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The purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.

The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.

Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

While the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.

The findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.

The paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

The purpose of this paper is to look at how the nature and contribution of leadership is evolving in step with developments in the environment and our organizations.

The authors argue that a collective or network leadership strategy is most suitable for the information age. This is based upon research and executive education and consultancy engagements with a range of organizations around the world and draws upon published research by the authors. They share further a case study of a public sector organization in the UK working to implement a network leadership strategy to transform a complex, bureaucratic structure into a lean, agile and knowledge rich one.

Organizations need to let go of previously held notions of leadership in order to embrace a new leadership concept and strategy more suited to today's environment. Future organizations will necessarily rely upon knowledge‐intensive networks of highly connected and autonomous talent, empowered to rapidly converge on singular intersections of common interest without guidance from above. Such co‐ordination will not be achieved through centralized command and control, but through network leadership – in effect, self‐direction in the interests of a common purpose and guided by shared values.

Enabling coalitions, coexistence and collaboration within and across networks will be the characteristic qualities of the new leadership.

This article is of value to organizations seeking to transform their capabilities and structures to embrace the contribution of the many and not simply the few. It addresses issues resonant with all organizations, irrespective of sector or geography, and argues that leadership in the information age requires us to challenge many closely held truths such as the inimitability of natural leadership qualities and traditional methods of work organization in favour of network‐based approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.

Places unions in their current context and discusses how they have responded to the challenge of declining membership.

With declining membership levels and the lack of a “silver bullet” solution, unions continue to face many challenges, although there is some light at the end of the organising tunnel.

This paper introduces the special issue which reflects on 150 years of the TUC.

This paper contributes to the international business lit‐erature by exploring the degree of globalization in our international business journals. Through an investigation of all multi‐authored articles in core international business journals over a five‐year period, we test the nature of international business authorship by following Rugman’s insights on the regional nature of the MNE. Our findings suggest that within the Triad regions of North America and Western Europe, and similar to MNE patterns and international commerce, international business research is not global. In contrast, within the Triad region of Developed Asia, we find that international business research is global.

Felicitous writing is enormously important. However, the art of writing well is rarely addressed by marketing scholars. This paper seeks to argue that the marketing academy has much to learn from historiography, a sub‐discipline devoted to the explication of historical writing.

Although it is primarily predicated on published works, this paper is not a conventional literature review. It relies, rather, on the classic historical method of “compare and contrast”. It considers parallels between the paired disciplines yet notes where marketing and history diverge in relation to literary styles and scientific aspirations.

It is concluded that marketing writing could benefit from greater emphasis on “character” and “storytelling”. These might help humanise a mode of academic communication that is becoming increasingly abstruse and ever‐more unappealing to its readership.

If its argument is accepted by the academic community – and, more importantly, acted upon – this paper should transform the writing of marketing. Although the academic reward systems and power structures of marketing make revolutionary change unlikely, a “scholarly spring” is not inconceivable.

The paper's originality rests in the observation that originality is unnecessary. All of the literary‐cum‐stylistic issues raised in this paper have already been tackled by professional historians. Whether marketers are willing to learn from their historical brethren remains to be seen.

This paper aims to explore why investment in people development and engagement is the key to company growth.

The paper explains the importance of people development and engagement in general terms; then highlights the contribution they made to performance at Molson Coors Brewing Company and social enterprise Aspire‐i.

The paper reveals that the career development program at Molson Coors Brewing Company is seen as a significant factor supporting and inspiring employees to manage their personal development and organizational contribution, while the development program at Aspire‐i has helped it to increase turnover by 15.8 percent and ensure that employees embrace challenge with enthusiasm and appetite to explore and capitalize on new opportunities and extract value from each piece of work.

The paper demonstrates that combining and developing an individual's talents and motives in the pursuit of an organization's goals provides both personal satisfaction and increased performance.

The paper highlights ways in which companies can improve their performance, to the ultimate benefit of society as a whole.

The paper claims that businesses can only function if employees are both engaged with the company's ideas and empowered to support and implement its plans.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.