The State of the Field in UK Management Research: Reflections of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) Panel

This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions.     

New politics and satire: the Euro financial crisis and the one-finger salute

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the conventional conceptualization in political science of politics is problematic, that it is overly narrow and constrained. This is because it excludes a range of actions like satire and humour which have come to play an increasing role in inspiring and provoking powerful political emotions and in informing the political agenda. Drawing on the work of critical scholars, it is argued that emotion, ethics and art can be deeply political. Moreover, new forms of media have encouraged new–old forms of political action often at the hands of young people who hitherto have been marginalized from the public sphere. Digital technology enables the production of user-generated content, opening new spaces for information, the exchange of ideas and mobilization. This article highlights the work of the young German satirist Jan Böhmermann to demonstrate how expressive art is playing a major role in shaping public opinion, in contesting power elites and informing political debate. In short, I use Böhmermann’s 2015 satire depicting Greco-German relations in the midst of a financial crisis and fears of loan defaults to argue for a broader understanding of politics that is inclusive of activities conventionally deemed non-rational.     

Life cycles of growing organizations: A review with implications for knowledge and learning

Conceptualizing growth trajectories of organizations in organismic terms describing transitions through a series of stages, from birth to maturity, has considerable intuitive appeal. Recently, the assumptions underpinning the life‐cycle perspective (growth is linear, sequential, deterministic and invariant) have been argued not to pertain to organizations. This paper reviews the literature on life‐cycle growth models, traces the development of a growing sophistication of conceptualizing growth and highlights some of the limitations of the literature. The authors make a contribution by proposing an alternative conceptual framework for thinking about growing businesses. The framework consists of two dimensions. First, a typology of key issues that are likely to be faced by all growing firms, and the discussion is shaped by M. Gladwell's (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little Brown, 2000) notion of ‘tipping points’. The second dimension is developed by drawing on the knowledge management literature and the concept of absorptive capacity ( Cohen, W.M. and Levinthal, D.A. (1990 ). Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35 , 128–152). This concept is applied to a discussion of the state of an organization regarding its ability to absorb and use new knowledge. Further, it is suggested that the framework has value for both policy and practice and can be used for the design and specification of interventional support and, to identify and evaluate their impact. If interventions are to help firms to grow, they must provide the right knowledge or support in forms that the firm can utilize. Together, these two dimensions provide a framework to examine firm growth issues and to analyse the effectiveness of different interventions on firms in different states within this framework.     

CONSOLIDATING AN INDUSTRY AND PROLONGING DEPENDENCY: PROFESSIONALS,POLICIES AND YOUNG PEOPLE

This article examines the nexus between professionalism and the representation of social problems among some young people. It considers how policy and professional interventions involve problem-setting as well as problem-solving activities. A central argument is that a primary effect of both professional activities and of major changes to the youth labour market has been an extension of dependency for many young people. No matter how young people experience the disappearance of the youth labour market, the fact remains: most young people have been permanently excluded from full-time work. As we reach the close of the twentieth century and without essentialising ‘youth’ it seems that more and more young people are unable to live autonomous lives that resemble adulthood until their mid-twenties. For some young people staying on in education, remaining out of the full-time labour market until their mid-twenties may not mark a dramatic shift in their experiences, but for other young people such trends have a dramatic impact on their life-worlds.     

THE YOUTH WAGE AND AGE‐BASED DISCRIMINATION: RIGHTS VS JOBS

Defences of the youth wage constitute a form of discrimination against young people with significant implications for income poverty among 16–24 year olds in Australia. In a manner comparable to the historic denigration of women and Indigenous Australians, arguments against the equal value of youth work rest on normative and empirical assumptions that are entirely contestable. Ultimately, they embody an animus against a section of the population that deprives them of their fundamental civic status.     

Transparency and ‘uncomfortable knowledge’ in child protection

Australia's child protection systems and the provision of out-of-home care, in particular, have been subject to sustained criticism for decades from dozens of official inquiries and reviews. It is now well established that many children in state care are treated significantly less well than required by relevant legal frameworks and community standards. Much attention and significant resources have been directed toward trying to ameliorate this ‘wicked problem’ and yet it continues. This article focuses on one reason the problems persists, namely the secrecy and closed cultures that characterize relevant organizations which reinforce strategies of denial that avoid acknowledging or dealing with ‘uncomfortable knowledge’. It is a situation many people in child protection systems confront. It is, for example, when we know abuse is taking place, or when they see or are ourselves party to corrupt or negligent practices. It is knowing that important ethical principles are being abrogated. We draw on recent official reports and inquiries noting the repeated calls for greater transparency and independent oversight. An argument is made for a default position of total transparency subject to caveats that protect privacy and any investigation underway. An account of what this can look like is offered.     

Sustainability‐oriented Innovation: A Systematic Review

This paper is intended as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of sustainability‐oriented innovation (SOI) and provides initial guidance on becoming and being sustainable. The authors organize and integrate the diverse body of empirical literature relating to SOI and, in doing so, develop a synthesized conceptual framework onto which SOI practices and processes can be mapped. Sustainability‐oriented innovation involves making intentional changes to an organization's philosophy and values, as well as to its products, processes or practices to serve the specific purpose of creating and realizing social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. A critical reading of previous literature relating to environmental management and sustainability reveals how little attention has been paid to SOI, and what exists is only partial. In a review of 100 scholarly articles and 27 grey sources drawn from the period of the three Earth Summits (1992, 2002 and 2012), the authors address four specific deficiencies that have given rise to these limitations: the meaning of SOI; how it has been conceptualized; its treatment as a dichotomous phenomenon; and a general failure to reflect more contemporary practices. The authors adopt a framework synthesis approach involving first constructing an initial architecture of the landscape grounded in previous studies, which is subsequently iteratively tested, shaped, refined and reinforced into a model of SOI with data drawn from included studies: so advancing theoretical development in the field of SOI.     

“DEREGULATING POVERTY”: LIBERAL-NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND YOUNG PEOPLE

It has come to be almost cliché to say that young people are among those Australians most deeply affected by the restructuring and globalisation which have reshaped the Australian experience since the early 1980s. Youth unemployment and a dramatic decline in the quantity of full-time employment available to 16–24 year olds, and especially to 16–19 year olds, have been accompanied by declining incomes and increasing dependency on parents and social security benefits by young Australians. Winning office in March 1996 after 13 years of Labor government, and with a mandate to implement a reform agenda directed in part at improving employment prospects for young Australians, the Howard Liberal-National Coalition government has pursued policies which impact heavily on the lives of many young Australians.     

Translating Bourdieu into youth studies

ABSTRACT

Against a backdrop of lively discussion about the best ways to do youth studies, or sociology of youth, this article asks: Can Pierre Bourdieu’s work be translated into youth studies in ways that benefit the field? We begin by considering Bourdieu’s thoughts on the category of ‘youth’ using a new translation of this text, and then turn to an important discussion by Furlong, Woodman, and Wyn about certain long standing tensions in youth studies. These tensions are between writers engaging in the ‘structure versus agency’ debate that is mapped onto the ‘culture versus transitions’ binary. We consider the case for adopting a ‘middle-ground’ represented by Bourdieu’s writings. We argue that many in youth studies work from an unacknowledged substantialist tradition, which is contra to Bourdieu's relational perspective. The result includes misunderstandings of Bourdieu's thinking and expectations of his work, for example, that it can pass certain empirical tests. We argue that if Bourdieu's relational perspective is to be translated into youth studies, we will need a more determined effort to understand that perspective first.