Thursday 8 December 2011, 1-2pm, Language lab 0/12, Craiglockhart
Ignazio Cabras, The York Management School - University of York, ignazio.cabras@york.ac.uk
The importance of pubs in enhancing community cohesion and socio-economic activities in rural and remote areas of Britain
In villages and rural areas of Britain, pubs play an important role in stimulating community cohesion and social capital by enhancing socioeconomic activities, such as communal initiatives and business activities. Despite their important function, there has been a constant decline in the number of British pubs during the past decades. Many factors had and have an impact on this decline, including rising prices and alcohol duties on pubs’ sales, the increased popularity of home entertainment, and the smoking ban. The disappearance of pubs from rural areas deprives locals of major centres of social aggregation and has a significant impact on rural economies, given the importance of these businesses for local supply chains. This seminar illustrates and discusses the significance of village and rural pubs in Britain with regard to a number of aspects, such as the creation of social capital and networking, the strengthening of community cohesion among villagers, and the potential for business opportunities in remote areas. In addition, this seminar examines solutions that may help to rescue village pubs from closure, such as the creation of small cooperatives or Industrial and Provident Societies (I&PSs) in villages and small communities. The author presents original data obtained from primary research and from secondary sources. Results are explored in the light of policies that can be developed in support of British rural pubs at both national and local levels.
Wednesday 16 November 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 2/09, Craiglockhart
Stephen Hincks, Centre for Urban Policy Studies - University of Manchester, stephen.hincks@manchester.ac.uk
Towards a Multifaceted View of Neighbourhood Change
The role of the neighbourhood in underpinning social responsibility and bolstering the well being of people living in deprived areas has long been at the heart of urban policy initiatives in the UK and elsewhere. There is of course a substantial international and cross-disciplinary literature that engages with debates about the role of the neighbourhood as a site for policy intervention notably in recent years in relation to the development of ‘mixed communities’. There has also been a focus in the academic literature on the effect of composition (e.g. population structure) on different neighbourhood outcomes and more recently an interest in understanding how neighbourhood functionality and spatial context help to shape change in economically and socially deprived areas.
The arguments made for understanding these individual drivers of neighbourhood change are compelling. However, it has been demonstrated that neighbourhoods are multi-dimensional in terms of their attributes, their compositions and their functionalities and as a result neighbourhoods vary across geographical space. This means that the effects of composition, functionality and spatial context manifest themselves in different ways in different places. This provides the rationale for this paper: that the ways in which composition, functionality and spatial context help to shape deprived neighbourhoods need to be understood holistically and not in isolation from one another. Through a case study of deprived neighbourhoods in Wales, this study explores the value of developing a multifaceted view of neighbourhood change.
Wednesday 26 October 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 2/47, Craiglockhart
Jan Auernhammer, School of Management, Edinburgh Napier University, j.auernhammer@napier.ac.uk
"A system perspective of creativity and innovation in organisations: An investigation of a large German Automotive Manufacturer with a long tradition in innovation.”
Creativity and innovation are very important capabilities within an organisation for sustainability, profitable growth and business success. Creativity and innovation in organisations are complex capacities containing many interrelating determinant factors. This complexity involves the influence of managerial and organisational factors such as individual and collective knowledge creation, shared behaviour, leadership style, routines, resources available, structures and infrastructures. These complex interrelating factors build patterns that explain how the system within the case organisation facilitates creativity and produces improvement and innovation.
This doctoral thesis investigation examines the organisation and, designs the system models on a macro level (organisational perspective) and micro level (individual and collective perspective). This system investigation comprises the identification of patterns through quantitative pattern analysis (macro level) and a qualitative pattern analysis (micro level). The identified interrelating patterns can be seen as the ‘blue print’ of the system of the organisational creativity and innovation capacity.
The analysis identified sixteen interrelating factors on the macro level and nine interrelating patterns on the micro level. As expected the macro level revealed that leadership, organisational behaviour and interdisciplinary creative working are the main determinants of the organisational innovation performance and improvement performance. The analysis of the micro level allowed theory elaboration, which resulted in a model of ‘being in the thick of the action’ and ‘Freiraum’ (German word for ‘free space’, ‘free time frame’ or ‘free environment’). This system model of the ‘Freiraum-theory’ is a ‘human-centric’ model that explains how to facilitate creativity and innovation in organisations.
The presentation gives an overview of the research conducted and insights of organisational and managerial capacities for successful innovation. This includes the presentation of the system models and the ‘Freiraum-theory’.
Wednesday 12 October 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 1/10, Craiglockhart
Jane Watters, Scottish Enterprise
"The role of Enterprise Europe Network within the sustainable energy sector"
This seminar is a joint event arranged by the Employment Research Institute in collaboration with the Operational Research Group of Scotland. It will be given by Jane Watters of Scottish Enterprise. She will talk about the development and use of the Enterprise Europe Network to improve connectivity among companies specifically in the Sustainable Energy Sector. There will be time to discuss associated topics of interest and especially the forthcoming Conference/Brokerage Event on Sustainable Energy due to take place at Edinburgh Napier University on March 2012.
Monday 18 July 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 2/06, Craiglockhart
Prof. Walter Scherrer, University of Salzburg (Austria), walter.scherrer@sbg.ac.at
"The role of public private partnerships at the regional level of government and regional innovation policy in particular"
Appropriate governance, institutions and institutional networks are significant components for the development and operation of regional innovation systems. Across the European Union the use of different forms of institutional structures, such as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), have been growing, but in different ways and for different reasons across Member States.
The paper focuses on three iinfluences which are relevant for the use of PPPs at the regional level of government in general: catering for regional preferences (which is particularly the case in federalist political systems), economies of scale which are inherent to PPPs, and different demands for investment and different budgetary strain at various levels of government. For the use od PPPs in regional innovation policies in particular three further topics are relevant: the role of spatial externalities ("proximity of economic agents") within a PPP framework, the scope for PPPs as a mode of delivery of services within a regional innovation system, and the potential of PPPs for regional innovation by stimulating demand.The paper argues that these influencing factors (spatial externalities and economies of scale for PPPs, in particular) are important to assist in understanding the development of PPPs in relation to regional innovation.
Wednesday 25 May 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 02/47, Craiglockhart
Alasdair Rae, University of Sheffield, a.j.rae@sheffield.ac.uk
"Exploring patterns of employment deprivation in England and Scotland: concentration, isolation and persistence"
In all parts of the United Kingdom, the government has an official measure of deprivation at the small area level. In England, the Indices of Deprivation for 2010 provide the most recent account whilst the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation for 2009 provides the most recent picture north of the border. These indices differ slightly in composition but they do allow us to compare places within each nation and, to an extent, between each nation. What we can also do is explore sub-sets of the data in order to gain a better understanding of labour market characteristics, in terms of 'employment deprivation', or worklessness. So, for example, we know that in parts of Glasgow more than 50% of the working age population are on employment-related benefits and that in one part of Rochdale this figure rises to 75%. In addition, we also know that these areas are spatially clustered and that they tend to change little through time. This presentation therefore takes a detailed look at patterns of employment deprivation in England and Scotland at the small area level using an approach that combines methods of spatial analysis and spatial statistics. The findings indicate that deprivation - and employment deprivation in particular - are characterised by the phenomena of concentration, isolation and persistence. The scale of the policy challenge is therefore obvious.
Wednesday 27 April 2011, 1pm - 2pm, Room 02/47, Craiglockhart
David Holman, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, david.holman@mbs.ac.uk "Variations in the distribution of job types in the EU: an explanation using institutional theory"
Theories such as strategic HRM indicate that different types of job should occur across the EU, and that these job types will differ along a number of dimensions, i.e., work organisation, pay, skills and development, security and flexibility, representation. However, previous empirically derived taxonomies of job types in Europe have been based on one job dimension, namely, work organisation (Valeyre et al., 2009).
As such, the first aim of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of job types in Europe with reference to all the main dimensions of a job. Job types are likely to vary in quality, as they will differ in the extent to which they have factors that promote employee well-being (Green, 2005). The second aim of the paper is to establish the job quality of each job type.
But are high quality job types more likely to be found in certain European countries than others? The third aim of this paper is to use institutional theory to examine whether cross-national variation in the distribution of job types is a result of differences in national institutional regime, i.e., social democratic, continental, liberal, southern European, transitional (Epsing-Andersen, 1990; Gallie, 2009).
The analysis was conducted on data from a sample of 25614 employees of the EU-27 and drawn from the European Working Conditions Survey 2005. The analysis had three stages:
The analysis identified six job types, which were:
As expected the proportion of high quality job types was higher in social democratic and continental countries, although continental countries had a relatively high proportion of passive jobs. Liberal countries had a lower proportion of high quality jobs than social democratic and continental countries but a higher proportion of higher quality jobs than Southern European and transitional countries. Liberal countries also had the highest proportion of insecure jobs. Southern European and transitional countries has the high proportions of low quality job types; with Southern European countries having the highest proportion of passive jobs, and Transitional countries having the highest proportion of team-based and high-strain jobs.
Overall, these results suggest that the proportion of high quality job types is higher when countries have institutional regimes that seek to promote full employment and extend employment rights to all and when organised labour has a strong capacity to influence decision-making within firms and governments.
Thursday 24 March 2011, 12noon - 1pm, Craiglockhart 2/06Natalie Branowsky, Director of the Washington Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (London & Washington, DC) "US Employment Policies: the Road to Recovery?"
Thursday, 17 March 2011, 1300-1400, Room 02/47, CraiglockhartDr Michael Lewrick, Swisscom IT Services, Michael.Lewrick@swisscom.com "Management Capabilities for Successful Innovation and Business Success."
There are many determinants of innovation. Some are associated with technology and the market but many are related to managerial capabilities. It is important to understand these managerial capabilities and to find how they might relate to promoting innovativeness.
In this presentation data obtained from a survey of enterprises in the high technology cluster around Munich in Germany are analysed using multi nominal logistic regression models to ascertain how facets of management might enhance the likelihood of innovation. Analysis is conducted for innovation defined as incremental, radical and the total of both.
It is found that managerial skills associated with knowledge acquisition, customer and market orientation, responsiveness to change and performance measurement are associated with enhanced innovative ability. Feature of social networks are also important. There are many determinants of innovation notably the skills and attributes of the individual entrepreneur.
In this presentation the focus is on organisational facets not on those of the individual. The presentation provides insights of the analysis and extent of management capabilities for successful innovation from a unique data set collected in a high technology cluster around Munich, Germany.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 1400-1500, Room 02/05, CraiglockhartProfessor Gillian Raab, University of St. Andrews, gmr1@st-andrews.ac.uk "Teenage mothers and fathers in Scotland, evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal study."
The debate around teenage pregnancy has mainly focussed on reducing the numbers of pregnant teenagers. There has been much less work on the consequences of parenthood for young mothers, and even less on those for young fathers. This presentation will use data for the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS). The SLS is a large linkage study which holds data on a semi-random sample making up 5.3% of the Scottish population. Census data held in the SLS from 1991 and 2001 allows us to examine the socio-economic and health outcomes at 2001 for young people who become teenage parents and compare them with outcomes for other young people. The SLS is supported by the ESRC, GRO Scotland and the Chief Scientist's office and social researchers can apply to use the data in a safe-setting based in GROS in Edinburgh.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011, 1300-1400, Room 02/47, CraiglockhartJenna Breckenridge, Queen Margaret University, JBreckenridge@qmu.ac.uk
"Being Person Driven in a Service Driven Organisation: A Grounded Theory of Revisioning Service Ideals and Client Realities in Condition Management Programmes"
This seminar presents the theory of ‘Revisioning Service Ideals and Client Realities’, which has emerged from a classic grounded theory study of health care practitioners working within Condition Management Programmes. As part of the UK Government initiative Pathways to Work, Condition Management Programmes provide short work-focused interventions to help incapacity benefit claimants return to employment.
This PhD research identified that practitioners working within Condition Management Programmes often experienced tensions between the competing priorities of service delivery, highlighting a prevailing concern with trying to deliver a person driven approach within a service driven organisation. The theory of ‘Revisioning Service Ideals and Client Realities’ offers a conceptual explanation of the means through which this concern is resolved, explaining the way in which practitioners make thoughtful, situational adaptations to their practice in order to deviate from or retreat within service boundaries.
By cycling iteratively between deconstructing and reinstating service ideals, practitioners are able to create a reverberating equilibrium between the expectations and realities of practice, negotiating a person driven approach without compromising service structures completely. The theory adds to current Condition Management literature by exploring the differences across and within programmes, highlighting some important considerations for the future development and evaluation of welfare to work programmes. Moreover, by offering a conceptual explanation of the behaviour of service workers at a ground level, the theory is demonstrated to have relevance to wider areas, most notably to theories of bureaucracy, organisation, policy implementation and professional reasoning.