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The teaching profession claims that it is experiencing heightened stress and lost staff in crisis proportions. The percentages of teacher resignations by area over the past two years are reviewed and future drop‐out rates in the 1990s are predicted. Reasons for drop out and for stress‐related illness in those who remain in post are examined. Workload is a frequently reported stressor by class teachers. The managers – head teachers and heads of departments – appear to have specific job related stressors. The Polytechnic of Wales study examines the current major stressors and those perceived as potential stress factors over the next five years. They are: meeting deadlines, workload, limited time, continuous change (current) and national curriculum, assessment, TVEI, LMS, records of achievement and organisational restructuring (potential). Females show highest stress levels but more effective coping mechanisms. Recommendations include establishment of formal and informal network support systems.

What access did readers have to fiction in Britain during the Romantic period? To what extent might the fiction market have been segmented into readers who borrowed their novels from libraries ‐ sometimes stealing or failing to return them ‐ and those who bought them new or second‐hand at bookshops? Many circulating‐library proprietors would also serve the novel‐reading population in their capacity as professional booksellers. As librarians, they would promote the value‐for‐money aspect of renting fiction to readers of limited means; as booksellers, they enabled readers to purchase their particular favourites among their bookstocks as well. Purchasing a book, though, did not equate with genuinely wishing and intending to read it. Failing to return a circulating‐library novel, or stealing one, may have been a stronger indication that a title was indeed being selected to be read ‐ and then being retained to be re‐read.

The present social security system has reached a point where it has outgrown its traditional structures. The system envisaged for the future is one in which the state decides what minimum protection everyone must receive and how much tax this entails, and in which a body representing all workers decides on how much of their income they will pay to insure themselves. Policy recommendations for restructuring social security systems in Europe should take into account the fact that social security benefits enjoy a privileged status within the context of public spending; that every country adopts a minimum level of expenditure in line with its considered minimum standard of social protection; and that greater efficiency of social security budgets should be aimed at, through rationalisation of choices, structures, means and services.

The Netherlands, although a small country with few natural resources, is a major industrial power in the West, and operates some of the world’s largest multinationals. To understand more about human resource management (HRM) practices in this country we used a structured interview format containing questions about selection techniques, equal employment opportunity, performance appraisal, motivational techniques, and participative decision making, and we interviewed 30 HRM professionals. Results show that creative research‐based HRM practices are helping organizations to adapt to global economic challenges, but it has not been easy to balance the needs of employers with those of employees in a country with a history of workers’ rights.

Discuss in detail the uses which might legitimately be made of the following passage by the writer of a profound study of economic life and thought in France at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. In answering the question make full use of your knowledge of (a) historical criticism; (b) French economic and general history.

To reexamine the Weber Thesis pertaining to the relationship between ascetic Protestantism – especially Calvinism – and modern capitalism, as between an economic “spirit” and an economic “structure,” in which the first is assumed to be the explanatory factor and the second the dependent variable.

The chapter provides an attempt to combine theoretical-empirical and comparative-historical approaches to integrate theory with evidence supplied by societal comparisons and historically specific cases.

The chapter identifies the general sociological core of the Weber Thesis as a classic endeavor in economic sociology (and thus substantive sociological theory) and separates it from its particular historical dimension in the form of an empirical generalization from history. I argue that such a distinction helps to better understand the puzzling double “fate” of the Weber Thesis in social science, its status of a model in economic sociology and substantive sociological theory, on the one hand, and its frequent rejection in history and historical economics, on the other. The sociological core of the Thesis, postulating that religion, ideology, and culture generally deeply impact economy, has proved to be more valid, enduring, and even paradigmatic, as in economic sociology, than its historical component establishing a special causal linkage between Calvinism and other types of ascetic Protestantism and the “spirit” and “structure” of modern capitalism in Western society at a specific point in history.

In addition to the two cases deviating from the Weber Thesis considered here, it is necessary to investigate and identify the validity of the Thesis with regard to concrete historical and empirical instances.

The chapter provides the first effort to systematically analyze and distinguish between the sociological core and the historical components of the Weber Thesis as distinct yet intertwined components.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.

The key questions explored in this volume converge around issues of educational governance in the context of globalization. The individual chapters each contribute to the goals of assessing the development of the educational agenda of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and providing evidence on the trajectories through which the organization’s programs and policies have directly and indirectly influenced and affected diverse educational systems. The chapter explores these issues in more depth, drawing on the perspectives presented in the volume’s individual chapters. The first section provides a discussion of the contexts that have given rise to the OECD as a key global education policy actor. Following this brief historical overview, some of the key findings raised by the volume’s authors are examined in the context of wider literature on global education policy. Collectively, the chapters raise important questions about the role of nation-states in educational planning, the scope and spatiality of international assessments such as PISA and TALIS, and the complexity of evidence and expertise in global, national, and local educational policy-making. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the volume’s work for the wider field of comparative and international education.

This article has four parts. First, we outline the main determinants of productivity and examine some evidence on the relative importance of the factors involved. Secondly, we outline the “conventional” wisdom on the influence of trade unions and generate several hypotheses on the possible effects of trade unions on a number of economic variables. Thirdly, by an appeal to a wide range of literature, we seek to test these hypotheses but with particular reference to the influence of trade unions on productivity. Fourthly, we indicate that in terms of policy on productivity‐raising measures the conventional wisdom is wanting and there is a need for an alternative theory upon which to base policies for the implementation of change.