Sector In Britain Research Articles

Rebuilding universities as vehicles for lifelong learning

It is widely acknowledged that adult education and lifelong learning are becoming more important than ever. Several universities in Britain are responding, by placing lifelong learning at the centre of their university strategy for the institution as a whole. But it will take investment to bring about the sort of change required, and to develop the new provision. The university sector in Britain is facing a financial squeeze, with costs rising faster than income. Some universities may therefore think that even the modest investments required are not affordable. It is vital that the government steps in to ensure that these opportunities are not lost. Many of the government’s own priorities will be far more likely to be delivered if we can usher in a new era of adult education and lifelong learning ‐ from overcoming the well-being and mental health crisis, to boosting innovation and productivity, to tackling the climate crisis.

Disrupting the discourse: Applying critical race theory as a conceptual framework for reflecting on learning and teaching in higher education

The Higher Education Sector in Britain, United Kingdom (UK) is currently being taken to task regarding issues of structural inequality and unfair outcomes for student learners from non-white backgrounds, also referred to as the degree awarding gap. How do we disrupt the narrative concerning race, and more specifically as part of our learning, teaching and assessment practices? Using Critical Race Theory, a project, ‘Disrupt the Discourse,’ an initiative launched in 2021 is a small scale case study piloting the application of the aforementioned theory as part of learning and teaching in a Higher Education Institution based in London. The project explored issues of curriculum design, and assessment practices in response to the issue of the degree awarding gap. The initiative explicitly explores uncomfortable conversations about race as part of learning and teaching practice and by working with a team of anti-racist scholars, a curriculum framework and digital toolkit to explore the lived experiences of student and staff was created. Feedback from the pilot was encouraging, academics from different curriculum disciplines and cultural backgrounds saw the initiative as instrumental in re considering assessment practices, curriculum content and pedagogy as part of learning and teaching practice.

Housing co-operatives in crisis

The co-operative housing sector in Britain has recently been in the paradoxical position of experiencing universal political support for its achievements, rapid growth in some areas, and severe problems in others, culminating in the launch of a ‘Time for Action’ campaign and the sudden winding up of the National Federation of Housing Co-operatives (NFHC). The paper suggests that main forces at work, the impacts, and implications for future actions.

Book review: Teaching Excellence in Higher Education: Challenges, Changes and the Teaching Excellence Framework by Amanda French and Matt O'Leary

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) aims to recognise and reward excellence in teaching and learning, and help inform prospective students' choices for higher education (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2017). Developed by the Department of Education in England and first trialled in 2016, the TEF claims to be a voluntary scheme that recognises excellent teaching and helps students choose where to study through awarding institutions a gold, silver or bronze status. From 2018-19, universities with a TEF award will be allowed to increase their tuition fees in line with inflation. The TEF has, however, been met with some concern. This debate is critical in shaping how we think of teaching and learning, the ways in which we seek to develop educational practice and, as learning developers, should be something we engage with, as Amanda French points out in Chapter 2 of this book: The TEF, one can argue therefore, should be regarded as much more than a tool for measuring teaching excellence; it has the potential to become the key vehicle for changing the face of the HE sector in Britain (pp.11-12).

An Uncompetitive Cinema: The British Fiction Short Film in the 1960s

This article offers a historical study of short films and their place in the British cinema programmes of the 1960s as a way of exploring the monopolistic practices which characterised the film industry during this period. Focusing on the short fiction/entertainment film is a particularly useful way of studying competition in the industry because the problems of financing, distribution and exhibition which characterised film production were felt more keenly by those working on short films than they were by those working solely in the feature film sector. The 1960s, and more specifically the mid-1960s, represented a key moment in the history of the short fiction film in Britain. The year 1966 saw the publication of the Monopolies Commission report into the dominance of the cinema circuits by Rank and ABC, a document which heralded recognition of the problems facing short film-makers (and film-makers in general). This article will tell the story of how the producers and distributors of short films in the 1960s jostled to find a space for their products among cinema programmes already replete with Rank and ABC’s Look at Life and Pathé Pictorial lifestyle documentary serials, and this history will in turn highlight the ways in which the conservative nature of the industry hampered the growth of a healthy, creative short film sector in Britain.

Индийская диаспора в Великобритании

The author traces the history of formation of the Indian diaspora in the UK, evaluates the key trends that characterize the current state of diaspora. The article highlights the level of involvement and participation of diaspora in the evolution of the bilateral relations, as well as the influence of diaspora over home and foreign policy in the UK and India. The diaspora today is not just a unique vibrant connection between the two countries, it has also become a factor of influence over domestic, social and economic affairs in both the UK and India. There is a growing number of Indians among British statesmen and politicians. Indians occupy significant posts in various sectors in Britain, including business and finance. This contributes to strengthening of economic ties between the two countries, particularly important considering Britain’s forthcoming exit from the EU. As to internal political matters, though potential issues exist (those include, for instance, the possible transfer from India into Britain of problematic inter-caste relations, India’s criticism over unbalanced approach to teaching colonial history in British schools), the Indian diaspora due to its’ inherent tolerance and moderation generally plays a stabilizing role in the UK, especially on the background of radicalization of other ethnic communities. For the new India the diaspora today is not just an important source of financing, competences and know-how, it is also a significant lobbying and soft-power instrument. This article is part of a broader research, related to the contemporary relations between the United Kingdom and India. Indian diaspora in the UK is an integral part of the unique centuries-long history that connects the two countries. It is poised to remain a strong factor contributing to interdependence and cooperation between Britain and India in the XXI century.

The UK National Minimum Wage's Impact on Productivity

Low pay poses issues for managers internationally. We examine productivity in low‐paying sectors in Britain, since the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW). We use a multiple channel analytical strategy, emphasizing the wage incentives channel and linking it to a model of unobserved productivity. We estimate firm‐specific productivity measures and aggregate them to the level of low‐paying sectors. Difference‐in‐differences analysis illustrates that the NMW positively affected aggregate low‐paying sector productivity. These findings highlight increased wage incentive effects with implications for management practice and public policy since ‘living’ wages may be productivity enhancing.

Exploring the tourist destination as a mosaic: The alternative lifecycles of the seaside amusement arcade sector in Britain

One criticism of the tourism area lifecycle model is that it treats destinations as homogeneous entities. Instead destinations can be conceptualised as a mosaic of elements, each of which can follow a lifecycle that is different from that of the destination overall. This paper examines this issue with reference to amusement arcades in British seaside resorts and triangulates secondary sources and in-depth interviews to examine the historical evolution of this sector. It argues that the arcade sector has followed a lifecycle trajectory that is independent of the resorts in which they are located. A range of internal/external factors and global, national and local influences have affected the lifecycle of the arcade sector, including global developments in the entertainment industries; the influence of state policies and legislation; and the responses of local entrepreneurs to resort restructuring. The paper ends by arguing that destinations can be conceptualised as 'assemblages' of interacting elements.

Retailer–Supplier Relationships before and after the Resale Prices Act, 1964: A Turning Point in British Economic History?

This article provides an analysis of the impact of the abolition of individual resale price maintenance (irpm) in 1964 on the relationships between retailers and suppliers and, wider, on defining features of the UK economic structure. It describes the role of irpm prior to 1964 in a complex competitive environment that existed across a range of goods and services. A key feature of this environment was the influence manufacturers had over retail margins and pricing. It shows how the 1964 Resale Price Act both unraveled this system and provided the legal prerequisite of today’s dominance by large retailers, as oligopolists and oligopsonists. The study delineates how a different set of business relationships came to dominate the retailing sector: in place of retailing as a manufacturer’s marketing strategy, conditions of supply were determined by the business strategies of multiple retailers. Retailing was further characterized by mutual dependencies among multiple retailers, commercial property investors, and the financial sector. In tracking this shift in business relationships, a historical analogy suggests itself that the Act has parallels with the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, for both changed the balance of economic power between two key business sectors in Britain.

Reflecting the context of MPA education in the time of economic crisis in public sectors in Britain and the Netherlands

The reality of the economic crisis and subsequent cuts in public sector funding in some European countries means that the context for public management education is significantly changing. In a period of economic constraint there is the obvious questioning of the cost of public management education programmes and even more of their relevance and academic content. As a consequence of this, there are not only practical challenges for the survival of public management masters programmes during a harsh economic period, but also the challenge for content to remain relevant to the changing environment, and the question of whether they remain a priority not only for those considering taking these courses, but also for those potentially funding and supporting them. Significant cuts to public sector funding have been compounded by a further crisis across many European public sectors and with that the stark reality of both job losses and losses in public service provision. In such a climate there is obvious questioning of the need, and support, for specific public management academic programmes. This article looks at the challenges facing public management education programmes in the UK and The Netherlands, as these two countries are undergoing similar periods of economic restraint in public sector funding and where the requirement for public management education is under scrutiny It argues the need for specific public management programmes despite the blurring of traditional public–private sector divides, and maintains that public management programmes are not only necessary but should continue in order to provide new students and continuing managers with the relevant skills, academic theory and new knowledge needed to manage in contemporary public management. It further argues that public management programmes need to be revised in order to retain their credibility and enable the new type of public manager to be able to manage people and service provision across sectors and in unfamiliar situations. It looks at the current economic crisis in the UK and The Netherlands and attempts to show ways in which public management programmes can adapt by looking at examples to changes to courses in these countries

Occupational cancer in Britain

An approach using the attributable fraction (AF) has been developed to estimate the current burden of occupational cancer in Britain. The AF combines the relative risk (RR) associated with exposure with the proportion exposed. For each cancer–exposure pairing, the RR is selected from key epidemiological literature such as an industry, or population-based study, meta-analysis or review. The CARcinogen EXposure (CAREX) database provides point estimates for the number of workers exposed to a range of carcinogens; alternative sources are national surveys such as the Labour Force Survey and Census of Employment. The number of workers exposed are split between high and low exposure levels matched to appropriate RRs from the literature. The relevant period for cancer development during which exposure occurred is defined as the risk exposure period (REP). Estimation of the numbers ever exposed over the REP takes into account the changes in the number of people employed in primary and manufacturing industry and service sectors in Britain where appropriate, and adjustment is made for staff turnover over the period and for life expectancy. National estimates of the population ever of working age during the REP are used for the proportion denominator. Strategies have been developed to combine exposure AFs correctly while avoiding double counting and minimising bias. The AFs are applied to national cancer deaths and registrations to obtain occupation-attributable cancer numbers. The methods are adaptable for other diseases and other geographies, and are also adaptable to more sophisticated modelling if better exposure and dose–response data are available.

Religion, Public Policy, and the Academy: Brokering Public Faith in a Context of Ambivalence?

This article considers the growing range of religiously oriented policy demands on higher education institutions in the UK and the responses universities make to them. It sets this in the context of public anxiety and ambivalence about faith, taking the higher education sector in Britain as emblematic of wider concerns about religious faith and its place in the public sphere. Specifically, the article looks at four key policy ‘arenas’: equalities and diversity; widening participation and social mobility; student experience; and fostering good campus relations. Drawing on interviews with university Vice-Chancellors, Pro-Vice Chancellors, operational staff and students, we explore how these policies are viewed, how they have been responded to, and how religion and belief are engaged with. We consider what this means for perceptions of religion in the academy—and beyond. We conclude that the quality of conversation about religious faith is generally poor, although different parts of the higher education sector respond to it differently. We outline these differences and argue that universities are well placed to encourage a better quality of conversation about religion, inside and outside the academy, which helps unpick public anxiety and ambivalence, supporting a more intellectually rooted, informed, and helpful engagement with religious belief in the public realm.

Liberalization Models in the Electricity Sector: The Impact of the Market for Corporate Control in Britain and Spain (1996–2010)

Liberalization and re-regulation have brought along major changes in the regulated environment of utility industries, and particularly in the electricity sector. Nonetheless, the impact of these developments exhibits substantial differences. This article analyses the diverging impact of the market for corporate control (i.e. takeovers) on the evolution of the electricity sector in Britain and Spain. Takeovers have been prominent in the restructuring of the electricity sector in Britain. Every single privatised company has been acquired by foreign rivals in a short span of time. The Spanish electricity sector, in contrast, has been unequally exposed to takeovers: changes in ownership at Iberdrola and Union Fenosa were characterised by a friendly transition while Endesa has been acquired by Enel despite the preferences of Spanish policy-makers for the building of national champions. The argument presented in this article stresses the continuing importance of three key national institutions of corporate governance –ownership structures of listed companies; the system of corporate law and its associated voting rights procedures; and the degree of independence of regulatory authorities.

Developing On-site Anaerobic Digestion for Smaller Businesses in the Food and Drink Sector

Development of Anaerobic Digestion (AD) in the UK has lagged behind other European member states. Focus on larger footprint plants has restricted the smaller scale (sub 250 kW electrical output) on-site AD sector, where energy can be generated from bio-residues at or close to the location where they are produced. Britain's food and beverage sector, as part of the transition to a more circular economy, must make better use of its raw materials by extracting value from unwanted residues (or co-products). Development of the bio-economy and on-site generation of decentralised energy should be part of the UK's industrial strategy prior to Brexit. There is considerable potential for bio-energy generation in the food and drink sector, including on smaller sites that proliferate across the food industry. More deployment of bio-energy needs less indifference from policy makers and more imagination from regulators. Also, the British bio-engineering sector needs to make the case for more proactive policy framework. The authors, based on their experience with on-site bio-digestion in the food and beverage sector, including plants for several multinational companies, explore how this approach could be deployed more widely, as part of the bio-economy, in the food and drink sector in Britain and across Europe. Definitions The Bio-economy encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, bio-based products and bio-energy using innovative technologies. It offers new opportunities and solutions to a number of social, environmental and economic challenges, including climate change mitigation, energy and food security and enhanced resource efficiency. On-site AD: smaller scale deployment of the process used to generate bio-energy in a biological degradation process whereby micro-organisms that thrive without oxygen convert bio-degradable (volatile) process residues into renewable energy. Clearfleau's industrial AD plants convert liquid effluents and production residues into valuable bio-energy. Digestion Plant Scale – small, medium and large scale AD plants: A classification for AD was developed by the Renewable Energy Association (REA) and other partners for dealings with policy makers: small: on-site AD plants generating under 100 Nm3 of biogas or 200 kW thermal output, medium: plants generating >200 kW thermal but <2 MW thermal output, large: plants generating over 2 MW thermal (increasingly using gas to grid technology).

The public–private sector gender wage differential in Britain: evidence from matched employee-workplace data

This article shows that little of the gender earnings gap in the public and private sectors in Britain are explained by differences in employee characteristics. The differences in workplace characteristics, however, make a significant, sizeable contribution. It is shown that performance related pay and company pension schemes are associated with higher relative earnings in the private sector, whilst increased provision of family-friendly employment practices in the public sector is associated with higher relative earnings for women.

The Globalization of the U.S.-Style Regulatory State and Domestic Institutional Diversity: A Comparative Study of the Financial Services Sector and the Communications Sector in Britain and Japan

The adoption of U.S.-style independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) such as the FCC and the SEC has become increasingly pervasive in advanced nations. Much recent political analysis of public regulation tends to regard this worldwide spread of the American model, or “regulatory state,” as a typical example of a policy diffusion mechanism, such as emulation or regulatory competition. After critically examining that view, this article develops an alternative framework that combines international structural forces, such as techno-economic changes and ideational factors, and domestic institutional factors, in particular, path dependence of historical institutions. The cross-national and cross-sectoral case analysis (the financial services and communications sector in Britain and Japan) demonstrates that while apparent convergence on the American model is due to international structural forces, national and sectoral differences with respect to the extent of organizational changes depend largely on domestic institutions. This finding suggests that, facing complex dynamism between international structural forces and domestic institutions, each national government chooses the feature of regulatory organization independently from other nation’s decisions, rather than interdependently as assumed in the policy diffusion approach.

The Material Culture of British Pharmaceutical Laboratories in the Golden Age of Drug Discovery (c. 1935–75)

At a time when pharmaceuticals were becoming one of the most successful science-based sectors in Britain and the British pharmaceutical industry was beginning to rank among the world's most innovative, c. 1945–1975, physical methods and electronic instrumentation revolutionised structural organic chemistry. Their introduction is described in three companies (Burroughs Wellcome Co., Glaxo, and Imperial Chemical Industries); when, how and why British pharmaceutical laboratories adopted these methods is examined. The impact they had on pharmaceutical innovation at that time is explored, and what this tells us about and, in turn, what can we learn from the material culture of British pharmaceutical laboratories in the Golden Age of Drug Discovery is discussed.

The Role of the Public Sector in Rural Tourism: Respondents' Views

Using a four round Delphi survey, a focus group and semi-structured interviews, this study investigates the respondent perspective of the public sector role in providing an environment conducive to the development of the rural tourism sector in Britain and South Africa. Although South African respondents generally perceived a greater need of support for the rural tourism sector than did their British counterparts, many of the problems, concerns and frustrations that emerged from the study were similar. Respondents perceived the public sector as ‘leader’, ‘strategist’, ‘mentor’, ‘co-ordinator’, ‘champion’ and ‘partner’ in their endeavour to build the rural tourism sector. Grappling with the problems of uplifting the quality, viability and communal benefit of rural tourism is seen as a futile exercise if the facilitatory platform of rational policy, planning and support conducive to the sustainability of the sector, is not in place. Above all local authorities are seen as ‘the enabler’ of successful rural tourism projects that diversify the local economy and generate employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. However, whilst there is respondent acknowledgement of the role played by the public sector, there is evidence of widespread disenchantment with the efficacy with which this role is fulfilled.

To market! To market! A new dawn for community care?

The public sector in Britain has been subjected to over a decade of major reform aimed at breaking up public service monopolies, at containing costs while at the same time opening services up to greater consumer choice. Health and social services have not been exempt from this revolution in the organization and management of public sector services. The long-standing policy of care in the community is being subjected to market principles and the introduction of a ‘contract culture’ very similar to the NHS reforms introduced in 1991. This paper reviews the origins of these developments in the doctrines of ‘new public management’, a movement which has proved attractive to policy-makers in many countries. Local authority social services departments have been identified as the lead agency for the development of a mixed economy of care following a review of community care policy by the government's health adviser, Sir Roy Griffiths, and a subsequent white paper. This paper examines the limited empirical evidence available on how managers and providers are meeting the challenge bestowed upon them, and concludes that most authorities are moving ahead cautiously if at all. Only a handful of authorities studied have embraced the reforms with any degree of enthusiasm. The paper concludes with an assessment of the reforms from two perspectives: a pessimistic one and an optimistic one. There are many worrying features of the reforms, not least among these being a lack of clarity over their intended purpose. Tensions and contradictions are plentiful, which places in jeopardy the certainty of the reforms in becoming user led rather than provider driven. A more optimistic scenario is that the changes are leading to a loosening up of services and practices which have often suffered from sclerotic tendencies, paternalism and sometimes complacency. If the reform process is skilfully handled and not rushed and if the ends are clearly established and communicated then users and carers could prove to be the principal beneficiaries.

False Dawn for CSR? Shifts in regulatory policy and the response of the corporate and financial sectors in Britain

We present a model of CSR as a set of mechanisms for aligning corporate behaviour with the interests of society in reducing externalities and promoting a sustainable corporate sector. These mechanisms include voluntary action by companies to go above minimum legal standards, with the aim of enhancing competitiveness (“action beyond compliance”); interventions by regulators designed to promote self‐regulation by industry (“reflexive law”); and steps taken by shareholders to put pressure on companies to make effective use of corporate assets (“shareholder engagement”). We then assess the degree to which the model is realised in current British practice. Focusing on the issue of working conditions, we find managerial resistance to the linking of CSR with internal employee relations, and obstacles to shareholder engagement on this issue.