By Dr Sarah Forbes and Dr Holly Birkett Co-directors of the Equal Parenting Project The UK has seen a steep rise in the number of employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a recent survey showing that 86% of the employees surveyed worked from home during the first COVID-19 lockdown, with 75.3 per … Continue reading “Flexibility is the Future of Work”
Category: Uncategorized
The electric vehicle revolution: Will we run out of the critical materials?
By Professor Rob J R Elliott, University of Birmingham, Ben Jones, University College London, and Viet Nguyen-Tien, London School of Economics Governments around the world are actively promoting EVs and global sales have now exceeded two million vehicles. Automakers and their suppliers have made plans for large scale investment in EV related production capacity. When … Continue reading “The electric vehicle revolution: Will we run out of the critical materials?”
Post-COVID recovery and the November Spending Review
By Professor John Bryson Department of Strategy and International Business, University of Birmingham The first sentence of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina is famous – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. The November Spending Review makes me think of this sentence. All ministerial roles are all alike; every … Continue reading “Post-COVID recovery and the November Spending Review”
HMRC scheme covers cost of homeworking, so why is it not put into practice?
By Dr Sarah Forbes and Dr Holly Birkett Co-directors of the Equal Parenting Project In 2011, the HMRC introduced a scheme which allowed employers to pay homeworking employees up to £4 per week to cover the cost of overheads and claim this back from HMRC. At the start of lockdown in April 2020, the scheme … Continue reading “HMRC scheme covers cost of homeworking, so why is it not put into practice?”
Equal Pay Day: The buck stops here
By Dr Juliet E. Kele, Research Fellow In HRM Department of Management and Lloyds Centre for Responsible Business, University of Birmingham The 20th November 2020 is the day when women in full-time work stop being paid, on average, relative to men. The Fawcett Society, a leading UK charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights, … Continue reading “Equal Pay Day: The buck stops here”
Brexit will work against ‘levelling up’ agenda
By Raquel Ortega-Argilés, Department of Strategy and International Business at the University of Birmingham, and Philip McCann, Chair in Urban and Regional Economics at Sheffield Management University A UK in a Changing Europe research team led by the University of Birmingham[1], and also involving the University of Sheffield, University of Groningen, Erasmus University and Dutch … Continue reading “Brexit will work against ‘levelling up’ agenda”
Life Under the new Epoch of Jenga Capitalism –The Mink Crisis and COVID-19
By Professor John Bryson Department of Strategy and International Business, University of Birmingham Life has always been uncertain. This uncertainty is partly about balancing the trade-offs and feedback loops that exist between the biological, the biographical and the environmental. These three processes and outcomes are interrelated. They highlight the importance of exploring the tensions between … Continue reading “Life Under the new Epoch of Jenga Capitalism –The Mink Crisis and COVID-19”
Barriers of banking and the cashless society
By Dr Ann-Christine Frandsen, Reader in Accounting Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham. The use of a cash machine is not just a matter of finding one it is also about having access to a bank account. In 2015 the Financial Inclusion Commission stated that almost 2 million adults in the UK had no bank … Continue reading “Barriers of banking and the cashless society”
Retail in a Post COVID World: Reflections and Future Directions
By Dr. Sarah Montano, Senior Lecturer in Marketing Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham This article has been produced as part of research for a joint ESRC Festival of Social Science event which will be held as a panel discussion at 1:30-2:30pm on Friday 13th November 2020. You can register for the event at the Eventbrite page. Do … Continue reading “Retail in a Post COVID World: Reflections and Future Directions”
The importance of digital skills in building back better
By Dr Abigail Taylor Research Fellow, City-Region Economic Development Institute The term ‘digital skills’ can be used to describe different categories of skills. Basic digital skills are those that all citizens need to be ‘digitally literate’. For example, conducting basic internet searches. Then you have digital skills for the general workforce. These include essential digital … Continue reading “The importance of digital skills in building back better”