Project leader: Simon Deakin
Research Associates: Jude Browne, Stephen Pratten (King’s College, London)
PhD students: Ana Lourenço (JBS), Renée Claude Drouin (Law), Richard Hobbs (Law)
Project dates: 2002-06
Funding: European Commission Fifth Framework Programme

Update on progress: July 2006

Aims and Objectives

Through this project, which is funded by the 5th Framework Programme of the EC, the CBR is part of a network exploring the implications for social policy of the rise of the knowledge economy in Europe. The central concept used here is Amartya Sen's notion of 'capability'. The issue is how far the process of European integration can be used to promote an equitable distribution of capabilities, their development and their reinforcement in law and social convention. The project uses a sample of regions and firms in five European countries. Through empirical research, the network will analyse a range of business policies and public interventions that are aimed at integrating changes in the form of work into the organisation of the economy, employment and welfare provision.

Results and Dissemination

The project began in October 2002 and ran to March 2006. Simon Deakin and Jude Browne carried out case studies of the use by enterprises of corporate governance mechanisms to promote gender equality and diversity, and Simon Deakin, Ana Lourenço (Ph.D. candidate, Judge Business School) and Stephen Pratten (King's College, London) looked into innovation, regulatory change and the effects of regional policy in the media sector. Renee Claude Drouin (Ph.D. candidate, Law) examined international framework agreements between multinational companies and trade union federations, and Richard Hobbs (Ph.D., Law: completed 2006) looked at the link between corporate social responsibility and the implementation of labour standards in the area of working time. Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson carried out theoretical and historical work on capability theory. Simon Deakin and Alain Supiot (Nantes) coordinated a project on links between the legal concept of capacity and the capability approach. Several workshops were held: one, in Cambridge, initiated a comparative study of corporate restructuring in Britain and France with colleagues from IDHE-Cachan; a second, in Nantes, was concerned with the comparative study of the legal notion of 'capacity' (March 2003); and network-wide workshops held in Paris in December 2003 and Warsaw in June 2004 heard presentations from the teams of preliminary results from the sectoral and enterprise-based case studies. In Cambridge a workshop was held in March 2005 which brought together the legal and economic components of the project. In January 2006 a workshop was organized by Simon Deakin at Doshisha University, Japan, using funds from the CBR's collaboration with the ITEC centre at Doshisha, on the theme of social dialogue, at which presentations from the Eurocap project were made together with contributions from researchers from Japan, the US and Australia. The results of this work will be published in the journal Corporate Governance: An International Review in January 2007. The final conference of the Eurocap project was held in Nantes in February 2006. Simon Deakin and Steve Pratten both gave presentations of the UK-based work.