Oliver Mallett

The spatial implications of homeworking: a Lefebvrian approach to the rewards and challenges of home-based work:

In this theoretical article we propose an approach to the spatial implications of homeworking derived from the work of social theorist Henri Lefebvre. By highlighting the processes involved in the inherently contested and (re)constructed nature of space in the demarcated home/work environment we draw on Lefebvre to suggest a collapse of this demarcation. We consider the impact of such a collapse on questions relating to the rewards and challenges of home-based work for both workers and their co-residents. In contrast to our approach to the spatial implications of home-based work derived from Lefebvre, we argue that a traditional, Euclidean conception of space risks ignoring the important, symbolic nature of social space to the detriment of both the effective research and practice of homeworking.

Making sense of self-employment in late career: understanding the identity work of olderpreneurs

The enterprise culture is a pervasive socio-historical discourse. This article adopts a narrative identity work approach to explore how individuals may exert agency to make sense of and negotiate with the structuring features of such discourses. Older entrepreneurs are an interesting case through which to explore these processes because ageing is predominantly portrayed as a form of decline to be resisted or hidden and as inherently anti-enterprise. Qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with two UK-based older entrepreneurs reveal how they engaged problematically with discourses around enterprise culture and ageing in constructing their identities. Sedimentation and innovation are proposed as valuable concepts for understanding how particular discourses become embedded in the understanding and identity work of individuals and how they seek to exert agency. The findings demonstrate the difficulties in innovative identity work for older entrepreneurs and this is discussed in terms of narrative resource poverty.

'You try to be a fair employer': Regulation and employment relationships in medium-sized firms

In this article, we explore the dynamic, indirect effects of employment regulation through a qualitative study of three medium-sized enterprises and their ongoing, everyday employment relationships. Whereas owner–manager prerogative is generally associated with informality in small and medium-sized enterprises, we identify instances of formal policies and procedures implemented in response to regulation being instrumental in exerting this prerogative. Furthermore, employees reinforced this process by making judgements regarding the employment relationship in terms of their perceived informal psychological contract rather than external regulatory obligations. This article extends understanding of dynamic, indirect regulatory effects in relation to the interplay of informality and formality within psychological contracts in medium-sized enterprises.

Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐Talking

This paper presents in-depth qualitative research on three small professional service firms whose owner-managers sought to introduce greater degrees of formality in their firms’ working practices and employment relationships. We focus on humour as an ambiguous medium of informality, yet viewed by owner-managers as a tool at their disposal. However, while early studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises support such a functionalist view, our findings indicate its significant limitations. We argue that humour obscures but does not resolve disjunctive interests and it remains stubbornly ambiguous and resistant to attempts to functionalize it. Our findings contribute to studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises by challenging its utility as a means of managerial control or employee resistance. They also contribute to studies of employment relationships by exploring humours potentially disruptive influence within the formality–informality span, especially as small and medium-sized enterprises seek greater degrees of formalization, with implications for how those relationships are conducted and (re)negotiated on an ongoing basis.

The unspoken side of mutual adjustment: Understanding intersubjective negotiation in small professional service firms

This article critically analyses intersubjective negotiation in the context of the small firm employment relationship. Such employment relationships are acknowledged as largely ad hoc, contested and negotiated, producing mutual adjustment between owner-managers and employees. It presents detailed qualitative empirical material from three small professional service firms, arguing that explicit instances of formal or informal negotiations cannot be understood as discrete events disassociated from ongoing, everyday intersubjective negotiation. The employment relationship, especially in ambiguity-intensive small professional service firms, draws on the perception of the value or interests of other actors rather than on any direct engagement with them. This intersubjective guesswork underlying mutual adjustment is potentially dysfunctional as outcomes arise that satisfy neither owner-manager nor employee interests. The article suggests that understanding employment relationships in small professional service firms requires a greater focus on individual perceptions and the ways in which their relative positions are structured in intersubjective, mutual (mis)recognition.

Small business revivalism: employment relations in small and medium-sized enterprises

This e-special issue focuses on employment relations in the context of ‘small business revivalism’ and an ‘enterprise culture’ that has sought to establish a so-called ‘entrepreneurial economy’. Economic restructuring and other political, social and economic changes in the 1970s and 1980s led to an increase in the number and prominence of small and medium-sized enterprises, with implications for the working lives of many people who are now more likely to work as self-employed, freelancers or members of smaller organizations. This e-special issue presents research from Work, employment and society that considers important elements of these changes, including debates about the influences of businesses’ external and internal environments, family relations and government policy. This introduction provides a general overview of the field of employment relations in small and medium-sized enterprises and the 11 articles included in the e-special issue.

Managing human resources in small and medium-sized enterprises : entrepreneurship and the employment relationship

Part I: The Distinctive Case of SMEs 1. Introduction 2. From Entrepreneur to Owner-Manager 3. Shaping Employment Relationships in Small Firms Part II: Managing Human Resources 4. Recruitment and Selection 5. Training and Development 6. Reward and Recognition 7. Staff Turnover Part III: Re-thinking HRM in SMEs 8. SME Growth, HRM and the Role of Formalisation 9. Employment Relationships and Practices in SMEs 10. The Management of Human Resources in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Contesting the history and politics of enterprise and entrepreneurship

Enterprise and entrepreneurship are frequently constructed within political discourse in terms of economic growth and prosperity. In the UK, for example, the cross-party political consensus on the value of ‘the entrepreneur’ ensures that this hegemony is rarely questioned. Instead, claims about the creation of economic growth and prosperity through entrepreneurship are repeated to the point that alternative ways of thinking about and doing business start-up and growth fall into disuse, limiting the scope for debate and opportunity. There is a danger that ideologically driven approaches that draw on the neoliberalism of free markets, deregulation and privatization but also, in turn, individualism and risk, produce accounts of entrepreneurship that are constrained by being ‘caught within a network of social, historical and economic forces’ (Ogbor, 2000: 624). These accounts create normative understandings that denigrate and exclude alternatives such as non-profit and more collective endeavours. Despite some valuable interventions that seek to question and critique the assumptions of enterprise and small business discourses (for example, Dannreuther and Perren, 2013; Du Gay, 1996; Jones and Spicer, 2009; Keat and Abercrombie, 1991), this review of three recent books on enterprise and entrepreneurship suggests that a need remains for more critical, socially oriented approaches.

Small and medium-sized enterprise policy: Designed to fail?

Significant doubts persist over the effectiveness of government policy to increase the numbers or performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the UK economy. We analyse UK political manifestoes from 1964 to 2015 to examine the development of small and medium-sized enterprise policy in political discourse. We do this by analysing how the broadly defined category of ‘small- and medium-sized enterprise’ has been characterised in the manifestoes and assess these characterisations in relation to the empirical evidence base. We highlight three consistent themes in UK political manifestoes during 1964–2015 where small- and medium-sized enterprises have been characterised as having the potential for growth, struggling to access finance and being over-burdened by regulation. We argue that homogenising the broad range of businesses represented by the small- and medium-sized enterprise category and characterising them in these terms misrepresents them, undermining policies developed in relation to this mischaracterisation.

Religious Social Identities in the Hybrid Self-presentations of Sikh Businesspeople

This paper explores the identity work practices of Thai Sikh businesspeople. The paper focuses on two important social identities in participants’ self-presentations – those derived from religious (Sikh) and western business discourses – and identifies powerful tensions in their hybrid identity work. Conducting discourse analysis on identity work practices within interview settings, the authors explore how participants resolve, accommodate or reject these discursive tensions while attempting stable and coherent hybrid self-presentations. They identify several different forms of hybridity, including what they term ‘equipollence’, which occurs when two equally powerful, contradictory discourses are incorporated in self-presentations, producing potentially irresolvable intersections and leading to a lack of coherence. Contributions are made to the literatures on religion and work, hybrid identity work processes and social identities.