The management of an ageing workforce: organisational policies in Germany and Britain

Demographic change as well as pressure from the European Union and national government are forcing organisations to change age-discriminatory HRM approaches. Based on a qualitative analysis of eight British and German organisations, we found that commitment, scope, coverage and implementation of age management differ due to country-specific institutions, particularly government, in nudging employers and unions to preferred age practices. This confirms the path dependency concept suggested by institutional theory. Nevertheless, we also found that industry-specific factors mediate the implementation of age management, leading to some convergence across countries. This indicates that organisations deviate from the institutional path to implement practices that they deem important.

Notions of Conflict and 'New' Citizens' Inclusion:Post-Cosmopolitan Contestations in Germany

This chapter argues that there is a gap between symbolic exclusion from the national community when it comes to the inclusion of new German citizens of Turkish or Kurdish background, and a broad claim to be a cosmopolitan society, at large. While focusing on narratives of minority key political activists in Berlin, and analysing individual stories on the background of contemporary populist xenophobic debates and hate crime of the 1990s, the chapter illustrates both, individual success and vulnerability due to institutionalised forms of anti- Muslim and anti-Turks segments in Germany.

Musically Consonant, Socially Dissonant: Orange Walks and Catholic Interpretation in West-Central Scotland

This article examines the music used by the Orange Order, in its public parades, more commonly referred to as “Orange Walks.” The Orange Order is an exclusively Protestant fraternal organization, which traces its roots to 1690 and the victory of the Protestant Prince William of Orange over the Catholic King James. Yet, as in Northern Ireland, many consider the group to be sectarian and view its public celebrations as a display of ethno-religious triumphalism. This article explores the extra-musical factors associated with Orangeism’s most iconic song, “The Sash My Father Wore,” how other groups have misappropriated the song, and how this has distorted its meaning and subsequent interpretation.

Recent statistics have shown that Glasgow hosts more Orange parades each year than in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry combined, yet while there have been many anthropological and ethnomusicological studies of Northern Ireland’s Orange parades, very little research has focused on similar traditions in Scotland. This article seeks to address that gap in the literature and is intended as a preparatory study, laying the groundwork for further analysis.

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island’s religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church’s long-standing ‘monopoly’ has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious ‘market’ featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing ‘extra-institutional’ expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church.

Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, this book describes how people of faith are engaging with key issues such as increased diversity, reconciliation to overcome the island’s sectarian past, and ecumenism. It argues that extra-institutional religion is especially well-suited to address these and other issues due to its freedom and flexibility when compared to traditional religious institutions. It describes how those who practice extra-institutional religion have experienced personal transformation, and analyses the extent that they have contributed to wider religious, social, and political change. On an island where religion has caused much pain, from clerical sexual abuse scandals, to sectarian violence, to a frosty reception for some immigrants, those who practice their faith outside traditional religious institutions may hold the key to transforming post-Catholic Ireland into a more reconciled society.

Children’s Burial Grounds in Ireland (Cilliní) and Parental Emotions Toward Infant Death

Cilliní—or children’s burial grounds—were the designated resting places for unbaptized infants and other members of Irish society who were considered unsuitable by the Roman Catholic Church for burial in consecrated ground. The sites appear to have proliferated from the seventeenth century onwards in the wake of the Counter-Reformation. While a number of previous studies have attempted to relate their apparently marginal characteristics to the liminality of Limbo, evidence drawn from the archaeological record and oral history accounts suggests that it was only the Roman Catholic Church that considered cilliní, and those interred within, to be marginal. In contrast, the evidence suggests that the families of the dead regarded the cemeteries as important places of burial and treated them in a similar manner to consecrated burial grounds.

An Inconvenient Truth: Barriers to Truth Recovery in the Aftermath of Institutional Child Abuse in Ireland

Contemporary settled democracies, including the United States, England and Wales and Ireland, have witnessed a string of high profile cases of institutional child abuse in both church and state settings. Set against the broader literature on transitional justice, this analysis argues that there are significant barriers to truth recovery within the particular context of historical institutional abuse by the clergy in the Republic of Ireland. In the main, I argue that the frameworks of the inquiries and commissions into historical institutional child abuse are not conducive to truth recovery or the search for justice in dealing with the legacy of an abusive past. It is the church-state relationship which makes the Irish situation noteworthy and unique. The Catholic Church and child care institutions are especially self-protective, secretive and closed by nature and strongly discourage the drawing of attention to any deficiencies in organisational procedures. The nature of the public inquiry process also means that there is often a rather linear focus on accountability and apportioning blame. Collectively, such difficulties inhibit fuller systemic investigation of the veracity of what actually happened and, in turn, meaningful modification of child care policies. The article concludes by offering some thoughts on implications for transitional justice discourses more broadly as well as the residual issues for Ireland and other settled democracies in terms of moving on from the legacy of institutional child abuse.

Attitudes towards ideal family size of different ethnic/nationality groups in Great Britain, France and Germany.

This article reports upon results from a European Union funded project on the integration of children of international migrants in Britain, France and Germany. It provides both a descriptive and a multivariate analysis of the factors that determine attitudes towards ideal family size. The results reveal that there are large differences between ethnic groups in Britain: Indian and Pakistani respondents in Britain expressed a preference for significantly larger families. However, many children of international migrants expressed a desire for smaller families than the autochthonous population in both countries. This was particularly the case for Portuguese respondents in France and Turks in Germany. Religious affiliation also had a significant effect, above and beyond ethnicity per se. Both Moslems and Christians preferred larger families than those with no religious affiliation. The article concludes that ethnic differences in attitudes towards fertility behaviour will remain important in the foreseeable future in western Europe, particularly in Britain.

Rethinking the Sacred and Secular Divide. Accounting and Accountability Practices in the Diocese of Ferrara (1431-1457)

Purpose – Informed by the work of Laughlin and Booth, the paper analyses the role of accounting and accountability practices within the 15th century Roman Catholic Church, more specifically within the Diocese of Ferrara (northern Italy), in order to determine the presence of a sacred-secular dichotomy. Pope Eugenius IV had embarked upon a comprehensive reform of the Church to counter the spreading moral corruption within the clergy and the subsequent disaffection with the Church by many believers. The reforms were notable not only for the Pope’s determination to restore the moral authority and power of the Church but for the essential contributions of ‘profane’ financial and accounting practices to the success of the reforms.
Design/methodology/approach – Original 15th century Latin documents and account books of the Diocese of Ferrara are used to highlight the link between the new sacred values imposed by Pope Eugenius IV’s reforms and accounting and accountability practices.
Findings – The documents reveal that secular accounting and accountability practices were not regarded as necessarily antithetical to religious values, as would be expected by Laughlin and Booth. Instead, they were seen to assume a role which was complementary to the Church’s religious mission. Indeed, they were essential to its sacred mission during a period in which the Pope sought to arrest the moral decay of the clergy and reinstate the Church’s authority. Research implications/limitations – The paper shows that the sacred-secular dichotomy cannot be considered as a priori valid in space and time. There is also scope for examining other Italian dioceses where there was little evidence of Pope Eugenius’ reforms.
Originality/value – The paper presents a critique of the sacred-secular divide paradigm by considering an under-researched period and a non Anglo-Saxon context.

Ancestors of Governmentality: Accounting and Pastoral Power in the 15th Century

Foucault identified the roots of governmentality in religious beliefs and religious history with its genealogical core the equivalent of pastoral power, the art of governing people by relying on a dualistic logic; individualization and totalization. This technology of power arose and matured within the Roman Catholic Church and provided a model for many states in the achievement and exercise of power. Informed by the work of Foucault on pastoral power the present work examines the genealogical core of governmentality in the context of the Roman Catholic Church at a time of great crisis in the 15th century when the Roman Catholic Church was undergoing reform instituted by Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447). The contributions of accounting to pastoral power are shown in this study to have been pivotal in restoring the Church’s standing and influence. Accounting was one of the technologies that allowed the bishops to control both the diocese as a whole and each priest, to subjugate the priests to the bishops’ authority and, thereby, to govern the diocese through a never-ending extraction of truth.

Catholicism and Fascism in Interwar Ireland

The interwar era saw the collapse of liberal democracy and the rise of anti-democratic authoritarian movements and states throughout much of Europe. Parliamentary or liberal democracy proved especially vulnerable in countries with large Catholic populations and ‘successor states’ – those states that achieved independence following the Great War. Despite meeting both criteria, the democratic structures of the Irish Free State – established in 1922 following a revolutionary struggle against British rule – proved remarkably resilient: indeed, it was arguably the only successor state to remain fully democratic by 1939 This outcome appears all the more striking given the formation of the state amidst a civil war, a form of conflict that frequently prevented the successful emergence of democracy. This is an article about the dog that didn’t bark: why did the kind of authoritarian political movements that flourished in many other parts of interwar Europe attract negligible support in the Irish Free State, and what does this have to tell us about the relationship between Catholicism and authoritarian politics? It begins by surveying the Irish Catholic Church’s attitudes to far-right politics in Continental Europe, and assessing how ‘official’ Catholic attitudes shaped popular perceptions of fascism and clerical authoritarianism within Ireland. It then explores the extent to which Ireland’s only significant fascistic movement – the Blueshirts – was influenced by, and sought to exploit, Catholicism. It concludes by questioning whether the immense influence of the Catholic Church and Catholic values within Irish political culture and society facilitated or hindered the cause of authoritarian politics in Ireland.