Business & Economics

While employee relations investigations are an important part of organisational practice for managing workplace issues, there is growing evidence of the significant harm they can cause to individuals being taken through them. This harm can also spread further to those involved in their delivery, as well as impacting organisational culture and reputation, leading to financial and economic harm.

Under Investigation proposes a shift in mindset that prioritises employee wellbeing alongside the application of the process, reducing potential harm and creating healthier work environments. Based on a programme of work and research within NHS Wales, it explores the wider impact of employee investigations, considers new approaches to applying disciplinary policy and includes a call to the human resources profession for change.

How can humanity navigate the environmental crisis beyond the pursuit of economic growth? Drawing on diverse philosophical and political traditions and from ecological economics to environmental social sciences, this book offers a bold alternative: relational degrowth, which recognises people, communities, and nature as fundamentally interconnected.

Through conceptual analysis and real-world examples, the book explores how to reshape economic and cultural systems and demonstrates why emphasis on relations is critical for the degrowth movement. It provides theoretical foundations and practical applications for scholars and activists enacting alternatives to growth-dependent societies.

This book presents an ethnography of a community empowerment programme called Big Local. Following three community groups as they navigated the Covid-19 pandemic, it offers timely insights into how groups change when crisis hits and explores implications for our collective capacity to address society’s most pressing problems.

The book introduces the concept of ‘group habitus’ for interpreting group life, showing how societally dominant ‘cultures of organising’ shape spaces of collective deliberation and action. A close-up examination of how people work together, this book offers a new way of understanding sociopolitical inequalities.

This book traces Sri Lanka’s engagement with international financial actors from a unique vantage point: as a small country in the global South that previously attempted to achieve self-sufficiency, Sri Lanka's experience exposes the contradictions within the international financial system. The authors reveal the IMF’s shifting attitude towards Sri Lanka, while exposing the barriers that hinder its own free-market vision for growth.

Exploring the intersection of international and national processes, this timely study critiques mainstream development thinking and champions more critical approaches. Essential for scholars and practitioners navigating today's mounting debt crises and the search for genuine alternatives.

Over 80% of practitioners in the UK arts sector work on a freelance basis. While freelancing offers scope for autonomy and creative freedom, it is also characterized by widespread precarity, low pay, long hours and systemic inequalities. Funding cuts and recent challenges have only intensified these conditions.

This book provides an evidence-based account of what it means to work as a freelancer in the UK performing arts sector, drawing on data from the Big Freelancer Survey (2020–2025). It presents a unique insight into arts-based freelance work in the UK, providing workable recommendations for change.

Behavioural science has never been a static field. From its roots in psychology and economics, it has borrowed ideas, adapted methods and reinvented itself in response to new challenges.

Today, the field is undergoing another transformation, shaped by debates about diversity and inclusivity, methodological pluralism, ethical boundaries, and questions of effectiveness, alongside the growing influence of data science and artificial intelligence.

Drawing on interviews with over 250 experts from academia, industry and policy, Merle van den Akker examines the challenges, frustrations, ambitions and hopes shaping behavioural science, and considers what its future might hold.

Chess Club or Drama Club: which would you rather join? Do you focus on the detail or prefer to imagine the bigger picture?

Sally Bridgeland introduces the 'Club Mix' as a playful recipe for everyday inclusion, designed to enhance team dynamics and drive business success by blending imagination and analysis.

Ideal for leaders and managers, this book uses real-life stories, business insights, and practical exercises to help you harness the power of inclusive teams that balance creativity and structure. Written for all stages and sizes of business, it will support you in broadening your team's capabilities and fostering a resilient and creative culture.

Today’s organizations are increasingly complex with many structures, practices and rules to follow. While the organizational head – an administrative knowing better class - becomes larger, the space for people doing the core job of the organization to think outside the box and take personal responsibility shrinks.

How can we tackle this and give workers more space to use their judgement?

Drawing on cases from universities, healthcare and other industries, this book reveals how the growth of management, policies and expertise are often counterproductive. The authors provide solutions for rethinking work and organization and to encourage what they call post-infantilized management.

Highlighting key debates around organizations and bureaucracy, this book presents an alternative vision for the future of work and management.

Academics have long been calling for better ethics of care and more inclusive working environments, yet situational and structural barriers within academia are complex and often hidden. Advocating the need for diverse voices in discussions on systemic inequality, this edited volume provides a vital platform for sharing lived experiences of intersectional identities navigating systemic barriers alongside academic pressures.

These personal essays offer powerful narratives of resistance, perseverance and hope from within the ‘ivory tower’ of academia, addressing religion, disability, geography, race, gender identity and language. They illuminate frequently invisible obstacles, examining issues such as tokenism, performativity and imposter syndrome.

A new perspective on the role of the market, and its future place in society.

Markets are apparently straightforward: they connect buyers to sellers. But their operation is complex, depending on places, things, networks and performances. Belief in markets is a cultural and political ideology. They are a means of governance in modern society, linked to individualistic self-responsibility.

But markets also have a darker side. Not everything should be for sale. Markets wield political power; they benefit those who already have resources; they impair collective action; they can be exploitative. As well as asking what markets are for, this book asks who they are for and what needs to change if they are to enable us to thrive in the 21st century.

A fresh, sustainability-focused take on building organizations.

In a world facing growing social, political and environmental challenges, our organizations are no longer serving us well. This book offers a fresh framework for rethinking organizations. It is built on four generative dynamics—purposing, democratizing, cooperating and commoning— underpinned by a planetary mindset. Grounded in real-world examples and the latest research, it explores how these dynamics can spark new modes of organizing. With a focus on overcoming barriers and inspiring change, it’s a compelling call to reimagine organizations for a future that sustains people and the planet.

A fresh, sustainability-focused take on building organizations.

In a world facing growing social, political and environmental challenges, our organizations are no longer serving us well. This book offers a fresh framework for rethinking organizations. It is built on four generative dynamics—purposing, democratizing, cooperating and commoning— underpinned by a planetary mindset. Grounded in real-world examples and the latest research, it explores how these dynamics can spark new modes of organizing. With a focus on overcoming barriers and inspiring change, it’s a compelling call to reimagine organizations for a future that sustains people and the planet.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is recurrently depicted as an enterprise that unites humanity in a common pursuit of a more just and sustainable world. But how is this enterprise pursued on a planet that is enormously unequal? Drawing on biopolitical theory and rich empirical data from different contexts around the world, this book explores how ESD is unpacked depending on whether people are rich or poor.

The book demonstrates how ESD is adapted to the lifestyles and living conditions of different populations. The implication of this depoliticized sensitivity to local ‘realities’, the book argues, is that inequality becomes accommodated and that different responsibilities are assigned to rich and poor. Ultimately, the book considers alternatives to this biopolitical divide.

How can diversity be practiced without reinforcing the very inequalities it aims to dismantle?

In this book, Maddy Janssens and Chris Steyaert address this pressing question by critically examining the assumptions behind current diversity initiatives and turning to critical practice theory and queer theory for novel insights. Through imaginative concepts, inspiring illustrations, and an integrative case study within the dance world, the authors articulate the ‘conditions of possibility’ for a fresh, impactful alternative. This book advocates for a shift from individual efforts to collective practices, proposing a politics of organizational worldmaking oriented at multiplicity – a practicing of diversity that aspires to transformative change into livable and just work lives.

Today drag has an unprecedented mass cultural appeal. Reaching far beyond traditional queer venues and audiences into the mainstream, it has evolved into a booming industry worth millions of dollars.

Drag is art, politics, lifestyle and entertainment all in one. Yet, studies examining its market value as a product, brand or consumption practice remain scarce. This interdisciplinary collection fills that void, exploring the intersection of drag and markets.

Written by an international group of scholars exploring cases from Europe, Asia and the US, this will be a key resource for anyone curious about drag’s social, political and economic impact.

This book explores data science in practice through an ethnographic study at a global marketing technology and research firm.

The book shows that, while businesses have embraced data science methods to understand markets and consumers, in practice they produce too much information. Consequently, they must be combined with creative practices that simplify and make sense of analytics. Cluley shows that in the age of data science, business is increasingly artistic. In this case, marketing science is more like marketing science fiction.

This is essential reading for understanding contemporary data-driven business and marketing as well as social and economic relations in the age of surveillance capitalism, with lessons for academics and students of marketing, technology and data science.

It is impossible to view the news at present without hearing talk of crisis.

This timely book looks at how three major crises – the economy, pandemic and climate – are related to the crisis of work, making it more precarious, intense and unequal.

Providing an original and critical synthesis of recent trends in the field, expert scholars offer a programme for transcending the crisis of work.

Offering a timely contribution to understanding the important issues facing the world, this book presents an important new way of thinking about work in contemporary societies.

Pension policy in the UK and US is designed on the assumption that people make informed financial decisions, consistently invest in pensions and manage diverse portfolios. Deviating from this is often deemed irresponsible and irrational. However, this assumption overlooks uncontrollable factors like caring duties, employment breaks or income limitations. Even when individuals act as expected, unpredictable market shifts can hinder long-term planning.

This book redefines deviations to “rational behaviour” as logical responses to a dysfunctional system. Challenging existing theoretical discussions and policy approaches, it proposes a fresh perspective on rationality when it comes to financial practices and policy.

Between 1934 and 1939 a wave of violent strikes and riots swept across the Caribbean. Roger Seifert explores how British political parties, trade unions, and pressure groups of the labour movement responded to these colonial struggles.

Using diverse primary sources, Seifert shows similarities between these disputes and solidarity (or otherwise) with Caribbean workers. The book explores deep ideological divisions on labour, colonialism, and political rights within the British Left, which still shape politics today.

A timely study of racism, empire, and class, this is essential reading for anyone interested in labour history, trade unionism, and global inequality.

EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Money is central to capitalism and to our many sustainability crises. Could we remake money so as to advance sustainable economies and fair societies? A growing number of scholars, politicians and activists think we can, and they are doing it from the bottom up.

This book examines how grassroots groups, municipalities and radical crypto-entrepreneurs are remaking money by designing and organising complementary currencies. It argues that in their novel ideas and governance practices lie the key for building green and inclusive economies.

Engaging imaginatively with the future of money, this accessible book will appeal to anyone interested in constructing a more sustainable and just world.

Our future is being dismantled in real time. Ecological collapse, climate breakdown, rising inequalities – and at the heart of it all: business as usual. More and more employees are beginning to realise that the organisations they work for, and often even the tasks they perform each day, are part of the problem rather than the solution.

The Green Handprint at Work is a guide for those who want to leave a positive environmental impact at their workplace by becoming an employee activist: someone who cares deeply about the environment and wants to create change from within their organisation.

It offers tools, not just inspiration, providing employee activists with insights into how power works and how change spreads. You don’t need a formal role to make a difference. You need a strategy – and the courage to act. This book will help you find both.

What’s it like to work in the male-dominated world of electronic music? How do women and gender-expansive music producers and DJs thrive despite clubland’s so-called ‘bro culture’? This book combines the author’s personal journey into DJing and music production with insights from a six year immersive research project and interviews with 63 global artists to explore the challenges women and gender-expansive artists face in the industry.

The book tackles common myths around gender, technology and cultural production head on, introducing the concept of ‘ameliorative work’ to recognise the continual and considerable additional work that minoritized genders do in order to succeed.

Engaging, accessible and thought-provoking, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in electronic music, the sociology of the contemporary club scene or diversity issues for workers in the creative industries.

Winner of the National Ccommunication Association's Outstanding Monograph award, Organizational Communication Division, 2025

'Corporate purpose' has become a battleground for stakeholders’ competing desires. Some argue that corporations must simply generate profit; others suggest that we must make them create social change.

Leading organization studies scholar Timothy Kuhn argues that this 'either/or' thinking dramatically oversimplifies matters: today’s corporations must be many things, all at once.

Kuhn offers a bold new Communicative Theory of the Firm to highlight the authority that creates corporations’ identities and activities. The theory provides a roadmap for navigating that battleground of competing desires to produce more responsive corporations.

Drawing on communicative and new materialist theorizing, along with three insightful case studies, this book thoroughly redefines our understandings of what corporations are 'for'.

This book offers a fresh perspective on work showing how past events, ideas, practices and values haunt organizations.

In a contemporary context where organizations are ever more obsessed with growth and transformation, the book discovers a politics of time at the heart of questions about power and ethics. It develops a non-linear approach to the history of education showing what it means to inherit from previous generations and how encounters with ghosts can open possibilities of other, alternative futures.

For academics and students across management, education, and sociology, the book is a crucial resource for understanding contemporary organizations. It invites you to find new ways to care for the future of work.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the institutions and processes shaping work, labour markets and industrial relations policies in Australia.

It explores traditional industrial relations issues and examines social change and policy failures in areas such as gender, work and family dynamics, skills and immigration and wage theft. Additionally, it considers how pandemics, climate change, technological advances and new business structures impact policy change. Addressing these universal challenges, the book offers fresh conceptual approaches and rethinks policy problems and solutions.

Essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners, this book reshapes our understanding of work and industrial relations policy.

Published in collaboration with BUIRA, this book provides a critical review of the field of industrial relations (IR) and evaluates its future in the rapidly evolving world of work.

Written by key names in IR, the book captures the significant transformations that have taken place within the field over the past decade. It traces the historical development of IR, exploring its ongoing impact on our lives. The chapters delve into various aspects, including union organization and mobilization, the influence of new technology, and the examination of intersectionality in the context of work and employment.

This is an invaluable resource for academics and students of employment and industrial relations, as well as HR professionals, trade union organizations and representatives.

Published in collaboration with BUIRA, this book provides a critical review of the field of industrial relations (IR) and evaluates its future in the rapidly evolving world of work.

Written by key names in IR, the book captures the significant transformations that have taken place within the field over the past decade. It traces the historical development of IR, exploring its ongoing impact on our lives. The chapters delve into various aspects, including union organization and mobilization, the influence of new technology, and the examination of intersectionality in the context of work and employment.

This is an invaluable resource for academics and students of employment and industrial relations, as well as HR professionals, trade union organizations and representatives.

EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Money is central to capitalism and to our many sustainability crises. Could we remake money so as to advance sustainable economies and fair societies? A growing number of scholars, politicians and activists think we can, and they are doing it from the bottom up.

This book examines how grassroots groups, municipalities and radical crypto-entrepreneurs are remaking money by designing and organising complementary currencies. It argues that in their novel ideas and governance practices lie the key for building green and inclusive economies.

Engaging imaginatively with the future of money, this accessible book will appeal to anyone interested in constructing a more sustainable and just world.

Between August 2022 and July 2024, GMB Union membership at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse skyrocketed, with 37 days of strike action resulting in a 28.5% pay rise. Yet despite this, the union narrowly lost a ballot that would have forced Amazon to grant formal recognition.

Based on ethnographic research and reflective essays from worker-leaders and organizers, this book offers a rich case study of the factors contributing to the union’s successes and setbacks. It provides a practical organizing model applicable beyond Amazon, offering strategies to engage the workforce, sustain support and develop leadership. An essential toolkit for those navigating the complexities of evolving labour practices, with particular relevance for precarious workers and workplaces where access is limited.

Debates about the origins and effects of European rule in the non-European world have animated the field of economic history since the 1850s. This pioneering text provides a concise and accessible resource that introduces key readings, builds connections between ideas and helps students to develop informed views of colonialism as a force in shaping the modern world.

With special reference to European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both Asia and Africa, this book:

• critically reviews the literature on colonialism and economic growth;

• covers a range of different methods of analysis;

• offers a comparative approach, as opposed to a collection of regional histories, deftly weaving together different themes.

With debates around globalization, migration, global finance and environmental change intensifying, this authoritative account of the relationship between colonialism and economic development makes an invaluable contribution to several distinct literatures in economic history.

Critically assessing growth-based models of innovation policy, this enlightening study sparks new debate on the role and nature of responsible innovation.

Drawing on insights from economics, politics, and science and technology studies, it proposes the concept of 'responsible stagnation' as an expansion of present discussions about growth, degrowth, responsibility and innovation within planetary limitations.

This important intervention explores real-world relationships between the political economy, innovation policy and concepts of responsibility, and will be an invaluable resource for individuals and civil society organizations who seek to promote responsible innovation.

What makes some people more likely to initiate positive change within their organizations? Can this behaviour be influenced by management?

Employee proactivity has largely been understood in terms of employees changing their environment or changing themselves. In this novel study Wu offers an alternative lens through which to examine such behaviour – the concept of attachment theory.

Wu integrates the current understanding of motivational factors in shaping proactive workers, through his introduction to attachment theory, and development of it as a theoretical framework.

This compelling approach provides academics with a new way of thinking about employee behaviour while also acting as a guide for practitioners and managers.

Debates about the origins and effects of European rule in the non-European world have animated the field of economic history since the 1850s. This pioneering text provides a concise and accessible resource that introduces key readings, builds connections between ideas and helps students to develop informed views of colonialism as a force in shaping the modern world.

With special reference to European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both Asia and Africa, this book:

• critically reviews the literature on colonialism and economic growth;

• covers a range of different methods of analysis;

• offers a comparative approach, as opposed to a collection of regional histories, deftly weaving together different themes.

With debates around globalization, migration, global finance and environmental change intensifying, this authoritative account of the relationship between colonialism and economic development makes an invaluable contribution to several distinct literatures in economic history.

Just as we need good food for good health, so too do we need ‘good finance’ for social and economic wellness.

In this book, Vedat Akgiray presents a timely critique of extreme financialisation, of the economics profession’s flawed modelling approach and the continuing blind faith in the efficient market hypothesis.

Outlining the causes of financial crises and their socioeconomic effects, Good Finance puts the issues into perspective. It offers a clear platform upon which our current concept of finance can be revised for the good of society.

One of the most important manuscripts surviving from thirteenth-century England, the corpus of documents known as the Hundred Rolls for Cambridge have been incomplete until the recent discovery of an additional roll.

This invaluable volume replaces the previous inaccurate transcription by the record commission of 1818 and provides new translations and additional appendices.

Shedding new light on important facets of business activity in thirteenth-century Cambridge, this volume makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the early phases of capitalism.

This unique text will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of economic and business history, entrepreneurship, philanthropy and medieval studies.

A research monograph based on recently discovered historical documents, Compassionate Capitalism: Business and Community in Medieval England, by Casson et al, is also now available from Bristol University Press.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND

Made famous by the Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith, the concept of an ‘invisible hand’ might be taken to imply that a government that governs least governs the best, from the viewpoint of society. Here an invisible hand appears to represent unfettered market forces.

Drawing from this much-contested notion, Mittermaier indicates why such a view represents only one side of the story and distinguishes between what he calls pragmatic and dogmatic free marketeers.

Published posthumously, with new contributions by Daniel Klein, Rod O’Donnell and Christopher Torr, this book outlines Mittermaier’s main thesis and his relevance for ongoing debates within economics, politics, sociology and philosophy.

“This is a book you should read, for understanding what went wrong in the past is our only hope of doing better in the future?”

- Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winner

Why did governments adopt austerity policies, and why were they so harmful? <br>

Why did the media largely ignore the experts who opposed these policies, and allow politicians to get away with lies? <br>

And why did voters choose Brexit when the economic consensus was that it would harm living standards? <br>

Simon Wren-Lewis, winner of the SPERI/New Statesman Prize for Political Economy, is one of Britain's most respected economists. Since 2012, his widely-read Mainly Macro blog has been an influential resource for policymakers, academics and social commentators around the world. This book presents some of his most important work, telling the story of how the damaging political and economic events of recent years became inevitable.

Recent policies have replaced direct government funding for teaching with fees paid by students. As well as saddling graduates with enormous debt, satisfaction rates are low, a high proportion of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and public debt from unpaid loans is rocketing.

This timely and challenging analysis combines theoretical and data analysis and insights gained from running a university, to give robust new policy proposals: lower fees; reintroduce maintenance awards; impose student number caps; maintain taxpayer funding; cancel the TEF; re-build the external examiner system; restructure the contingent-repayment loan scheme; and establish different roles for different types of institutions, to encourage excellence and ultimately benefit society.

It may seem like a recent trend, but businesses have been practising compassionate capitalism for nearly a thousand years.

Based on the newly discovered historical documents on Cambridge’s sophisticated urban property market during the Commercial Revolution in the thirteenth century, this book explores how successful entrepreneurs employed the wealth they had accumulated to the benefit of the community.

Cutting across disciplines, from economic and business history to entrepreneurship, philanthropy and medieval studies, this outstanding volume presents an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the early phases of capitalism.

A companion book, The Cambridge Hundred Rolls Sources Volume, replacing the previous incomplete and inaccurate transcription by the Record Commission of 1818, is also available from Bristol University Press.

For many younger and lower-income people, housing affordability continues to worsen.

Based on the academic research of two distinguished housing economists – and stimulated by working with governments across the world - this wide-ranging book sets out clear theoretical and empirical frameworks to tackle one of today’s most important socio-economic issues.

Housing unaffordability arises from complex forces and a prerequisite to effective policy is understanding the causes of rising house prices and rents and the interactions between housing, housing finance and the macroeconomy. The authors challenge many of the conventional wisdoms in housing policy and offer innovative recommendations to improve affordability.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. It is critical that the wellbeing of society is systematically tracked by indicators that not only give an accurate picture of human life today but also provide a window into the future for all of us.

This book presents impactful findings from international longitudinal studies that respond to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 commitment to “leave no-one behind”. Contributors explore a wide range and complexity of pressing global issues, with emphasis given to excluded and vulnerable populations and gender inequality.

Importantly, it sets out actionable strategies for policymakers and practitioners to help strengthen the global Sustainable Development Goals framework, accelerate their implementation and improve the construction of effective public policy.

Now available in paperback with a new preface and foreword by Stella Nkomo.

How might imperialist, masculinist and white supremacist grips on leadership be loosened? In this thought-provoking and accessible new study, Helena Liu suggests that anti-racist feminism can challenge conventional models and practices of power.

Combining a critical review of leadership theory with enlightening examples from around the world, the book shows how the intellectual and activist elements of feminist movements provide antidotes to contemporary leadership research and practice. For those interested in management, organisation, feminism, race and many more studies, it sets the agenda for a radical reimagining of control and leadership in all its forms.

Much of the literature that addresses youth unemployment has been framed within an economic paradigm and much less attention has been focused on the role played by country-specific value orientations in structuring economic activity.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork research and the work of experts in Europe and the United States, this book provides a culturally nuanced analysis of key issues relating to youth unemployment.

Examining the causes and consequences of youth unemployment, it explores ways forward to promote economic self-sufficiency. This pioneering work offers invaluable tailored policy solutions to tackle one of today’s most important socioeconomic issues.

Recent developments in the organization of work and production have facilitated the decline of wage employment in many regions of the world. However, the idea of the wage continues to dominate the political imaginations of governments, researchers and activists, based on the historical experiences of industrial workers in the global North.

This edited collection revitalises debates on the future of work by challenging the idea of wage employment as the global norm. Taking theoretical inspiration from the global South, the authors compare lived experiences of ‘ordinary work’ across taken-for-granted conceptual and geographical boundaries; from Cambodian brick kilns to Catalonian cooperatives. Their contributions open up new possibilities for how work, identity and security might be woven together differently.

This volume is an invaluable resource for academics, students and readers interested in alternative and emerging forms of work around the world.

Austerity was presented as the antidote to sluggish economies, but it has had far-reaching effects on jobs and employment conditions.

With an international team of editors and authors from Europe, North America and Australia, this illuminating collection goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work and uniquely covers the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres.

Drawing on a range of perspectives, the book engages with the major debates surrounding austerity and neoliberalism, providing grounded analysis of the everyday experience of work and employment.

The world of work has changed and so have trade unions with mergers, rebrandings and new unions being formed. The question is, how positioned are the unions to organize the unorganized?

With more than three quarters of UK workers unrepresented and the growth of precarious employment and the gig economy this topical new book by Bob Smale reports up-to-date research on union identities and what he terms ‘niche unionism’, while raising critical questions for the future.

People often believe that we can overcome the profound environmental and climate crises we face by smart systems, green innovations and more recycling. However, the quest for complex technological solutions, which rely on increasingly exotic and scarce materials, makes this unlikely.

A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on how we should be marshalling our resources to preserve the planet and secure our future. Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that ‘high’ technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to build a more resilient and sustainable society.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Individuals’ behaviours at work are known to be shaped by cold, or cognitive-motivational, processes as well as hot, or affect-motivational, processes. To date, employee proactivity research has mainly focused on the ‘cold’ side. But emotion has been proposed to ‘energize’ employees’ proactivity, especially in interdependent and uncertain work environments.

In this pioneering work, expert scholars offer new thinking on the process by examining how emotion can drive employees’ proactivity in the workplace and how, in turn, that proactivity can shape one’s emotional experiences.

The liberating promise of big data and social media to create more responsive democracies and workplaces is overshadowed by a nightmare of election meddling, privacy invasion, fake news and an exploitative gig economy.

Yet, while regressive forces spread disinformation and hate, 'guerrilla democrats' continue to foster hope and connection through digital technologies.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of platform-based radical movements, from the online coalitions of voters and activists to the Deliveroo and Uber strikes. Combining cutting edge theories with empirical research, it makes an invaluable contribution to the emerging literature on the relationship between technology and society.

People often believe that we can overcome the profound environmental and climate crises we face by smart systems, green innovations and more recycling. However, the quest for complex technological solutions, which rely on increasingly exotic and scarce materials, makes this unlikely.

A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on how we should be marshalling our resources to preserve the planet and secure our future. Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that ‘high’ technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to build a more resilient and sustainable society.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

In this enlightening study of modern working lives in Britain, leading experts on the sociology of work draw on detailed statistical analyses to assess job quality and job satisfaction.

Drawing on decades of research data on hundreds of occupational groups, the authors challenge conventional notions of ‘good work’ and consider them afresh through the lens of workers themselves. With examples from many professions, the book examines why some occupations feel more rewarding than others, regardless of factors like pay and security.

Exploring fresh policies to promote the agenda for fulfilling employment, it builds an important case for genuine and sustained satisfaction in working lives.

Why does the City of London, despite an apparent commitment to recruitment and progression based on objective merit within its hiring practices, continue to reproduce the status quo?

Written by a leading expert on diversity and elite professions, this book examines issues of equality in the City, what its practitioners say in public and what they think behind closed doors.

Drawing on research, interviews, practitioner literature and internal reports, it argues that hiring practices in the City are highly discriminating in favour of a narrow pool of affluent applicants, and future progress may only be achieved by the state taking a greater role in organizational life. It calls for a policy shift at both the organizational and governmental level to address the implications of widening inequality in the UK.

The liberating promise of big data and social media to create more responsive democracies and workplaces is overshadowed by a nightmare of election meddling, privacy invasion, fake news and an exploitative gig economy.

Yet, while regressive forces spread disinformation and hate, 'guerrilla democrats' continue to foster hope and connection through digital technologies.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of platform-based radical movements, from the online coalitions of voters and activists to the Deliveroo and Uber strikes. Combining cutting edge theories with empirical research, it makes an invaluable contribution to the emerging literature on the relationship between technology and society.

The relationship between unstable work careers and family transitions into adult life can vary according to the personal circumstances of individuals, as well as the welfare state system of the country.

Drawing from interviews and survey data across the EU and the UK, this in-depth study explores how worker instability is perceived and experienced, and how this ‘perception’ in turn affects individuals’ economic and social situations. Using intersectional analysis and a unique focus on different life stages, the authors identify groups who are more prone to labour market risks and describe their relative disadvantage.

This powerful study will inform policy measures internationally in several social domains related to work, employment and society.

How can entrepreneurs become mentally, emotionally and practically prepared for a crisis? What strategies might help them endure and surface from a crisis? And what can we learn from them?

Drawing on research and insights from 20 years spent studying entrepreneurs, Rachel Doern explores the experiences of entrepreneurs facing crises and presents practical strategies for building resilience in a turbulent world. With real-life examples and hands-on exercises, this book offers actionable steps to build resilience — and to protect it — by helping us shift how we think, what we focus on and how we shape and use our environment and resources.

Essential reading for entrepreneurs, students and academics, business stakeholders, coaches and mentors, this book provides a fresh perspective on navigating crises. Through personal stories of resilience, it offers inspiration and guidance for the resilience work we can all do.

This book discusses common management and work practices in professional service organizations.

Alvehus opens important discussions on what it means to work, manage, and be managed in such professional organizations, casting light on classic conflicts. He takes everyday work as a starting point and adopts a critical view that focuses on challenges and struggles in both public and private settings. He offers new perspectives and key insights for the future of professionalism.

Providing a comprehensive overview of the field, this book is an important guide for understanding how professionalism is maintained in today’s organizations. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of management and leadership.

‘Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government,’ wrote Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, ‘and with them, the liberty and security of individuals.’ However, Philipp Robinson Rössner shows how, when looked at in the face of history, it has usually been the other way around.

This book follows the development of capitalism from the Middle Ages through the industrial revolution to the modern day, casting new light on the areas where premodern political economies of growth and development made a difference. It shows how order and governance provided the foundation for prosperity, growth and the wealth of nations.

Written for scholars and students of economic history, this is a pioneering new study that debunks the neoliberal origin myth of how capitalism came into the world.

How can we reimagine the relationship between academia and activism to provide new opportunities for social change?

Based on an ethnography with an anti-violence feminist collective, this vibrant and vital book develops an interdisciplinary approach to activism and activist research, helping us reimagine the role of scholarship in the fight against social inequality.

With its reflections on novel tools that can be utilized in the fight for social justice, this book will be a valuable resource for academics in critical management studies, sociology, gender studies, and social work as well as practitioners and policymakers across the social services sector.

At a time when the practices of technology companies continue to attract fierce criticism, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and how it might affect the way in which an organization operates.

Combining new and traditional Marxian perspectives, the authors offer an in-depth analysis of how these technology giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.

As technology firms continue to shape our political and socio-economic landscape, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students who seek to understand the function of technological monopolies in contemporary capitalism.

This book discusses common management and work practices in professional service organizations.

Alvehus opens important discussions on what it means to work, manage, and be managed in such professional organizations, casting light on classic conflicts. He takes everyday work as a starting point and adopts a critical view that focuses on challenges and struggles in both public and private settings. He offers new perspectives and key insights for the future of professionalism.

Providing a comprehensive overview of the field, this book is an important guide for understanding how professionalism is maintained in today’s organizations. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of management and leadership.

This book explores the representation of women and their interests in the world of work across four trade unions in France and the UK.

Drawing on case studies of the careers of 100 activists and a longitudinal study of the trade unions' struggle for equal pay in the UK, it unveils the social, organizational, and political conditions that contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities or, on the contrary, allow the promotion of equality.

Guillaume’s nuanced evaluation is a call to redefine the role of trade unions in the delivering of gender equality, contributing to broader debates on the effectiveness of equality policies and the enforcement of equality legislation.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022

Does ‘woke capitalism’ improve capitalism’s image or does it threaten the future of democracy?

From Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick, to Gillette’s engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, the 21st century has seen a sharp increase in corporations taking over public morality, a phenomenon which has come to be known as ‘woke capitalism’.

Carl Rhodes takes us on a lively and fascinating history of woke capitalism – from 1950s corporate social responsibility, through 1980s neoliberalism, tracing it alongside the adoption and mutation of the term ‘woke’ from Black American culture – and brings us right up to current-day debates.

By examining the political causes that woke capitalism has co-opted, and the social causes that it has not, he argues that this surreptitious extension of capitalism has serious implications for us all.

The words ‘precarity’ and ‘precariousness’ are widely used when discussing work, social conditions and experiences. However, there is no consensus on their meaning or how best to use them to explore social changes.

This book shows how scholars have mapped out these notions, offering substantive analyses of issues such as the relationships between precariousness, debt, migration, health and workers’ mobilizations, and how these relationships have changed in the context of COVID-19.

Bringing together an international group of authors from diverse fields, this book offers a distinctive critical perspective on the processes of precarization, focusing in particular on the European context.

The Introduction, Chapters 3 and 8, and the Afterword are available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Do you know where your money is? More importantly, do you know what your money is doing?

Most of us feel confident that we know what money is. But few of us feel confident in taking responsibility for what our money does. We hand over the power of money to banks and mainstream finance with real, often damaging, consequences for people and planet.

A unique collaboration between an academic and a practitioner, this book tells the story of money, from ancient Athens to the Bitcoin revolution, to explain how crowdfunding is the way for people to reclaim the power of their money in pursuit of a fairer and greener society.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022

Does ‘woke capitalism’ improve capitalism’s image or does it threaten the future of democracy?

From Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick, to Gillette’s engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, the 21st century has seen a sharp increase in corporations taking over public morality, a phenomenon which has come to be known as ‘woke capitalism’.

Carl Rhodes takes us on a lively and fascinating history of woke capitalism – from 1950s corporate social responsibility, through 1980s neoliberalism, tracing it alongside the adoption and mutation of the term ‘woke’ from Black American culture – and brings us right up to current-day debates.

By examining the political causes that woke capitalism has co-opted, and the social causes that it has not, he argues that this surreptitious extension of capitalism has serious implications for us all.

Getting business on board is essential if we want to achieve the United Nations’ goal of building a better future for people and planet by 2030. But much of the sustainable business agenda falls woefully short of what is needed, with some practices even accelerating the problems they’re trying to solve.

In Urgent Business Ian Thomson and Dominic Bates, a business school professor and a former journalist, combine their expert insight to challenge five common myths that trap businesses in an unsustainable black-hole and offer a manifesto for change. Combining cutting-edge research – from AI and systems theory to climate science and behavioural economics – with fascinating real-world examples, the authors highlight the practical and holistic steps all businesses can take to play their part in addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. .

More people are extending their working lives through necessity or choice in the context of increasingly precarious labour markets and neoliberalism. This book goes beyond the aggregated statistics to explore the lived experiences of older people attempting to make job transitions.

Drawing on the voices of older workers in a diverse range of European countries, leading scholars explore job redeployment and job mobility, temporary employment, unemployment, employment beyond pension age and transitions into retirement.

This book makes a major contribution and will be essential reading within a range of disciplines, including social gerontology, management, sociology and social policy.

This ambitious collection follows the evolution of capitalism from its origins in 13th-century European towns to its 16th-century expansion into Asia, Africa and South America and on to the global capitalism of modern day.

Written by distinguished historians and social scientists, the chapters examine capitalism and its critics and the level of variation and convergence in its operation across locations. The authors illuminate the aspects of capitalism that have encouraged, but also limited, social responsibility and environmental sustainability.

Covering times, places and topics that have often been overlooked in the existing literature, this important contribution to the field of economic history charts the most comprehensive chronology of capitalism to date.

Based on qualitative interviews with sustainability-oriented parents of young children, this book describes what happens when people make interventions into mundane and easy-to-overlook aspects of everyday life to bring the way they get things done into alignment with their environmental values. Because the ability to make changes is constrained by their culture and capitalist society, there are negative consequences and trade-offs involved in these household-level sustainability practices.

The households described in this book shed light on the full extent of the trade-offs involved in promoting sustainability at the household level as a solution to environmental problems.

Insurance is an important – if still poorly understood – mechanism for dealing with a broad variety of risks associated with modern life.

This book conducts an in-depth examination of one of the largest and longest-established private insurance industries in Europe: British life insurance. In doing so, it draws on over 40 oral history interviews to trace how the sector has changed since the 1970s, a period characterized by rampant financialization and neoliberalization.

Combining insights from science and technology studies and economic sociology, this is an unprecedented study of the evolution of insurance practices and an invaluable contribution to our understanding of financial capitalism.

We all have to work to pay the bills – but what influence do we really have over our pay and working conditions? The emergence of the global economy, digital technologies, mass migration, gig work and zero hours contracts have thrust this question to the forefront of HRM. So how can we keep the ‘human’ in human resource management faced by these pressures?

This book adopts a critical approach to today’s major workplace challenges. It turns traditional HRM on its head by placing workers’ perspectives towards the workplace alongside those of managers to create an HRM textbook for the 21st century. Written by two experienced and research-active authors, the book:

• locates control of labour costs and productivity at the heart of HRM policy and practice;

• covers key issues that are overlooked in many textbooks, including conflict and resistance, the ‘new’ unitarism, migration and the challenges of Artificial Intelligence;

• adopts a critical approach that will appeal more to students who don’t wish to become traditional managers;

• includes current examples and case studies from the international world of work and business that will bring the subject to life.

This is a comprehensive one-stop resource for students and lecturers alike.

In this important book, Gallas asks what strikes in non-industrial sectors mean for class formation, a critical question which has largely been unaddressed by the current literature on global labour unrest.

A mapping of strikes around the world and case studies from Germany, Britain and Spain cast new light on class relations, struggles around waged and unwaged work and labour movements in contemporary capitalism to bring class theory back to labour studies.

This is a valuable resource for academics and students of employment relations, sociology and politics.

The symptoms of menopause transitions have profound implications for work and are, in turn, affected by work. Despite this, the topic is rarely discussed in management and organization studies.

Providing an overview of existing knowledge in the field of menopause in the workplace, this collection re-theorizes the management of human resources as it relates to the connections between gender, age and the body in the workplace environment with an intersectional analysis.

Offering theoretical frameworks from experts as well as possible practical approaches that can be implemented in workplaces to support women transitioning through menopause, this is a go-to reference for academics and policy makers working in the field.

The twentieth century was an era of socialist revolutionary transformations and significant social-democratic reforms. By the twenty-first century, these socialist inspired movements have largely disappeared, their ideologies have been disavowed, and their institutions dismantled and replaced by global neoliberal capitalism.

This book explores the social, political and economic forces driving these movements in Western Europe and in the USSR, explaining their initial triumphs and how they eventually faltered under the influence of global neoliberalism. David Lane examines the nature and appeal of neoliberal capitalism and analyses current social and political proposals for its reform or replacement, including statist forms of capitalism; social-democratic and ecological globalization reforms; self-sustaining autonomous communities; and globalised forms of social-democracy or socialism.

Outlining his own proposal to replace global neoliberal capitalism with political systems based on a combination of market socialism and state planning, Lane provides important insights for ways forward, and a challenge for parties seeking political and economic alternatives.

Active labour market policies aim to assist people not in work to move into employment through a range of interventions including job search, preparation, training and in-work support and development. While policies, programmes and scholarship predominantly focus on jobseekers’ engagement with these initiatives, this book is the first text to shed light on the employer’s perspective.

Bringing together renowned scholars from social and public policy and human resource management, the book draws on empirical research, comparative case studies and real-life examples from practice, providing a comprehensive analysis of this under-explored issue.

This go-to resource will inform HRM and public policy scholarship and promote collaborations between the disciplines.

We all have to work to pay the bills – but what influence do we really have over our pay and working conditions? The emergence of the global economy, digital technologies, mass migration, gig work and zero hours contracts have thrust this question to the forefront of HRM. So how can we keep the ‘human’ in human resource management faced by these pressures?

This book adopts a critical approach to today’s major workplace challenges. It turns traditional HRM on its head by placing workers’ perspectives towards the workplace alongside those of managers to create an HRM textbook for the 21st century. Written by two experienced and research-active authors, the book:

• locates control of labour costs and productivity at the heart of HRM policy and practice;

• covers key issues that are overlooked in many textbooks, including conflict and resistance, the ‘new’ unitarism, migration and the challenges of Artificial Intelligence;

• adopts a critical approach that will appeal more to students who don’t wish to become traditional managers;

• includes current examples and case studies from the international world of work and business that will bring the subject to life.

This is a comprehensive one-stop resource for students and lecturers alike.

Accessible and comprehensive, this book puts forth an innovative perspective on international aid, going beyond top-down attempts to centre local voices and practices.

By providing an overview of newer iterations and overlooked practices in development, including citizen aid, technologies for development, and faith-based humanitarianism, the book explores the extent to which they disrupt existing models and potentially lead to more equitable grassroots-led approaches. The authors develop the concept of 'horizontal development' to examine how power and privilege operate in international and local horizontal development spaces. Examining challenges, they also highlight opportunities for doing things differently in light of prominent calls for decolonising aid and development.

Accessible and comprehensive, this book puts forth an innovative perspective on international aid, going beyond top-down attempts to centre local voices and practices.

By providing an overview of newer iterations and overlooked practices in development, including citizen aid, technologies for development, and faith-based humanitarianism, the book explores the extent to which they disrupt existing models and potentially lead to more equitable grassroots-led approaches. The authors develop the concept of 'horizontal development' to examine how power and privilege operate in international and local horizontal development spaces. Examining challenges, they also highlight opportunities for doing things differently in light of prominent calls for decolonising aid and development.

Why does the City of London, despite an apparent commitment to recruitment and progression based on objective merit within its hiring practices, continue to reproduce the status quo?

Written by a leading expert on diversity and elite professions, this book examines issues of equality in the City, what its practitioners say in public and what they think behind closed doors.

Drawing on research, interviews, practitioner literature and internal reports, it argues that hiring practices in the City are highly discriminating in favour of a narrow pool of affluent applicants, and future progress may only be achieved by the state taking a greater role in organizational life. It calls for a policy shift at both the organizational and governmental level to address the implications of widening inequality in the UK.

Now available in paperback with a new preface and foreword by Stella Nkomo.

How might imperialist, masculinist and white supremacist grips on leadership be loosened? In this thought-provoking and accessible new study, Helena Liu suggests that anti-racist feminism can challenge conventional models and practices of power.

Combining a critical review of leadership theory with enlightening examples from around the world, the book shows how the intellectual and activist elements of feminist movements provide antidotes to contemporary leadership research and practice. For those interested in management, organisation, feminism, race and many more studies, it sets the agenda for a radical reimagining of control and leadership in all its forms.

How can we reimagine the relationship between academia and activism to provide new opportunities for social change?

Based on an ethnography with an anti-violence feminist collective, this vibrant and vital book develops an interdisciplinary approach to activism and activist research, helping us reimagine the role of scholarship in the fight against social inequality.

With its reflections on novel tools that can be utilized in the fight for social justice, this book will be a valuable resource for academics in critical management studies, sociology, gender studies, and social work as well as practitioners and policymakers across the social services sector.

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South.

Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalisation can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South.

Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalisation can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

Following the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been significant interest among scholars and activists in alternative forms of organization that operate according to noncapitalist logic, including Alternative Consumer Cooperatives (ACCs).

Using the example of Turkey, where neoliberal economics combined with authoritarian politics formed conditions that have profound social and economic consequences, this book investigates ACCs as spaces for prefigurative food politics.

Offering a novel perspective on alternative forms of organizing, this book challenges the easy assumptions of what it means to be a scholar working on activism in the global north and shows how, through the foundational values of solidarity, reciprocity and responsibility, it is possible to create new and imaginative forms of politics and activism.

Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work and what do they really do? Most importantly, what might finance be and what could we expect from it?

Exploring contemporary finance via the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, Roscoe mingles historical and technical detail with humorous anecdotes and lively portraits of market participants.

Deftly combining research and autobiographical vignettes, he offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion. Positioning financial markets as central devices in the organization of the global economy, he includes contemporary concerns over inequality, climate emergency and (de)colonialism and concludes by wondering, in the market’s own angst-filled voice, what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.

Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work and what do they really do? Most importantly, what might finance be and what could we expect from it?

Exploring contemporary finance via the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, Roscoe mingles historical and technical detail with humorous anecdotes and lively portraits of market participants.

Deftly combining research and autobiographical vignettes, he offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion. Positioning financial markets as central devices in the organization of the global economy, he includes contemporary concerns over inequality, climate emergency and (de)colonialism and concludes by wondering, in the market’s own angst-filled voice, what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.

Once hidden behind the veils of entrepreneurship, it is now clear that platforms are reshaping the world of work, and Amazon has been a forerunner in setting the trend.

This book examines two key and contrasting Amazon platforms that differ in how they organize workers: its e-commerce platform and digital labor platform (Mechanical Turk). With access to the people who are working at the heart of these platforms, it explores how different working conditions alienate workers, and how, despite these conditions, workers organize within their political-economic contexts to express their agency in traditional and alternative ways.

Written for social scientists studying and researching the platform economy, this is a timely and important analysis of work and workers on the (digital) shop floor.

Winner of the Social Enterprise and Innovation category and overall Management Book of the Year, awarded by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), the British Academy of Management (BAM) and the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS)

How do men interested in gender equality become ‘change makers’ and lead their organisation towards inclusion?

Directly addressing men, this innovative book reveals how they can be centrally involved in creating gender-inclusive cultures in their organisations. Using cutting-edge research, it suggests practical actions for men as leaders and managers to implement in order to make real changes .

Ideal for the time-poor professional, it is essential reading for all men who want to make a difference but don’t know where to start.

The turnover of labour and its significance for workers and employers has usually been considered at the organizational level as individual exit behaviour, and seldom in relation to the cross-border mobility practices of migrant workers within and without the workplace.

Drawing from labour process theory, the autonomy of migration, social reproduction, and industrial relations, this book explores the relationship between labour mobility and international migration under a global and historical perspective.

Uncovering both the individual and collective actions by migrants inside and outside worker organizations, the authors develop a new understanding of migrants’ everyday mobilities as creative and life-sustaining strategies of social reproduction and labour conflict.

This volume explores where, how and why the cooperative model is having a distinctive, transformational impact in driving socio-economic changes in a post-pandemic 21st century world.

Drawing from a diverse range of examples, the book sheds light on how today’s cooperatives and a co-operative way of organising might serve new societal demands. It examines organisational structures and governance models that develop socio-economic resilience in cooperatives. The book’s contributors reveal how the very pursuit of cooperative values and principles challenges market fundamentalism and promotes participatory democracy.

This is a timely contribution to recent debates around transformative economies and an invaluable resource for scholars and activists interested in alternative ways of organising.

Based on decades of research, this book explores global social change processes through the concepts of social change organisations (SCOs) and social change makers (SCMs) – the individuals working within and alongside SCOs.

The book delves into a vast array of compelling social justice issues, from tackling inequality to championing human rights, bridging the realms of social movement and third sector research.

Inspiring and empowering, this is essential reading for scholars, students, NGOs and activists alike.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Economic theory relies heavily on the idea of rational action, but how are we to understand the empirical content of rational choice when we can only observe the outcome, not what goes into making the choice?

With contributions from Alan Kirman and Rod O'Donnell, Karl Mittermaier's posthumously published work establishes a new conceptual framework that will enable economic theorists to forge new paths of empirical analysis.

Introducing readers to the work of a profound thinker who was not recognized in his lifetime, this book, featuring previously unpublished material, is poised to become a seminal text in the philosophy of social sciences.

Retail has never existed in a vacuum.

This interdisciplinary volume explores how English commercial, co-operative and charity retailing were shaped by and in turn influenced their social and political environments, from the local to the global, between the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries.

Historians, sociologists, archivists and heritage professionals engage with current debates on the rise of modern business and the decline of the high street, class and credit, professionalisation in the voluntary sector, migration and the end of empire.

This book will be a key resource to better understand retail and community in an era defined by social change, shedding new light on the enduring centrality of community relationships to modern retailers.