Kevin Morrell
Biographic Data
| ID | 334900 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin Morrell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin |
| FAMILY NAME | Morrell |
| SIGNATURE | MORRELL K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0777-0302 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 121 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Marketisation and the Public Good: A Typology of Responses among Museum Professionals
Across Western democracies, the public sector has undergone significant changes following successive waves of marketisation. Such changes find material expression in an organisation’s logic and associated vocabulary. While marketisation may be adopted, a growing body of research explains how it is often resisted as public sector professionals reject its logic and vocabulary. We contribute to this debate by detailing additional, theoretically impo…
Aristotle in the Anthropocene: The comparative benefits of Aristotelian virtue ethics over Utilitarianism and deontology
In the Anthropocene, humanity faces a pressing question: 'what should we do?' Here we are interested in the underlying sense and reference of the normative 'should' as it applies to ethics with respect to different actors. To excavate 'should', we unearth the foundations of three conventional groupings of normative ethical systems: Mill's utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Each provides a normative basis …
How can governments tax multinational enterprises more fairly? A discourse analysis
Extant research has identified numerous causes for multinational enterprises (MNE) tax avoidance and formulated a variety of remedial policy solutions. Yet despite being consistently decried as societally unfair, these contested practices persist. We reveal the conflicting and complementary ideologies and worldviews that reside in the background of MNE tax avoidance policy deliberations. Analysis of primary interviews with accounting and tax regu…
Corporate actors, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Earth System Governance: A research agenda
The Anthropocene requires significant shifts and innovation in policy as well as human action and behavior. While much research attention has focused on society and policy makers, we know significantly less about how businesses exercise agency as part of Earth System Governance such as their contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Concerns are mounting over how large corporations are being governed and how businesses generally shoul…
Brexit: What the hell happens now
Is critical leadership studies ‘critical’
‘Leader’ and ‘follower’ are increasingly replacing ‘manager’ and ‘worker’ to become the routine way to frame hierarchy within organizations; a practice that obfuscates, even denies, structural antagonisms. Furthermore, given that many workers are indifferent to (and others despise) their bosses, assuming workers are ‘followers’ of organizational elites seems not only managerialist, but blind to other forms of cultural identity. We feel that criti…
Impossible Jobs or Impossible Tasks? Client Volatility and Frontline Policing Practice in Urban Riots
Various public administration jobs are described as “impossible,” meaning that they have an unpopular or illegitimate client base, stakeholders have conflicting values, and leaders and their agency's mission are continually questioned. Although this framework is widely used, it has also become overgeneralized. The authors propose three theoretical extensions to understanding impossible jobs based on findings from a three‐year multimethod study of…
Rhetoric in policy texts: The role of enthymeme in Darzi’s review of the NHS
Political administrations try to present their policies in the best light to justify the ownership of power, and in doing so rely on rhetoric. The documents through which they communicate policy (policy texts) use rhetorical devices to do so. Through these, administrations need to create the impression that they have chosen the best possible course of action, and they also need to create the impression that they are doing something innovative. Bo…
Considerations on the 'Replication Problem' in Sociology
Evidence-based dialectics
‘Evidence-based policy’ and ‘evidence-based management’ are increasingly popular ways of describing the relationship between research and practice. The majority discussing the evidence-based approach have tended to be in favour: here, ‘believers’. Yet this approach has also attracted critics: ‘heretics’. Understanding of such a division can be enhanced by dialectics: a process which tries to destabilize, reconcile or transcend apparent opposites.…
The replication problem and its implications for policy studies
In this article we re-examine the epistemological basis for claims to ‘best evidence’ and ‘best practice’ in policy studies by tracing these to a Popperian model of theory development and testing. This model outlines how only scientific explanations that survive repeated testing count as good theory. Yet repeated testing (replication) is scarce across the social sciences – this is the ‘replication problem’. More specifically, the lack of replicat…
Leadership in crisis: ‘Events, my dear boy, events’
In this paper we discuss the theme for the 2009 8th International Conference on Studying Leadership (ICSL): Leadership in Crisis, which was hosted by the Centre for Leadership at the University of Birmingham (CLUB). We introduce five papers chosen from the conference which make up this special issue and that engage with different facets or manifestations of crisis — in context, method and theory. Prior to introducing the papers we offer our own r…
What Is Governance in the ‘Public Interest’? The Case of the 1995 Property Forum in Post‐conflict Nicaragua
‘Public interest' (synonymous here with ‘common good’ and ‘public good’) is a central concept in public administration. In an important, basic sense, we evaluate the effectiveness of governments in terms of whether their policies are detrimental to, or benefit, public interest. However there are problems operationalizing public interest: it seems a concept that is simultaneously indispensable yet vague. While difficulties operationalizing public …
Public Service Improvement: Theories and Evidence
Governance and the Public Good
The paper examines the control of power, using an account of the public good developed from Aristotle. It identifies three different perspectives on the relationship between governance (the control of power) and the public good: a ‘cybernetic’ perspective, an ‘axiological’ perspective, and a perspective of ‘critique’. This framework offers a way to scrutinize the exercise of power, and to evaluate the linkages between a political administration a…
Aesthetics and Learning in Aristotle: A Note on Grint's `Learning to Lead
Aphorisms and Leaders’ Rhetoric: A New Analytical Approach
Using insights from conversation analysis, the article analyses aphorisms from 20 different writers demonstrating how these combine common rhetorical formats. It then proposes a simple framework that allows for aphorisms to be analysed further and in terms of two continua: whether they are convex or concave, and whether they are creative or destructive. The framework supplements content-based approaches with a structural account of how aphorisms …
Policy as Narrative: New Labour’s Reform of the National Health Service
Beginning with a brief review of the governance literature, a definition of governance in the National Health Service of England and Wales (NHS) is offered. This introduces an analysis of NHS reform, as presented in the recent policy literature. Using narrative theory, I critique this literature with reference to three key actors: the new organizational form of the ‘Foundation Trust’, NHS staff, and NHS patients. For each actor, a motif is identi…
A model of political leadership
In this article we develop a model of political leadership. In doing so, we analyse the challenges facing political leaders in local government in England and Wales. We use this analysis as a basis for broader theorizing: about leadership at other levels of government, and in other countries. The scope for applying extant accounts of leadership in these domains can be enhanced by considering the relational complexities that characterize the envir…
Ethics in leadership: The case of local politicians
The mainstream literature on leadership has little to say about the role of ethics. Equally, much of this literature is concerned with the private sector and with managerial leadership. This paper addresses both these gaps, by reporting on the development of a scale for measuring ethical values in local political leadership, the public service values scale. This is one section of a larger instrument for assessing the skills of local political lea…
A model of political leadership
In this article we develop a model of political leadership. In doing so, we analyse the challenges facing political leaders in local government in England and Wales. We use this analysis as a basis for broader theorizing: about leadership at other levels of government, and in other countries. The scope for applying extant accounts of leadership in these domains can be enhanced by considering the relational complexities that characterize the envir…
Policy as Narrative: New Labour’s Reform of the National Health Service
Beginning with a brief review of the governance literature, a definition of governance in the National Health Service of England and Wales (NHS) is offered. This introduces an analysis of NHS reform, as presented in the recent policy literature. Using narrative theory, I critique this literature with reference to three key actors: the new organizational form of the ‘Foundation Trust’, NHS staff, and NHS patients. For each actor, a motif is identi…
Considerations on the 'Replication Problem' in Sociology
Public Service Improvement: Theories and Evidence
Governance and the Public Good
The paper examines the control of power, using an account of the public good developed from Aristotle. It identifies three different perspectives on the relationship between governance (the control of power) and the public good: a ‘cybernetic’ perspective, an ‘axiological’ perspective, and a perspective of ‘critique’. This framework offers a way to scrutinize the exercise of power, and to evaluate the linkages between a political administration a…
Is critical leadership studies ‘critical’
‘Leader’ and ‘follower’ are increasingly replacing ‘manager’ and ‘worker’ to become the routine way to frame hierarchy within organizations; a practice that obfuscates, even denies, structural antagonisms. Furthermore, given that many workers are indifferent to (and others despise) their bosses, assuming workers are ‘followers’ of organizational elites seems not only managerialist, but blind to other forms of cultural identity. We feel that criti…
Ethics in leadership: The case of local politicians
The mainstream literature on leadership has little to say about the role of ethics. Equally, much of this literature is concerned with the private sector and with managerial leadership. This paper addresses both these gaps, by reporting on the development of a scale for measuring ethical values in local political leadership, the public service values scale. This is one section of a larger instrument for assessing the skills of local political lea…
Corporate actors, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Earth System Governance: A research agenda
The Anthropocene requires significant shifts and innovation in policy as well as human action and behavior. While much research attention has focused on society and policy makers, we know significantly less about how businesses exercise agency as part of Earth System Governance such as their contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Concerns are mounting over how large corporations are being governed and how businesses generally shoul…
Leadership in crisis: ‘Events, my dear boy, events’
In this paper we discuss the theme for the 2009 8th International Conference on Studying Leadership (ICSL): Leadership in Crisis, which was hosted by the Centre for Leadership at the University of Birmingham (CLUB). We introduce five papers chosen from the conference which make up this special issue and that engage with different facets or manifestations of crisis — in context, method and theory. Prior to introducing the papers we offer our own r…
Rhetoric in policy texts: The role of enthymeme in Darzi’s review of the NHS
Political administrations try to present their policies in the best light to justify the ownership of power, and in doing so rely on rhetoric. The documents through which they communicate policy (policy texts) use rhetorical devices to do so. Through these, administrations need to create the impression that they have chosen the best possible course of action, and they also need to create the impression that they are doing something innovative. Bo…
The replication problem and its implications for policy studies
In this article we re-examine the epistemological basis for claims to ‘best evidence’ and ‘best practice’ in policy studies by tracing these to a Popperian model of theory development and testing. This model outlines how only scientific explanations that survive repeated testing count as good theory. Yet repeated testing (replication) is scarce across the social sciences – this is the ‘replication problem’. More specifically, the lack of replicat…
What Is Governance in the ‘Public Interest’? The Case of the 1995 Property Forum in Post‐conflict Nicaragua
‘Public interest' (synonymous here with ‘common good’ and ‘public good’) is a central concept in public administration. In an important, basic sense, we evaluate the effectiveness of governments in terms of whether their policies are detrimental to, or benefit, public interest. However there are problems operationalizing public interest: it seems a concept that is simultaneously indispensable yet vague. While difficulties operationalizing public …
Aphorisms and Leaders’ Rhetoric: A New Analytical Approach
Using insights from conversation analysis, the article analyses aphorisms from 20 different writers demonstrating how these combine common rhetorical formats. It then proposes a simple framework that allows for aphorisms to be analysed further and in terms of two continua: whether they are convex or concave, and whether they are creative or destructive. The framework supplements content-based approaches with a structural account of how aphorisms …
Aristotle in the Anthropocene: The comparative benefits of Aristotelian virtue ethics over Utilitarianism and deontology
In the Anthropocene, humanity faces a pressing question: 'what should we do?' Here we are interested in the underlying sense and reference of the normative 'should' as it applies to ethics with respect to different actors. To excavate 'should', we unearth the foundations of three conventional groupings of normative ethical systems: Mill's utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Each provides a normative basis …
Aesthetics and Learning in Aristotle: A Note on Grint's `Learning to Lead
Aphorisms and Leaders’ Rhetoric: A New Analytical Approach
Using insights from conversation analysis, the article analyses aphorisms from 20 different writers demonstrating how these combine common rhetorical formats. It then proposes a simple framework that allows for aphorisms to be analysed further and in terms of two continua: whether they are convex or concave, and whether they are creative or destructive. The framework supplements content-based approaches with a structural account of how aphorisms …
Policy as Narrative: New Labour’s Reform of the National Health Service
Beginning with a brief review of the governance literature, a definition of governance in the National Health Service of England and Wales (NHS) is offered. This introduces an analysis of NHS reform, as presented in the recent policy literature. Using narrative theory, I critique this literature with reference to three key actors: the new organizational form of the ‘Foundation Trust’, NHS staff, and NHS patients. For each actor, a motif is identi…
A model of political leadership
In this article we develop a model of political leadership. In doing so, we analyse the challenges facing political leaders in local government in England and Wales. We use this analysis as a basis for broader theorizing: about leadership at other levels of government, and in other countries. The scope for applying extant accounts of leadership in these domains can be enhanced by considering the relational complexities that characterize the envir…
Ethics in leadership: The case of local politicians
The mainstream literature on leadership has little to say about the role of ethics. Equally, much of this literature is concerned with the private sector and with managerial leadership. This paper addresses both these gaps, by reporting on the development of a scale for measuring ethical values in local political leadership, the public service values scale. This is one section of a larger instrument for assessing the skills of local political lea…
Aesthetics and Learning in Aristotle: A Note on Grint's `Learning to Lead
Governance and the Public Good
The paper examines the control of power, using an account of the public good developed from Aristotle. It identifies three different perspectives on the relationship between governance (the control of power) and the public good: a ‘cybernetic’ perspective, an ‘axiological’ perspective, and a perspective of ‘critique’. This framework offers a way to scrutinize the exercise of power, and to evaluate the linkages between a political administration a…
Leadership in crisis: ‘Events, my dear boy, events’
In this paper we discuss the theme for the 2009 8th International Conference on Studying Leadership (ICSL): Leadership in Crisis, which was hosted by the Centre for Leadership at the University of Birmingham (CLUB). We introduce five papers chosen from the conference which make up this special issue and that engage with different facets or manifestations of crisis — in context, method and theory. Prior to introducing the papers we offer our own r…
What Is Governance in the ‘Public Interest’? The Case of the 1995 Property Forum in Post‐conflict Nicaragua
‘Public interest' (synonymous here with ‘common good’ and ‘public good’) is a central concept in public administration. In an important, basic sense, we evaluate the effectiveness of governments in terms of whether their policies are detrimental to, or benefit, public interest. However there are problems operationalizing public interest: it seems a concept that is simultaneously indispensable yet vague. While difficulties operationalizing public …
Public Service Improvement: Theories and Evidence
Evidence-based dialectics
‘Evidence-based policy’ and ‘evidence-based management’ are increasingly popular ways of describing the relationship between research and practice. The majority discussing the evidence-based approach have tended to be in favour: here, ‘believers’. Yet this approach has also attracted critics: ‘heretics’. Understanding of such a division can be enhanced by dialectics: a process which tries to destabilize, reconcile or transcend apparent opposites.…
The replication problem and its implications for policy studies
In this article we re-examine the epistemological basis for claims to ‘best evidence’ and ‘best practice’ in policy studies by tracing these to a Popperian model of theory development and testing. This model outlines how only scientific explanations that survive repeated testing count as good theory. Yet repeated testing (replication) is scarce across the social sciences – this is the ‘replication problem’. More specifically, the lack of replicat…
Rhetoric in policy texts: The role of enthymeme in Darzi’s review of the NHS
Political administrations try to present their policies in the best light to justify the ownership of power, and in doing so rely on rhetoric. The documents through which they communicate policy (policy texts) use rhetorical devices to do so. Through these, administrations need to create the impression that they have chosen the best possible course of action, and they also need to create the impression that they are doing something innovative. Bo…
Considerations on the 'Replication Problem' in Sociology
Impossible Jobs or Impossible Tasks? Client Volatility and Frontline Policing Practice in Urban Riots
Various public administration jobs are described as “impossible,” meaning that they have an unpopular or illegitimate client base, stakeholders have conflicting values, and leaders and their agency's mission are continually questioned. Although this framework is widely used, it has also become overgeneralized. The authors propose three theoretical extensions to understanding impossible jobs based on findings from a three‐year multimethod study of…
Is critical leadership studies ‘critical’
‘Leader’ and ‘follower’ are increasingly replacing ‘manager’ and ‘worker’ to become the routine way to frame hierarchy within organizations; a practice that obfuscates, even denies, structural antagonisms. Furthermore, given that many workers are indifferent to (and others despise) their bosses, assuming workers are ‘followers’ of organizational elites seems not only managerialist, but blind to other forms of cultural identity. We feel that criti…
Brexit: What the hell happens now
Corporate actors, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Earth System Governance: A research agenda
The Anthropocene requires significant shifts and innovation in policy as well as human action and behavior. While much research attention has focused on society and policy makers, we know significantly less about how businesses exercise agency as part of Earth System Governance such as their contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Concerns are mounting over how large corporations are being governed and how businesses generally shoul…
How can governments tax multinational enterprises more fairly? A discourse analysis
Extant research has identified numerous causes for multinational enterprises (MNE) tax avoidance and formulated a variety of remedial policy solutions. Yet despite being consistently decried as societally unfair, these contested practices persist. We reveal the conflicting and complementary ideologies and worldviews that reside in the background of MNE tax avoidance policy deliberations. Analysis of primary interviews with accounting and tax regu…
Aristotle in the Anthropocene: The comparative benefits of Aristotelian virtue ethics over Utilitarianism and deontology
In the Anthropocene, humanity faces a pressing question: 'what should we do?' Here we are interested in the underlying sense and reference of the normative 'should' as it applies to ethics with respect to different actors. To excavate 'should', we unearth the foundations of three conventional groupings of normative ethical systems: Mill's utilitarianism, Kantian deontological ethics and Aristotelian virtue ethics. Each provides a normative basis …
Marketisation and the Public Good: A Typology of Responses among Museum Professionals
Across Western democracies, the public sector has undergone significant changes following successive waves of marketisation. Such changes find material expression in an organisation’s logic and associated vocabulary. While marketisation may be adopted, a growing body of research explains how it is often resisted as public sector professionals reject its logic and vocabulary. We contribute to this debate by detailing additional, theoretically impo…
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Public relations (10 works) · Economics (8 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works)