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Discusses the contributions to economic theory by various authors and covers popular beliefs about entrepreneurial function. Analyses the potential contribution of Shackle to the development of entrepreneurial theory and outlines key elements of his theory. Concludes that a better understanding of Shackle’s decision‐making theory is useful, particularly now there is renewed interest in entrepreneurship.

While remaining in the public sector, the British Post Office has undergone massive changes in terms of its general orientation and structure over the last decade, with major implications for workplace management‐labour relations and shopfloor trade union organization. The most recent phase of restructuring within the core Royal Mail section of the Post Office has been accompanied by an assertive managerial strategy aimed at tackling the strong workplace union levels of control and autonomy that have developed in many city‐based sorting offices. Provides evidence from empirical case study research into one of the largest and most union‐militant Royal Mail sorting offices in the country based in central Liverpool. After outlining the strengths and weaknesses of workplace unionism during the mid‐1980s to the late 1980s, focuses on how the Liverpool UCW leadership have attempted to respond to Royal Mail′s 1992 restructuring initiative and HRM practices. Suggests that, notwithstanding new and complex dilemmas, workplace unionism within the Royal Mail remains relatively resilient.

This paper seeks to focus on civil society organizations (CSOs) and their capacity to exercise power in the employment relationship. In particular, the paper is concerned with identifying the sources of power, how it is exercised and whether CSOs can exert pressure on other employment actors despite their apparent lack of resources possessed by more established representative structures.

Findings are based on 139 completed postal questionnaires and 47 interviews, primarily face‐to‐face, across 34 different CSOs.

Adopting a resource dependence framework suggests that CSOs have the capacity to exercise power and influence key employment actors. However, the power of CSOs is undermined by the absence of an internal organizational presence, making it difficult to mobilize workers.

The research highlights the role of an often‐ignored employment actor. To provide further insights further research is needed to garner the views of other employment participants.

In employee relations discussions of workplace power have typically focused on the power of the state, employers and trade unions. This paper adopts a novel angle by exploring the role of CSOs and their ability to exercise power.

Regardless of judgements about the novelty, permanence or extent of the “new industrial relations”, key features in the USA are a decline in union membership, the declining role of bargaining and a corresponding decrease in its scope; the increasing importance of human resource management; the increasing importance of “high‐tech” industries; the increasing need for a “responsible, flexible” worker; the conscious attempt to avoid and undermine unions by firms through location policies and sophisticated paternalism; the attempt to link pay more directly to the economic performance of the plant or firm through gain‐saving schemes, profit‐sharing and fragmented bargaining. It should not be assumed that these developments are widespread or actually represent a change in the management of people. A variety of methodological problems exist making it difficult to assess whether these features are in themselves “new”, notably those relating to the danger of generalising from specific and isolated cases, the problem of benchmarks, links between managerial intentions and practice, the measurement of attitudinal change and the notion of management strategy in itself. To demonstrate these problems and to provide documentary evidence current practices in the US car industry are examined, particularly to evaluate recent change. A multitude of research methods (including participant observation) are required in order to capture all the dimensions of shop‐floor industrial relations behaviour.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.

The idea that worker co‐operatives offer the possibility of increasing productivity without sacrificing workers' safety and health is investigated. Ten worker co‐operatives and four conventional capitalist firms in the Pacific Northwest plywood industry are studied. Co‐operatives have worse productivity and safety records than conventional firms. Lower productivity is due to the unexpected behaviour that emerges in co‐operatives relying heavily on hired labour. Higher levels of accidents are due to different reporting practices arising from different social relations in production. Co‐operatives tend to over‐report their accidents whereas conventional firms under‐report accidents.

The 50th anniversary of Fox's Beyond Contract and Man Mismanagement coincides with another vital contribution to the sociology of work from 1974: Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital. This article analyses these two scholars' complementary approaches to job design and the extent to which Fox's ideas influenced subsequent labour process thought.

The article's methodological approach is a historiographical reading of Fox and Braverman's thought in the context of their times and later scholarship.

The article demonstrates that despite some noteworthy overlap with Braverman concerning scientific management, Fox's insights were marginal to later iterations of labour process analysis. It delves into the reasons for this relative neglect, providing an understanding of the dynamics at play.

This paper's value lies in its combined industrial relations and labour process historiography. It offers a fresh perspective on Alan Fox's relationship to the latter field of study.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.