Centre for Employment Studies Research - CESR

Welcome to the CESR Review

The CESR Review is aimed at employment relations and human resource management practitioners, trade unionists, researchers, lecturers and students in these and related fields. Follow the links to access pdf versions of short articles, book reviews and interviews. cesr Steve Fleetwood

Details of the major journals and other web-sites useful to those working in these fields can be found at the bottom of this page.

Professor Steve Fleetwood
Editor, CESR Review

Current Issue: January 2012

Lean management, the restructuring of work in the public sector and implications for employee well-being - This article is an analysis of the imposition of lean management techniques at six processing centres of one of the largest civil service departments in the UK, focusing on the processes by which administrative services are maintained with significantly fewer staff, and the consequences for employee well-being, Professor Andy Danford

Can you hear us now? Voice mechanisms in the racing industry - This article presents findings from a study of voice in the small firm aiming to identify those occasions when workers in small firms opt to use union voice to resolve individual problems through formal mechanisms; when they use individual voice, formally or informally, to resolve problems; what they see as collective problems; and what they see as restraints to resolving problems collectively. The study focuses on one class of small firm, namely racing stables, Dr Janet Miller

Somali refugees, mental health and employability in the south west: Exploring the barriers to inclusion - This article begins to investigate the experiences of Somali immigrants in Bristol. It reviews a number of key explanations for the evidence of high mental health conditions, namely the experience of migration, access to health care, economic and social exclusion and finally, limited advocacy. It argues that there is a significant requirement for research. Somalis are amongst the most likely to seek asylum in the UK, yet little is known of their experience on arrival. However, with limited financial resources, language and communication barriers together with cultures and customs which differ from those of the majority in the host country, asylum seekers and refugees are undoubtedly more vulnerable to social exclusion and marginalisation following migration to a new country, Dr Dave Evans and Dominic Page

The British Sufragette Movement: Overcoming patriarchy and class - In the early years of the Twentieth Century women were oppressed in many ways. The denial of the vote was both a manifestation and a cause of their oppression. But women were far from passive recipients of this oppression. Two main campaigning societies emerged to challenge the status quo: the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). These societies dominated the suffrage movements between 1905 and 1914. It seems fair to speculate that the activities of the women in these societies has shaped the modern agenda for women and, without their efforts, the lives of women today would be far worse, Lin Lovell

Flexible working in Germany - This article considers the extent to which state reform and other changes in the labour market have contributed to the decline in traditional working relationships and altered the landscape of the German labour market, Hilary Drew

In conversation with Justine Nola, Deputy Programme Director, Disaster Management Team, Tearfund, Afghanistan, Dr John Neugebauer

Book Review: A Business and Labour History of Britain. Case Studies of Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Mike Richardson and Peter Nicholls. (Eds.) Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, 2011, 210 pp., ISBN 978 0 230 28092 2. Reviewed by Thor Indridason