Government policy emphasises five ‘drivers’ of productivity: competition, enterprise, innovation, investment and skillsand each of these has been the subject of major programmes of reform (HM Treasury, 2006). Despite this, andnotwithstanding some improvement, UK productivity in terms of output...

We investigate the empirical usefulness of a new measure of the degree of competition in a market, proposed by Boone (2000). This measure is based on the reduction in profits that firms experience as a result of cost inefficiencies. We compare this with measurescommonly used by policy makers and...

Do “Anglo-Saxon” management practices generate higher productivity only at the expense of lousywork-life balance (WLB) for workers? Many critics of “neo-libéralisme sauvage” have argued thatincreased competition from globalisation is damaging employees’ quality of life. Others have...

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from 732 medium sizedmanufacturing firms in the US, France, Germany and the UK. These measures of managerialpractice are strongly associated with productivity, profitability, Tobin’s Q, sales growth and survivalrates....