Generic distinctiveness and the entrepreneurial self: a case study of English Higher Education

Young people are increasingly called upon to invest in educational qualifications, experience opportunities and other character forming activities in order to stand out from the crowd. This fetishising of generic distinctiveness is promoted throughout education in England, and particularly Higher Education. This paper considers the policy and theoretical implications of the quest to enfranchise distinctiveness in English HE. From a policy perspective the universal promotion of distinction reflects how recent neoliberal reforms in HE have been moderated by a commitment to a liberal ethos of equality of opportunity. Theoretically the mantra of standing out from the crowd is emblematic of the entrepreneurial self as a tool of governmentality. The expectation of compulsory distinction encapsulates the duality of individualisation and regulation that is central to the project of governmentality. This duality is also implicit in the activity of enterprise and how it is calibrated by competition. Being entrepreneurial stimulates innovation but the uncertainty of competition may simultaneously stimulate isomorphic behaviours. The paper concludes by reviewing what the promotion of generic distinctiveness infers for young people and how the promotion of distinction is also bound up with the mantra of confidence.     

Maintenance Default or Maintenance At Fault?: A Rejoinder

Maintenance default is a large problem and a number of reasons have been suggested for the cause. However, there are also philosophical questions as to whether maintenance is a desirable concept in the first place.     

Gendered forms of responsibility and control in teenagers' views of alcohol

There has been a shift in the most recent UK Government's Alcohol Strategy (2012) from personal responsibility towards a model of shared responsibility for young people's drinking. On closer examination of the strategy, however, it appears that rather than exonerating young people from blame, governance is merely extended to include wider partners. Using findings from nine focus groups with young people in Liverpool, UK, we explore who they believe are responsible for their drinking behaviours and how they learn to become ‘good drinkers’. Our findings show that while teenagers were aware of dominant alcohol-related messages and maintained a moral position as responsible citizens; they also negotiated and resisted norms about teenage drinking. Although both boys and girls agreed that parents were the primary responsible authority for regulating their drinking, there was gendered disagreement about personal responsibility. The girls described how they were ultimately responsible for any adverse consequences if they drank too much whilst the boys considered a wide range of partners who would be implicated. However, unlike the girls, the boys described a willingness to either abstain or moderate their alcohol intake in order to remain in control and avoid any alcohol-related trouble or harm.     

A qualitative study investigating adolescents' understanding of aggression,bullying and violence

There is a general consistency across the research literature regarding the definition of bullying. This has filtered down into the construction of governmental and school anti-bullying policies around the world. However, research suggests that children and adolescents are failing to accurately identify cases of bullying. This in turn has implications upon the accuracy of our perception of the extent of the problem of bullying within schools. The current study aimed to investigate how 11–17 year olds understand and differentiate between terms relating to interpersonal peer aggression, violence and bullying. Fifty-seven (twenty male, thirty-seven female) participants were recruited via an opportunity sample. Participants took part in focus group interviews within which they were asked to provide a definition for a list of words relating to both traditional and cyber forms of aggression, bullying and violence. Thematic analysis revealed that the participants held a shared understanding of the terms relating to aggression, bullying and violence. Participants defined each term by describing the behaviors involved, their perception of the level of control the perpetrators of each type of negative peer interaction have and the perception of those involved. The implications of these findings for both policy and future research are discussed.     

The role,power and influence of company chairs

This paper develops an analytical framework to depict the heterogeneity that characterises the role of board chair and demonstrate the potential variability in how chairs operate boards and exercise power and influence on strategy, control and resource related tasks at board level. Theories of power and influence, as applied to top management teams and boards of directors, are explicated within the context of contemporary governance practices that are establishing the role of the board chair as distinct to that of the chief executive officer. Specifically, the paper maps sources of power and varying contemporary chair practices, including chair nomenclature (i.e. executive vs. non-executive chairs), chair origin (insider vs. outsider) and chair time (full-time vs. part-time). A number of theoretical chair-power models emerge from this analysis and are subject to empirical analysis using data collected from 160 chairs of 500 FTSE-listed companies. Theoretically and empirically, the paper complements structural approaches to studying boards with attention to behaviour on boards. By linking board structure, board process and the exercise of influence, the study reveals both differences amongst chairs in how they run the board, but also that chairs’ differ in the influence they exert on board-related tasks. Full-time executive chairs exert their greatest influence in strategy and resource dependence tasks whereas part-time, non-executive chairs seem to exert more influence over monitoring and control tasks.