Alistair Rainnie
Biographic Data
| ID | 263785 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alistair Rainnie |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alistair |
| FAMILY NAME | Rainnie |
| SIGNATURE | RAINNIE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Curtin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6071-4193 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 324 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 34 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Meaningful voice during university restructuring
The study examines how employee voice is exercised during a university restructuring. The investigation focuses on the consultation process outlined in the enterprise agreement (EA) and the employer’s obligation to consult under Australian legislation. The research centres on a regional university in Australia that consolidated its five faculties into three colleges in 2020. This consolidation led to job losses and impacted both professional and …
Just Transition in Australia – depoliticisation
We cannot and should not assume that Just Transition (JT) is a straightforward and uncontested concept. In this article, we turn a critical eye on JT, firstly by looking at the origins and development of the idea. Secondly, we will look at the theoretical frameworks that have been mobilised to underpin JT. Thirdly, we will look at the way that trade unions in Australia, both through the ACTU and individual unions, have approached the subject, as …
Whyalla and the transition to a decarbonised future
Regional assets and value capture trajectories
This article examines the relationship between regional assets and value capture with a focus on knowledge and intellectual property assets. It traces, over an extended time horizon, the upgrading and later downgrading path of a single supplier firm in a peripheral location to illuminate the degree to which value capture trajectories are shaped by the power geometries of regional, network, and macroeconomic forces. The analysis suggests that func…
Not so "smart"? An Australian experiment in smart specialisation
This article explores the utility of applying the European policy of smart specialisation to tackle spatial divergence in the Australian context. Using a geographical political economy approach and considering a growing literature on innovation in peripheral places, the work explores how smart specialisation is applied in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, a coal-dependent non-metropolitan industrial enclave in the Gippsland region. Analysis of the case …
Warring Brothers
We detail how the world's two largest engineering machinery firms, Japan's Komatsu and the us's Caterpillar, actively managed geographical concerns to become global actors. We argue that their globalization was not a teleological given but had to be proactively made. Both the state and organized labor played significant roles in shaping their geographical evolutions, as did their efforts to outmaneuver each other spatially. Their globalization, t…
The Covid-19 pandemic
This discussion paper by a group of scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations argues that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. The pandemic’s disastrous worldwide health impacts have been exacerbated by, and have compounded, the unsustainability of economic globalisation based on the neoliberal dismantling of state capabilities in favour of markets. Flow…
Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School initiative in Western Australia
The devolution of public sector schooling systems has been a feature of education reform since the 1980s. In Western Australia, the Independent Public School (IPS) initiative has recently been installed, announced by the state government in 2009. Now over 80% of the state’s public school students attend IP schools. Drawing on interview data from a broader study of devolution and the conditions of teachers’ work, this article explores the cases of…
Ecological modernisation, industry policy and the Australian automotive industry, 2007–13
Ecological modernisation (EM), in theory and practice, has increasingly become central to contemporary state environmental reform agendas. EM’s allure lies in its central tenet that the contemporary institutions of capitalism can be ecologically adapted to achieve ‘win–win’ economic and environmental outcomes. How government policy can best accomplish this aim is contested, however, with weak and strong EM approaches advocating different roles fo…
The restructuring of WA human services and its implications for the not‐for‐profit sector
Western Australia provides an interesting case study of the outsourcing of human services to the not‐for‐profit (NfP) sector. This article presents and discusses some of the key themes that emerged from a recently completed research project examining one large NfP in Western Australia. Key themes included the recruitment and retention of staff linked to pay and changing funding arrangements, and the sector becoming increasingly corporatised in ou…
Global destruction networks, labour and waste
Analysis of waste has largely focused on the physical transformation of commodities at the ends of their lives. This has led to a discourse of ongoingness in which the re-use of commodities’ parts is often seen to be almost endless. Such a focus on form, though, fails to adequately account for the movement of value—used here in the Marxist sense of ‘congealed labour’—or to recognize the centrality of the labour process in shaping how previously u…
Partnerships and integrated responses to rural decline
Waste, commodity fetishism and the ongoingness of economic life
Waste in general, and e‐waste in particular, has become a topic of interest in recent years. One focus of attention has been on how commodities are broken up after the putative end of their lives, with such commodities' constituent elements then being used as inputs into other products. The fact that much waste is recycled in this manner has led several scholars to emphasise the ‘ongoingness’ of economic life. In this context, Lepawsky and Mather…
Global production networks, labour and small firms
The literature on global production networks (GPNs) and global commodity/value chains has generally conceptualised small firms as being at the bottom of the commodity chain hierarchy, and thus subordinate to larger firms. As a consequence, small firms and their employees are typically imagined to be fairly powerless to shape the structure of GPNs. By way of contrast, in this paper we argue that small firms and their employees are not lacking in t…
Strategic Planning in Ireland's Institutes of Technology
An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place‐Based Partnerships in Victoria
Place‐based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place‐based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build c…
Community Unionism and Union Renewal
The purpose of this article is to identify various ways unions engage with communities and to understand the obstacles that confront union—community cooperation. Qualitative data was analyzed from multiple sources, including documentary evidence and interviews with union officials and community activists. We locate the debate on community unionism within the broader literature on union renewal and revitalization. In doing this we are able to expl…
Community and Unions
This article is an introduction to this issue of Labor Studies Journal, which is a collection of articles on the conference held in Prato, Italy, July 1–4, 2006, on the theme of “Socially Responsive, Socially Responsible Approaches to Employment and Work.”
Working space
Theorists of work and employment (W&E) practices should more seriously engage with literatures concerning how space is constitutive of social praxis. Rather than simply serving as a stage upon which social life is played out or being merely a reflection of social relations, the construction of the economic landscape in particular ways is fundamental to how social systems function. Struggles over space are a central dynamic in W&E practices as dif…
Labor History Symposium
New Regionalism in Australia
Networks of value, commodities and regions
The aim of this paper is to explore a theoretical framework that can assist in under-standing the extent to which the increased integration of macro-regional economies (such as the European and North American) and the global economy is leading to divergence and/or convergence in the pattern of economic activity and the distribution of value-added and wealth. In particular, the paper focuses on the extent to which changing divisions of labour, the…
What's So Special About Small Firms
The contention in this article is that an integrated approach can be used to analyse industrial relations in small firms and to investigate the image of industrial harmony. This integrated approach, incorporating the dialectical relationship between structural forces and human agency, is underpinned by Marxist labour process theory, and can be used to explain the variety of small firm industrial relations and the conditions under which they are p…
Flexible films
The flexible specialization approach to the structure and dynamics of the film industry has arguably become the dominant framework of analysis. In identifying a succession of waves of small production company formation and demise throughout the history of the British film industry, this article challenges that mode of analysis. This article proposes an alternative method of analysing the relationship between large and small firms in the industry
Small firms and local economic development in Poland
Networks of value, commodities and regions
The aim of this paper is to explore a theoretical framework that can assist in under-standing the extent to which the increased integration of macro-regional economies (such as the European and North American) and the global economy is leading to divergence and/or convergence in the pattern of economic activity and the distribution of value-added and wealth. In particular, the paper focuses on the extent to which changing divisions of labour, the…
Working space
Theorists of work and employment (W&E) practices should more seriously engage with literatures concerning how space is constitutive of social praxis. Rather than simply serving as a stage upon which social life is played out or being merely a reflection of social relations, the construction of the economic landscape in particular ways is fundamental to how social systems function. Struggles over space are a central dynamic in W&E practices as dif…
Global destruction networks, labour and waste
Analysis of waste has largely focused on the physical transformation of commodities at the ends of their lives. This has led to a discourse of ongoingness in which the re-use of commodities’ parts is often seen to be almost endless. Such a focus on form, though, fails to adequately account for the movement of value—used here in the Marxist sense of ‘congealed labour’—or to recognize the centrality of the labour process in shaping how previously u…
Just-in-Time, Sub-Contracting and the Small Firm
It has been suggested that moves towards Just In Time systems of production bring with them a fundamental change in the nature of the buyer-supplier relationship. New long-term, high-trust relationships are supposed to replace a win:win for the old win:lose equation. Equally, the new flexibility demanded of suppliers is supposed to favour the small firm. Elements of this analysis have been incorporated into variants of the post-Fordist paradigm. …
What's So Special About Small Firms
The contention in this article is that an integrated approach can be used to analyse industrial relations in small firms and to investigate the image of industrial harmony. This integrated approach, incorporating the dialectical relationship between structural forces and human agency, is underpinned by Marxist labour process theory, and can be used to explain the variety of small firm industrial relations and the conditions under which they are p…
Combined and uneven development in the clothing industry
Small firms, big problems
Al Rainnie's paper is an attempt to understand the role and importance of small businesses in advanced capitalism. Arguing against widely held myths about small businesses, he claims they should not be viewed as anachronistic survivors of a bygone age destined for destruction. He suggests rather they are an integral part of Thatcher's Britain
Partnerships and integrated responses to rural decline
Is Small Beautiful? Industrial Relations in Small Clothing Firms
The first part of the article traces, briefly, the political and ideological background to the resurgence of interest in small business. Largely unresearched and uncritically adopted, the theory that 'small is beautiful' assumes that harmonious industrial relations characterise small firms. The proxy measures of harmony (strike indices, levels of unionisation) commonly used to support the 'small is beautiful' school of thought are examined. Secon…
Coming to Terms with Quality
The authors argument is that current quality initiatives are managerially driven and coincide with the development of so-called 'new right' politics in the public sector. They criticize those those who argue that quality is simply imposed on a quiescent workforce and suggest instead that the process is mediated through workers and their representatives. They use case study evidence from a local authority to analyse trade union responses and locat…
Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School initiative in Western Australia
The devolution of public sector schooling systems has been a feature of education reform since the 1980s. In Western Australia, the Independent Public School (IPS) initiative has recently been installed, announced by the state government in 2009. Now over 80% of the state’s public school students attend IP schools. Drawing on interview data from a broader study of devolution and the conditions of teachers’ work, this article explores the cases of…
Community Unionism and Union Renewal
The purpose of this article is to identify various ways unions engage with communities and to understand the obstacles that confront union—community cooperation. Qualitative data was analyzed from multiple sources, including documentary evidence and interviews with union officials and community activists. We locate the debate on community unionism within the broader literature on union renewal and revitalization. In doing this we are able to expl…
Just Transition in Australia – depoliticisation
We cannot and should not assume that Just Transition (JT) is a straightforward and uncontested concept. In this article, we turn a critical eye on JT, firstly by looking at the origins and development of the idea. Secondly, we will look at the theoretical frameworks that have been mobilised to underpin JT. Thirdly, we will look at the way that trade unions in Australia, both through the ACTU and individual unions, have approached the subject, as …
Waste, commodity fetishism and the ongoingness of economic life
Waste in general, and e‐waste in particular, has become a topic of interest in recent years. One focus of attention has been on how commodities are broken up after the putative end of their lives, with such commodities' constituent elements then being used as inputs into other products. The fact that much waste is recycled in this manner has led several scholars to emphasise the ‘ongoingness’ of economic life. In this context, Lepawsky and Mather…
Global production networks, labour and small firms
The literature on global production networks (GPNs) and global commodity/value chains has generally conceptualised small firms as being at the bottom of the commodity chain hierarchy, and thus subordinate to larger firms. As a consequence, small firms and their employees are typically imagined to be fairly powerless to shape the structure of GPNs. By way of contrast, in this paper we argue that small firms and their employees are not lacking in t…
Flexible films
The flexible specialization approach to the structure and dynamics of the film industry has arguably become the dominant framework of analysis. In identifying a succession of waves of small production company formation and demise throughout the history of the British film industry, this article challenges that mode of analysis. This article proposes an alternative method of analysing the relationship between large and small firms in the industry
Not so "smart"? An Australian experiment in smart specialisation
This article explores the utility of applying the European policy of smart specialisation to tackle spatial divergence in the Australian context. Using a geographical political economy approach and considering a growing literature on innovation in peripheral places, the work explores how smart specialisation is applied in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, a coal-dependent non-metropolitan industrial enclave in the Gippsland region. Analysis of the case …
The Reorganisation of Large Firm Subcontracting
This article brings into sharper focus an aspect of the restructuring debate: namely the post Fordist orthodoxy which seeks to emphasise the centrality of the locality and the role of small and medium sized firms. Drawing on evidence from empirical examples, including the Hertfordshire study, Rainnie demonstrates that whilst the functions of large firms may be decentralised, with units taking on local appearances, control still resides in the han…
The Inevitability of Flexibility
Regional assets and value capture trajectories
This article examines the relationship between regional assets and value capture with a focus on knowledge and intellectual property assets. It traces, over an extended time horizon, the upgrading and later downgrading path of a single supplier firm in a peripheral location to illuminate the degree to which value capture trajectories are shaped by the power geometries of regional, network, and macroeconomic forces. The analysis suggests that func…
Ecological modernisation, industry policy and the Australian automotive industry, 2007–13
Ecological modernisation (EM), in theory and practice, has increasingly become central to contemporary state environmental reform agendas. EM’s allure lies in its central tenet that the contemporary institutions of capitalism can be ecologically adapted to achieve ‘win–win’ economic and environmental outcomes. How government policy can best accomplish this aim is contested, however, with weak and strong EM approaches advocating different roles fo…
The restructuring of WA human services and its implications for the not‐for‐profit sector
Western Australia provides an interesting case study of the outsourcing of human services to the not‐for‐profit (NfP) sector. This article presents and discusses some of the key themes that emerged from a recently completed research project examining one large NfP in Western Australia. Key themes included the recruitment and retention of staff linked to pay and changing funding arrangements, and the sector becoming increasingly corporatised in ou…
Strategic Planning in Ireland's Institutes of Technology
An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place‐Based Partnerships in Victoria
Place‐based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place‐based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build c…
Community and Unions
This article is an introduction to this issue of Labor Studies Journal, which is a collection of articles on the conference held in Prato, Italy, July 1–4, 2006, on the theme of “Socially Responsive, Socially Responsible Approaches to Employment and Work.”
Combined and uneven development in the clothing industry
Small firms, big problems
Al Rainnie's paper is an attempt to understand the role and importance of small businesses in advanced capitalism. Arguing against widely held myths about small businesses, he claims they should not be viewed as anachronistic survivors of a bygone age destined for destruction. He suggests rather they are an integral part of Thatcher's Britain
Is Small Beautiful? Industrial Relations in Small Clothing Firms
The first part of the article traces, briefly, the political and ideological background to the resurgence of interest in small business. Largely unresearched and uncritically adopted, the theory that 'small is beautiful' assumes that harmonious industrial relations characterise small firms. The proxy measures of harmony (strike indices, levels of unionisation) commonly used to support the 'small is beautiful' school of thought are examined. Secon…
Just-in-Time, Sub-Contracting and the Small Firm
It has been suggested that moves towards Just In Time systems of production bring with them a fundamental change in the nature of the buyer-supplier relationship. New long-term, high-trust relationships are supposed to replace a win:win for the old win:lose equation. Equally, the new flexibility demanded of suppliers is supposed to favour the small firm. Elements of this analysis have been incorporated into variants of the post-Fordist paradigm. …
The Reorganisation of Large Firm Subcontracting
This article brings into sharper focus an aspect of the restructuring debate: namely the post Fordist orthodoxy which seeks to emphasise the centrality of the locality and the role of small and medium sized firms. Drawing on evidence from empirical examples, including the Hertfordshire study, Rainnie demonstrates that whilst the functions of large firms may be decentralised, with units taking on local appearances, control still resides in the han…
Coming to Terms with Quality
The authors argument is that current quality initiatives are managerially driven and coincide with the development of so-called 'new right' politics in the public sector. They criticize those those who argue that quality is simply imposed on a quiescent workforce and suggest instead that the process is mediated through workers and their representatives. They use case study evidence from a local authority to analyse trade union responses and locat…
Globalization and Utopian dreams
Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996), 227 pp., ISBN 0–7456–12458 Winfried Ruigrok and Rob Van Tulder, The Logic of International Restructuring (Routledge, London, 1995), 344 pp., ISBN 0–415–12239–2 Robert Boyer and Daniel Drache (eds), States against Markets (Routledge, London, 1996), 448 pp., ISBN 0–415–13726–8 Dick Bryan, The Chase Across The Globe (Westview Press, Oxford, 1995), 204 pp., IS…
Restructuring Krakow. Desperately Seeking Capitalism
Part 1 Theories of transition: prophets and profits. Part 2 Poland 1948-1994: from autarchy to international production desperately seeking capitalism - trade unions and restructuring closer to the world - foreign direct investment and transnational corporations beyond the nuts and bolts - privatization and restructuring. Part 3 Krakow in transition: transforming Krakow local strategies - rushing to fill the void? from the Lenin steelworks to lea…
The Inevitability of Flexibility
Flexible films
The flexible specialization approach to the structure and dynamics of the film industry has arguably become the dominant framework of analysis. In identifying a succession of waves of small production company formation and demise throughout the history of the British film industry, this article challenges that mode of analysis. This article proposes an alternative method of analysing the relationship between large and small firms in the industry
Small firms and local economic development in Poland
Networks of value, commodities and regions
The aim of this paper is to explore a theoretical framework that can assist in under-standing the extent to which the increased integration of macro-regional economies (such as the European and North American) and the global economy is leading to divergence and/or convergence in the pattern of economic activity and the distribution of value-added and wealth. In particular, the paper focuses on the extent to which changing divisions of labour, the…
What's So Special About Small Firms
The contention in this article is that an integrated approach can be used to analyse industrial relations in small firms and to investigate the image of industrial harmony. This integrated approach, incorporating the dialectical relationship between structural forces and human agency, is underpinned by Marxist labour process theory, and can be used to explain the variety of small firm industrial relations and the conditions under which they are p…
Labor History Symposium
New Regionalism in Australia
Working space
Theorists of work and employment (W&E) practices should more seriously engage with literatures concerning how space is constitutive of social praxis. Rather than simply serving as a stage upon which social life is played out or being merely a reflection of social relations, the construction of the economic landscape in particular ways is fundamental to how social systems function. Struggles over space are a central dynamic in W&E practices as dif…
Community Unionism and Union Renewal
The purpose of this article is to identify various ways unions engage with communities and to understand the obstacles that confront union—community cooperation. Qualitative data was analyzed from multiple sources, including documentary evidence and interviews with union officials and community activists. We locate the debate on community unionism within the broader literature on union renewal and revitalization. In doing this we are able to expl…
Community and Unions
This article is an introduction to this issue of Labor Studies Journal, which is a collection of articles on the conference held in Prato, Italy, July 1–4, 2006, on the theme of “Socially Responsive, Socially Responsible Approaches to Employment and Work.”
An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place‐Based Partnerships in Victoria
Place‐based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place‐based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build c…
Strategic Planning in Ireland's Institutes of Technology
Global destruction networks, labour and waste
Analysis of waste has largely focused on the physical transformation of commodities at the ends of their lives. This has led to a discourse of ongoingness in which the re-use of commodities’ parts is often seen to be almost endless. Such a focus on form, though, fails to adequately account for the movement of value—used here in the Marxist sense of ‘congealed labour’—or to recognize the centrality of the labour process in shaping how previously u…
Partnerships and integrated responses to rural decline
Waste, commodity fetishism and the ongoingness of economic life
Waste in general, and e‐waste in particular, has become a topic of interest in recent years. One focus of attention has been on how commodities are broken up after the putative end of their lives, with such commodities' constituent elements then being used as inputs into other products. The fact that much waste is recycled in this manner has led several scholars to emphasise the ‘ongoingness’ of economic life. In this context, Lepawsky and Mather…
Global production networks, labour and small firms
The literature on global production networks (GPNs) and global commodity/value chains has generally conceptualised small firms as being at the bottom of the commodity chain hierarchy, and thus subordinate to larger firms. As a consequence, small firms and their employees are typically imagined to be fairly powerless to shape the structure of GPNs. By way of contrast, in this paper we argue that small firms and their employees are not lacking in t…
The restructuring of WA human services and its implications for the not‐for‐profit sector
Western Australia provides an interesting case study of the outsourcing of human services to the not‐for‐profit (NfP) sector. This article presents and discusses some of the key themes that emerged from a recently completed research project examining one large NfP in Western Australia. Key themes included the recruitment and retention of staff linked to pay and changing funding arrangements, and the sector becoming increasingly corporatised in ou…
Economics (27 works) · Political science (27 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Business (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Economic geography (11 works) · Market economy (11 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Economic system (10 works)