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The purpose of this paper is to test the existing theoretical argument that the Indian software industry is a case of uneven and combined development by examining the workforce.

The paper is based on a survey conducted in two software organizations located in Bangalore. Data were collected through a combination of quantitative (114 questionnaires) and qualitative methods (62 semi‐structured interviews). Respondents were selected randomly from the work floor.

The paper observes that the workforce is uneven in nature and directly integrated with the global market. The workforce appears homogeneous. A typical software worker in India is a young male; hails from an urban and a semi‐urban locality; follows Hinduism, and belongs to the upper socio‐economic stratum of Indian society. He holds an undergraduate engineering degree, not necessarily in computer science, from a second‐grade educational institution. He is trained by the employers as per the needs of the Western market, and works for longer hours than required. He earns more than his counterparts in the other industries, and is promoted periodically based on work experience.

The paper suggests that Indian future policy initiatives should recognize the need for inclusion of the disadvantaged in this growing sector. Also, conclusions drawn from the study are useful for the developing countries that imitate Indian software industry to develop inclusive development policies.

From the existing literature, it is not known whether the employment‐related benefits are reaching all the social groups, or uneven and combined development is reflected at the workforce as well. The paper fills the gap using triangulation of methods.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss economic and social issues of contemporary capitalism through the views and works of Grazia Ietto-Gillies who has a long experience of research in these fields. The issues relate to strategies of TNCs, to globalization and transnationalization, to internationalization indices, to linkages between innovation and internationalization, to uneven development, and, finally, to issues related to the economics profession and the dissemination of research in the twenty-first century.

In-depth interview; use of relevant literature to support statements by interviewer and interviewee; qualitative analysis of issues discussed.

The article links together under the same theoretical umbrella the following issues: a theory of TNCs based on strategic approach towards labour, governments and suppliers; the development of an internationalization index based on the geography of TNCs' networks; and the possible impact of internationalization on innovation. Uneven development is linked to current problems in Europe. The need and opportunity to reconsider the economics profession and the peer review system in the digitalization era is presented.

The article is based on the views of the interviewer and the interviewee. Their views are backed by their own previous research as well as by research by other scholars cited in the article.

The interview draws policy implication in relation to TNCs and other actors who interact with them such as labour and governments. There are also policy implications in the economic and social spheres regarding the implications of TNCs' strategies and the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis.

At the methodological level the article highlights the advantages of in-depth interviews. Specifically, it allows the interviewee to give an overall perspective on her research and to show how the various strands are connected and how they developed through the decades of her research. It allows both interviewer and interviewee to link the issues to a variety of literatures in the economics, sociology and politics fields.

Post‐industrial predictions of a rapid growth in new technology homeworking have gained widespread currency to become part of the conventional wisdom. However the evidence, including primary research material, suggests that the claims for new technology homeworking, both regarding its extent and its alleged benefits, have been considerably overestimated. In particular, new technology homeworking by itself does not appear to open up opportunities for women to improve their position in the labour market; the demographic changes predicted for the 1990s may provide a better bet. Nevertheless, there is a danger in assuming that all firms apply the same strategy when employing homeworkers; at least three different variations can be identified and this has important implications for personnel managers. The overestimation of new technology homeworking stands in stark contrast to traditional homeworking where the extent has been considerably underestimated. This marginalisation of traditional homeworking stems in large part from the distortion caused by the conceptual split between private and public realms. The failure to find evidence to support the growth of new technology homeworking leads to a consideration of how the arguments may better be considered as rhetoric designed to advance a certain set of ideas – in particular that set associated with “privatisation” as a political ideology.

The purpose of this paper is to take conceptual and methodological steps towards the elaboration of the critical grounded theory (CGT) method.

Starting from conceptual issues with mapping everyday discourses and practices in their broader societal context in organisational ethnography, cultural political economy (CPE) is proposed as a suitable theoretical framework for integrating the cultural dimension of discourses and imaginaries into political-economic analyses of organisation and management. The CGT method is introduced for empirical operationalisation.

Grounded theory tools for working with ethnographic data can be employed within critical approaches such as CPE although they originate from positivist social science. The need to combine ethnographic fieldwork with substantial theoretical work and/or critical discourse analysis may be met by CGT, which affords the ethnographic strengths of grounded theory without, however, bracketing the critical-theoretical insights of CPE.

The usefulness of CGT has been tentatively tested, but requires thorough meta-theoretical and methodological development, which is what is undertaken here.

CGT expects and takes account of the social implications of its employment in the field.

First steps towards a new critical method for organisation and management studies are taken. Although originating from concern with CPE, the CGT method may appeal to a wider audience of critical scholars across the social sciences.

Oriented to ongoing student and university momentums for decolonial futures, the purpose of this paper is to interrogate the role and status of mainstream international development curricula and pedagogies by critiquing two absences in the sub-discipline’s teaching formulae: appropriations and assassinations.

The author draws from a decade of research on oil extraction in Central Africa, including ethnographic work with two communities in Cameroon along the Chad–Cameroon Oil Pipeline; four years of research (interview-based and unofficial or grey materials) on the 1983 August Revolution in Burkina Faso and assassination of Thomas Sankara; and five years of experience teaching international development in North America, Western Europe and North and Eastern Africa.

Through a critical synthesis of political and rhetorical practices that are often considered in isolation (i.e. political assassinations and corporate appropriation of Indigenous knowledges), the author makes the case for what the author calls pedagogical disobedience: an anticipatory decolonial development curricula and praxis that is attentive to the simultaneity of violence and misappropriation within colonial operations of power (i.e. “coloniality of power” or “coloniality”).

This paper contributes to debates within international development about the future of the discipline given its neo-colonial and colonial constitutions and functions with a grounded attention to how this opens up possibilities for teaching praxis and scholarship in action.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which the UK Labour Government “framed” the policy and practice debate on social enterprise, the way in which “strategic” networks were (or were not) facilitated and the extent to which scale and geography shaped policy choices after 1997.

The paper examines three phases of development through a series of examples/case studies all of which are based in the West Midlands in the UK. The paper draws upon the author's practice and experience as both a practitioner and researcher during this period. Interviews with other key individuals are undertaken to inform the author's reflections and analysis.

The paper suggests that there is a risk that experience, knowledge and understanding are at risk as there seems to be poorly developed processes and systems to “capture” informed understanding and that the importance of regional networks to promote practice and to protect innovation are often poorly developed and supported.

The paper is timely given the renewed focus by political parties in the UK on the role of the third sector in providing the “solution” for a number of public sector initiatives.

The paper cuts across both the literature/debate on public policy as well as that on the role of networks and decision making within informal (as well as formal) organisations.

The paper is timely and will add to an awareness of policy choices and the importance of sustaining a “memory” of past (and current) programmes.

The need to survive in a capitalist economy provides considerable constraints within which co‐operatives must operate. Existing research has been misplaced in believing that the co‐operative doors can be closed and analysis made without reference to the economic environment. Within these constraints some control over the labour process is still possible. Some potential for democratic control by the workforce exists. This control of the labour process within the co‐operative is complex and rests on three levels: control of the work process; control of the co‐operative process; control at the level of the individual. Further investigation is needed into the processes that are at work in the crucial transition from early exhilaration to practical control of the co‐operative process and through that the work process itself.

Most recent prescriptions for firm development in the garment industry have focused on methods of reducing labour costs, with less emphasis placed on targeting high margin niches. This paper examines how the early ready‐made womenswear industry in the UK moved from a wage‐cost containment strategy before the First World War to exploiting fashion‐sensitive demand in the inter‐war period. The economics of fashion‐sensitive demand meant that the most efficient structure for the industry was to have many small producers, specialised in sub‐processes, and all closely located. However, contemporaries failed to understand the efficiency properties of the ‘industrial district’ type of local economy which emerged in London's East End in the first half of this century, a failure which eventually contributed to the dispersion of industrial activities and to the eventual decline of the industry.

Brand positioning based on the brand’s country of origin is at the centre of attention in international marketing. It is evident that global brands constitute critical intangible assets for businesses and places. However, it is not clear how they contribute to national economies. This paper aims to discuss the significance of brands as contributing to the value of their companies but also helping to leverage national economies. Although global brands can be produced and purchased in multiple countries, their influence on the economy of the country where their owner’s seat is located can be more meaningful than in other economies included in the “global factory”.

Based on 500 Brandirectory, the Most Valuable Global Brands 2011-2015 rankings powered by Brand Finance, the authors observed a spatial-economic autocorrelation which exemplifies the potential interdependency between gross domestic product (GDP) and brand value. This relationship has become a starting point for designing a spatial regression model.

The findings support the hypothesis that assumptive spatial dependencies have a significant influence on the examined relationship of brand value and GDP.

The presented study is the first to examine the potential interdependence between brand values and GDP of the countries of origin using a dynamic spatial approach.