Partnership, ownership and control: the impact of corporate governance on employment relations

Prevailing patterns of dispersed share ownership and rules of corporate governance for UK listed companies appear to constrain the ability of managers to make credible, long-term commitments to employees of the kind needed to foster effective labour-management partnerships. We present case study evidence which suggests that such partnerships can nevertheless emerge where product market conditions and the regulatory environment favour a stakeholder orientation. Proactive and mature partnerships may also be sustained where the board takes a strategic approach to mediating between the claims of different stakeholder groups, institutional investors are prepared to take a long-term view of their holdings, and strong and independent trade unions are in a position to facilitate organisational change

FairShares Model

The attached document provides an introduction to the FairShares Model, a new brand and concept for self-governing social enterprises operating under Company and Co operative Law

Conceptualisation of intellectual capital in analysts’ narratives: a performative view

Purpose: This study tests the performativity of Intellectual Capital (IC) from the perspective of sell-side analysts, a type of actor who consumes and creates IC information and in whose practice IC information plays a significant role. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical component of the study comprises a narrative analysis of the text of a large corpus of sell-side analysts’ initiation coverage reports. We adopt Mouritsen’s (2006) performative and ostensive conceptualisations of IC as our theoretical framework. Findings: We find that the identities and properties of IC elements are variable, dynamic and transformative. The relevance of IC elements in the eyes of analysts is conditional on the context, temporally contingent and bestowed indirectly. IC elements are attributed to firm value both directly, in a linear manner, and indirectly, via various non-linear interrelationships established with other IC elements, tangible capital and financial capital. Research limitations/implications: This study challenges the conventional IC research paradigm and contributes towards a performativity-inspired conceptualisation of IC and a resultant situated model of IC in place of a predictive model. Originality/value: This is the first study to apply a performative lens to study IC identities, roles and relationships from the perspective of a field of practice that is external to the organisation where IC is hosted. Examining IC from analysts’ perspective is important because not only can it provide an alternative perspective of IC, it also enables an understanding of analysts’ field of practice

The Organizational Fitness Navigator: Creating and Measuring Organizational Fitness for Fast-Paced Transformation

In the fast-changing environment of today dynamic capabilities to manage organizational transformation are regarded as crucial for business survival and improved performance. Although dynamic organizational capabilities have been receiving intense scrutiny by researchers and practitioners in the past few years, relatively little attention has been directed towards creating a systemic model of dynamic capabilities, and how to effectively measure what the authors call organizational fitness capabilities. This paper builds on the concepts of organizational fitness and its profiling (OFP), and proposes the organizational fitness navigator (OFN) as a systemic model of dynamic organizational capabilities. Part of the OFP model is a systemic scorecard (SCC) as a measurement tool for organizational fitness - in contrast to the well-known balanced scorecard (BSC) - for improving business survival and performance in increasingly networked environments.dynamic capabilities, organizational fitness, organizational fitness profiling, organizational fitness navigator, systemic scorecard

Creative Industry: Fact or Fiction?

In the late 1990's there was a growing realisation that for many 'post industrial' economies and especially the UK, not only had they become dominated by traditional 'service' businesses (banking, finance, retail, logistics, law and other professional service firms) but that the most rapidly growing group of these 'knowledge based' firms were in an ill defined sector that depended on creativity for their source of competitive advantage such as fashion, design, architecture, advertising and PR, books, music, film and TV production, theatre, online communities, video games, museum and gallery exhibitions and other print and screen based media. Many of these firms were young and rapidly growing, there were some large scale businesses in media and advertising but the majority stayed small and had a high attrition rate. In the UK they represented about 8% of GDP but crucially were growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole. From a policy point of view they attracted a lot of interest - was this the holy grail of the future 'knowledge economy'? Now nearly 10 years on from the UK's declaration of 'cool Britannia' under Tony Blair's New Labour project, it is worth reflecting on what we really know about the 'Creative Industries and Creative Business'. Are they fact or fiction? and what might be the implications for education in the arts and management

It\u27s Time for a Good Hard Look in the Mirror: The Corporate Law Example

This Article asserts that the move from the industrial age to the information age represents a fundamental change to our society on such a widespread basis that the legal order must reexamine the premises about how our society functions, assessing whether foundational elements of U.S. Common Law remain valid. This Article first confronts briefly the continuing acceptance of certain foundational premises in contract and intellectual property law, illustrating that such premises are no longer supported by the realities of modern society. With fundamental change challenging multiple areas of law in the information age, this problem is worthy of widespread inquiry by legal scholars in various fields. This Article then turns to a detailed analysis of the premises supporting shareholder primacy in corporate law, demonstrating that the historic justifications for allocations of ownership, control and duties no longer support these premises. Based on the relative needs of today’s businesses vis-à-vis the contributions of various other constituencies, this Article asserts that employees should also have certain duties owed to them. This Article concludes with a novel model for creating such a stake in the form of a springing right to profit sharing

The centrality of 'between' in intellectual entrepreneurship

A great deal of intellectual entrepreneurship happens between institutions. Between institutions in the dual sense of the term: institutions as organizations and institutions as conventions. Ideas and the energy to take them forward are often born when people from different organizations come together, ideas that might not fit within one institution alone. And the introduction of new ideas often involves pushing institutions as conventions aside, creating new space BETWEEN existing institutions for the different idea to emerge. The article explores the example of a business- and-research venture, CHOICE mobilitätsproviding GmbH, to illustrate the importance of multiple types of BETWEEN and their significance for organizational learning. -- In der modernen Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft ist Wissen die wichtigste erneuerbare Ressource. Welche Rolle spielen Institutionen bei der Generierung von Wissen und dessen Umsetzung in Innovationen? Findet wissensbasiertes unternehmerisches Denken und Handeln innerhalb von Institutionen oder eher außerhalb von Institutionen statt? In diesem Beitrag wird die Bedeutung von Räumen und Zeiten zwischen Institutionen hervorgehoben und zwar im doppelten Sinn: Institutionen als Organisationen und Institutionen als Konventionen. Anhand des Beispiels der CHOICE mobilitätsproviding GmbH, einem Unternehmen zwischen Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, werden einige Zwischen-Institutionen dargestellt und ihre Bedeutung für das Organisationslernen erläutert.

Communitarian perspectives on social enterprise

Concepts of social enterprise have been debated repeatedly, and continue to cause confusion. In this paper, a meta-theoretical framework is developed through discussion of individualist and communitarian philosophy. Philosophers from both traditions build social theories that emphasise either consensus (a unitarist outlook) or diversity (a pluralist outlook). The various discourses in corporate governance reflect these assumptions and create four distinct approaches that impact on the relationship between capital and labour. In rejecting the traditional discourse of private enterprise, social enterprises have adopted other approaches to tackle social exclusion, each derived from different underlying beliefs about the purpose of enterprise and the nature of governance. The theoretical framework offers a way to understand the diversity found within the sector, including the newly constituted Community Interest Company (CIC).</p

Transitioning from Transaction-Based Markets to Alliance-Based Supply Chains: Implications for Firms

Industrial Organization,

Social enterprise as a socially rational business

What is the goal of social enterprise policy? Is it the creation of a ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘more-than-profit’ business movement? In institutional policy circles, arguments are shaped by the desire to protect assets for the community, while entrepreneurial discourses favour a mixture of investment sources, surplus sharing and inclusive systems of governance. This article uses data from a critical ethnography to offer a third perspective. Human behaviour is a product of, and support system for, our socio-sexual choices. A grounded theory of social and economic capital is developed that integrates sexuality into organisation development. This constructs business organisations as complex centres of community-building replete with economic and social goals. By viewing corporate governance from this perspective social enterprise is reconceived as a business movement guided by social rationality with the long-term goal of distributing social and economic capital across stakeholder groups to satisfy individual and collective needs.</p