With special reference to the steel industry, this article draws upon a politicalinstitutional perspective to examine the progress made in the most recent round of state-enterprise reform in China - the introduction of the Modern Enterprise System and Group Company System. This reform programme...

This paper explores the professionalization project of paramedics, based on an ethnographic study of UK National Health Service (NHS) ambulance personnel. Drawing on concepts derived from institutional theory and the sociology of professions, we argue that the project is enacted at two levels,...

The spread of Lean management has fuelled debates over the changing nature of workplace domination. While Lean discourses often espouse a ‘human relations’ approach, research has suggested the proliferation of coercion systems and questioned whether Lean is instead shorthand for...

This paper outlines the economic reform process being undertaken in China and the subsequent partial closure and radical down-sizing of the state-owned enterprise sector. Redundancies arising out the restructuring process have eroded the state-worker contract of the iron rice-bowl. This has...