The ‘science’ and ‘practice’ of HRM in small firms

This paper looks at the ‘science’ and ‘practice’ of human resource management in small firms. While there is growing evidence that the practice of human resource management in small firms is characterized by informality, there is less evidence about the science, or explaining why this is the case. We look to writing on strategic human resource management, which has at its heart the resource based view of the firm, for possibilities offered to understanding the science of human resource management in small firms.     

‘House poor’ or simply ‘poor’?

This paper defines a set of indicators for distinguishing housing affordability problems resulting from high rents from those chiefly arising from low income. In place of the common ratio of rent to income, it uses a residual income indicator with indicators of over-consumption and over-paying for housing services. The indicators are computed for a sample of renter households in Switzerland, one of the countries with the greatest rental share. They help define more precisely who needs general income assistance and who needs specific housing aid (only one fourth of the former).     

Combating environmental repercussions through ‘TQEM’ and ‘ISO 14000’

Business is totally dependent on society although we sometimes do not experience it that way. All business, even in their most limited form, confront environmental issues, some more than others. Business leaders will be actively addressing social and environmental issues. These companies will be going for certification to ISO 14001 (EMS) and progressive organizations have moved beyond EMS requirement, seizing control of environmental operations through Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM). Industry leaders are incorporating environmental thinking into every aspect of their operations. As a long‐range plan towards TQEM, an organization can have a road map and a clear model for achieving excellence in the area of Environmental Management. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Environmental management: from ‘fit’ to ‘stretch’

Environmental management is a budding discipline that studies the development and shaping of environmental policy in business. This article discusses what progress has been made in theory building in the field of environmental management, and what priorities should be set for future research. The level of ambition of a company with respect to its environmental performance is seen as the result of the following three variables: the coincidence of increased eco-efficiency and market opportunities; the internal structure and culture of the company (including the influence of a number of important actors in it) and the pressure from the immediate and wider social environment to take environmental measures. Research in the field of environmental management can improve our understanding of the conditions under which companies will strive for higher eco-efficiencies. It is argued that such research must concentrate on the interaction of the three variables mentioned above and on how they affect the actions of companies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Institutionalization of ‘The Property Mind’

This essay discusses the idea of ‘the culture of property’ and whether it combines the economic and cultural explanations of gentrification. To explore the idea of a culture of property in the case of Singapore, it examines both what motivates Singaporeans to invest in real estate (e.g. nostalgic feelings, duty, guilt, moral economy, face, filial piety towards ancestors and a way to remember their origins as reasons for investing in properties in China), and the institutions in the property state of Singapore (e.g. the possibility of owning and selling public housing, collective sales legislation that encourages collective profitmaking and the pension system) that increase Singaporeans' appetite for property and make them watchers of the property market. Lastly, the essay discusses the consciousness of evictions and of class differences and notes the random and unfair nature of the property market. It ends with a call for further research on real estate and property development, and their role in increasing urban inequality.     

The ‘Urban Age’ in Question

Foreboding declarations about contemporary urban trends pervade early twenty‐first century academic, political and journalistic discourse. Among the most widely recited is the claim that we now live in an ‘urban age’ because, for the first time in human history, more than half the world's population today purportedly lives within cities. Across otherwise diverse discursive, ideological and locational contexts, the urban age thesis has become a form of doxic common sense around which questions regarding the contemporary global urban condition are framed. This article argues that, despite its long history and its increasingly widespread influence, the urban age thesis is a flawed basis on which to conceptualize world urbanization patterns: it is empirically untenable (a statistical artifact) and theoretically incoherent (a chaotic conception). This critique is framed against the background of postwar attempts to measure the world's urban population, the main methodological and theoretical conundrums of which remain fundamentally unresolved in early twenty‐first century urban age discourse. The article concludes by outlining a series of methodological perspectives for an alternative understanding of the contemporary global urban condition.     

‘A Land of Milk and Honey’? Reengineering the ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ in a Call Centre*

ABSTRACT This article explores how managers, in the Call Centre of a Bank, (re)defined, and drew boundaries around ‘past’ cultural conditions, in relation to the introduction of a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) regime. Managers represented the ‘past’ negatively, in terms of conflict and coercion, whilst the ‘present’ was largely described as a Shangri‐La of teams and consensus. This eschewing of the ‘past’ and sublimation of the ‘present’ stood in opposition to the representations of the staff. Both the ‘staff’ and ‘managers’ seemed to reject or embrace discourses that challenged or coincided with their understanding of how things are or should be. In view of this, their understanding of the past/present is inseparable from a consideration of power and identity. The article examines the interplay between discourses and individuals, arguing that it is bound up with fear and anxiety, hope and aspiration, memory and nostalgia, among other, everyday life experiences.     

Obtaining legacies ‘face-to-face’

This paper is a general overview on how to obtain legacies. It must be remembered that the element of legacy fundraising which involves face-to-face techniques is the culmination of a properly organised and researched campaign, and cannot in any circumstances be done without a great deal of other essential preparatory work. Legacies account for nearly a half of all voluntary income in the UK, yet even now very few charities have developed a really effective all round legacy campaign integrated into their overall fundraising strategy. This paper is an attempt to give some insight into this potentially important income stream and is designed to give every fundraiser some helpful ideas, whether working for a large established national charity or a very small, local, recently formed voluntary group.     

‘Repeat commercializers,’ the ‘habitual entrepreneurs’ of university–industry technology transfer

Among academic faculty, is there a class of ‘repeat commercializers’ who account for a disproportionate share of commercialized technologies arising from university research? In a survey of 172 engineering, mathematics, and science faculty members from a major Canadian university, we found evidence that a class of repeat commercializers does exist. Further, we found that the 12% of the faculty who are repeat commercializers account for 80% of the commercialized innovations. Interviews with repeat commercializers in the same faculties at the same university suggest that repeat commercializers parallel habitual entrepreneurs in that they have the ability to commercialize (i.e. the ability to generate and identify commercializable inventions and the ability to acquire resources for the commercialization of their inventions) and the aspiration to do so (i.e. commercialization-friendly attitudes). Since repeat commercializers account for such a large percentage of commercialization activity, it is important that programs and policies associated with technology transfer address the needs of this subpopulation of the faculty.     

The ‘New Competition’ and Working Time

Jill Rubery, who is Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Management, and Sara Horrell, Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, draw on a study for the Equal Opportunities Commission to discuss the significance of the competitive conditions said to lie behind changes in working time. They argue that the existing approaches to understanding these changes – they are ‘determined’ by the ‘market/technology’ or relate to a redefinition of power relations within the workplace – are both inadequate. What is required, they suggest, is a more complex analysis of competition which takes into account both the factors that shape market conditions and the factors inside the organisation that influence responses to them.     

Patent statistics: deciphering a ‘real’ versus a ‘pseudo’ proxy of innovation

Patent statistics have fascinated economists concerned about innovation for a long time. However, fundamental questions remain as to whether or not patent statistics represent the real state of innovation. As Griliches pointed out, substantial questions involve: What aspects of economic activities do patent statistics actually capture? And, what would we like them to measure? He pointed out that these statistics can be a mirage appearing to provide a great number of objective and reliable proxies for innovation.This paper aims to address some of these questions by making a comparative evaluation of the representability of patent statistics in four levels of the innovation process, using as examples research and development (R&D) in Japan's printer and photovoltaic solar cell (PV) industries over the last two decades. Furthermore, this research provides a new set of patent statistics which could be considered a more reliable proxy for innovation.     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

‘Generation Rent’ and The Fallacy of Choice

The now widely used term ‘Generation Rent’ reflects the growing phenomenon in the UK of young people living in the private rental sector for longer periods of their lives. Given the importance of leaving home in youth transitions to adulthood, this is a significant change. It is further critical given the rapid expansion of the private rented sector in the UK over recent decades and the more limited rights that private tenants have. This article draws on qualitative evidence to highlight the impact this has on young people's lives, and broader patterns of social‐spatial inequality. Our research highlights that, whilst young people retain long‐term preferences for homeownership, they nonetheless deconstruct this normalized ideal as a ‘fallacy of choice', given its unachievability in reality. Influenced by the work of Foucault, Bourdieu and Bauman, we emphasize how these dominant norms of housing consumption are in tension with objective reality, since young people's ability to become ‘responsible homeowners' is tempered by their material resources and the local housing opportunities available to them. Nonetheless, this does not exempt them from the ‘moral distinctions' being made, wherein renting is problematized and constructed as ‘flawed consumption'. These conceptual arguments advance international scholarly debates about the governance of consumption, offering a novel theoretical lens through which to examine the difficulties facing ‘Generation Rent’.     

The limits of ‘the new industrial relations’

This article argues that ‘the new industrial relations’ represents a continuation of key themes in the Marxist tradition of enquiry. It identifies and offers a critique of the important contributions made by the ‘new’ approach in the debate on the structure and development of industrial relations in capitalist society.