A paper by social psychologists proclaimed that, for UK citizens, it could be shown that being born in the summer half-year was associated with a significantly higher belief in being lucky, compared with being born in the winter half-year. Are we that much determined by nonsocial forces? A test...

Interest has grown in the significance of the country-of-origin impact on the Employment Relations (ER) approaches in the international subsidiaries of Multinational Companies (MNCs). In this article, a comparative cross-sectional analysis of German subsidiaries with indigenous UK firms will be...

The UK coalition government claims that the establishment of market 'credibility' can only be achieved through the implementation of immediate and unpalatable fiscal austerity measures. The paper examines this claim and considers some additional questions. First, is there is any justification...

The compensation hypothesis predicts a positive causation from international economic openness to the size of the public sector, as governments step in to perform a risk mitigating role to counterbalance the increasing exposure to external risk and the economic dislocations caused by growing...

Over the past 30 years, developed economies' approaches to supporting growth have focused on competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation to varying degrees. However, following the credit crisis and global recession in 2008 there has been demand for an updated narrative of growth based on...

This paper presents a critic of the 'modernisation' policies of the previous Labour Government with particular reference to National Health Service (NHS) and explores why the modernisation policies could not achieve its main objectives. How the present Coalition Government's policies intend to...

This article reviews the establishment and use of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Ireland. It notes the many difficulties experienced in obtaining a precise view of the composition of the Irish public sector and comments on ambivalent (and therefore often destructive) attitudes to the control...

In recent years, the local government sector in European countries has undergone important changes involving, among other things, the externalisation of local public service provision through various forms of corporatisation, public-public collaboration, public-private partnerships and...

The reported turnaround of the Indian Railways (IR) has attracted wide notice. This article locates the enterprise within the broader Indian public sector and explores the factors that led to the turnaround from a low performing organisation to a high performing one. The case study method is...

This article recognises that the Mexican financial crisis of 1982 marked a turning point in the country's development. The crisis followed a period of steady economic growth. Since then, the entrepreneurial state has been under steady attack by members of a new business elite, who are direct...