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This paper aims to explore and analyse how shifting frontiers of control emerge and change the labour process so that restrictions to output become diminished, subsequently affecting organisational performance.

Multiple case study design. Interviews with 104 respondents. Analysis of productivity statistics in order to test for the statistical significance of the closedown effect. Single multiple regression analysis of the comparative strength, of the closedown effect, between cases.

Shifting frontiers of control arise during the closedown process, a control system characterised by markedly unrestricted autonomy for the workers as the management frontiers of control abate. This provides an operative space for informal work practices, innovation and emerging new industrial relations, accounting for the higher levels of output.

A multiple case study of three different manufacturing organisations, with comparably long closedown periods. The authors do not analyse the sustainability of the increase in output or the generalisibility of the closedown effect to other industries.

It is possible to anticipate improved productivity if shifting frontiers of control are rapidly replacing the old. If management abandons the old control mechanisms, previous to the closedown decision, and provides operative space for workers' initiatives and informal leadership during the closedown process, it is possible to expect good performance, enabling a scope for extended closedown periods.

This is the first study that analyses the comparative strength of the closedown effect and how restricted work practices change under the process of closedown.

In modern corporations, internal R&D is considered an important source of new products and, therefore, a major mechanism of new business generation. Innovation studies report, however, that only a small fraction of all R&D projects are successful. They recognise that the quality of management is a key factor in predicting the outcome of innovation processes. In spite of this consensus, only a few empirical studies have described how managers from various organisational positions jointly produce certain innovative outcomes in certain industries and corporate contexts (Maidique 1980, Burgelman & Sayles 1986).

Colombia has one of the highest levels of inequality in landholding in the world. This inequality has persisted in spite of numerous state-led land reform efforts, which leads to the question: why has it been so difficult to reverse unequal land distribution in Colombia? To answer this question, the chapter examines the role of the state, non-state armed groups, land inequality, land reform efforts, and a history of violence to reveal the relationship between land, inequality and violence in Colombia. This chapter explores the nature of this relationship to understand Colombia’s enduring inequality and to inform theoretical approaches to statehood and power. Rather than reducing state capacity to common Weberian binary constructions of state and statelessness, I explore how state capacity takes on different forms in different regions of Colombia – analyzing how various actors shape land inequality and violence across the territory. Using a comprehensive longitudinal panel data set of displaced persons, I use a negative binomial regression model to demonstrate how land reform, land inequality, and a history of violence have directly affected current displacement of citizens. I argue that several constellations of powerful social actors have at various points converged to control land, through non-state armed groups, to exert a local form of logistical control outside the scope of the federal state, deeply affecting the dynamics violence across different territories. These groups have subsequently engaged in a land grabbing process that has resulted in a reverse form of land reform – leading to persisting inequality in Colombia.

This paper aims to assess the economic impact of uniform COVID-controlling policies that were implemented by the US government in 2020 and compare it with hypothetical targeted policies that consider the heterogenous effect of COVID-19 on different age groups.

The author began by showing that the adjusted SEQIHR model is a good fit to the US COVID-induced daily death data in that it can capture the nonlinearities of the data very well. Then, he used this model with extra parameters to evaluate the economic effects of COVID-19 through its impact on the job market.

The results show that targeted COVID-controlling policies could reduce the US death rate and GDP loss to 0.03% and 2%, respectively. By comparing these results with uniform COVID-controlling policies, which led to a 0.1% death rate and 3.5% GDP loss, we could conclude that the death rate reduction is 0.07%. Approximately 378,000 Americans died because of COVID-19 during 2020, therefore, reducing the death rate to 0.03% means saving a significant proportion of the COVID-19 casualties, around 280,000 lives.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first study to assess the economic impacts of COVID-controlling policies by using the multirisk SEQIHR model.

Public space has traditionally been space of and for the people, a place where the community could congregate and engage in public expression, including expression of a political nature. In the current environment of increasing insecurity, police departments are encouraged to join the fight against terrorism by increasing surveillance and control over ever-larger areas, including public space, and over ever-greater segments of the community. This chapter examines two recent initiatives by the New York Police Department that are changing the nature of public space in the city.

Placing expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia in the context of the global land grab, this paper analyzes the contemporary extent and early historical periods of plantation expansion via the theory of accumulation by dispossession (ABD).

After reviewing the empirical debate about the land grab, this paper examines the importance of ABD to understand the land grabs in general and for oil palm plantations in Indonesia in particular. Rather than a new phenomenon of the last four decades of neoliberalism, ABD has a history of several centuries.

Accumulation by dispossession (ABD) is a powerful and appropriate lens by which to understand the land conversion and social displacement occurring in Indonesia. Building on historical understanding of ABD, this paper applies the theory to the Indonesian oil palm case, making the case that the multiple and uncertain sequences of engagement with oil palm expansion are reflective of a broader struggle against dispossession.

ABD is not just a global financial process of corporate-led neoliberalization but also shaped importantly by domestic state and local elites. These elites have shaped ABD differently in colonial, authoritarian, and neoliberal periods.

There is a basic ambiguity in TQM in that, while managers seek the commitment and co‐operation of their employees, increased control over the work process is a cornerstone of TQM. This ambiguity is reflected in the literature concerning TQM (Wilkinson et al, 1992). Its advocates see it as universally beneficial, improving competitive advantage and, at the same time, empowering the workforce as responsibility is delegated to those actually carrying out the task. Its critics, however, note the tighter managerial control involved in the drive to reduce variation (Parker and Slaughter, 1993) and the increased surveillance arising out of the quality measurement systems introduced (Delbridge et al, 1991; Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992). From the latter perspective, TQM is seen as another development in the capitalist labour process intended to push back the frontiers of control and intensify work.

Summarises the impact of challenges of reorganization faced by the UK medical profession over a 30‐year period up to the arrival in government of New Labour in 1997 in order to provide a historical context for the appearance of clinical governance. Investigates the NHS manager as a “diplomat”, the era of “general management” and the National Health Service quasi‐market. States that: managerial supremacy has increased over a long period; managerial control over medicine seemed uncertain in 1997; and a good deal of secular change has arisen from government imposing macro‐level reorganization. Concludes that it remains to be seen whether these elements are capable of allowing the development of local clinical governance arrangements that carry the support of the medical profession.

Originates from a management development programme which was run for a statutory water authority over a period of two‐and‐a‐half years, which sought to facilitate a change in management style away from a directing and controlling paradigm towards a supportive and trust‐based paradigm. A significant requirement of the programme, as specified by senior management, was the empowerment of middle management. However, the implications of this were not fully appreciated by senior management until late in the programme when issues of control came back into prominence. Eventually, the programme was curtailed and middle managers were consequently disillusioned rather than empowered. Offers insights into the nature of the dynamics of the change process and draws attention to the phenomenon of senior management resistance to change. Suggests, however, a more pervasive ambivalence in change management in general and “empowerment” in particular. This has significant implications for the regulation and limitation of learning.

The division between town and country in most areas of the world is marked and shows little evidence of any closer association, but in this country recent history with its wide economic changes has made the division less deep than in times past, but still within living memory. Time was when country folk were almost a distinct breed, living under conditions for the most part primitive.