The EU Working Time Directive has so far had little impact on an ingrained culture of long-hours working in the UK. Case studies suggest that the use of individual opt-outs from the 48-hour limit on weekly working time is a principal reason for this. However, removal of the individual opt-out...

Amartya Sen’s capability approach has the potential to counter neoliberal critiques of social welfare systems by overcoming the false opposition between security and flexibility. In particular, it can be used to promote the idea of social rights as the foundation of active participation by...

We explore the finding of La Porta et al. that differences in Ôlegal originÕ account for part of cross-national diversity in labour regulation and corporate governance. We suggest that the finding needs a better historical grounding and that a mechanism which might explain it has not been...

Over the last ten years, the debate on labour market flexibility has increasingly become polarised between two distinctive and potentially irreconcilable viewpoints. On the one hand, concern over high levels of persistent unemployment and low levels of employment in Europe has led some to argue...

The reforms instituted by the Broadcasting Act 1990 led to a period of turbulence and upheaval within British broadcasting with results that were at best unintended and, at worst, seriously undermined the ideal of public service broadcasting. A Hayekian economic perspective would suggest that...

This paper explores the links between the economic notion of 'capabilities' and the judicial concept of social rights. We begin by revisiting TH Marshall's classic analysis of social rights and their ambiguous relationship to the market. We then examine how far Amartya Sen's Capabilities...

The aim of this paper is to reassess the place of labour law in the wider area of employment relations research and to argue the case for labour law's importance to social scientists. We give an analytical account of the principal institutional features of labour law as a form of legal...

The corporate governance environment in the UK and US is generally thought to be hostile to the emergence of cooperative employment relations of the kind exemplified by labour-management partnerships. We discuss case study evidence from the UK which suggests that, contrary to this widespread...

We suggest, on the basis of empirical research into the implementation of recent legal reforms, that Japan is not moving inexorably towards a 'global standard' in corporate governance, based on external monitoring and a market for corporate control. Japanese corporate governance is nevertheless...

This paper explores the legal and normative implications of the idea that the labour market is a spontaneous order or self-organising system which rests on set of mutually-reinforcing conventions which are themselves the outcome of an evolutionary process. It is suggested that the role of...