Migrant and Minority Learning Needs in the Communications Industry : Final report

This research was commissioned to examine the trade union learning needs of migrant workers in the communications industry. The key research questions focus on how far this learning meets the needs of migrant workers, whether there are structural or discriminatory disincentives to taking up union learning and how far inclusion and cohesion in the workplace and wider community can be promoted by union learning activities. There were two key findings: firstly, although some barriers to accessing union learning existed primarily associated with migrant workers disproportionately working unsociable shifts, the type of union learning activities demanded by workers cut across diversities. Experiences related to union learning were common to all workers who were unified by lack of access to, or utilisation of, formal educational resources. The second key finding was that a culture of learning for learning’s sake is valuable in fostering the social integration of workers generally and of migrant workers more specifically

Workplace industrial relations in the context of a failing school

Over the last two decades the UK public sector has seen the introduction of 'new managerialism' - the devolvement to the local level of management initiatives and techniques more traditionally associated with the private sector; this has arguably increased industrial relations tensions in the workplace as both line managers and workers have become involved in actions and negotiations new to them. This thesis provides a unique, in-depth, consideration of the impact on industrial relations of new managerialism in a 'failing' secondary comprehensive school; it identifies how devolved management and public accountability has inflamed the workplace industrial relations of that school. By taking a qualitative, multi-method, case study approach to the research, the thesis investigates at first hand how management and teachers respond to centralised government initiatives at the school level. It considers, and contributes to, the debate surrounding the extent of managerial autonomy that public sector managers have and how managers may take differing approaches - and achieve different results - when implementing new managerialist initiatives at the local level. As a study of workplace industrial relations, the thesis, engages with and significantly contributes to, the academic literature stressing the importance of local trade union leadership to trade union activity; indeed, the work furthers the debate concerning the inter-relationship between political and trade union activism and the importance of political factions within trade unions, areas which are under-researched. By exploring the tensions between trade union members and their official union representatives, the thesis examines the complex inter-relationship between union democracy and union bureaucracy. Finally, the case study identifies policy implications for both the government and the trade union, particularly with respect to the closing and re-opening of 'failing' schools

The psychological contracts of academics in UK and Ghana

Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Managing the Employment Relationship

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by SAGE Publishing in Strategic Human Resource Management: An International Perspective, 2nd Edition on 2017, available at: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/strategic-human-resource-management/book249141.The chapter discusses and explores the employment relationship within a UK and international context. It looks at Government ideological perspectives, employee engagement and employee voice.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Academics at the intersection of age and gender: : A Ghanaian experience

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Gender and the Professions: International and Contemporary Perspectives, on 15 August 2017, available online at: https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-the-Professions-International-and-Contemporary-Perspectives/Broadbent-Strachan-Healy/p/book/9781138680579. Under embargo until 15 February 2019.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Scaling the mobility of health workers in an enlarged Europe : An open political-economy perspective

The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in European Urban and Regional Studies, Vol. 23 (4), October 2016, published by SAGE Publishing.The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and 2007 and the marketisation of health care are increasing the mobility of workers and driving a scalar transformation of the sector across Europe. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews in 17 European Union countries, and focusing on two case study New Member States, we analyse inter- and intra-country drivers and impacts of health care labour mobility. The data are analysed from an open political-economy perspective underpinned by an understanding of scale as a socially constructed material entity mediated by national and supranational state institutions, and the collective agency of workers. We emphasise the contradictory and contested nature of rescaling health care and the complex micro-dynamics of mobility. Although absolute outward migration across borders is relatively small, the movement of health care specialists is having a disproportionate effect on sender countries and regions within them.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Political Activism and Workplace Industrial Relations in a UK Failing School

This paper explores the dynamics of workplace unionism in an inner-city comprehensive school characterised as failing and ultimately closed down. Recent and continuing educational change and the nature of industrial relations in the education sector set the context. The focus of the paper is on the way that local activists influence, resist and challenge the managerial processes during the period of failing and then closing. In particular, the paper allows a consideration of the influence of local activism, the link with political activists and the tension between workplace relations and formal union organisation

Does sector make a difference : A comparative study of managerialism in secondary and higher education

The public sector has undergone considerable change over the last two decades with massive privatisation and marketisation programmes; governments have focused on economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Pollitt 1993), with the clear intention of forcing public sector management to manage (Colling and Ferner 1995). Emphasis has been placed on the necessity for the control of financial budgets, quality of service and performance. The implementation of such changes has resulted in new managerialism (Pollitt, 1993). By drawing on data from two independent pieces of research, this paper compares and contrasts the introduction of initiatives associated with new managerialism in two related, but diverse public sector settings- institutes of higher education and secondary schools

Joe Sent Me - Some Personal Reflections on the Problems of Gaining Access

If I say Joe sent me will you let me in behind the green door (F. Vaughan) Although fieldwork is a necessary component of qualitative research and the gaining (and maintaining) of access to an organisation is often fraught with difficulties and anxieties, such issues are largely ignored by the research literature. This paper draws on the personal reflections of two researchers undertaking completely independent and separate projects. Despite the research settings being as diverse as a light engineering firm and a failing school, the paper explores how the experiences of the researchers in the field were inherently similar. The rationale in writing the paper is the hope that it may generate a response, perhaps even a debate, on what are important, though largely ignored, aspects of qualitative research. With this in mind, the findings upon which this paper is based should not be seen as prescriptive, they are simply accounts of attempts to overcome problems encountered whilst undertaking social research

Revisiting Collectivism- Unionised Teachers Response to Individualism

The paper engages with contemporary debates on individualism and collectivism and argues that there is no necessary relationship between individualised management techniques and an individualised orientation to work and refutes a deterministic shift to individualism. It attempts to redress the gap in empirical evidence identified by Madsen (1997) and Towers (1997) by drawing on evidence from a large survey of schoolteachers and a qualitative study of a 'failing' school.It draws on three main themes, unionisation, appraisal and career development, to show that teachers a)join and participate in unions for collectivist reasons, b)that unions are integrally involved in apparently individualised management strategies such as appraisal and c)that teachers want their union to have a collective role in their career developmen