The London Creative Industries

This lecture draws from the Creative Industries Observatory research on the London creative industries and in particular provides some initial insights into the networks and relationships which exist including organisational structure, size, and location. Consideration has been given to clustering and markets. In particular attention has been paid to the levels of creativity found in the London creative industries and the possible implications for public policy intervention. These findings are based on a shared definitional framework, and can be compared with other cities

Diversity in Teams: Source of Conflict or Source of Creativity? Investigating Hidden Mental Models

The workforce in organizations today is becoming increasingly diverse. Consequently the role of diversity management is heavily discussed with respect to the question how diversity influences the productivity of a group. Empirical studies show that on one hand there is a potential for increasing productivity but on the other hand it might be as well that conflicts arise due to the heterogeneity of the group. Usually according empirical studies are based on interviews, questionnaires and/or observations. These methods imply that answers are highly selective and filtered. In order to make the invisible visible, to have access to mental models of team members the paper will present an empirical study on the self-understanding of groups based on an innovative research method, called “mind-scripting”.working teams; productivity; mind-scripting

The Impact of Public Policy and Membership of the EU on Regional Policy in Estonia

The primary aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the development and topical issues of the Estonian regional policy along with public policy. In order to implement a public policy, choices must be made based on values, which in their turn considerably influence the actual result. Public policy is usually described as a process of making choices from the determination of the situation to evaluation of the policy being implemented. This process has often an irrational character, which is caused by limited information available to decision-makers and limited time. My approach moves on from the statement of Ludek Sukora and his colleagues (Balchin et al 1999, 163) which says that in Eastern European countries, thus, hypothetically in Estonia as well, the former centralised planning economy replaced by relatively small local governments under the conditions of new legislation, where national plans do not work and consistent regional development policies do not exist, has brought about a situation of uncertainty, application of ad hoc methods instead of long-term comprehensive planning, and the use of earlier experience in administrative techniques. Following the above I present following hypotheses: H1) governmental normative documents on regional development change frequently and are often contradictory; H2) institutions responsible for the implementation of regional policy are unstable; H3) national and EU plans do not work and sectoral development plans are not compatible; H4) regional political initiatives depend on activities of different officials or ministers - human factor is critical; H5) no attempts are being made in municipalities to achieve awareness of conceptual basics of national and EU policies and their objectives, instead, different lobbying methods have been applied. In theoretical part, we look at the concept of regional policy and it’s changes in Europe. The empirical part will give a description of the Estonian regional and administrative polices in time, primarily based on observations, on the content analysis of documents and the written media, and interviews carried out in 1990-2005.

From iron rice bowl to the world's biggest sweatshop: globalization, institutional constraints, and the rights of Chinese workers

This article discusses how China's institutional constraints combine with its integration into the global economy to suppress its workers' rights. The rapid expansion of China's market economy is the consequence of the government's active embrace of global capitalism and global capitalists' ongoing search for new markets and lower production costs. China's traditional socialist labor relationships collapsed as a result of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform and the emergence of private enterprises. In the wake of these events, China's leaders promulgated new labor legislation and social insurance schemes, but these initiatives fail to safeguard workers' rights effectively. This is because the SOEs fail to compensate their workers properly, local authorities do not actively monitor labor abuses, the judicial system cannot effectively defend workers' rights, and the Chinese government suppresses efforts to organize independent labor unions. In short, global capitalism together with China's authoritarian polity have limited workers' rights and undermined their well-being

Education and older adults at the University of the Third Age

This article reports a critical analysis of older adult education in Malta. In educational gerontology, a critical perspective demands the exposure of how relations of power and inequality, in their myriad forms, combinations, and complexities, are manifest in late-life learning initiatives. Fieldwork conducted at the University of the Third Age (UTA) in Malta uncovered the political nature of elder-learning, especially with respect to three intersecting lines of inequality - namely, positive aging, elitism, and gender. A cautionary note is, therefore, warranted at the dominant positive interpretations of UTAs since late-life learning, as any other education activity, is not politically neutral.peer-reviewe

What are communities of practice? A comparative review of four seminal works

This paper is a comparative review of four seminal works on communities of practice. It is argued that the ambiguities of the terms community and practice are a source of the concept's reusability allowing it to be reappropriated for different purposes, academic and practical. However, it is potentially confusing that the works differ so markedly in their conceptualizations of community, learning, power and change, diversity and informality. The three earlier works are underpinned by a common epistemological view, but Lave and Wenger's 1991 short monograph is often read as primarily about the socialization of newcomers into knowledge by a form of apprenticeship, while the focus in Brown and Duguid's article of the same year is, in contrast, on improvising new knowledge in an interstitial group that forms in resistance to management. Wenger's 1998 book treats communities of practice as the informal relations and understandings that develop in mutual engagement on an appropriated joint enterprise, but his focus is the impact on individual identity. The applicability of the concept to the heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first century is questionable. The most recent work by Wenger – this time with McDermott and Snyder as coauthors – marks a distinct shift towards a managerialist stance. The proposition that managers should foster informal horizontal groups across organizational boundaries is in fact a fundamental redefinition of the concept. However it does identify a plausible, if limited, knowledge management (KM) tool. This paper discusses different interpretations of the idea of 'co-ordinating' communities of practice as a management ideology of empowerment

People, place, enterprise: proceedings of the first annual conference on Olympic Legacy 8 and 9 May 2008

The Olympic Legacy: People, Place, Enterprise conference took place at the University of Greenwich in May 2008. The first in a series of annual conferences, it brought together leading academics, policy makers and practitioners to debate the lasting legacy of the games. The conference had four themes: social and cultural regeneration; Olympic tourism; enterprise, including social enterprise and skills development, and education, providing a multi-dimensional perspective on the likely impacts of the forthcoming London Olympics

Profiling the victims: public awareness of pollution-related harm in China

This article aims to identify factors which influence public awareness of health or economic harm from pollution in China. Based on an analysis of the China General Social Survey (CGSS) carried out nationwide by Renmin University and HKUST in 2006, it focuses on awareness of pollution-related harm or self-identification as a pollution victim. The analysis tests three groups of hypotheses about how self-identified victims differ from others: first, in terms of the environmental conditions they experience, such as the actual level of pollution and types of neighbourhoods they inhabit; second, in terms of resources including material and information resources, time, social capital and political experience; and third, in terms of political attitudes. The conclusion discusses implications for the politics of public participation in environmental governance in China

The Co-operative Model in Practice : International Perspectives

Published with the support of the Scottish Government and the Economic & Social Research CouncilPublisher PD