Bryn Jones

Enhancing technology and skills in small and medium-sized manufacturing firms: problems and prospects

DR. PETER SCOTT IS CURRENTLY A researcher at the University of Cardiff, Wales, Dr. Bryn Jones, Professor Alan Bramley and Dr. Brian Bolton are all with the University of Bath, England. This paper discusses the results of, and issues arising from, an interdisciplinary study of technology management expertise in a sample of smalland medium-sized manufacturing establishments in South-west England. Many mature companies suffer from an unrecognised deficiency in high-level technological skills. Although examples of good practice are identified and enabling factors discussed, the stimuli to improvement both within, and external to, the firm are weak overall. Changes in the practices of SMEs themselves, and of external agencies, will be necessary to facilitate progress.

The British Engineer Problem: A Comparison of Careers, Employment and Skills

ABSTRACT For decades British engineers have been seen as playing an inadequate role in industry. Their restricted roles have been ascribed to diverse causes and conditions: as ‘under-educated’ for the grounding to lead companies to ‘world class’ status; as ‘under-utilized’ by employment in technical support roles; and as ‘under-professionalized’ in a supposed generally anti-engineering national culture. This study of young graduate engineers seeks to disentangle these blanket characterizations by differentiating between the sectoral and cross-national motive forces in an allegedly ubiquitous ‘British engineer problem’. Our evidence suggests that restricted jobs and careers are sectoral, as opposed to general, phenomena. In some sectors, a ‘crowding’ of engineers and under-recruitment of technician grades results from overreliance on a labour supply of standard, degree-level, qualification sources. Other important influences on work roles and careers are graduate engineers’ orientations to work, and engineers’ own microcorporate culture. Many British graduate engineers feel over-qualified for tasks, but German engineers are divided into the graduates of more theoretical university degrees and the graduates of more practically-focused vocational college degrees (Fachhochschule) responsible for more applied tasks. Within the British complex of occupational crowding and distance between technicians’ and engineers’ tasks, most engineers prefer not ‘high-flying’, managerial careers but work involving engineering know-how. A defensive and subordinate-occupational culture in engineering departments, rather than an independent professional or enterprise one, results from these factors. The analysis concludes with an assessment of its implications for recent reforms to the qualifying procedures for engineering graduates.

How redundancies worsen social inequality

Attempts to show the wider social impact of collective redundancy creating recruits for the “flexible” sector of the labour force, those on temporary contracts, part time and self employed. Considers the way collective redundancy has changed the demographic structure of the UK labour force including a sizeable number of older unemployed individuals and many female part time workers. Argues that this could be seen as limited empowerment, labour market enfranchisement for women or marginalization of the traditional older male worker.

Governance through civil society? An Anglo-Italian comparison of democratic renewal and local regeneration

Abstract The UK has become a prime case for the implementation of the ‘new governance’ of partnership between central government and civil society. This perspective has become central to New Labour policies for both local socio-economic regeneration and democratic renewal in the United Kingdom. However, limitations in its redistribution of power, its transparency in the policy-making process, including the representativeness of civil society participants, and, in the effectiveness of its outcomes have all been alleged by academic critics. These issues are explored by contrasting a robust, British case of local, participatory governance in Bristol with a quite different, and more conventional approach to democratic renewal in the Italian city of Naples. Despite similar problems of socio-economic dereliction and similar schemes of regeneration in the two cases, the Italian approach emphasized the exclusive role of a renewed constitutional democracy, while in Bristol central government agencies promoted an accentuation of local trends to participation by local civil society organizations. Applying an analytical framework composed of national policies and regulations, institutional rules and norms, and the collective ‘identity’ factors identified by social capital theory, governance changes are here treated as ‘exogenous shocks’ and/or as opportunities for choice. However, over and above differences in these institutional frameworks the key factors are shown to be the longer-standing political cultures influencing local actors and their own repertoires of action; with repertoires influenced by objective validations of previous policy choices, or economic or electoral successes. The study finds that the achievements of the ‘inclusive’, participative governance approach do not significantly exceed those of an exclusivist, ‘neo-constitutionalism’, as practised by a more autonomous local government in Naples. Thus, on this evidence, enhanced civil society engagement still requires greater freedom from central government direction.

Resistant to Change? Some Unexplained Omissions in the 1990 Standard Occupational Classification

As researchers with interests in both the theory and practice of occupational structures, our response to the new official framework for occupational classification is puzzlement. The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) (Employment Department Group/Office of population Censuses and Surveys 1990) is a recent re-design of earlier official taxonomies commissioned by the Employment Department Group (EDG) and the Office of Population and Census Statistics (OPCS). Why can we not find in it several of the occupations with which both contemporary research and managerial policy is urgently concerned.

The Money or The Principle

Christel Lane and Reinhard Bachmann (eds), Trust within and Between Organizations , Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, £45.00, xiii+334 pp. Patrick Maclagan, Management and Morality. A Developmental Perspective , London: Sage, £45.00, paper £14.99, vii+212 pp. Trust seems a useful test-case for business morality. According to Fukuyama it is the opposite of contractual relations, as it is ‘based on commonly shared norms . . . about deep “value” questions like the nature of God or justice, but it may also encompass secular norms, like professional standards and codes of behaviour.’ (Fukuyama 1995: 26).

Participation in the Socio-Political Foundations of the Management of Urban Redevelopment

Can the participation of civil society actors improve the planning and management of re-development and regeneration schemes? Can such participation mobilise social capital in ways that complement the provision of political and financial capital to achieve successful outcomes? Or does more civil society participation impede the management and implementation of complex schemes? Before tackling these questions, they have to be contextualised in the much broader socio-political shifts in the triangular interaction of the state, business, and civil societies. Traditional centralised decision making and implementation of urban and local economic planning are being replaced by new schemes of governance spreading from the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ societies of North American and the United Kingdom through Western Europe. It could even be claimed that, in some domains, governance through polyarchy is supplanting either the monopolistic authority of state and local government or, in other cases, narrower, ‘corporatist’/social partnership triads of government, business, and trade unions. The EU is in the process of adding ‘civic partners’ to its conventional reliance upon governance through the social partners of labour and capital (Frazer, 2005). Business involvement in redevelopment is not new but now its role is changing; from that of contractor or adviser to more active funding, planning, and management of schemes. Such business involvement has a much longer pedigree in the United States (Reushcke, 2004). However, since its adoption by the neo-liberal, Thatcherite and ‘third way’, New Labour governments in Britain, it has been augmented by policies for inclusion of ‘communities’ and civil society associations to help reverse the decline of both urban economies and social vitality. A pragmatic, efficient case for the direct involvement of business in financing or management of redevelopment schemes can easily be made. However, the participation of community and civil society groups is more difficult to define and justify.