The state and post-industrial urban regeneration: the reinvention of south Cardiff

South Cardiff was once dependent on the export of coal and the production of steel, but these activities had faded by the 1970s, creating economic stagnation and physical dereliction. However, the area was rechristened ‘Cardiff Bay’ in the mid—1980s and was the focus of an ambitious and contested state—funded regeneration. This article argues that regeneration was broadly successful, although not without failures, and that government remained willing to intervene heavily in some small areas. The main contribution is to identify and analyse how local authorities retained influence over regeneration, in contrast to approaches taken elsewhere by central government

Employers' organisations: a continuing force in the UK?

Leon Gooberman and Marco Hauptmeier explain how Employers' Organisations - an underestimated actor within the world of work - deliver benefits to their members, represent employers in the political process, and play an important role in UK employment relations

Business failure in an age of globalisation: interpreting the rise and fall of the LG project in Wales, 1995-2006

In 1996 the South Korean conglomerate LG announced a £1.67 billion investment in Wales to manufacture consumer electronics and semiconductors. The project was to be Europe’s largest inward investment project and LG was offered the UK Government’s most generous grants. However, the semiconductor plant was built but never entered production while the consumer electronics facility closed in stages up to 2006. This article responds to calls for a ‘new business history’ by using the ill-fated investment as a case study of business failure, arguing that narrow firm-specific factors do not fully explain LG’s failure in Wales. The article finds instead that analysis of distorted institutional environments in South Korea and Wales, linked to rentseeking behaviour by LG, provides a fuller answer

The emergence of regional industrial policy in Britain, the case of Wales, 1939 to 1947

From the 1940s to the 1970s British Governments steered manufacturing businesses to peripheral regions designated as needing more employment. This approach was delivered through a Regional Policy that deployed industrial location controls and financial incentives. Effectiveness varied over time but was dramatic in the mid-1940s when it boosted the regional stock of secondary manufacturing to the extent that its legacy remains visible today. The literature describes how Regional Policy was a peacetime policy, albeit one formulated during the war. This article, however, proposes that the initial and most successful phase of Regional Policy was an extension of wartime policies governing regional manufacturing businesses producing munitions. It uses a case study of Wales to make two arguments. One is that the Regional Policy associated with the post-war period began to be implemented before the war had ended. The other is that the Board of Trade pursued the policy through repurposed wartime governance mechanisms within an economy that remained subject to onerous state controls. The case outlines a short but consequential burst of assertive state involvement that shaped business activity throughout much of regional Britain, echoing Scranton and Fridenson’s arguments as to ‘the state always being in’ given its role in shaping markets, business behaviour, and regulations

Welsh Office exceptionalism, economic development and devolution, 1979 to 1997

Between 1979 and 1997, five successive Conservative Secretaries of State headed the Welsh Office, the government department responsible for administratively devolved activity. The extent to which these ministers developed their own ‘exceptional’ policies at variance with those of central government was much debated, most commonly in relation to economic development. This paper examines such activity to make three arguments. First, exceptionalism took place, but was constrained by the nature of administrative devolution. Second, it often reflected the individual political philosophies of Secretaries of State and their ambitions on the UK’s political stage, as opposed to any desire for autonomy. Third, it was a crucial if inadvertent factor behind convincing the electorate that political devolution was both feasible and desirable. Overall, exceptionalism was driven by the Secretary of State’s ability to marshal the public sector behind his policy objectives, the momentum of existing institutions and the characteristics of each minister

The decline of Employers' Associations in the UK, 1976 to 2014

This article examines the collective, member-based employers’ associations in the UK that regulate the employment relationship by participating in collective bargaining. The main empirical contribution is to provide, for the first time, a longitudinal dataset of employers’ associations in the UK. We use archival data from the UK Government’s Certification Office to build a new dataset, identifying a decline of 81% in the number of employers’ associations between 1976 and 2013–2014. We also find that political agency and reducing levels of collective bargaining undermined employers’ associations by reducing employers’ incentives to associate, although changes within the UK’s system of employment relations enabled other types of collective employer organisation to survive

Contemporary employer interest representation in the United Kingdom

Focussing on employers’ organisations in the United Kingdom, this article contributes to the literature on employer interest representation by advancing three interrelated arguments, which reflect how the methods, structure and interests of employer representation have evolved. First, the primary method of collective interest representation has shifted from collective bargaining, nowadays only pursued by a minority of employers’ organisations, to political representation, now the most frequent form of collective interest representation. Second, the structure of employer interest representation has evolved and is fragmented between a small number of large, general employers’ organisations, a large majority of sectoral employers’ organisations, regional interest representation in the devolved nations, which has become more important, and a new type of employer body, the employer forum, which focusses on corporate social responsibility. Third, the shift in collective interest representation is complemented by a broadening of individual interest representation, with employers’ organisations having developed a wide range of services

A typology of employers' organisations in the United Kingdom

This article examines employers' organisations in the United Kingdom, drawing upon 70 interviews and a new dataset encompassing 447 employers’ organisations. The article's contribution is to develop a new typology of employers’ organisations capturing their organisational change in the wake of the decline of collective bargaining. It does this by drawing on a conceptualisation of employers’ organisations as intermediary organisations before identifying four organisational types: lobbying; service; negotiating, and; standard-setting employers’ organizations. The article also identifies and discusses factors that underlie this pattern of differentiation