Search results

The emergence of the global economy between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, with its concomitant intensification of competitive pressures, has been accompanied by a search for appropriate objectives, policies and mechanisms for developing private enterprise in the UK. The current UK Government has attempted to accommodate the varied local needs of the private business sector, and the need for support by public authority, by creating the Training and Enterprise Council (TEC) network. This offers a devolved management structure for the delivery of enterprise support and training services and a means of creating public‐private partnerships in the stimulation of local economic growth. An overall view is given of this initiative, based on an appreciation of the critical interactions between central government, the TECs, private sector organizations and representative forums for local business. Drawing on current theories of governance to suit the new conditions of the 1990s, a contribution is made to discussions of the evolution of public policy and its effect on the development of a healthy and vigorous private enterprise sector.

Despite the wide‐ranging debate on industrial relations in Great Britain, relatively little is known about management attitudes on a number of key issues. Data was collected from 300 managers, mainly top level management in the private, manufacturing sector in London and the South East, using a postal questionnaire. The article begins with a summary of their work situation and educational and social background and then proceeds to an examination of their attitudes. The attitudes are discussed under three headings: the nature of relationships in industry, management's role, and their problems. It is reported that there was a widespread belief that management constituted a third party, not allied to either employer or employee.

In July 1985 the government decided in favour of major reform of wages councils. It restricted their scope to setting minimum hourly and overtime rates of pay and removed people under 21 completely from their coverage. This raises questions about the functions of wages councils within the British industrial relations system. There is a need to adopt an industrial relations perspective on wages councils. Contemporary debate on the continued usefulness of wages councils is biased against them by virtue of failing to recognise that they exist not only to protect workers from low pay, but also represent state attempts to create collective bargaining and industrial democracy in situations where the capacity of workers for collective organisation has been too low to support voluntary developments. All these different identities of wages councils need to be understood and combined to achieve a comprehensive conception of their actual significance. There is a need for more research based on appropriate methodologies, studying the wages council sector itself and for studies to measure the effects of wages councils on efficiency and productivity.

Baumol’s impact on the development of managerial theories of the firm is investigated here through the material found in Galbraith’s archives. In 1957, Galbraith published a paper claiming that the impact of macroeconomic policies varies with market structures (competitive versus oligopolistic). That publication prompted Baumol (1958b) to send Galbraith a manuscript dealing extensively with a crucial question of managerial theories of the firm, namely, the trade-off between sales and profits. I argue that Baumol’s critiques and Galbraith’s answers largely explain the way Baumol (1958a, 1959) framed his alternative model of the behavior of corporations. He reasoned in terms of maximization of sales with a profit constraint as their main objective. In return, Business Behavior, Value and Growth fostered the development of Marris’ (1964) and Galbraith’s (1967) theories of the corporation. While Tullock (1978) provides a narrative in which the sales maximization hypothesis has two main branches – Baumol for the one and Galbraith–Marris for the other – the paper demonstrates that these branches are intimately connected.

The competencies that need to be developed and deployed in coping with accelerating changes in the business environment have been the subject of much work dating back at least to the 1960s. Two broad themes are discernible in this work. On the one hand there are those who argue that the speed of change is so fast that organisations and managers who can respond almost instinctively and improvise responses quickly will do well. On the other, there are those who argue that more formalised systems of strategic development and control are needed to give organisations a competitive advantage. The results from an empirical study of some 267 organisations are used to shed some light on this debate. The evidence supports the idea that a growing organisation is associated with the existence of internal strategic systems that support the firm’s growth ambitions, allowing it to make not only “good” business decisions and to monitor how well the organisations is doing against its strategy, but to do so speedily.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

The British CBI introduced national educational and training targets in 1991. Small firms might be regarded as unlikely to respond to them because of, for example, lack of time, cost constraints and fears of other firms poaching their employees. Is this true? Surveys of South London employers in November 1992 and February 1993, which were carried out for South London Training and Enterprise Council (SOLOTEC), provide some interesting insights on the relative standards of training in small businesses. Reports findings which show that size does matter and goes on to argue that there could be a different set of training dynamics in many small firms. Poses a culture of rational and incremental change in training activity in large firms against a more visionary approach in small firms to explain some curious evidence on the uptake of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs).

The right to copyright protection is an important asset in industries which rely on individual creativity for competitiveness. Considers the role and function of UK copyright law for design protection in the furnishing fabric sector, with particular reference to the implications for introducing knowledge of the law into design training. Reports on the findings of an industry survey which investigated both the actual experience of design infringement and practitioners’ views about potential measures of improving awareness of copyright law. The increasing propensity to find copies in overseas markets is documented along with data pertaining to the sources of information on legal measures to which currently designers have recourse. It is concluded that, due to changing factors in the industry, modern design training courses need to review the educational requirements of future designers in this area.

This paper examines the impact of restructuring within the transport and logistics sector on women managers working at senior and less senior (middle/junior management) levels of the organization. The majority of women experienced increased performance pressures and heavier workloads as well as an increase in working hours. At the same time, there were pressures to work at home (i.e. weekends and evenings) and reduced opportunities to work from home (i.e. during normal office hours). Management level emerged as an important factor in how these changes were interpreted. Senior managers perceived more positive outcomes in terms of increased motivation and loyalty. Despite a longer working week, they were less likely to report low morale as an outcome from long hours. In fact, irrespective of management level, women working shorter hours were more likely to report low morale as an outcome. Results are discussed in relation to literature on restructuring and careers, in terms of perceptual framing and in relation to different levels of investment in the organization.