Past projects

Principal Investigator: Dr Graham Smith

Funder: ESRC IAA

This project develops previous work with Greater Manchester Police (GMP) which investigated drivers and obstacles to the development and implementation of place-based integration (PBI). PBI is a rapidly moving policy initiative that seeks to address behaviours commonly subjected to criminal justice interventions by bringing together a range of public service resources within the same location with the aim of adopting alternative solutions.

Principal Investigator: Aristea Koukiadaki (with Mathew Johnson, Stephen Mustchin and Laura Watt)

Funder: MBS Strategic research investment fund (SRIF) (2017-2021)

The aim of this proposed interdisciplinary research project is to investigate the design and implementation of public procurement contracts, the influence of formal and informal notions of social responsibility and their combined effects on employment conditions in publicly contracted companies. Designed to respond to significant gaps in knowledge and in policy and practice, the research will focus in particular on decision-making processes, the negotiation of conflicting interests (eg local authority budget targets, legal restrictions, social responsibility norms, profit interests and employee concerns) and interactions with regulatory and organisational policy and practice.

Principal Investigator: Prof Neville Harris (led by The University of Edinburgh)

Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

The ESRC research project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1) is examining the implementation of legislation in England and Scotland which has established a new framework of rights for children and young people with special educational needs (or, in Scotland, additional support needs) in relation to education decision-making. The English part of the research is being led by Professor Neville Harris, assisted by Dr Gail Davidge and will assess how effectively in practice the local arrangements, established under the Children and Families 2014, are ensuring that children and young people with special educational needs are able to realise their enhanced rights.

Many of the rights accorded to children and young people under the 2014 Act are concerned with their participation and local authority engagement with their views in the various processes by which decisions about their education are made and any disputes arising over them are resolved. But they also offer children and young people collectively an opportunity to influence the state’s determination and review of local special educational provision. These kinds of empowerment and rights of participation would be consistent with the state’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But they are not being introduced against a settled background, but rather in the context of transition and change in this field.

For further information on the project, see The University of Edinburgh website.

Principal Investigator: Prof Robert Thomas (with The University of Sheffield)

Funder: The Nuffield Foundation

This project asks: how is the system of immigration and judicial review operating in practice? Could some of these cases be better and more efficiently handled through an alternative process?

The 16,000 immigration and judicial reviews lodged each year are pushing at the limit of what the judicial system can cope with. However, policy-makers lack a detailed understanding of this area of litigation, and there is a need to identify:

• What specific types and categories of immigration and judicial reviews are lodged and why?
• What proportion of these challenges could be resolved more effectively through an alternative dispute resolution model?
• What are the options for an alternative approach and how could they be modelled?

See the full project for more information.

Principal Investigator: Neville Harris

Funder: Goteborgs Universitet

Principal Investigator: Ruth Lamont

Funder: Humanities Strategic Investment Fund (HSIF)

Principal Investigator: Sarah Devaney

Funder: SIRF

Co-Investigators: David Williamson; Cecilia Flores Elizondo

Project aim: Regulators tend to engage in a variety of activities to encourage regulatees to comply with applicable regulatory frameworks, or to punish non-compliance. In a number of sectors, including finance and health and safety, such activities include taking action to harm the regulatee’s reputation (or threatening such harm). Significant gaps exist however in our knowledge about this regulatory approach including, for example, which regulators use it and how (and which regulators could resort to it but do not); which regulatees respond to it and why; and in what circumstances it is effective and why. Drawing on a variety of qualitative methods, it is such questions which this project addresses with the intention of enabling regulators to take action affecting reputations in a way which maintains their own reputation as knowledgeable, effective and proportionate.

Social dialogue during the economic crisis: The impact of industrial relations reforms on collective bargaining in the manufacturing sector

Principal Investigator: Dr Aristea Koukiadaki

Funder: European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion DG

Co-investigators: Tony Dundon (NUI Galway, Ireland), Sabrina Colombo and Ida Regalia (Università degli studi di Milano, Italy), Maria do Pilar Gonzalez (University of Porto, Portugal), Aurora Trif (Dublin City University, Ireland), Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mrčela and Miroslav Stanojević (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Carlos Jesús Fernández Rodríguez and Rafael Ibáñez Rojo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain).

Project aim: Against the background of a profound economic crisis in Europe, wide-ranging labour market reforms are radically transforming the national systems of collective labour law and collective bargaining in a number of EU Member States. The comparative research project will seek to understand how the crisis-driven policy reforms translate into changes in collective bargaining in manufacturing.

The seven-country comparative study consists of primary and secondary data in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Fieldwork includes interviews with social and regulatory actors in terms of social dialogue and collective bargaining arrangements. The case studies illuminate the challenges and strategies of social partners at sectoral and company levels as well as the likely outcomes for employees.

The significant policy interest of this project lies in its potential for contributing to addressing the employment and social dimensions of national and EU priorities relating to the response to and exit from the crisis. Specific questions include: What have been the effects of the reforms for the process and content of collective bargaining at the national, industry and company level? How do employers and trade unions respond to the new regulatory framework and what have been the implications for the outcomes of collective bargaining on issues such as wages, employment conditions and gender equality? How can the comparison of the reforms, their respective effect and social partners’ strategies be used for EU and national policy-making as well as cross-national learning and knowledge exchange for social partners?

The rise of the dual labour market: Fighting precarious employment in the new member states through industrial relations

Funder: European Commission

Co-ordinating Team: Aristea Koukiadaki (University of Manchester), Aurora Trif (Dublin City University) and Marta Kahancová (Central European Labour Studies Institute)

Co-investigators: Alf Vanags and Marija Krumina (Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies), Hrvoje Butkovic and Višnja Samardžija (Institute for Development and International Relations), Boguslavas Gruzevskis and Inga Blažiene (Lithuanian Social Research Centre), Miroslav Stanojevic (University of Ljubljana), Adam Mrozowicki and Malgorzata Maciejewska (University of Wrocław)

Project aim: Precarious work has increased dramatically in the recent years. Despite this, little evidence is available on the strategies of the social partners to address the rise of the dual labour market. To fill this gap, this project explores how the strategies of employers and trade unions across 10 EU member states represent the interest of non-standard and vulnerable groups in precarious employment; and how the needs of these groups are addressed in the process of collective bargaining and other initiatives undertaken by the social partners.

Principal Investigator: Jon Spencer

Co-Investigators: Dr Juan Medina Ariza; Dr Sarah Devaney; Dr David Ellis; Professor Royston Goodacre; Dr Adam Leaver; Dr Nicholas Lord

Funder: ESRC and Food Standards Authority

Project aim: This proposal intends to answer the question: How does the nature, functioning and regulation of a food supply network affect the risk of food fraud by adulteration?

This research question is allied to one anticipated integrative output: a predictive, transposable dynamic computational model that will outline nodes in a food supply network vulnerable to criminal acts of adulteration. Recent research by Spencer et al suggests that criminal action by legitimate actors in the meat supply chain is commonplace. All food adulteration scandals undermine consumer confidence in food and inflict reputational damage on those retailers caught up in the fallout. It is anticipated that this will advance academic understanding of food fraud and have practical use for regulators and food retailers who have a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of food supply networks. This project is run by an inter-disciplinary group from the disciplines of Chemistry, Law, Criminology, Regulation and Business.