Managing the locals: employee relations in South Asian restaurants

This paper examines the management of employee relations in South Asian firms in the UK independent restaurant sector. Key working practices pertaining to the employment relationship are examined in a particular socio-economic and spatial context. Acknowledging such contexts facilitates an appreciation of how ethnicity and employment relations interact, rather than abstracting culture from the material context in which it operates. Consistent with this analytic focus, a mixed embeddedness perspective (Kloosterman et al. 1999) is adopted which recognizes the importance of both economic and social aspects of ethnic minority entrepreneurship. A qualitative methodology, drawing upon 23 case histories (involving both employer and employee perspectives) is deployed. The indications from this research suggest that the employment relationship is an outcome of the fluid interaction of social, economic and geographical contexts. This renders problematic both culturalist and purely economic approaches to ethnic minority entrepreneurship. Future research should carefully consider how the employment relationship is influenced by its embeddedness within specific communities.     

'Fun and surveillance': the paradox of high commitment management in call centres

Much of the research into telephone call centres has focused on the coercive employment systems which are adopted in these organizations. This appears to contrast with the high levels of customer service and satisfaction which are often required for them to be successful. Our research, which is based on two case studies of call centres studied in depth, challenges this 'satanic mills' image. We explore the ways in which both companies sought to balance the pressures in the product and labour markets and employee needs to develop strategies which combined elements of commitment and control. They developed sophisticated human resource practices, which resembled the high commitment management approach, while, at the same time, maintaining a highly controlled and measured work environment. Consequently, there was a greater alignment between their HR practices and control systems, the needs of employees and the high quality of interactions with customers expected. This suggests that high commitment practices are not automatically associated with extensive employee discretion, as has been argued in the manufacturing sector. HR practices of this kind can be used to offset some of the worst features of call centre working. These findings illustrate the variety of HR practices in call centres and suggest some possible reasons for this diversity.     

FOOD STAMPS,TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES AND FOOD HARDSHIPS IN THREE AMERICAN CITIES

We examine how participation in the Food Stamp and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs is associated with self‐reported household food hardships, using data from a longitudinal survey of low‐income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. In addition to the measures of hardships and program participation, the survey includes measures of income, wealth, social resources, disability, physical health and family structure, measures that help us to account for selection between recipient and non‐recipient households. For our multivariate analyses, we estimate multiple indicator multiple cause models that are modified to incorporate discrete outcome variables and to account for longitudinal data. Estimates from these models reveal that participation in the Food Stamp Program is associated with fewer food hardships, while participation in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has no detectable association with hardships.     

Britain’s Industrial Evolution: The Structuring Role of Economic Theory

We trace the coevolution of industrial organization and the ideas and policies that have influenced Britain’s industrial development from Alfred Marshall’s pioneering work on the English industrial districts to the present. Then, we examine four contemporary districts — in footwear, motorsport, sparkling wine, and cyber security — that are internationally competitive, despite decades of ill-informed policy choices, if not neglect. We also investigate the case of British elite sport as a high-performance industrial cluster with potentially transferrable institutional arrangements, particularly with regard to the nature and role of the strategic lead body and the state, as well as relationships within the system. We conclude that Marshall’s methodological and theoretical approach to understanding industrial organization — and his belief that industrial districts would coexist with other forms of industrial organization (rather than be superseded by them) — helps to explain the dynamism of contemporary British industrial districts, with important implications for Britain’s industrial revitalization.     

Management Research and the New Logics of Discovery and Engagement

This paper develops an argument that leads to a vision of management research as a form of design science. Such an approach to research requires an inversion of the relationship between rigour and relevance. Giving primacy to the pursuit of rigour, as tends to be the current norm, de-emphasizes the importance of relevance and leads to research that interests very few beyond the community of management scholars. We argue that we should re-imagine relevance as a necessary condition for rigour and that this will lead to new forms of engagement with theory and practice that have the potential to create a new science of management.     

Sustainable Development and the Consumer: Exploring the Role of Carbon Labelling in Retail Supply Chains

This empirical article contributes to the sustainable development debate by examining consumer responses to carbon labels within a real world context. Given the limitations of methodologies that use self‐reported or intended measures of purchasing behaviour, we use the loyalty card data of the largest supermarket retailer in the UK to measure the impact of carbon labels on sales by different consumer segments. The data show that the trial of carbon labels on supermarket own brand products has had no discernible impact on shifting demand to lower carbon products. In order to explore possible reasons for lack of impact, nine focus groups were held using purposive sampling by retailer consumer segments to allow an exploration of awareness, understanding and use of carbon labels. The findings from the focus groups identified possible reasons for this lack of impact: lack of awareness and understanding of carbon labelling; constraining or facilitating social and cultural influences; and the heterogeneous nature of consumers. As a result, a number of implications for stakeholders are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Owners and managers: The venture 100 vs the fortune 500

A steady supply of entrepreneurs who will build the growth firms of the future has always been seen as fundamental to the economic health of a country. However, as companies have grown to the point where many have balance sheets larger than many countries, the role of the Top Management Team in managing these corporate giants has also received more prominence. Unfortunately, research into the two groups of current entreprenurs and large corporation managers has been both sparse, and has followed different, though parallel, paths. This research examines their backgrounds and asks the question whether the basic assumption that they are, in fact, different is correct—who are the high flying entrepreneurs, and are they any different from successful corporate leaders?Data was drawn from three sources. A questionnaire was sent to the 167 founders listed in the July 1984 edition of Venture Magazine as the “Venture 100”—“the nation's top entrepreneurs who run the companies they founded in the past ten years”. Sixty-seven useable replies were received from 40% of the founders and 52% of the companies. Comparative data was extracted from the “Korn Ferry's International Executive Profile: A Survey of Corporate Leaders” which surveyed five senior executives from each of the Fortune 500 companies. A response rate of 47% was received from a survey of 3640 executives. Further comparative analysis was extracted from the characteristics of senior executives of all firms in five selected industries (Dairy, Mobile Homes, Tires, Footwear, and Machine Tools) as listed in Duns Reference Book of Corporate Management 1983/1984. Data was collected on personal characteristics (age, family background, and education), previous employment experience, managerial style, and work patterns.The null hypothesis of there being no significant difference between high flying entreprenurs and their counterparts in the largest U.S. corporations was not sustained. Whereas certain characteristics showed similar patterning—previous employment experience, managerial success traits—the remaining variables demonstrated significant differences. The entrepreneurs were younger, better educated, had more international experience, and worked harder than their corporate colleagues. If replicated elsewhere, the results of this study have particuloar implications for the type of educational and employment experience necessary to affect the supply of the entrepreneurs of the future.     

The Effects of the Fourth Amendment: An Economic Analysis

We develop an economic model of crime and search that allowsus to analyze the effects of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionaryrule on crime and privacy. We find that the rule always increasescrime but has two opposing effects on searches. It directlyreduces searches by reducing the chances that they lead to successfulconviction, but it also indirectly increases them by increasingcrime. If its indirect effect dominates, the rule actually increasessearches and has an ambiguous effect on wrongful searches. Ifits direct effect dominates, it reduces wrongful searches, therebyprotecting privacy. Its direct effect is more likely to dominatethe greater is the number of police officers per capita, thelower is the police's incentive to simply close cases and themore accountable the police are for their mistakes. Police accountabilityalso increases crime but unambiguously reduces wrongful searches.We also explore the effects of long-term progress in searchtechnology on crime and privacy.