Keith Bradley - Böcker

This book investigates how John Lewis's unique ownership and organizational arrangements have enabled it to become one of the largest and longest-surviving employee-owned firms in the Western world. From its emergence in 1864, the John Lewis Partnership has placed its trust in an explicit set of business principles, emphasizing employee share-ownership, employee motivation, and profit-sharing. This study examines the success of these principles and the lessons to be learned from them for successful retailing strategy and competitiveness in the 1990s.

This book was originally published in 1992. The skills shortage of the late 1980s demonstrated that managers need to support their corporate strategies with coherent policies for recruiting, developing and retaining people. While the recession has slowed the job market and caused some of these pressures to abate, they will reassert themselves with a vengeance when recovery comes: the demographic time bomb continues to tick.Putting the emphasis on people should not, however, be a reactive process – a skilled and motivated workforce is one of the most important productive assets which companies possess, whether in recession or not.Companies which are prepared to adopt more imaginative approaches to managing their human resource capital can unlock a major and unexploited source of long-term competitive edge. Recognising the competitive advantage in people – their contribution to productivity, the role of skills in strategic positioning, the opportunities in effective management training – brings human resources into the ambit of strategic management. This book will help managers and students alike explore beyond the traditional methods of human resource management and focus on leading-edge techniques which successfully incorporate the management of human resources into strategic planning.

This book was originally published in 1992. The skills shortage of the late 1980s demonstrated that managers need to support their corporate strategies with coherent policies for recruiting, developing and retaining people. While the recession has slowed the job market and caused some of these pressures to abate, they will reassert themselves with a vengeance when recovery comes: the demographic time bomb continues to tick.Putting the emphasis on people should not, however, be a reactive process – a skilled and motivated workforce is one of the most important productive assets which companies possess, whether in recession or not.Companies which are prepared to adopt more imaginative approaches to managing their human resource capital can unlock a major and unexploited source of long-term competitive edge. Recognising the competitive advantage in people – their contribution to productivity, the role of skills in strategic positioning, the opportunities in effective management training – brings human resources into the ambit of strategic management. This book will help managers and students alike explore beyond the traditional methods of human resource management and focus on leading-edge techniques which successfully incorporate the management of human resources into strategic planning.

This book, first published in 1994, is concerned with discovering what it was like to be a slave in the classical Roman world, and with revealing the impact the institution of slavery made on Roman society at large. It shows how and in what sense Rome was a slave society through much of its history, considers how the Romans procured their slaves, discusses the work roles slaves fulfilled and the material conditions under which they spent their lives, investigates how slaves responded to and resisted slavery, and reveals how slavery, as an institution, became more and more oppressive over time under the impact of philosophical and religious teaching. The book stresses the harsh realities of life in slavery and the way in which slavery was an integral part of Roman civilisation.

Managing Knowledge reverses the status quo argument that organisational change is driven by the specific demands of large companies. Instead of viewing firms as the catalysts for gradual change, Albert and Bradley argue that expert professionals have fuelled a break away from the traditional organisational structure to an organisational structure at the heart of which is an agent and/or an agency system. The authors draw our attention to the growing phenomenon of atypical work manifested in workforce flexibility, mobility, the feminisation of professional employment, and technological changes. They focus upon a group of knowledge-based employees - experts - who increasingly have influence over work and wealth creation. Case studies are developed from companies including AT and T, the Hollywood film industry, London accounting firms, and specialised agencies such as Labforce and Knowledge Net.

Managing Knowledge reverses the status quo argument that organisational change is driven by the specific demands of large companies. Instead of viewing firms as the catalysts for gradual change, Albert and Bradley argue that expert professionals have fuelled a break away from the traditional organisational structure to an organisational structure at the heart of which is an agent and/or an agency system. The authors draw our attention to the growing phenomenon of atypical work manifested in workforce flexibility, mobility, the feminisation of professional employment, and technological changes. They focus upon a group of knowledge-based employees - experts - who increasingly have influence over work and wealth creation. Case studies are developed from companies including AT and T, the Hollywood film industry, London accounting firms, and specialised agencies such as Labforce and Knowledge Net.

Volume 1 in the new Cambridge World History of Slavery surveys the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world. Although chapters are devoted to the ancient Near East and the Jews, its principal concern is with the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. These are often considered as the first examples in world history of genuine slave societies because of the widespread prevalence of chattel slavery, which is argued to have been a cultural manifestation of the ubiquitous violence in societies typified by incessant warfare. There was never any sustained opposition to slavery, and the new religion of Christianity probably reinforced rather than challenged its existence. In twenty-two chapters, leading scholars explore the centrality of slavery in ancient Mediterranean life using a wide range of textual and material evidence. Non-specialist readers in particular will find the volume an accessible account of the early history of this crucial phenomenon.

Apuleius and Antonine Rome features outstanding scholarship by Keith Bradley on the Latin author Apuleius of Madauros and on the second-century Roman world in which Apuleius lived. Bradley discusses Apuleius’ work in the context of social relations (especially the family and household), religiosity in all its diversity and complexity, and cultural interactions between the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.These essays examine the Apology, the speech Apuleius made when he defended himself on the criminal charge of having enticed a wealthy widow to marry him through magical means; the fragments of his speeches known as the Florida; and the remarkable serio-comic novel Metamorphoses (better known as The Golden Ass). Altogether, Apuleius and Antonine Rome effectively illustrates how socio-cultural history can be recovered from works of literature.