Cultivating meaning: interpretive fine-tuning of a South African health information system

A recently conducted piece of micro-level, interpretive IS action research has enabled the delivery of direct user benefits through the adoption of a methodological approach which focuses specifically on the interpretive generation of meaning by authorial individuals. Drawing on recent debates concerning knowledge and identity within social anthropology, IS and social psychology, this approach derives from a theoretical position which acknowledges social constraints on individual behaviour whilst according primacy to individuals’ biographically determined interpretive work. Use of this approach in the field revealed layers of interpretive interaction between users and technology which had hitherto remained invisible and problematic, and allowed several simple practical interventions which strengthened the ability of users to generate their own meanings at critical junctures in the system. It is suggested that such sensitive, low-level ‘fine tuning’ represents a new way forward for those seeking a practical, focused alternative to the more commonplace, high-level research approach within current interpretive IS literature.     

Work‐life balance and the software worker

This article examines the impact of employer flexibility to work‐life issues and negative spillover from work to non‐work life on the attitudes of software developers. Software workers present an interesting case for work‐life balance issues – Ackroyd et al (2000) designate them the key occupation to examine in future studies of ‘knowledge workers’, and Barrett (2001) states that they are the ‘vanguard’ of new working practices, with the separation of work and life being substantially more ‘blurred’ than for more traditional occupations. Despite this general perception of the work‐life boundary, our results show that intrusion of work into private life for this group of workers still has a substantial impact on work‐related attitudes. Work‐life boundary variables affect trust in the organisation which plays a mediational role in these variables' relationship to job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Our results suggest that even within this industry, where employees are relatively individualistic in orientation, highly marketable and unlikely to show attachment to a single organisation, mutual gains for employee and employer can be attained by an accommodating approach to non‐work commitments which may lead to greater organisational attachment.     

City-Regions and Social Reproduction: A ‘Place’ for Sustainable Development?

Recent studies have suggested a city-region’s competitiveness is based not only on production, but social reproduction. These issues as well as the policy measures adopted by many city-regions are frequently couched in a discourse of ‘sustainable development’. But as an analytical framework how well does the concept of sustainable development account for the dynamics of social reproduction and the sustainability of a city-region? This article examines the possible relationship between city-regions and sustainable development at a conceptual level. We argue that despite some excellent work on the concept of ‘just sustainability’, current constructions of sustainable development are inadequate to capture the broad array of social and economic issues found in the city-region. As a way forward we initiate a discussion between the sustainability literature and labor geography, and provide a case study of a hospital privatization process in Boston, USA, which has been framed by a politics of city-regionalism.     

De‐Essentializing the Knowledge Intensive Firm: Reflections on Sceptical Research Going against the Mainstream

This paper provides an updated summary and discussion of my 1993 JMS paper ‘Organization as rhetoric: knowledge‐intensive firms and the struggle with rhetoric’, and relate this to my own and others' later work in the area explored in the paper: knowledge‐intensive work and discourse. A key aspect of knowledge work is the ambiguity of what it stands for, what people working with ‘knowledge’ are doing, and what they accomplish. This fuels identity uncertainties, which is also addressed and reflected upon in the paper. As part of my broader reflections, I also provide a brief overview of some methodological ideas on how to do problematization: a key theme in the original piece but which is more generally a research approach that may lead to contributions that generate interest.     

UK universities and the state: a Faustian bargain?

The universities are now‘one of the last seminationalised sectors of the British economy,’used by government as an instrument of social policy. This situation represents a‘Faustian bargain’which threatens both the quality and the prosperity of universities. One solution would be privatisation of some universities through public flotation. These universities could then contract with government to take state-funded students. Two objections are that the scheme would promote elitism and that it would encourage greater inequality between universities, but the relevant question is whether it would offer an improvement on the present regime.     

Raising the Regional Leviathan: A Relational‐Materialist Conceptualization of Regions‐in‐Becoming as Publics‐in‐Stabilization

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of how spatial entities in general — and those spatial entities that are defined as ‘regions’ in particular — form, evolve and sometimes stabilize. Inspired by the scholarship of Noortje Marres, the article explores how regions‐in‐becoming may be gainfully conceptualized as publics‐in‐stabilization. In the article it is argued that some of the mechanisms involved in such processes pertain to how territorially framed issues sometimes become formulated as loosely articulated propositions for regionalization. These can, with time, generate emergent stakeholder communities, which in turn may become stabilized and delegated to more durable forms and materials which can eventually become naturalized as recognized regions. A suggested conceptual model is utilized to perform an analysis of empirical material from three contemporary processes of regionalization in Northern Europe with the purpose of examining and discussing some of the potential merits and shortcomings of the conceptual model. It is concluded that adopting the proposed perspective can enable scholars to highlight some of the mechanisms whereby vague and non‐coherent propositions for regionalization within time may be singularized and stabilized to such a degree that they become taken for granted as naturalized spatialities.     

‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ Revisited: Which Way Forward For Equal Opportunity Initiatives?

Recent interest in ‘managing diversity’ has reopened debates about forms of equality in the workplace. Approaches to equality developed in the 1970s and 1980s have been characterized as an attempt to ensure that if individuals bring the same abilities to work, or perform in the same way, they should receive the same access to jobs and employment benefits, regardless of social group membership. Managing diversity appears to be about a more positive valuing of difference. Benefits are seen to derive from different perspectives and approaches and these should be nurtured and rewarded rather than suppressed. Feminists have long argued about the extent to which women are the same as, or different from, men, and about the political consequences of adopting these positions. Recent theoretical developments have led to some novel solutions to this dilemma. These include asserting claims to both ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, the deconstruction of ‘difference’, and the reconstruction of ‘sameness’ on women's terms. This paper explores approaches to equal opportunities through both established and novel theoretical perspectives. It argues that existing practice cannot be fitted neatly into the conventional distinctions between ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, and explores the potential characteristics and strengths and weaknesses of equality initiatives based on the new theoretical perspectives.     

‘Policies in Motion’, Urban Management and State Restructuring: The Trans‐Local Expansion of Business Improvement Districts

This article examines the ways in which business improvement districts are being introduced into UK cities. In advancing this analysis, the focus here is on the means through which one or two Manhattan business improvement districts have been constructed as ‘models’ of urban management, taken out of their particular local/regional and national contexts and introduced into a diverse set of local political economic contexts in UK cities and towns. Examining the way business improvement districts have become a policy in motion, the article sketches out the emergence of entrepreneurial urban governance arrangements in the UK as part of the state's changing spatiality in the industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America. I argue that these changes make UK cities and towns increasingly receptive to the business improvement district model of downtown management. Seeking to move beyond the sometimes rather one‐sided representations of policies that find themselves on the move, the article seeks to connect the ‘exporting’ and ‘importing’ zones of policy transfer, arguing for an open and permeable conceptualization of these places. It draws on work in Manhattan, New York to unpack the nature of the political–economic relations that business improvement districts were part of, before moving on to examine the dynamics of policy transfer and the early days of the introduction of this downtown ‘model’ into UK cities.     

Greening work–life balance: Connecting work,caring and the environment

The emerging field of green work–life balance (growing from the work–life balance and sustainability fields) largely centres its analysis around the organisational benefits of green work–life balance policies. Consequently, it often focuses on the way in which individual behaviours can reduce the environmental footprint of the organisation. This paper argues that the gendered assumptions underpinning the research mean that the nascent field of green work–life balance has failed to theorise the way in which personal, community, environmental and organisational needs interconnect. Specifically, it has failed to address the way in which ‘care’—for people and the environment—lacks recognition because of gender norms of carework. This paper proposes a theoretical framework of green work–life balance that centres both environmental and people care. This theoretical framework can be used to inform both research and practice, including the way in which unions bargain and campaign for green clauses and just transition.     

Research and theory on high‐performance work systems: progressing the high‐involvement stream

The notion of a high‐performance work system (HPWS) constitutes a claim that there exists a system of work practices for core workers in an organisation that leads in some way to superior performance. In this article, we dissect this fuzzy notion and examine its companion terminology: high‐involvement work systems and high‐commitment management. We argue that a focus on the high‐involvement stream usefully grounds HPWS studies in an important area of workplace change in the current context and takes us away from eclectic and contentious selections of ‘best practices’. We review research models and findings in this stream. The path to better research lies in examining the underpinning processes experienced by workers when management seeks to pursue high‐involvement systems, and charting their links to employee and operational outcomes.     

USING LEGISLATION TO REDUCE ONE‐TIME PLASTIC BAG USAGE

Plastic bag litter generates serious environmental concerns and poses a risk to wildlife. As this does not seem to be a problem which can be resolved by the private sector alone, or by ‘Coasean’ negotiation, legislation is proposed, particularly focusing on ‘one‐use’ bags. This article surveys legislation worldwide, while concentrating on lessons from the United States and the United Kingdom. The issues are more complex than is often assumed. While environmentalists argue for restriction and ultimate elimination of one‐use bags, manufacturers, especially those that have reformulated the composition of their bags, see legislation as an overreaction to a problem that is already being addressed within the industry. They cite evidence that, when used within a comprehensive recycling programme, plastic bags are not only cost‐effective but a sound use of our limited resources. Bans or restrictions can have knock‐on effects which can create new problems.     

The over‐training of apprentices by employers in advanced manufacturing: a theoretical and policy analysis

This article reports the results of a study of the ‘over‐training’ of apprentices by large manufacturers in the UK. The term ‘over‐training’ was traditionally used to refer to the way in which nationalised industries trained more apprentices than they needed, with the ‘surplus’ being released at the end of their training to find another employer. In contrast, the evidence reported in this article indicates that over‐training now typically involves large employers helping to train apprentices who are employed and paid by other firms from the outset. The project examines the extent and nature of over‐training, the reasons why employers become involved in over‐training, and policy implications. The evidence suggests that over‐training can increase the number of high‐quality apprenticeships. Large employers need to be made more aware of over‐training. Government can help promote over‐training via its ‘Catapult Centres’.     

Opportunities to work at home in the context of work‐life balance

Discussion of ‘work‐life balance’ and ‘family‐friendly’ employment is much in vogue among politicians and business leaders. Often, but not always, working at home is included within such practices. However, the concepts of work‐life balance and family‐friendly are commonly left ill‐defined by researchers and policymakers alike. In this article we outline formal definitions of these terms, which place spatial issues ‐ and hence working at home ‐ at the heart of the debate. This leads us on to examine working at home through the theoretical lens offered by attempts to explain the rise of work‐life balance arrangements. Twelve hypotheses emerge from the literature and are tested on the management data contained in the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey or WERS98. Many of these hypotheses pass weak statistical tests but fail on stronger logistic regression tests. The article shows that the option to work at home is more likely to be available in the public sector, large establishments and work environments in which individuals are responsible for the quality of their own output. These workplaces are typically less unionised but not especially feminised.     

A number‐of‐modes reference rule for density estimation under multimodality

We consider kernel density estimation for univariate distributions. The question of interest is as follows: given that the data analyst has some background knowledge on the modality of the data (for instance, ‘data of this type are usually bimodal’), what is the adequate bandwidth to choose? We answer this question by extending Silverman's idea of ‘normal‐reference’ to that of ‘reference to a Gaussian mixture’. The concept is illustrated in the light of real data examples.     

Promising Futures: CMS,Post‐Disciplinarity,and the New Public Social Science

This paper considers the future prospects for Critical Management Studies and by extension management studies more generally. To explore these, two frameworks from the wider social sciences are deployed. The anchorpoint for the discussion is Michael Burawoy's work distinguishing types of scholarship on the bases of (a) conceptions of knowledge produced by social scientists, and (b) different audiences for that knowledge. Critical Management Studies is founded on critique but its future will be determined by how it makes its way across Burawoy's other domains of professional, policy and public scholarship. To examine this, I draw on John Brewer's recent articulation of the ‘new public social science’. Brewer's problem‐driven, post‐disciplinary approach conceives the public value of social science as its conservation of moral sentiments and sympathetic imagination towards each other as social beings, and its ethical concern about the humanitarian future of humankind. The new public social science is normative and partisan, transgressive, scientific, and impactful. I argue that this provides a potentially fruitful template to guide future management studies. This is a future in which Critical Management Studies – as management studies' critical and emancipatory conscience – has a central role to play.     

An application of search theory to the analysis of regional labour markets

This paper argues that the theoretical framework conventionally used by regional economists when analysing labour markets does not allow the spatial dimension of these markets to be discussed in a wholly satisfactory way. Search theory, which has been little used in regional economics, offers a means of overcoming this limitation. A search theory of labour markets is developed which includes as an exogenous variable the cost of travelling between home and work. The theory is shown to imply an inverse relationship between ‘accessibility to jobs’ and ‘duration of unemployment’.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.     

LIBERTY BETWEEN THE LINES IN A STATIST AND MODERNIST AGE: UNFOLDING THE ADAM SMITH IN FRIEDRICH HAYEK

This article interprets F. A. Hayek as having been constrained by the statism and modernism of his times, and as writing in a way that obscured some of his central ideas. I suggest that between the lines we can see a focus on liberty understood hardily as others not messing with one's stuff– even though Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty defined liberty in ways that tended to obscure this hardy definition, and Hayek often used code words like ‘competition,’‘the market,’ and ‘spontaneous’ where ‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’ would have been plainer, albeit more offensive to the culture. Seeing the hardy definition of liberty between the lines in Hayek enables us to see his focus on the liberty principle and his case for a presumption of liberty. Such a reading of Hayek, I suggest, is true to Adam Smith, who expounded a central message that by and large the liberty principle holds, and that it deserves the presumption in our culture and politics.     

An unsuitable job for a woman: a ‘native category’ approach to gender,diversity and cross-cultural management

This paper takes an ethnographic study of the recruitment of women at BMW MINI between 2003 and 2006 as the basis to explore the impact of the concepts of ‘native categories’ and ‘recontextualisation’ on diversity management and cross-cultural management. I consider how managers' and workers' subconsciously held cultural categories relating to gender and work affected efforts to increase the number of female line workers in the plant, and how these were further complicated by the recontextualisation of German native categories in a British context. In doing so, this paper will develop a better understanding of the way native categories affect management and international business, provide an addition to the literature on recontextualisation, by introducing the concept of ‘native categories’ to research exploring the effects of recontextualisation on cross-cultural knowledge transfer, international human resource management strategy and marketing, and, finally, develop some understanding of how diversity management initiatives can fail in practice.