial choirmaster which plays a prominent role in the Merkabah tradition. Although references to this office of the exalted patriarch are absent in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Genesis Apocryphon, and the Book of Giants, this article argues that the roots of Enoch-Metatron’s liturgical imagery can be traced to the Second Temple Enochic lore, namely to 2 Enoch, the Jewish apocalypse, apparently written in the first century CE. This article investigates a tradition found in 2 Enoch 18 where the translated patriarch encourages the celestial Watchers to start liturgy ‘before the Face of the Lord’, that is, in front of the divine Kabod, the exact location where Metatron will later conduct heavenly worship of angelic hosts in the Shi‘ur Qomah and Hekhalot accounts.
Joseph and Aseneth: Jewish or Christian?
Authors: Collins John J.
Published: June 2007

The balance of probability still favors the consensus view that Joseph and Aseneth originated in Egyptian Judaism, before the revolt under Trajan. While a story of intermarriage of an Israelite and an Egyptian was not without interest for Christians, it was of far more central importance for Jews. The likelihood of Jewish authorship is confirmed by the laudatory reference to Hebrew women in ch. 1 and by Aseneth’s embrace of Joseph’s father and brothers. The fact that conversion does not involve baptism weighs heavily against Christian composition. Christian copyists found much that was congenial in the tale, but this does not require that they composed it.
‘You Take Alasdair Macintyre Much too Seriously’ (Ronald Preston) — but Do Preston or Macintyre Take the Global Economy Seriously Enough?
Authors: Brown Malcolm
Published: June 2007

Ronald Preston found Alasdair MacIntyre's analysis of plurality and incommensurability unconvincing, holding that, ultimately, a common rationality enabled disparate perspectives to achieve shared positions. This commitment made Preston sceptical of theologies which drew on MacIntyre to deny the possibility of meaningful dialogue with economics but he ignored the argument that shared liberal roots might constrain his own critique of market institutions. Preston's theological conversation with economics assumes a state-based capitalism, political dominance over economics and a thin plurality. Globalisation challenges such foundations severely but MacIntyre's focus on communities of tradition offers only a weak challenge to global economic power. Preston's understanding of the significance of finitude in economics and MacIntyre's focus on the problems of plurality and the communitarian response are both important in any response to contemporary globalisation. This article explores whether the respective virtues of Preston's and MacIntyre's approaches can coalesce in a theology adequate to the global era.
Marginalisation, Manchester and the Scope of Public Theology
Authors: Atherton John
Published: June 2007

Reflections on contemporary national and global change, including its implications for marginalisation, are developed through an appreciation of Manchester as a fulcrum of such processes, and in critical conversation with Ronald Preston's social theology. The reflections also suggest key features of a contemporary public theology. These are elaborated in the second part of the article with references to an emerging substantive public theology agenda through reflections on a bias for inclusivity, the nature of the human, and the procedures for religious interventions in the public square. The article concludes with a brief consideration of Manchester's central role in developing such a public theology, and the latter's emerging character as promoting connections.
Justice, Ethics and Economics
Authors: Grenholm Carl-Henric
Published: June 2007

Within Christian social ethics different conceptions of market economy are related to different theories of justice. In this article the understanding of justice in the economic ethics of Ronald Preston will be analysed. Here will also be discussed some conceptions of justice which are developed within a Swedish research project on ethics and economics. Justice is often treated in terms of equal distribution, but there are different ideas about what objects can be distributed equally.
Ronald Preston and the Future of Christian Ethics
Authors: Kamergrauzis Normunds
Published: June 2007

In the light of the possibilities and the limitations of theological realism as exemplified by the contribution of Ronald Preston, and given an increasingly global context and pluralist agenda, an argument is developed that proceeds to clarify and promote the contribution of Christian ethics to public debate and policy. It is proposed that Christian ethics has a particular contribution to make to contemporary debate, in clarifying the procedure and content of moral decision-making. The argument shows how different conceptions of the relationship between ethics and a religious, in this case specifically Christian, system of belief influence both the assessment of human moral possibilities and the scope for engagement beyond the confines of one's own social context and tradition. More importantly, it is then argued that such engagement is to be conducted in dialogue and solidarity with those who are excluded from participation in the interpretation of justice and the distribution of power.
Idolatry, Lost Icons and Consumer Preferences
Authors: Steedman Ian
Published: June 2007

Advertising, with its effects on both individual wants and the general ethos of ‘consumerism’, is a matter of concern to both economists and spiritual commentators on the state of society: it thus falls well within Ronald Preston's range of interests. The article will consider both the economists’ approach to advertising and wider concerns about its influence in society, before posing a number of questions about the good and bad aspects of advertising and what, if anything, can and should be ‘done about it’.
The Market, the Multitude and Metaphysics: Ronald Preston's Middle Way and the Theological Critique of Economic Reason
Authors: Northcott Michael S.
Published: June 2007

The European post-Marxist work Empire by Hardt and Negri points to the theological/metaphysical underpinnings of modernity and global capitalism in the medieval shift from Trinitarian orthodoxy to nominalism. Though Hardt and Negri reject religious or transcendental approaches to the social, their work shows remarkable resemblances with the ontological critique of modernity and economism mounted by John Milbank and Stephen Long among others. By contrast the considerable oeuvre of Ronald Preston on capitalism lacks a deep ontological critique. The return of ontology to theological economics in recent contributions from Gorringe, Long, Milbank and Northcott marks a significant recovery of a more theological orthodoxy, but also a more thoroughgoing critique of economism whether in capitalist or socialist guise. It is moreover a critique which highlights the significance of the economic actions of churches and Christians.