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This monograph contains abstracts from the 2005 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, 6‐7th September 2005

The purpose of this paper is to consider the interplay between discourse, policy and practice in relation to aspects of organization and processes of organizing.

Provides an introduction to the six contributions contained in this special issue and discusses how they relate to the core theme.

Highlights the need for an approach which treats discourses, policies and practices as connected and mutually implicated, rather than discrete, phenomena.

Presents an approach to discourse analysis which promotes an engagement with wider aspects of social activity.

A discussion of the EC proposals for 1992 on employee participation in the supervision and strategic management of those companies wishing to operate as European Companies (SEs); and the effect this may have on the role of trade unions. The three alternative forms of model of participation are described and reviewed in the light of present British practice. The practical difficulties are considered and the three areas pinpointed where the proposals currently advanced may further undermine the position and role of British trade unions, these being: (1) representation rights, (2) collective bargaining, and (3) information disclosure.

This paper aims to present a detailed examination of the relationship and debate between realist understandings of HRM, on the one hand, and discourse‐based notions of HRM, on the other. The objective is to provide a basis for a possible debate between these, seemingly contradictory, perspectives.

The paper argues that these perspectives can be integrated if one adopts a perspective that overcomes this dualism by thinking of HRM as a “project” where speech acts and non‐linguistic forms of action are seen as interdependent. The paper uses interview extracts in order to illustrate how the HRM Project gets constituted but also resisted in the context of a post‐privatisation electricity company.

This paper is predicated on the notion that the discourse of HRM is closely intertwined with the shift in power relations between employers, managers, employees and trade unions from the early 1980s onwards. In order to capture the broader context of the discourse it is suggested that the notion of an “HRM Project” includes not only language but also practices, boundary‐spanning linkages, and external agents such as regulators and financial institutions.

Builds on the notion of discourse as a strategic resource.

Paradoxically, the emergence of Human Resource Management (HRM) represents both a challenge and an opportunity to the practice of personnel management. Conventional personnel management is being out‐moded to be superseded by an approach to employees which seemingly promises to put “people issues” at the centre of strategic decision making. The debate about HRM has been confused and confusing because it has failed to clearly identify the distinctive forms of management – as well as personnel – practice to which the term HRM has been applied. This confusion only serves to mask the important moral issues HRM poses for personnel practitioners.

Paradoxically, the emergence of Human Resource Management (HRM) represents both a challenge and an opportunity to the practice of personnel management. Conventional personnel management is being outmoded to be superseded by an approach to employees which seemingly promises to put “people issues” at the centre of strategic decision making. The debate about HRM has been confused and confusing because it has failed clearly to identify the distinctive forms of management – as well as personnel – practice to which the term HRM has been applied. This confusion serves only to mask the important moral issues HRM poses for personnel practitioners.

To explore the link between enterprise scale, ownership and responsibility, specifically with regard to environmental responsibility. The paper argues that more local ownership and the co‐operative organisational form may ensure a higher level of corporate responsibility

The paper is mainly discursive, although three case‐studies of companies are used to illustrate the argument: Shell, Vaux Brewery, and Tower Colliery.

The central findings are that the nature of ownership, the scale of an enterprise, and the governance form are key considerations in terms of the corporate responsibility of firms.

Further explorations of CSR in relation to the nature of governance and ownership of firms, and the scale of their operations, would develop and explore this paper's central argument further and thus provide more valuable insights.

The paper suggests that the issue of scale and the role of co‐operatives may be of more significance as corporate governance comes under greater scrutiny and sustainability plays a more central role in business practice.

This is the first conceptual application of the concept of CSR to co‐operative ownership and governance.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly explore some recent curious interlocking of the ideology of markets and the practice of policy.

This particular discursive combine has most visibly been apparent in the concatenated birth and death of the US Defense Department's so‐called “Policy Analysis Market” (PAM). Yet PAM is but the most notorious example of a more sustained and pervasive attempt to use the technologies and disciplines of markets to render policy both better informed and more amenable to control through robust and seemingly incontestable systems of accountability. Given its prominence, our way in is through a brief description of PAM's origins and demise.

It is found that PAM and its similar brethren of markets for use in policy formation and judgement are less concerned with the capture of reality and more with the disciplining power of a curious “objectivity”.

Projects such as PAM are thus not easily challengeable on grounds of their veracity. Rather research that seeks to interrogate the use of market technologies in policy must look to their context and effects.

To study the relationship between organization structure and socio‐economic impact in the Welsh music industry and the potential role of social enterprises.

The economic value of social enterprise and the role of creative industries in urban regeneration are discussed from the viewpoint of the inclusion of marginalized workers, especially the young, into the labour‐market. Discusses the increasing political interest in social enterprise and explores evidence for this policy interest, including whether the nature of the governance and management structure of social enterprises influences their social and economic impacts. Reports preliminary stages of the research project and presents evidence gathered through case studies of three unnamed music businesses based in South Wales comprising: a development agency based on co‐operative principles; a loosely organized collective of practitioners and trainers; and a limited liability company. Explains that all three companies began by focusing on hip‐hop music but have developed in different directions and have also developed distinct forms of governance, and this enable the relationship between governance, the music industry, and socio‐economic outcomes to be studied.

The critical analysis of the potential of social enterprises to achieve social and economic regeneration supports the authors’ own conception of mutual economic activity in terms of what they call “associative entrepreneurship”. Concludes that this concept is needed because the existing definition of social enterprise has become too wide to have analytical value. Notes that the authors hope to present the research findings to a conference of creative industries’ academics in the coming year.

Presents the authors’ preliminary attempts to apply their knowledge of the social economy to the music industry as the first stage of a research project funded by the Welsh Assembly.

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co‐operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

The paper takes the form of a theoretical discussion focusing around seven preliminary case studies.

As yet only a cluster of community‐based enterprises have been discovered in the renewable energy sector in Wales. The authors propose to study them in detail in the next stage of the research.

This is a developmental paper and many of its suggestions require rigorous testing. The authors would suggest that detailed case studies of the seven examples of associative enterprise in the renewable energy field outlined here, and others which may emerge during the research, would greatly enhance our understanding of what drives entrepreneurs in this field. Further research might also compare these examples with others organised according to more traditional business models.

In view of the urgent need to move towards a low‐carbon economy and the expansion of the renewable energy sector this would require, understanding of the motivations of entrepreneurs in this sector is of great value.

Innovation in the renewable energy sector may be being held back by the limitations of the concept of entrepreneurship.