Cranfield Management Research Paper Series
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Browsing Cranfield Management Research Paper Series by Type "Working paper"
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Item Open Access Is there a North-South divide in self-employment in England?(2007-07-01T00:00:00Z) Burke, Andrew; FitzRoy, Felix R; Nolan, Michael AUsing decomposition analysis, the paper investigates why Northern England has fewer but higher performing self-employed individuals than the South. We find the causes are mainly structural differences rather than regional variation in individual characteristics. There are more self employed individuals in the South, but on average they create fewer jobs. Post compulsory education has a strong negative effect on the probability of self employment in the South, probably due to better employment opportunities there, but little influence in the North. Education has some positive effects on job creation by entrepreneurs in both regions. Aggregate studies may thus give misleading results.Item Open Access Muslim voices: The British Muslim response to Islamic video-polemic - An exploratory study(2006-12-01T00:00:00Z) Baines, Paul R.; O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas J.; Moloney, Kevin; Richards, Barry; Butler, Sara; Gill, MarkThis paper represents an attempt to deconstruct how Muslims living in Britain might respond to militant Islamist propaganda, as typified by elected ‘Jihadist’ video-clips obtained from the Internet, using a discussion group format. The article discusses the methodological difficulties of conducting research in the propaganda field using a conventional advertising-evaluation type approach, and provides a series of testable propositions to guide further research in the field. The central thesis is that ‘Jihadist’ communications focus around a meta- narrative of Muslims as a unitary grouping selfdefined as victim to Western aggression. While early indicators are that some genres of propaganda may be more effective than others (e.g. cartoons) in introducing this notion and some groupings more susceptible than others, we conclude that in general most Muslim respondents were unsympathetic to the messages contained in the propaganda clips. This paper will be of particular interest to managers of government social and market research programmes and media/PR practiItem Open Access Onwards and upwards: why companies change their executive remuneration schemes, and why this leads to increases in pay(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006-10-01T00:00:00Z) Bender, RuthMuch has been written about the phenomenon of ever-increasing executive pay in listed companies. This paper examines some of the underlying reasons for this continued increase in executive directors’ remuneration. It reports the results of 40 interviews with protagonists in the remuneration debate in FTSE 350 companies, exploring the types of change made and the reasons given for these changes. This issue has not specifically been addressed by previous studies. Reasons given for making changes included: increases due to being below market; changing performance-related schemes that did not pay out or paid less than the anticipated amount; changes in the company's culture or strategy; changes to senior personnel (executive and non-executive); compliance with good human resources practice; and a perceived need to comply with best practice in corporate governance. The results are analysed through two theoretical lenses. An agency theory explanation provides insight into the structure of executive remuneration contracts, and expectancy theory suggests why schemes might be changed to motivate the executives. The expectancy theory explanation tempers the agency theory explanation, showing why changes are made even though this may lead to moral hazarItem Open Access Tension management in logistics service innovation projects(2006-11-01T00:00:00Z) Kohler, Thomas; Harrison, AlanInnovation projects create tensions, which may be envisaged as conflicts between different perspectives on how such projects should be managed. Such tensions have been described in such terms as autonomy versus standardisation. By tracking the origins and life cycle of tensions as they arose in an innovation project in practice, we sought to understand the nature of tensions and to gain insights into how they could be managed. The findings of an exploratory longitudinal case study were used to develop an optimised process model as well as to propose seven ways in which tensions could be managed pro-actively in innovation projects. In a second longitudinal case study, we tested these propositions by means of action research. In both cases, one of us was both project manager and researcher. This provided detailed operational access to the people and processes involved in two systems innovation projects at DHL Express in Germany.