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Research
Will Hutton on fair pay, luck, and desert
April 2011
The publication of Will Hutton’s Review of Fair Pay in the public sector has reignited the debate about what fairness requires of us when it comes to people’s pay. Hutton’s own analysis of fairness is philosophically ambitious, drawing as it does on a prominent school of academic thought called luck egalitarianism. But it is also philosophically flawed, as we show in our article in People Management.
The logic of university fees
March 2011
The government’s plans to reform undergraduate fees assume that English universities will form themselves into a recognisable hierarchy. But this is a forlorn hope. The increasing number of league tables have added to, not diminished, the contestability of who ranks where by providing conflicting sources of apparently authoritative data. In more ways than one, English universities simply do not know their place. When it comes to setting fees, what is at stake is not just revenue but reputation: allowing these two to mix together, under conditions of uncertainty, creates an incentive for universities en masse to gravitate to the maximum fee.
Rising to the top
January 2011
The question of whether the professions are becoming more, or less, socially mixed is much in the minds of commentators and politicians at the moment. In this short piece we look at the professionalising of the political selection process, in the light of last autumn's Labour leadership contest and the appointment of Ed Miliband's first shadow cabinet.
Getting it right:An analysis of the ingredients of good selection decisions
January 2011
Decisions about who to appoint to key positions have a significant impact on an organisation’s fortunes. But there is little systematic analysis of the ingredients of a good selection decision and of the trade-offs and dilemmas selection bodies commonly face. Syllogism is undertaking a research project to close this gap in understanding. Drawing on evidence from a range of organisations - in the private, public, and third sectors - the project follows up on the report we published in December of 2009 on succession planning in the university sector.
Back to the Future
March 2010
What kind of decision are we making in casting our vote for one political party over another? Are we thinking ahead and choosing the option that will best promote our future well-being? Or are we looking to the past and exacting retribution for political actions we have disliked? These questions underlie the current jostling for position between the main political parties in their attempts to focus the electorate’s mind on the versions of the past and the future most favourable to their party’s cause. As a political tactic, however, this manoeuvring comes up against deep tensions in the way we think about voting - tensions that all parties have in the past found it easier to paper over than to confront.
Luck, politics, and the economic downturn
January 2010
The question of how many of the good and bad things in our lives are attributable to the workings of luck and how many to our own efforts and skills seems a long way from everyday political and business reality. But the financial crisis and the ensuing economic downturn have forced government ministers and business people alike to get their story straight on just this issue. After all, if they want to say that the good times were down to them, don’t they have to accept that the bad times are down to them also? And if they want to say that the bad times are despite them, don’t they have to accept that the good times were despite them also? The attached article examines how those under fire have tried to navigate their way around these pitfalls - and whether their answers stand up to scrutiny.
The Role of the Chief Economist
December 2009
Drawing on interviews with more than twenty senior economists across private, public, and not-for-profit sectors this report is about the role of chief economists. As well as looking at how the financial crisis and its aftermath have affected their standing, the report examines the contribution senior economists make to organisational life, the duties they are under and the dilemmas they face, and how they view the relationship between the worlds of practice and theory. As such, the report stands as an anatomy of a professional discipline at a time of scrutiny and change.
Succession Planning in the University Sector
November 2009
The report is based on interviews with the senior officers of twenty one universities. Taken together, the universities represent a mix of higher education institutions in the UK. The report aims to stay close to the issues as they play out in practice. But it presents these issues – and the views of the study participants – in a way that is structured and systematic and seeks to recognise their broader context.
The Civil Service and Its Values
November 2009
The question we ask here is: what are values, and how does an organisation know whether it is living by the right ones? Instead of answering this in the abstract, we look at the ongoing debate about the values of the civil service. Many features of this debate are generalisable. They tell us something important about values, and organisations, across the board.
Brown and the S-Word
March 2009
The question of when those in authority should say sorry was very much in the news in the spring of 2009 when our piece was published online in The Guardian. The issue has stayed in the news ever since. The article asks what kind of things should people say sorry for - and considers the traps of saying sorry too often.
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