scholarly journals “The Art of Good Management”

1984 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-385
Author(s):  
Richard Whipp

This paper is derived from a study of work and trade unionism in the British pottery industry in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It is an attempt to open up the history of pottery management's labour strategies for debate, given the relatively slight attention the subject has received in general or with regard to this important period. Ceramic historians, in common with labour and social history, have neglected the detailed study of management, while contemporary writers on the Potteries often lapsed into a “demonology” when dealing with pottery manufacturers. In contrast to the more famous volumes on social conditions in the Potteries by Shaw or Owen and Warburton's examination of trade unions, the early-twentieth-century pottery-owners have not been the subject of sustained analysis. Yet an orthodoxy of sorts has developed, which sees the industry's management as typically crude and unchanging in technique. Economists such as B. R. Williams or geographers like Yeaman have been unchallenged in their assertions that owners could almost dispense with labour-control strategies in the light of the workforce's passivity and the tranquility of industrial relations in the industry.

Author(s):  
David Evans

Breakaway unions have been a feature of labour organisation since the dawn of trade unionism. Despite this long history, the historiography of the subject remains undeveloped. The process of breaking away from an established union and setting up a rival organisation can be triggered by a range of impulses and inducements, fostered by both progressive and reactionary forces. On one level they can be considered a product of intra-union conflict, but a fuller understanding comes from viewing breakaways in the context of the broader economic and political circumstances in which they are embedded. The systematic remapping of the political and industrial relations landscape during the neoliberal epoch has brought into question the pluralist assumptions that have traditionally underpinned the notion of breakaway unions. Building from a historically-contingent approach, this chapter contends that the ideological onslaught unions have faced since the 1980s has encouraged division among union members and the breakaways that have emerged have generally given voice to a more moderate approach, sometimes couched in a ‘non-political’ narrative. In shining a light on the reasons behind these ideologically-motivated breakaways, this chapter contributes to the knowledge of this important but neglected area of trade union history.


Author(s):  
Laura Carter

Histories of Everyday Life is a study of the production and consumption of popular social history in mid-twentieth-century Britain. It traces how non-academic historians, many of them women, developed a new breed of social history after the First World War, identified as the ‘history of everyday life’. The ‘history of everyday life’ was a pedagogical construct based on the perceived educational needs of the new, mass democracy. It was popularized to ordinary people in educational settings, through books, in classrooms and museums, and on BBC radio. In the 1970s this popular social history declined, not because academics invented an alternative ‘new’ social history, but because bottom-up social change rendered the ‘history of everyday life’ untenable in the changing context of mass education. Histories of Everyday Life ultimately uses the subject of history to demonstrate how profoundly the advent of mass education shaped popular culture in Britain after 1918, arguing that the twentieth century was Britain’s educational century.


2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Pajares

Trade unions have always found it difficult to get to grips with the subject of immigration. From their beginnings in the 19th century they assumed that working conditions were determined by labour supply and demand and became apprehensive in the face of any situation of surplus supply. The history of trade unionism abounds with conflicts between local workers and those from further afield. At the present time the European trade unions operate upon the assumption that immigrants are full members of the workforce, whose interests have to be defended alongside those of other workers. Even so, it remains the case that immigration prompts considerable misgivings within the trade unions and that situations of rejection continue to arise. The article identifies differences between southern Europe and central and northern Europe in trade unions' attitudes to new immigrants, differences that are reflected in the debates taking place on European legislation concerning labour immigration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
T.N. GELLA ◽  

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the views of a famous British historian G.D.G. Cole on the history of the British workers' and UK socialist movement in the early twentieth century. The arti-cle focuses on the historian's assessment and the reasons for the workers' strike movement intensi-fication on the eve of the First World War, the specifics of such trends as labourism, trade unionism and syndicalism.


Author(s):  
Marek Korczynski

This chapter examines music in the British workplace. It considers whether it is appropriate to see the history of music in the workplace as involving a journey from the organic singing voice (both literal and metaphorical) of workers to broadcast music appropriated by the powerful to become a technique of social control. The chapter charts four key stages in the social history of music in British workplaces. First, it highlights the existence of widespread cultures of singing at work prior to industrialization, and outlines the important meanings these cultures had for workers. Next, it outlines the silencing of the singing voice within the workplace further to industrialization—either from direct employer bans on singing, or from the roar of the industrial noise. The third key stage involves the carefully controlled employer- and state-led reintroduction of music in the workplace in the mid-twentieth century—through the centralized relaying of specific forms of music via broadcast systems in workplaces. The chapter ends with an examination of contemporary musicking in relation to (often worker-led) radio music played in workplaces.


Author(s):  
Brent A. R. Hege

AbstractAs dialectical theology rose to prominence in the years following World War I, the new theologians sought to distance themselves from liberalism in a number of ways, an important one being a rejection of Schleiermacher’s methods and conclusions. In reading the history of Weimar-era theology as it has been written in the twentieth century one would be forgiven for assuming that Schleiermacher found no defenders during this time, as liberal theology quietly faded into the twilight. However, a closer examination of this period reveals a different story. The last generation of liberal theologians consistently appealed to Schleiermacher for support and inspiration, perhaps none more so than Georg Wobbermin, whom B. A. Gerrish has called a “captain of the liberal rearguard.” Wobbermin sought to construct a religio-psychological method on the basis of Schleiermacher’s definition of religion and on his “Copernican turn” toward the subject and resolutely defended such a method against the new dialectical theology long after liberal theology’s supposed demise. A consideration of Wobbermin’s appeals to Schleiermacher in his defense of the liberal program reveals a more complex picture of the state of theology in the Weimar period and of Schleiermacher’s legacy in German Protestant thought.


1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Olby

The increasing attention which has been given to social history of science and to the sociological analysis of scientific activity has resulted in a renewed interest in scientific controversies. Furthermore, the rejection of the presentist view of history, according to which those contestants who took what we can identify, with the benefit of modern knowledge, as the ‘right’ stand in a controversy, were right and their opponents were ‘wrong’, left the subject of scientific controversies with many questions. What determines their emergence, course and resolution? When Froggatt and Nevin wrote on the Bio-metric-Mendelian controversy in 1971 they called their article ‘descriptive rather than interpretative’, so they avoided the very questions we would like to ask. Provine, in the same year, concentrated on the strong personalities of the contestants, their clashes, and the scientific arguments in play. But in 1975 Mackenzie and Barnes argued that the controversy could not be accounted for unless recourse was had to sociological factors. Their view has become widely known and figured prominently in 1982 in Steven Shapin's recital of the empirical achievements of the application of the sociological approach. I have returned to this subject because I do not yet feel altogether convinced by Mackenzie and Barnes' analysis. Even if their analysis of the controversy between Pearson and Bateson be accepted, it is not so obvious how effectively it can be used to explain the controversy between Weldon and Bateson, and I am not confident that it is adequate for an understanding of the evolution of their differing views of the mechanism of evolution.


1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (25) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Richard Andrews

The regular community drama activity of the village of Monticchiello in Italy has been pursued for nearly a quarter of a century, but is still little known abroad. A full study of the phenomenon is as much a study of the community, past and present, as it is a piece of theatrical analysis, in the area where there is a complete interlock between social history and the theatrical activity which a society produces. Since the work and history of the Teatro Povero have too many ramifications for everything to be summarized or even alluded to in one article, Richard Andrews here sets out to introduce the subject to students of theatre ‘by example’ – aiming to dig a single trench into the strata, in order to convey the outlines of the subject, hopefully without damage to the evidence needed for a more complete survey. Richard Andrews is Professor of Italian at Leeds University, having previously taught at Swansea and Kent. For the past fifteen years his research interests have been mainly concentrated on theatrical material, and he is currently preparing a study of sixteenth-century Italian comedy for Cambridge University Press. His regular contact with Monticchiello dates from 1983, and has been supported by a systematic analysis of all the texts produced there since 1967.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29
Author(s):  
Luisa Levi D’Ancona Modena

With a focus on art donations, this article explores several case studies of Jewish Italian patrons such as Sforni, Uzielli, Sarfatti, Castelfranco, Vitali, and others who supported artists of movements that were considered modern at their time: the Macchiaioli (1850-1870), the Futurists (1910s), the Metaphysical painters (1920s), the Novecento group (1920-1930s), and several post WWII cases. It reflects on differences in art donations by Jews in Italy and other European countries, modes of reception, taste, meanings and strategy of donations, thus contributing to the social history of Italian and European Jewry and the history of collections and donations to public museums.


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