The introduction of competition between service providers in industries with some sort of network - such as telecommunications, but also gas and electricity - has created the regulatory problem of access pricing. Where a service provider requires access to a network owned by another firm, how...

Labour market flexibility is often portrayed as a key to the competitive success of the UK and US economies. We surveyed several hundred firms in the UK, and using the resulting data (on over 200 manufacturing firms) this paper investigates the relationships between firms' use of flexible work...

Changes in public policy and corporate strategy have enhanced the role of contracts as mechanisms of economic governance. The understanding that norms, standards and other forms of regulatory mechanism can affect the structure of incentives and the quality of contractual outcomes has helped to...

The relationship between technology, productivity and employment is a complex one. Increased productivity can lead not just to increased market share, but through falling relative prices can help expand markets, and through product innovation can develop new markets. On the other hand, if demand...

There is increasing emphasis being put on the need to be 'internationally competitive'. This imperative is being driven, it is argued, by the globalization of economic and corporate life. This 'globalization' is the subject of a burgeoning academic literature. To achieve and maintain the...

This paper contributes to the strategic human resource management literature by testing the three main approaches - the universalistic ('best practice'), contingency and configurational - against an original database. Specifically, we examine: (1) the relationship between HR and firm...

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world’s leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues...

With contributions from the leading commentators in the field and an over-arching introduction from the editor, the concerns of this updated and revised Handbook are two-fold. Firstly, to redefine the concept of globalisation and dispel the haze that surrounds it through a systematic and...