Designing and rolling-out a global style in process innovation

This paper discusses a consultancy project for a large multinational-manufacturing client. Style is explored as a concept originatirg in 'cultural' rather than economic disciplines. Three interpretations of culture are explored which have differing, complementary implications for managing style in technology-related organizational learning. The overall intenlion is not to identity and install a global 'best' style or a universal model of IT-related organizational culture. Rather it is to develop heuristics, which highlight what may require attention and handling in a practical situation, within a dialopue-based and learning-oriented approach to global-local strategy in complex production systems.     

Social Exclusion—New Language, New Challenges for Local Authorities

National policy initiatives such as the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit and the new government strategy, 'Opportunity for All', have provided a new stimulus to local authorities to develop more effective local strategies to promote social inclusion. The major features of current local initiatives are described, and the leadership and management challenges presented to local authorities are discussed. However, for local government to tackle social exclusion and poverty more effectively it is also necessary for the structural and regional dimensions of social exclusion to be taken more into account by central government, and for a new equilibrium between central, regional and local initiative to be achieved.     

‘Everybody's talking at me’: the dynamics of information disclosure and consultation in high‐skill workplaces in the UK

This article examines the dynamics of direct and indirect consultation processes in three high‐skill work establishments in the UK. Drawing on a mix of case study survey and interview data, it analyses the experiences and attitudes of predominantly well‐qualified professional employees. Adopting the concept of ‘embeddedness’ of employee consultation at the workplace level, we find that despite considerable breadth and depth of practice, many employees remain dissatisfied with the extent of their individual and collective influence over management decision‐making processes. Four underlying contributory factors are presented: extant hierarchical and bureaucratic management styles, the negative impact of work overload, the individualisation of consultation through computerisation, and the weakness of cooperative forms of union engagement.     

Governance, organizational capabilities, and restructuring in transition economies

This paper focuses on the links between governance, firm capabilities and restructuring following the large-scale privatization process in Central and Eastern European transition economies using an integrative approach. Restructuring in these countries has been motivated by political and institutional changes and less so by market forces. Accordingly, political processes have produced political solutions such as “give-away” privatizations to insiders. These privatizations, in contrast to divestitures to outside owners, have realized less substantive restructuring because non-market incentives, such as too much managerial equity ownership, have created managerial entrenchment. In addition, we propose a connection between governance and organizational learning suggesting that learning is inhibited by excessive managerial ownership and lack of board knowledge regarding its oversight function. Furthermore, this entrenchment and poor board functioning may be perpetuated in financial-industrial groups, which have emerged as substitutes for market intermediaries in emerging economies. Thus, we propose that outside ownership involvement and the development of organizational capabilities may facilitate restructuring in the Central and Eastern European context. Our theoretical arguments are supported by case study evidence from transition economies.     

The Neglected Legacy of Lancashire Cotton: Industrial Clusters and the U.K. Outdoor Trade, 1960-1990

This article considers the neglected legacies of the Lancashirecotton industry and their impact on the U.K. outdoor trade.Studies of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry afterthe Second World War have concentrated on the collapse of coarsecotton spinning and weaving, largely ignoring the impact ofthe knowledge and skills related to the finishing trades. Theexamination of the evolution of rainwear, coatings, and high-performancefabrics in the nineteenth century provides a backdrop to a studyof the innovation process that emerged in the U.K. outdoor tradeafter 1960. It shows that there was a path dependency betweenthe skills that resided in Lancashire’s finishing tradesand coating and fabric innovation for outdoor products. Thisarticle explores both the legacy and the ways in which the networksof innovation functioned as the U.K. outdoor trade expanded.     

Towards a model of cross-sectoral policy development in leisure: the case of sport and tourism

Whilst leisure studies has now become an established field of academic analysis, there is still little literature on the dynamics of the leisure policy process, particularly in the area of cross-sectoral liaison. This paper attempts to synthesize previous research relating to general policy dynamics in developing a model of cross-sectoral policy development. In developing this model, particular attention is given to two major ESRC funded projects of the 1980s – work on Inter-Governmental Relations and Government Industry Relations – which produced two recognizably different models of the policy process. A combined model is proposed which is used to examine and compare the structures of the sport and the tourism policy communities and to analyse how these structures might effective the emergence of a sport-tourism policy network. In conclusion, the extent to which the model this paper develops might be applicable to other areas of leisure policy is discussed.     

The Nonstationarity of Money and Prices in Interdependent Economies

In most nations, paths of monetary aggregates and prices consistently depart from stationary trends. This paper shows that this is a fundamental implication when monetary authorities of interdependent countries seek to smooth their home output and prices in the presence of incomplete world output-market integration and structural asymmetries. Using a two-country model with interdependent output supply schedules, we show that this conclusion holds whether the exchange rate floats or is fixed. It also holds if monetary policies are coordinated. Therefore, optimal monetary policy choices by central banks yield stationary paths for money and prices only under very specific conditions.