6 research outputs found

    Policy mixes for incumbency: the destructive recreation of renewable energy, shale gas 'fracking,' and nuclear power in the United Kingdom

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    The notion of a ‘policy mix’ can describe interactions across a wide range of innovation policies, including ‘motors for creation’ as well as for ‘destruction’. This paper focuses on the United Kingdom’s (UK) ‘new policy direction’ that has weakened support for renewables and energy efficiency schemes while strengthening promotion of nuclear power and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (‘fracking’). The paper argues that a ‘policy apparatus for incumbency’ is emerging which strengthens key regimebased technologies while arguably damaging emerging niche innovations. Basing the discussion around the three technology-based cases of renewable energy and efficiency, fracking, and nuclear power, this paper refers to this process as “destructive recreation”. Our study raises questions over the extent to which policymaking in the energy field is not so much driven by stated aims around sustainability transitions, as by other policy drivers. It investigates different ‘strategies of incumbency’ including ‘securitization’, ‘masking’, ‘reinvention’, and ‘capture.’ It suggests that analytical frameworks should extend beyond the particular sectors in focus, with notions of what counts as a relevant ‘policy maker’ correspondingly also expanded, in order to explore a wider range of nodes and critical junctures as entry points for understanding how relations of incumbency are forged and reproduced

    Turnaround and failure: resource weaknesses and the rise and fall of Jarvis

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    Research employing the resource-based view (RBV) has overwhelming focused on the upside of resources, namely those that provide benefit to the firm. However, an emerging research stream suggests that the downside of resources, namely resource weaknesses, may be crucial in gaining a greater understanding of the key factors that contribute to firm performance and the ability to turnaround failing companies. We examine the infamous case of Jarvis, a firm that achieved a turnaround, but then experienced catastrophic failure. In so doing we explore the emergence of resource weaknesses, their nature and ability to combine to create a fatal organisational outcome

    Attitudes to justice in a rural community

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    This paper considers access to justice in rural areas through place-based research that draws on the insight of residents in a small community among the mountains and hills of the Mid Wales countryside. The paper reports on an interview study designed to gain the local knowledge and personal experience of one particular group of rural dwellers in the hope that it might help contribute to a wider discussion on access to rural justice. The current cuts to legal services in the UK conducted under Conservative austerity policy pose a particular threat to rural areas, wherein the provision of local justice can be deemed of some significance. Considering the potential impact cuts may have on rural justice, the paper suggests that giving further attention to justice in rural areas is of the utmost importance in contemporary socio-legal scholarship
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