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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.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first, to shed light on the different patterns in which international marketing and purchasing (IMP) and national innovation system (NIS) were embedded into the Swedish policy context, where the first approach must be regarded as a relative failure and the second a success, second, to compare their analytical lenses and policy implications through the study of a number of seminal texts of the two approaches.

First, a Swedish case is selected since it provides an example of a policy context where both approaches have been considered and used as sources of inspiration for the design of policy measures. Second, the authors study a selection of the seminal texts of the two approaches in order to identify their basic theoretical assumptions. The emphasis here lies on how the schools view the importance of relations between companies, how they perceive the innovation process, their attitude towards the neoclassical market model and the explicit and implicit implications of their theoretical assumptions for policy.

IMP and its notion of the heterogeneity of resources can provide a much more context grounded analysis than is possible within the NIS/Lundvall framework. However, it requires deep contextual knowledge of individual companies, industries and national and international settings to understand the value of these resources. IMP is “tied to the ground” and radically critical of the atomistic abstractions characterising the neoclassical market view. NIS, on the other hand, requires contextual knowledge on a more superficial level and can co-exist with neoclassical economics.

While the authors mainly focus on IMP and NIS, which date back to the 1980s, a later wave of concepts from the 1990s and onwards involve clusters (Porter, 1990), and triple helix (Etzkowitz and Leidesdorff, 1998). However, these latecomers share with NIS the ability to co-exist with neoclassical economics.

IMP requires high demands on any policy maker that would adopt it, in terms of acquiring deep contextual knowledge and giving up established views on how the economy works

The paper reveal that while both IMP and NIS like to present themselves as rebels radically departing from neoclassical economics and the linear model, NIS can still co-exist with neoclassical economics. Furthermore, IMP places high demands on any policy maker that would adopt it, in terms of acquiring deep contextual knowledge and giving up established views on how the economy works. NIS, on the other hand, requires contextual knowledge on a more superficial level.

This study aims to advance practice and research on workforce nationalization in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries through identifying relevant policy and practical implications needed to implement nationalization initiatives effectively.

The author followed a two-stage approach. Stage 1 reviewed the literature to identify relevant papers on workforce nationalization in the GCC region. Stage 2 used a thematic analysis to propose relevant implications for both policy makers and employers.

Through the lens of four perspectives at different levels, i.e. legal, organizational, human development and socio-cultural perspectives, the author has identified ten policy and practical implications. Both governments and employers need to consider these when developing holistic strategies for effective workforce nationalization.

Over several decades, the GCC countries have been implementing several nationalization initiatives to increase the percentage and qualifications of their national employees. The significance of these initiatives stems from the fact that the GCC countries lack adequately trained citizens. Moreover, regardless of political attitudes toward foreigners, development plans for modernization, industrialization or urbanization heavily relies on foreign employees. This is because nationals represent the minority of employees and are largely employed in the public sector. This phenomenon needs the attention of scholars to discuss different aspects of nationalization and how to effectively implement it.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the policy and organizational implications of gender imbalance in management, which research suggests exists in the NHS.

The research in this paper involved a qualitative approach with an analysis of élite interviews conducted with a non‐random sample of officials involved in health policy and interviews with a random sample of senior managers in NHS Scotland. The research formed part of a larger study, which explored the enablers and inhibitors to female career progression in various Scottish sectors.

The paper finds that gender imbalance in management exists in the NHS. This is manifested in a masculine organizational context, leadership and policy decision‐making process, which have implications for female career advancement opportunities and subsequently access to macro policy decisions.

The paper involved a sample (30 percent) of senior managers and examined policy processes in NHS Scotland. To improve the external validity of the findings further research should be conducted in NHS organizations in England and Wales.

The findings in the paper suggest that gender imbalance in management and a masculine organizational context and leadership style within the NHS create a less than conducive environment for female employees. This has practical implications in terms of levels of part‐time employment, career progression and attrition rates.

The paper adds to the debate of gender and organizational studies by examining the health sector, which has high levels of female employment but low levels of female representation at senior management levels. The paper therefore adds to an often‐neglected area of study, women in leadership and senior managerial positions. The paper is original in its approach by examining the micro and meso organizational dimensions which impact on women's ability to influence macro health policy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how US school leaders and teachers make sense of multiple accountability policies, including the Common Core State Standards and teacher evaluation, and how this process relates to school priorities and classroom practice.

This study uses a comparative case study approach to understand how principals and teachers in three high-poverty urban schools respond to policy.

Although principals and teachers viewed academic standards and the teacher evaluation framework as complementary, two of the three schools focused on meeting the expectations of the teacher evaluation framework at the expense of attention to academic standards. Without attention to the connections among policies and school priorities, the introduction of new policies may detract from rather than reinforce attention to academic standards.

Principals who are stronger instructional leaders may be better able to “craft coherence” among multiple standards-based policies and school priorities for instruction and student learning. Although their experiences are not generalizable, findings suggest that attending to standards for student and teacher performance without connecting to the implications for content and students’ learning may lead to superficial integration of accountability policies with school priorities.

Findings provide further evidence that principals play an essential role in responding to policy and suggest that districts and external support providers can assist their efforts by creating opportunities for professional learning about the connections among multiple policies and their implications for practice.

This paper extends Honig and Hatch’s conceptualization of “crafting coherence” to the work of teachers and the implications for classroom practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse an example of non-decision making in the Nordic tripartite policy process, namely, the reform of the Finnish gender equality legislation and the law for equal pay comparisons.

The paper uses non-decision making as a conceptual framework for qualitative analysis of the documentation of the working group that drafted the law for equal pay comparisons. The analysis focuses on the strategic responses used by the participants in order to defend the status quo and resist change in legislation.

The key findings are that the suggested law for conducting equal pay comparisons as part of gender equality planning in Finnish organisations changed dramatically in the tripartite policy process. Employer organisations successfully prevented the most relevant features from being implemented in the reformed law.

The findings of this research indicate that there is a need for more research on the tripartite policy process and its implication on developing policy.

This paper shows what kind of power employer and employee organisations use in Finnish policy making. As a result, the reformed gender equality legislation is a compromise reflecting the vested interests of different stakeholders. The findings highlight the challenges of developing policy in tripartite policy process.

The tripartite policy process and its implications have rarely been studied. The value of this paper lies in both originality of the topic and approach, and the societal importance of the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to alert commercial enterprises, and politicians, of the moral implications of policy decisions.

The paper is a review of some moral issues of migration policy, and their commercial implications.

This paper concluded that strict attention be paid to the commercial implications of migration policy.

As this is a review paper, it does not have research limitations. Rather, it considers the wider implications of migration policy.

The practical implication is for a more serious consideration of the commercial implications of policy decisions.

The wider social benefit should be to include the existing populace in such debates and policy formulation.

This paper is an original look at the moral implications of migration policy decisions with regard to the economy and commerce.

This paper aims to present and assess the EU energy policies regarding their dependence on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) implications and the level of complexity of the applied ICT implications using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity of Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. The used criteria have been retrieved from the official “ICT Implication Assessment method of EU Legislation”.

The methodology approach deals with the ranking representation of EU energy policies according to the ICT exploitation. The data for the study were collected from the official website of the European Union (EU) (www.europa.eu). According to these data, the subtopics of the EU energy policies regard the internal energy market, the European energy policy, the energy efficiency, the nuclear energy, the security of energy supply, the external dimension, the enlargement and the renewable energy sources. The EU energy policies were assessed using the TOPSIS multicriteria analysis. The TOPSIS is widely used to solve real-world decision-making problems due to its characteristic to deal with different information types.

According to the results of the research, the EU energy policies achieve a good level of dependence on ICT implications and of complexity of the applied ICT implications but not the optimum. However, EU policy-makers should take into account the ICT factors while updating an existing one or while designing a new energy policy. The results of this research can provide an overview of the current situation regarding the current legislation while moving toward a sustainable eEurope. There is a need for stronger incubation efforts for a wide range of innovations to be ready in due time.

This is the first time that EU energy policies are presented and assessed regarding their dependence on ICT implications and the level of complexity of the applied ICT implications using the TOPSIS method.

The aim is to assess how a policy of tertiary education for all affects the shape of the unconditional earnings distribution.

The paper discusses the quantile-regression literature looking at the link between education and wage inequality, also proving new evidence based on unconditional quantile regressions.

The findings support the idea that a policy of tertiary education for all increases the overall level of wage inequality.

The research has implications for public policy and administration. Among the limitations, the paper does not deal with distributional aspects related to other outcomes (e.g. health outcomes) of the policy of interest.

The analysis highlights a series of potential government interventions aimed at reducing the wage-inequality externalities of the policy of interest.

A policy of tertiary education for all, by itself, is not useful to fight wage inequality.

This paper belongs to the small group of studies using unconditional quantile regressions to study the link between education and wage inequality. It is the first study specifically looking at the distributional effects of a policy of tertiary education for all.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the continuing decline of the social rented sector in England implies increased residualisation of the sector, to estimate who is likely to be living in social housing in the future, and to explore the policy implications in terms of the future role of social housing.

The paper addresses these aims by analysing secondary data on the characteristics of current tenants and changes in these as the sector has become smaller. It applies the results of this analysis to demographic projections to determine the likely future profile of social housing tenants and to assess the implications of this for the future management of the sector.

Analysis results suggest that the sector will house three main groups of households in the future: those for whom it provides a secure home for life; those for whom it is a temporary tenure; and a smaller group who enter for the first time in old age.

The main limitation of this approach is that it assumes that the future will be like the past, whereas changes in policy and economic circumstances could produce a different outcome. However, recent trends reflect the outcomes of economic variables and policy changes take time to have an impact, therefore the analysis has practical applications in the short term.

The method, findings and policy implications in this paper all provide value for policy makers, as well as contributing to the wider debate about the role of social rented housing.