The Move from Protectionism to Outward-looking Industrial Development: a Critical Juncture in Irish Industrial Policy?

This paper utilises a new framework for examining critical junctures to help us understand whether the changes to Irish industrial policy at the end of the 1950s constituted a critical juncture, breaking cleanly with what came before, or were a continuation of policy pathways previously established. The framework is made up of three elements, which must be identified in sequence, for us to be able to declare a critical juncture. Irish industrial policy is examined here, as it constitutes a core tenet of wider economic policy

Approaches to Qualitative Research: Theory and Its Practical Application (A Guide for Dissertation Students)

Qualitative research is a multifaceted approach that investigates culture, society and behaviour through an analysis and synthesis of people’s words and actions. Qualitative methods produce compelling knowledge of how and why people behave as they do, whether in organisational, family, personal, or other social roles. The primary objective of this book is to introduce students to the concepts underlying qualitative research and how this kind of research can be conducted in a practical manner. To this end, it discusses various approaches to qualitative research and provides examples of these approaches being carried out in practice. In doing so, the book shows how various disciplines all use qualitative research in order to discover answers to their own particular research questions. The book is primarily designed to be a qualitative research guidebook for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking dissertations as part of their course of study. Each of the chapters has been structured like a mini dissertation with introductions, brief literature reviews, methodology sections, and finally analysis. As qualitative methodologies can be applied across a broad spectrum of disciplines, the book can be used by students working in any area of research from business studies to the social sciences

Introduction: Approaches to Qualitative Research

Undertaking a dissertation can be a daunting prospect, irrespective of whether a student is an undergraduate or a postgraduate. The idea of having to start with a blank sheet of paper and finish with anything between 15,000 words for an undergraduate dissertation, and 100,000 words of a PhD dissertation, is an arresting thought. But, even these coarse figures fail to capture the true extent of the work involved, as a finished dissertation is usually only a distillation of volumes of work and words that far exceed the finished product ultimately presented. The various chapters present examples for dissertation students in terms of how they might go about conducting qualitative research. Additionally, the chapters’ findings show how students might consider presenting their own findings. To this end, each of the chapters has been structured like a mini dissertation with introductions, brief literature reviews, methodology sections, and finally analysis. Thus, the book was written with the intention of assisting dissertation students as they grapple with the difficulties of selecting and implementing a research strategy

UK political elite networks are formed early in life and inspecific fee-paying schools

What accounts for political elite formation in the UK? And what are the implications for democracy? Here, Brendan O’Rourke, John Hogan, and Paul F. Donnelly use a new ‘Institutional Influence Index’ to demonstrate the validity of the widely-held view that elite formation takes place early in life, and in specific fee-paying private schools such as Eton and Harrow

What Stick Figures Tell Us about Irish Politics

This paper forms part of an ongoing research project using the technique of freehand drawing to study how students entering university in Ireland perceive the state of Irish politics and the wider society. By sidestepping the cognitive verbal processing routes through the use of freehand drawing, we find that students tend to present a more holistic, integrated and clearer understanding of the pertinent issues from their perspective

Government Policies Must Keep Business on Tight Rein

The unethical behaviour that helped create the economic and banking crisis has caught the attention of some parties

Introduction: Reflections on Issues in Irish Business and Society

In this introductory chapter, we will put the book and its aims in context and provide the reader with a guide to the wide-ranging, diverse and thought-provoking contributions contained between its covers. In order to do so, this chapter is structured as follows. The first section looks at the context within which this book finds itself and which makes its appearance particularly apposite. The second section deals with the aims of the book as we editors have come to conceive of them. We then provide the reader with an overview of the book’s themes and structure, before concluding the chapter

Irish Business and Society: Governing, Participating and Transforming in the 21st Century

Irish Business and Society is a contemporary exploration of the wide-ranging debates surrounding the relationships between business and society in 21st century Ireland, providing a context in which to question and inform our perspectives on both. The book consists of diverse and thought-provoking contributions from leading business researchers, economists, sociologists and political scientists from Ireland and abroad, which address five central themes: -- The Making and Unmaking of the Celtic Tiger -- Governance, Regulation & Justice -- Partnership & Participation -- The nature of Irish Borders within Ireland, Europe & the Wider World -- Interests & Concerns in Contemporary Irelan

Working Paper: Concentration of Secondary Schooling for Irish and UK Elite Politicians

The study of elites and their formation has returned to centre stage in recent years. The lessons from these studies can be made more universal if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable. The multifaceted nature of the concept of elite formation makes this complex. However, in this paper, by building upon measures used in other fields, such as industrial economics, we offer such a measure that facilitates comparison of elite formation. We illustrate this measure through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British political elites