Mark Stuart

University of Leeds · Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC)

Studies of the benefits of human resource development (HRD) for organisations have assumed a direct connection between training strategy and a hierarchy of performance outcomes: learning, behavioural change and performance improvement. The influence of workplace practices and employees' experiences on training effectiveness has received little atte...

The HR world is abuzz with talk of big data and the transformative potential of HR analytics. This article takes issue with optimistic accounts, which hail HR analytics as a ‘must have’ capability that will ensure HR's future as a strategic management function while transforming organisational performance for the better. It argues that unless the H...

With a novel methodology searching news events from world’s largest news agencies via the online GDELT project, this report documents protest of key workers against their working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 90 countries.

The article develops a novel conceptualisation of labour unrest and trade unionism in the platform economy, extending current understandings in two ways. First, we situate platform work historically, in the longue durée of paid work under capitalism. Secondly, we introduce a consideration of social structure into debates on union practices often fr...

This paper presents findings from the Leeds Index of Platform Labour Protest, a database of platform worker protest events around the world which gathers data from online news media reports and other online sources. For the period January 2017 to July 2020, we identified 1,271 instances of worker protest in four platform sectors: ride-hailing, food...

This article assesses regulatory reform of the state in the context of the move to furloughing in the UK. It establishes that furloughing was a successful response to the COVID-19 crisis, partly because it challenged the traditional UK crisis response of non-state intervention in the labour market. Furloughing prevented higher unemployment and enab...

This article reveals the extent of international inequalities in the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on participation in paid work. Drawing on World Systems Theory (WST) and a novel quasi-experimental analysis of nationally representative household panel surveys across 20 countries, the study finds a much sharper increase in the likelihoo...

Drawing on Marxist political economy, this article examines wage theft in hospitality work. Through a detailed, qualitative study of workers’ experiences in London hotels, a novel typology is developed that reveals how managers extract additional unpaid labour time through wage theft. The article argues that both the legal definition and existing a...

Blog for ESRC Digital Futures at Work Research Centre: https://digit-research.org/blog_article/three-unanswered-questions-about-eu-directive-on-gig-work/

Podcast for the Leeds University Business School Research and Innovation Blog/Podcast series: https://business.leeds.ac.uk/dir-record/research-blog/1909/podcast-furlough-and-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

The article argues that job retention should be a central aim and practice of human resource management (HRM). Set against the global COVID‐19 crisis, theoretical insights are drawn from strategic HRM planning and the economics of ‘labour hoarding’ to consider the potential benefits of workforce furloughing. Furlough has been supported in the UK by...

Active labour market policies (ALMPs) have evolved as pivotal social policy instruments designed to place the unemployed and other disadvantaged groups in sustainable employment. Yet, little is known about what drives employer participation in such initiatives. This article provides a nuanced account of the socio-economic aspects of the demand-side...

We report initial findings from a unique survey of managers on the practice of furlough, their experiences of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), and workplace change during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study draws on an online survey of managers in the UK with responsibility for staffing (HR managers, or other managers at senior or middle l...

This report addresses the nature, scope and possible effects of digital automation. It reviews relevant literature and situate s modern debates on technological change in historical context. It identifies threats to job quality and an unequal distribution of the risks and benefits associated with digital automation. It also offers some policy optio...

Labour unrest by platform workers is an important phenomenon in the new world of work. This study examines patterns of platform labour unrest on a global scale, drawing from a database of over 500 instances of labour unrest in the food delivery sector. Results show that labour unrest has been growing in recent years and has spread across a large nu...

Podcast for Leeds University Business School Blog/Podcast series: https://business.leeds.ac.uk/research-ceric/dir-record/research-blog/1692/podcast-technologies-in-the-workplace

The article presents emerging evidence on the development of the platform economy, paying particular attention to the motivations for entering platform work, the conditions of platform work and the extent of social protections afforded platform workers. Debate thus far has tended to be highly speculative and lacking in grounded empirical analysis,...

The article presents emerging evidence on the development of the platform economy, paying particular attention to the motivations for entering platform work, the conditions of platform work and the extent of social protections afforded platform workers. Debate thus far has tended to be highly speculative and lacking in grounded empirical analysis,...

This chapter explores the connections between training and development and industrial relations. As the skills agenda has moved to the forefront of public conversation, in a practical sense training and development have become more of an industrial relations concern, as policymakers exhort the social actors to cooperate and build new partnership re...

This study investigates the social protection of workers in the platform economy at the request of the European Parliament's Employment and Social Affairs Committee. The report reviews literature and previous research on the platform economy with the aims of defining it and developing a typology for understanding its nature. It discusses the growth...

In 2011 the UK Coalition government introduced its flagship welfare-to-work programme, ‘The Work Programme’ (WP). Based on a ‘payment by results’ model, it aims to incentivise contracted providers to move participants into sustained employment. Employer involvement is central to the programme’s success and this paper explores the ‘two faces’ of thi...

This report explores the potential effect of trade unions on training provision in the British workplace. It does this through an analysis of the Labour Force Survey, covering the period 2001–2013, and in terms of postrecession practice the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. The results show that union members received more training than n...

This article explores recent developments in equal pay bargaining in the UK local government sector. It situates equal pay bargaining against the implementation of a new single status agreement designed to promote equality at work and the supporting regulatory lever of the Gender Equality Duty. The implementation of single status has been fraught w...

http://lubswww.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/webfiles/ceric/Documents/CERIC_Policy_Report_5.pdf

In this introductory article, the editors of Work, Employment and Society reflect on the journal’s body of published work and present the main contributions of the 25-year anniversary issue. As a journal of record WES is now well established and offers extensive conceptual insights into, and empirical analysis of, contemporary trends and experience...

This article considers the potential gains which the union-led learning agenda may provide for its various stakeholders in Britain. To do this, it draws on extensive surveys of individual learners, trade union workers and employers to evaluate the extent of possible gains. The article argues that the union-led learning agenda may open a new and nov...

This article examines the position of women within the modernization processes of British trade unions, based on the first analysis to date of projects funded under the British government’s Trade Union Modernisation Fund. The focus of the article on the Trade Union Modernisation Fund provides unique insights into the relatively underexplored ‘inner...

Unions in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland have come a long way since the increasing interest in equality in the 1970s. There have been a range of policy related and strategic developments in relation to gender and race, for example. There are challenges which remain but unions have reformulated much of their ways of working to account for t...

Este informe proporciona un análisis de los efectos de la crisis económica en las mujeres del sector del transporte. Ya que los efectos de la crisis y la recesión son continuos, el análisis de los datos es relativamente limitado. Los datos de documentación y los datos directos sobre los efectos de la crisis en la mujer son preliminares y en absolut...

Ce rapport fournit une analyse des effets de la crise économique sur les femmes dans le secteur du transport. Vu que les effets de la crise et de la récession se poursuivent, l’analyse faite jusqu’à présent est relativement limitée. Les documents et les données directes sur les effets de la crise sur les femmes sont préliminaires et sont loin d’avo...

This article examines Jarley's contention that trade union revitalization is conditional upon the generation of social capital through the systematic creation of networks. It draws on a qualitative study of freelance workers in the UK audio‐visual industry to consider two propositions. The first, that ‘social capital within networks is forged on “b...

Trade Unions and Workplace Training examines the changing role of trade unions in the provision of vocational education, workplace training and skill development. It reflects upon: the role that unions have played in the reform of vocational education and training systems; the nature of union involvement in consultative mechanisms at a national and...

This article explores the way that the British New Labour Government (1997–2010) sought to craft a modernised approach to employment relations through the means of ‘soft regulation’. Drawing from discrete empirical projects from each of New Labour's three terms of office, the article examines the role of the state in promoting labour-employer partn...

The development of HRM and its social and economic consequences are the subject of a wide array of processes and inputs. The manner in which the management and regulation of the employment relation evolves is influenced as much by external factors as it is internal ones specific to the organization. The role of law, the state as a public sector emp...

The emergence of the union learning agenda under the New Labour variant of neo-liberalism has produced a debate on the appropriateness of union involvement in this arena of activity. The incorporation thesis argues that unions merely implement policy over which they have had little influence. The critical engagement thesis suggests that there may b...

'Activating' the jobless – bringing them into or closer to paid work – has become a government-funded industry. What are the dynamics of employment relations in this sector, constituted as a mixed market of non-profit, for-profit, and public sector bodies? Drawing on in-depth qualitative research in the UK and Germany, we argue that there is a tens...

This article examines the role of unions in learning in Norway, specifically that of the lead union confederation, Landsorganisasjonen i Norge (LO). The article argues that while many of the conditions for effective union involvement in policy formation existed in Norway, weaker union structures at the local level constrained its implementation, as...

Final report of an evaluation of ULF Rounds 8-11, using multiple methods. 145 pages

This paper examines the nature and process of trade union modernisation in Britain, through an analysis of the Labour Government's Trade Union Modernisation Fund (UMF). The key concern of the paper is to examine how the state has sought to influence the modernisation processes of trade unions via the UMF, the union response and what the potential g...

http://www.ufhrd.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/3_16.pdf This paper draws on the Learning through Work project, which evaluated the potential of on-the-job learning as a mechanism for skills development in low-skilled, low-paid work. The target group, representing some 20 per cent of the UK workforce, have few qualifications and often...

This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those ‘at a career crossroads’, for whom there were tensions betwee...

During the global economic downturn of recent years, there has been rising interest in the anticipation and management of redundancies, and in notions of ‘socially responsible restructuring’, although studies of the effects of layoffs on workers remain relatively scarce. In this paper we address three questions. First, what are the consequences of...

This chapter presents an assessment of the union organising agenda in Britain. It considers the origins and recent developments of organising, and assesses how the union movement has sought to operationalise organising as a tool for revitalisation. The nature and relative efficacy of the concept for union revitalisation has stimulated an extensive...

The aim of this article is to examine the changing role of the state in a more market-driven system of industrial relations, specifically in terms of the new roles that are being developed with regard to mediation, advisory and arbitration services. It focuses empirically on the role played by the British Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Serv...

This paper presents an assessment of the union organizing agenda in the United Kingdom. It considers the origins and recent developments of organizing and examines how the union movement has sought to operationalize organizing as a tool for revitalization. We seek to tease out a twofold argument that is sensitive to both external and internal dynam...

■ The learning agenda has become an increasingly prominent concern of policy-makers at the level of the EU and national Member States, and is often presented as a positive-sum issue around which industrial relations renewal can take place. Yet the dynamics related to this in industrial relations terms are relatively under-explored. This introductor...

■ This article explores the role of trade unions in innovative learning partnerships. Formal framework partnerships suffer from implementation problems and a lack of focus on worker needs, in contrast to local learning partnerships that address the specific interests of workers displaced through restructuring. The key challenges facing unions are t...

This paper examines the potential of web-based networks for representing the interests of freelance audio-visual workers. It suggests that while such networks provide fora for the expression and mobilisation of interests, their ability to represent workers is limited. Consequently, they provide an opportunity for trade unions to extend organisation...

The training debate has suffered from a tendency to over-state the consensual nature of skill formation. This position is challenged through an extended literature review and case study evidence from the printing industry. The article highlights the need for a broader conceptual framework for understanding training provision and bargaining arrangem...

Accounts of the shift to post-industrial modes of employment have tended to present an over-simplified view of networks as an assemblage of contacts used to gain individual advantage in the labour market. Creative industries represent a challenge to this as typically they rely on networks to foster collaboration, trust and co-operation. In this art...

Mark Stuart, who is a Research Fellow in the School of Business and Economic Studies at the University of Leeds, discusses the issues and problems of formulating and implementing training policy within specific industries. He presents an investigation of the Recruitment, Training and Retraining Agreement covering the UK printing industry and, as we...

Investment in vocational education and training is commonly regarded as a prerequisite of competitive success. Training is also seen as a cornerstone of management initiatives designed to enhance employee involvement and co-operation in the production process. Ironically, however, commentators have rarely sought to assess employee attitudes towards...

Whether UK employment relations have been ‘remade’ in recent years through new forms of labour-management cooperation or partnership-based approaches to employment relations, has been the subject of significant academic debate (Stuart and Martinez Lucio 2005a). The partnership approach has occupied a central place in the UK Labour government’s appr...

Many commentators have argued that a shift towards post-industrial modes of production and employment has progressively undermined the conditions for collective labour organisation and regulation. The capacity of trade unions to respond to these changes and represent the interests of contingent workers has become a key issue in many industries in w...

No This article explores the importance of class and collectivism to personal identity, and the role this played during a period of personal and collective crisis created by mass redundancy in the Welsh steel industry. The research findings demonstrate the importance of occupational identity to individual and collective identity formation. The appa...