Facility closure management:the case of Vauxhall Motors Luton

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to present the findings of a study of factory closure management. It details the sequence and the results of the key strategic manufacturing management decisions made from the time of the announcement of the plant closure to the cessation of operations. The paper also includes an analysis of the human resource management (HRM) actions taken during this same time period and their consequences upon all those involved in the closure management process. Design/methodology/approach – The case study methodology consisted of two initial site visits to monitor closure management effectiveness (adherence to plan and the types and frequency of closure management communications). During these visits, documentary evidence of the impact of the closure decision upon production performance was also collected (manufacturing output and quality performance data). Following plant closure, interviews were held with senior business, production and HRM managers and production personnel. A total of 12 interviews were carried out. Findings – The case study findings have informed the development of a conceptual model of facility closure management. Information obtained from the interviews suggests that the facility closure management process consists of five key management activities. The unexpected announcement of a factory closure can cause behavioural changes similar to those of bereavement, particularly by those employees who are its survivors. In addition, similar reactions to the closure announcement may be displayed by those who choose to remain employed by the factory owner throughout the phased closure of the plant. Originality/value – Facility closure management is an insufficiently researched strategic operations management activity. This paper details a recommended procedure for its management. A conceptual model has also been developed to illustrate the links between the key facility closure management tasks and the range of employee changes of behaviour that can be induced by their execution.

Betwixt spaces: student accounts of turning point experiences in first year transitions

‘Not belonging’ is becoming a prevalent theme within accounts of the first-year student experience at university. In this study the notion of not belonging is extended by assuming a more active role for the idea of liminality in a student’s transition into the university environments of academic and student life. In doing so, the article suggests that the transition between one place (home) and another (university) can result in an ‘in-between-ness’ – a betwixt space. Through an interpretative methodology, the study explores how students begin to move from this betwixt space into feeling like fully-fledged members of university life. It is concluded that there is a wide range of turning points associated with the students’ betwixt transition, which shapes, alters or indeed accentuates the ways in which they make meaningful connections with university life. Moreover, transitional turning point experiences reveal a cast of characters and symbolic objects; capture contrasting motivations and evolving relationships; display multiple trajectories of interpersonal tensions and conflicts; highlight discontinuities as well as continuities; and together, simultaneously liberate and constrain the students’ transition into university life.

Strategy as practice:Interactive governance spaces and the corporate strategies of retail transnationals

There is growing interest in the role of corporate governance systems within the strategy-making process of firms. Using a 'strategy as practice' perspective, we conceptualize the governance system as a contested space in which management and security analysts mutually adapt/transform and enact corporate strategies vis-à-vis argumentation. Synthesizing this micropractice perspective within corporate governance research, the supple role of securities analysts' arguments in shaping corporate strategies assumes a new significance. It also provides a basis for observing and understanding the contested nature of the retail internationalization process. The implications and opportunities for management studies and economic geography are considered. © The Author (2007). Published by Oxford Press. All rights reserved.

Achieving closure through knowledge management strategy

Case studies of knowledge management practices are often conducted in organizations where the aim is to manage knowledge for future operational improvements. What about knowledge management for organizations with limited life-spans that are preparing for closure? Such organizations are not common but can benefit from knowledge management strategy. This case study concerns the knowledge management strategy of an organization that is preparing for its final phase of operations. We facilitated two group workshops with senior managers to scope a strategy, following which the organization initiated a set of projects to implement the resulting actions. This paper reviews their implemented actions against those designed in the workshop to shed light on knowledge management in this uncommon situation.

Employment outcomes and plant closure in a post-industrial city:an analysis of the labour market studies of MG Rover workers three years on

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

Languaging the worker:globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces

In the introduction to the special issue “Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”, we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for the study of governmentality as a viable and growing approach in critical sociolinguistic research. As such, in this introduction, we first discuss key concepts germane to our interrogations, including the notions of governmentality, languaging, peripherality and language worker. We proceed to map out five ethnographically and discourse-analytically informed case studies. These examine diverse actors in different settings pertaining to the domain of work. Finally we chart how the case studies construe the issue of languaging the worker through a governmentality frame.

Everyday tactics and spaces of power: the role of informal economies in post-Soviet Ukraine

Utilising de Certeau's concepts of daily life and his delineation between strategies and tactics as everyday practices this paper examines the role of informal economies in post-Ukraine. Based on 700 household surveys and seventy-five in-depth interviews, conducted in three Ukrainian cities, the paper argues that individuals/households have developed a wide range of tactics in response to the economic marginalisation the country has endured since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Firstly, the paper details the importance of informal economies in contemporary Ukraine while highlighting that many such practices are operated out of necessity due to low wage and pension rates and high levels of corruption. This challenges state-produced statistics on the scale of economic marginalisation currently experienced in the country. By exploring a variety of these tactics the paper then examines how unequal power relations shape the spaces in which these practices operate in and how they can be simultaneously sites of exploitation and resistance to economic marginalisation. The paper concludes pessimistically by suggesting that the way in which these economic spaces are shaped precludes the development of state policies which might benefit the economically marginalised.

Beyond all reason:spaces of hope in the struggle for England’s universities

This essay examines how academics and students in England have been primed to comply with a political agenda of “deep” neoliberalization through cumulative processes of institutional and subjective undermining and considers what might be an appropriate logic of critical response. It first describes how the embedding of principles and mechanisms of market governance within academic life has depoliticized methods for critically theorizing and collectively resisting these processes and then explores the work of recent student-led opposition to the British government’s new policies, teasing out some theoretical implications of the logic of occupation being cultivated there. It suggests that by fusing a determination for autonomy with a transgressive cultivation of new forms of thinking and social practice, the occupations illustrate new critical-experimental work in the politics of possibility. The underlying logic thus offers some resources for reimagining modalities of resistance to processes of deep neoliberalization; however, becoming receptive to them may also require a critique of professional academic subjectivities and reevaluation of attachments to existing forms of the university itself.

Semantic linking through spaces for cyber-physical-socio intelligence:a methodology

Humans consciously and subconsciously establish various links, emerge semantic images and reason in mind, learn linking effect and rules, select linked individuals to interact, and form closed loops through links while co-experiencing in multiple spaces in lifetime. Machines are limited in these abilities although various graph-based models have been used to link resources in the cyber space. The following are fundamental limitations of machine intelligence: (1) machines know few links and rules in the physical space, physiological space, psychological space, socio space and mental space, so it is not realistic to expect machines to discover laws and solve problems in these spaces; and, (2) machines can only process pre-designed algorithms and data structures in the cyber space. They are limited in ability to go beyond the cyber space, to learn linking rules, to know the effect of linking, and to explain computing results according to physical, physiological, psychological and socio laws. Linking various spaces will create a complex space — the Cyber-Physical-Physiological-Psychological-Socio-Mental Environment CP3SME. Diverse spaces will emerge, evolve, compete and cooperate with each other to extend machine intelligence and human intelligence. From multi-disciplinary perspective, this paper reviews previous ideas on various links, introduces the concept of cyber-physical society, proposes the ideal of the CP3SME including its definition, characteristics, and multi-disciplinary revolution, and explores the methodology of linking through spaces for cyber-physical-socio intelligence. The methodology includes new models, principles, mechanisms, scientific issues, and philosophical explanation. The CP3SME aims at an ideal environment for humans to live and work. Exploration will go beyond previous ideals on intelligence and computing.

Simple eye-closure penalty estimate for amplitude noise-degraded signals

We present a simplified model for a simple estimation of the eye-closure penalty for amplitude noise-degraded signals. Using a typical 40-Gbit/s return-to-zero amplitude-shift-keying transmission, we demonstrate agreement between the model predictions and the results obtained from the conventional numerical estimation method over several thousand kilometers.

Shared action spaces:a basis function framework for social re-calibration of sensorimotor representations supporting joint action

The article explores the possibilities of formalizing and explaining the mechanisms that support spatial and social perspective alignment sustained over the duration of a social interaction. The basic proposed principle is that in social contexts the mechanisms for sensorimotor transformations and multisensory integration (learn to) incorporate information relative to the other actor(s), similar to the "re-calibration" of visual receptive fields in response to repeated tool use. This process aligns or merges the co-actors' spatial representations and creates a "Shared Action Space" (SAS) supporting key computations of social interactions and joint actions; for example, the remapping between the coordinate systems and frames of reference of the co-actors, including perspective taking, the sensorimotor transformations required for lifting jointly an object, and the predictions of the sensory effects of such joint action. The social re-calibration is proposed to be based on common basis function maps (BFMs) and could constitute an optimal solution to sensorimotor transformation and multisensory integration in joint action or more in general social interaction contexts. However, certain situations such as discrepant postural and viewpoint alignment and associated differences in perspectives between the co-actors could constrain the process quite differently. We discuss how alignment is achieved in the first place, and how it is maintained over time, providing a taxonomy of various forms and mechanisms of space alignment and overlap based, for instance, on automaticity vs. control of the transformations between the two agents. Finally, we discuss the link between low-level mechanisms for the sharing of space and high-level mechanisms for the sharing of cognitive representations. © 2013 Pezzulo, Iodice, Ferraina and Kessler.

Engaging junior doctors:evidence from "open spaces" in England

Purpose: This paper aims to report on a project undertaken in order to identify, develop and reflect on the leadership and managerial skills of clinicians. The main aim of the project was to design, plan, organise and deliver a learning session for Foundation Year 2 Doctors within the premises of one of the largest NHS Foundation Trusts in the UK. The key theme of the learning session was the introduction of the notion of competent medical leadership in the NHS. A leadership role has been traditionally seen as the task of managers and as such clinicians have seemed reluctant to engage. Design/methodology/approach: A two hour workshop was designed and delivered with the use of Open Space Technology. Foundation Year 2 doctors were invited to consider the importance of leadership in their everyday roles. An awareness of the Medical Leadership Competency Framework had been a key aspect of the learning session. Findings: The project's outcome can be identified as being the encouragement of Foundation Year 2 doctors in considering their roles as leaders in their everyday tasks. Originality/value: Design, planning, organisation and delivery of a two hour Open Space learning session with the Foundation Year 2 doctors portrays the session's learning potentials and the potential for such sessions to provide a platform for difficult discussions in the NHS. This is particularly beneficial where a cultural shift is needed in order to see a way forward, notably when facing significant change. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Crack closure and residual stress effects in fatigue of a particle-reinforced metal matrix composite

A study of the influence of macroscopic quenching stresses on long fatigue crack growth in an aluminium alloy-SiC composite has been made. Direct comparison between quenched plate, where high residual stresses are present, and quenched and stretched plate, where they have been eliminated, has highlighted their rôle in crack closure. Despite similar strength levels and identical crack growth mechanisms, the stretched composite displays faster crack growth rates over the complete range of ΔK, measured at R = 0.1, with threshold being displaced to a lower nominal ΔK value. Closure levels are dependent upon crack length, but are greater in the unstretched composite, due to the effect of surface compressive stresses acting to close the crack tip. These result in lower values of ΔKeff in the unstretched material, explaining the slower crack growth rates. Effective ΔKth values are measured at 1.7 MPa√m, confirmed by constant Kmax testing. In the absence of residual stress, closure levels of approximately 2.5 MPa√m are measured and this is attributed to a roughness mechanism.