School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

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    Front-line work in employment services after ten years of New Public Management reform: Governance and activation in Australia, the Netherlands and the UK
    Considine, M ; Lewis, JM (Sage Publications, 2010)
    This study examines the impact of administrative reforms upon the work of front-line staff in the employment services of three reform-oriented countries – Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. These changes have involved greater use of private agents, more detailed performance contracts, clearer expectations about outcomes for job-seekers, and increased competition between agencies seeking government work. The study compares the work characteristics and strategies of front-line staff in agencies in the three systems in 2008 and a decade earlier, using surveys. The results show that there are substantial differences in the level of tailoring and investment in these countries. There are three relatively stable modes of governance in these cases and the most stable of these types across countries and across time is what we term the corporate-market mode – more generally labelled New Public Management (NPM). Despite the expectations of theorists and of reformers, the role of network governance proves neither as stable nor as generalised as expected.
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    Age Equality in Education and Training
    TAYLOR, P ; Peterson, P ; Baker, E ; McGaw, B (Elsevier, 2010)
    The issue of age and work has come to prominence in recent years, particularly among European Union countries, as policymakers have grown concerned with the stability of social welfare systems and labor supply due to population aging. Critical to the prolongation of working lives is the maintenance and development of skills and competences. However, older workers' participation in learning activities is rather lower than among younger ones. While this issue is being addressed by policy reforms in a number of countries, the response overall could be described as fragmented, although much is now known about what works for older learners.
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    Cross National Trends in Work and Retirement
    TAYLOR, P ; Dannefer, D ; Phillipson, C (SAGE, 2010)
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    Population ageing in a globalizing labour market: Implications for older workers
    Taylor, P ; Jorgensen, B ; Watson, E (Informa UK Limited, 2010-07-01)
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    Older workers and organizational change: corporate memory versus potentiality
    Taylor, P ; Brooke, L ; McLoughlin, C ; Di Biase, T ; Shultz, K (EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LIMITED, 2010)
    Purpose Drawing on the recent work of Sennett and others who considered the position of older workers in dynamic economies subject to rapid change, this paper aims to examine the perceived fit between employees of different ages and their employing organizations in four Australian workplaces. Design/methodology/approach Analysis of qualitative data, collected among workers and managers in four Australian organizations, was performed. Findings Results suggests that potentiality tended to be prized as an asset over corporate memory. While managers were frequently paternalistic towards their older employees, ageing human capital was often devalued as managers tried to balance operational budgets and organizations sought to remain responsive to changing market demands. Originality/value The paper discusses the implications for the prolongation of working lives.
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    North by North West Cape: Eyes on China
    TANTER, R (Nautilus Institute, 2010)
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    Social governance in a global economy: Introduction to an evolving agenda
    Macdonald, K ; Marshall, S (Ashgate, 2010-12-01)
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    Experiments in globalizing justice: Emergent lessons and future trajectories
    Macdonald, K ; Marshall, S ; Macdonald, K ; Marshall, S (Ashgate Publishing, Limited, 2010-01-01)
    Civic, corporate and state-based governance initiatives that seek to promote norms of social or global ‘justice’ are achieving steadily rising levels of reach and influence in the global economy. More seem to be emerging every day, and their legitimacy as mechanisms of local, national and transnational regulation is achieving increasing acceptance in many quarters. They perform a range of functions – from delivering social services and facilitating economic redistribution and poverty reduction, to establishing, monitoring and enforcing social and labour standards within global production systems across large parts of the industrialized and developing worlds. Although the patterns of their diffusion are still limited and highly uneven, it is important to understand the forces that drive them, the mechanisms and actors through which they operate, and the factors that condition their success or failure.
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    The liberal battlefields of global business regulation
    Macdonald, K ; Macdonald, T (CO-ACTION PUBLISHING, 2010)
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    Democracy in a Pluralist Global Order: Corporate Power and Stakeholder Representation
    Macdonald, K ; Macdonald, T (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2010-01-01)
    Whereas representative democratic mechanisms have generally been built around preexisting institutional structures of sovereign states, the global political domain lacks any firmly constitutionalized or sovereign structures that could constitute an analogous institutional backbone within a democratic global order. Instead, global public power can best be characterized as “pluralist” in structure. Some recent commentators have argued that if global democratization is to succeed at all, it must proceed along a trajectory beginning with the construction of global sovereign institutions and culminating in the establishment of representative institutions to control them. This paper challenges this view of the preconditions for global democratization, arguing that democratization can indeed proceed at a global level in the absence of sovereign structures of public power. In order to gain firmer traction on these questions, analysis focuses on the prospects for democratic control of corporate power, as constituted and exercised in one particular institutional context: sectoral supply chain systems of production and trade. It is argued that global democratization cannot be straightforwardly achieved simply by replicating familiar representative democratic institutions (based on constitutional separations of powers and electoral control) on a global scale. Rather, it is necessary to explore alternative institutional means for establishing representative democratic institutions at the global level within the present pluralist structure of global power.