Business and Management - Research

This groundbreaking book investigates and documents corporate influence on social policies at global/regional, national and local levels. It argues that we cannot understand the recent history and present direction of the welfare state unless we focus on the role that business has played in its development. 

This book is about money. Not about how to make money, but how to use it and use it well. A range of stimulating articles from leading international thinkers and writers forms a thought-provoking collection on how we can all use money to achieve positive social change.

Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce.

We are all 'glass consumers'. Organisations know so much about us, they can almost see through us. This book takes the debate beyond privacy issues, arguing that we are living in a world in which - more than ever before - our personal information defines our opportunities in life.

This study, by a qualitative sociologist, uses interpretive methods to examine the impact of auditing and inspection on professional work in schools, hospitals, local government and the police and provides a true sense of what is practically involved in the work of counting, measuring and managing quality.

How did partnerships come to emerge almost everywhere and at almost the same time? What is the inner logic of partnerships? And at what point does that logic begin to break down? This book improves our understanding of the shifting ground on which partnerships and agreements must be reached in today's hyper-complex society.

Based upon cross-national case studies of public and private sector workplaces, "Work, families and organisations in transition" illustrates how workplace practices and policies impact on employees' experiences of "work-life balance" in contemporary shifting contexts.

The important study investigates changes in women's transitions in and out of paid work, comparing Italy and Great Britain across four subsequent birth cohorts from the time they leave full-time education, up to their 40s.

A highly readable account of how and why NHS treatment centres evolved with practical lessons based on case study research.

This topical book takes a critical look at contemporary governance theory, arguing that there are structural impediments to achieving an ideology of networks and reconsidering it from Marxist and Gramscian perspectives. 

This multi-disciplinary volume brings together original research from diverse disciplinary backgrounds investigating how we can define and operationalise a bio-psychosocial model of ill-health to improve work participation in middle and later life.

This book casts light on the empirical relationship between labour market deregulation through non-standard contracts and the three main dimensions of worker security: employment, income and social security.