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WP191: The Many Futures of the Contract of Employment
Simon Deakin
The paper sets out a number of possible futures for the employment contract as a mechanism for risk management, and identifies ‘mutations’ within the conceptual framework of employment law which suggest possible directions of change.
WP190: The Influence of Location on the Use by SMEs of External Advice & Collaboration: Detailed Econometric Estimates
Robert Bennett, Paul Robson and William Bratton
This paper provides a large scale analysis of the influence of location on the extent of use and impact of external advice and collaboration on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Britain.
WP189: The Professions between State & Market: A Cross-National Study of Convergence & Divergence
Christel Lane, Margaret Potton and Wolfgang Littek
This paper analyses the impact on the professions of changes in their institutional environment during the last two decades, comparing solicitors/advocates and pharmacists in Britain and Germany.
WP188: The Relationship between Training & Employment Growth in Small & Medium Sized Enterprises (limited availability)
Andy Cosh, Alan Hughes and Melvyn Weeks
A rigorous analysis of the impact of training upon the employment growth characteristics of SMEs shows a positive relationship, especially when training is embedded in a wider range of human relations practices.
WP187: Creative Work Systems in Destructive Markets
Suzanne Konzelmann and Robert Forrant
Using the productive systems approach, this paper examines the inter-relationship between “creative” work systems and “destructive” markets using a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms in three industries.
WP186: An EmpIrical Investigation of the Terms of Corporate Charters & Influences on Term Standardization in a Laissez-Faire Environment
Michael Whincop
Corporate governance contracts in Australia prior to legislation on directors’ duties demonstrates pervasive alteration of default rules, and subsequently standardisation, but not the lock-in of network externality theory.
WP185: Knowledge, Economic Growth & the Role of Policy on the Role of “Public-Private Partnerships” in the New “Knowledge-Driven” Economy
Stephanie Blankenburg
The paper examines the economic rationale for “public-private partnerships” to promote technological progress and growth in the new “knowledge-driven” economy.
WP184: Human Resource Management & Business Objectives & Strategies In Small & Medium Sized Business
Frank Wilkinson
Survey findings show that a substantial majority of UK SMEs use HRM methods. Use is associated with commitment to non-price competition and other strategy, management and market variables.
WP183: Creating New Local Industry through Inter-Organizational Collaboration: A Japanese Case
Yushi Inaba
This paper looks at entrepreneurs’ attempts to create a new local industry for regional regeneration in Japan, collaborating beyond their own organisations to create and operate a “technical core”.
WP182: Government Advice Networks for Smes: An Assessment of the Influence of Local Context on Business Link Use, Impact & Satisfaction
Robert Bennett, Paul Robson and William Bratton
This paper uses a 1997 survey of SMEs to determine how Business Link use, impact and satisfaction are influenced by firm, local partnership, local geographical, service intensity and other characteristics.
WP181: The Small Business Service: Business Support, Use, Fees & Satisfaction: Econometric Estimates
Robert Bennett and Paul Robson
This paper assesses advice and information support for firms provided by the Small Business Service (SBS) Business Link, using a new survey of client use, satisfaction and experience of service fees.
WP180: On Enlarging Employment by Promoting Small Enterprises
Alan Hughes
This paper provides an overview of the role of SMEs in employment generation in advanced and developing countries, critiques ‘job generation’ literature, and emphasises the importance of efficient managerial strategies.
WP179: Emu Versus the Regions? Regional Convergence & Divergence in Euroland
Ron Martin
This paper examines the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for divergence and convergence in Europe, and analyses patterns of regional productivity trends and employment growth in 1975-1998.
WP178: Putting Partnership into Practice in Britain
William Brown
The paper reviews industrial relations developments in Britain during 1999 by assessing how New Labour’s policy commitment to encouraging ‘partnership’ is developing in practice.
WP177: The Legalization of the International Anti-Money Laundering Regime: The Role of the Financial Action Task Force
Kern Alexander
This paper analyses international instruments and principles adopted by leading states at the international level to combat money laundering by financial institutions, thereby reducing systemic risk.
WP176: The Challenges for the Next Decade: Notes on the Debate on the Development of the Emilia-Romagna Region
Margherita Russo, Giorgio Allari, Silvano Bertini, Paolo Bonaretti, Elio De Leo, Giuseppe Fiorani and Gianni Rinaldini
This paper examines the transformation of Emilia-Romagna, one of the richest regions in Europe, as a result of exogenous changes and endogenous impasses.
WP175: Exit, Voice & Loyalty in the Industrial District: The Case of Prato
Gabi Dei Ottati
The “exit, voice and loyalty” approach by Hirschman is applied to the case of the rise and evolution of the Prato industrial district, from post-war days until now.
WP174: Capabilities, Spontaneous Order & Socal Rights
Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson
This paper explores the idea that the labour market is a self-organising system which rests on set of mutually-reinforcing conventions which are themselves the outcome of an evolutionary process.
WP173: Norms in Private Insolvency Procedures: The ‘London Approach’ to the Resolution of Financial Distress
John Armour and Simon Deakin
This paper examines how norms, known collectively as the ‘London Approach’, guide the resolution of financial distress by creditors of large UK firms and act as a substitute for legal insolvency proceedings.
WP172: Does Law Matter? The Separation of Ownership & Control in the United Kingdom
Brian Cheffins
This paper provides evidence on the extent to which legal regulation does “matter” in the corporate governance context, focusing on the separation of ownership and control in the UK.
WP171: The Employment Contract: From Collective Procedures to Individual Rights
William Brown, Simon Deakin, David Nash and Sarah Oxenbridge
Based on the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, this paper shows that collective procedures have declined in importance, but there has been an increase in legal governance of the employment relationship.
WP170: An Incentive Based Regulatory System: A Bridge Too Far
Rahul Dhumale
This paper considers the “incentive problem” in regulation using a principal-agent framework and the design of an incentive compatible regulatory system which encourages prudent behaviour and efficient financial intermediation.
WP169: World Market Shares of Advertising TNCs: Intangible Comparative Advantage?
Lilach Nachum
This study explores the link between home country location advantages and the competitive position of national firms in world markets in the advertising industry.
WP168: The Role of Soft Law in the Legalization of International Banking Supervision: A Conceptual Approach
Kern Alexander
This paper analyses the concept of legalization at the international level its application to the development of international ‘soft law’ principles in international banking supervision.
WP167: Business Advice: The Influence of Distance
Robert Bennett, William Bratton and Paul Robson
This paper examines the external advisors used by small businesses to help them solve their problems in five representative locations in Britain, focusing on distance between client and advisor.
WP166: Public Markets, Private Orderings & Corporate Governance
Ugo Pagano
Critiquing the New Property Rights approach, this paper argues that managers and public authorities build respectively private and public “legal equilibria” that set the working rules within which transactions can take place.
WP165: Capital Adequacy Standards: Are They Sufficient?
Rahul Dhumale
This paper examines and models the link between the relative level of an individual bank’s capital adequacy and its effects on the fragility of the banking system
WP164: The Political Economy of Full Employment in Modern Britain
Robert Rowthorn
This paper examines the regional aspects of structural change and unemployment in the UK. Using a simple export base model, it quantifies the underlying decline of the northern economy, which in relative terms has been almost as fast in the 1990s as in the previous decade of industrial crisis.
WP163: Regulatory Competition Versus Harmonisation in European Company Law
Simon Deakin
Co-evolution based on diversity at the level of national legal systems, coupled with encouragement from transnational norms for devolved solutions, is a more likely path for European company law than the type of convergence around a single, dominant regime which appears to characterise the Delaware effect in the US context.
WP162: The Contested Meaning of Labour Market Flexibility: Economic Theory & the Discourse of European Integration
Simon Deakin and Hannah Reed
This paper warns that the institutional arrangements for the conduct of social and economic policy (broadly conceived) within the European community are making it impossible to forge the linkages between labour standards, active labour market policy and the macroeconomic framework of the kind which are needed to renew the ‘European social model’.
WP161: Citizenship, Public Service & the Employment Relationship
Simon Deakin and Mark Freedland
This paper reports on the effects on employment relations and conceptions of citizenship of the shift from bureaucratic to market-led forms of public service provision in Britain. Two contrasting case studies are reported, ‘imposed contractualism’ in the public education service, and (precarious) partnership arrangements in the utilities.
WP160: Trade Union Organising Among Low-Wage Service Workers: Lessons from America & New Zealand
Sarah Oxenbridge
This paper examines how American and New Zealand unions have responded to the challenges of organising workers in low-wage service sectors. Different approaches to organising are examined, with a particular focus on the ‘organising’ model of unionism. Relevance of organising model methods for British unions is considered.
WP159: Rethinking Receivership
John Armour and Sandra Frisby
We argue that although insolvency law’s formal structure is imbalanced, this can generate savings for parties by allowing a concentrated creditor who has invested in information-gathering about the debtor to conduct a private insolvency procedure. Further, this procedure is likely to be more efficient than one conducted by a state official.
WP158: Sources of Increasing Returns & Regional Innovation in the UK
Suma Athreye and David Keeble
This paper investigates the impact of different sources of increasing returns on firm innovative behaviour in different regions of the UK. The emergence of specialised markets and the impact of intermediation are particularly relevant, and regional public R&D and dynamic economies to scale due to learning within a firm are also considered.
WP157: Regulation, Power & Scale: ‘Reworking’ Capital-Labour Relations in German SMEs
Christian Berndt
An investigation of 28 SMEs in the Ruhr Area shows that capital-labour relations in Germany are being downscaled and decentralised, that the regulatory landscape is being ‘reworked’ in terms favourable to capital, and that there is a peculiar spatial dimension to the rearticulation of power relations and core institutions of the German Model.
WP156: The Rise & Fall of the Size of Firms
Fabrizio Traù
This paper casts a theoretical bridge between the shift from the so-called Golden Age to the ‘unstable’ macroeconomic environment of the ’70s and the ’80s on the one hand, and the reversal of the long run pattern of development of the size distribution of industrial firms, also from the mid ’70s, on the other.
WP155: CEO Pay, Shareholder Returns & Accounting Profitability
Fred Guy
We assess the impact on CEO pay of changes in both accounting and shareholder returns in 99 British companies in the years 1972-89, and find a strong positive relationship between CEO pay and within-company changes in shareholder returns, but no statistically significant relationship between CEO pay and within-company changes in accounting returns.
WP154: Foreign & Indigenous Firms in the Media Cluster of Central London
Lilach Nachum and David Keeble
An in-depth study of 49 foreign and indigenous media firms in the Soho district of Central London highlights differences and similarities in terms of their cluster behaviour and benefits from cluster participation. These differences and similarities are related to the extent to which internal linkages within TNCs substitute for cluster linkages.
WP153: The Role of the Basle Standards in International Banking Supervision
Kern Alexander
This paper argues that the Basle Committee on banking supervision has played a significant role in developing principles of sound regulatory practice for national supervisors to adopt in their jurisdictions, and that the increasing complexity of international financial markets and the need to reduce systemic risk require a global supervisor to coordinate the regulatory activities of national authorities.