Business and Law

This article contributes to the debate over reflexive regulation in relation to equality by focusing on attempts in the UK local authority sector to bring about equal pay through the implementation of the 1997 Single Status Agreement. This was a national agreement between local government employers and public sector unions that was to be implemented at local level following a local level job evaluation and grading process. Examined through the lens of reflexive regulation, the agreement can be understood as an attempt by the actors to engage in reflexive deliberation in order to give effect to the values of equal pay enshrined in legislation. The implementation process, however, was challenged by significant levels of litigation. In drawing on interview data with actors involved in the implementation of single status and litigation, the paper highlights both the potential of reflexive regulation and some of its limitation. Three issues in particular emerge for the theory of reflexive regulation: the tension between collective solutions and hard law; the extent to which existing power relations can be challenged through deliberation; and the bridging institutions that might be needed for reflexive regulation to function effectively.

This article draws on the concept of ‘productivity coalitions’ to assess the micro-foundations of Danish and Irish social partnership, and the extent to which they have facilitated a sustainable, ‘high road’ national competitive strategy. It focuses on continuous training to analyse the conditions necessary for effective collaboration between employers and unions. Four key variables that underpin strong productivity coalitions are identified: non-market coordination mechanisms, union ‘embeddedness’, ideological concordance and institutional constraints. The implications are pessimistic for effective collaboration in liberal market economies.

We present a socio-legal case study of the recent equal pay litigation wave in Britain, which saw an unprecedented increase in the number of claims, triggered in part by the entry of no-win, no-fee law firms into this part of the legal services market. Although the rise in litigation led to greater adversarialism in pay bargaining, litigation and collective bargaining mostly operated as complementary mechanisms in advancing an equality agenda. Although there are limits to the effectiveness of law-driven strategies in the face of organisational pressures to canalise and diffuse human rights, litigation may be a more potent force for social change than some recent accounts have suggested. (co-authored with Simon Deakin, Sarah Fraser Butlin and Aleksandra Polanska).

We review the different regulatory mechanisms which have been used in the UK context to promote gender equality in employment over the past decade, including legal enforcement based on claimant-led litigation, collective bargaining, pay audits, and shareholder pressure. Evidence is drawn from case studies examining the effects of these different mechanisms on organisations in the public and private sectors, and from econometric analysis of the impact of stock market pressures on firms' human resource practices. We argue that there is scope for reflexive solutions to improve the effectiveness in practice of UK equality law, by inducing efficient disclosure by employers, setting default rules, and encouraging bargaining in the shadow of the law.

© 2018, The Author(s) 2018. A questioning of the neoliberal consensus in the global economic order is creating turbulence in Western democracies. Long regarded as the only viable capitalist model, neoliberalism is now subjected to increasing scrutiny. Management education that has been aligned to a neoliberal worldview must now respond to this shifting landscape in order to retain its legitimacy. One core element of management education undergoing revision as a result is the case method of teaching. The case method’s traditionally narrow focus on training students to solve business problems is increasingly problematic in an environment where the structure of the capitalist system in which firms operate is now a topic of debate. To address this, we argue for a reconceptualization of the case method’s relationship with theory. This has conventionally taken two forms: a hostility to any inclusion of theory in the analytical process and an approach that uses theory as an instrument for profit maximization. We propose an alternative third approach that encourages students to engage in a critical questioning of business-as-usual capitalism from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including managers, employees, unions, not-for-profit organizations, government, and the natural environment.