Chadwick, Hilary;
(2022)
Employer Ownership: The barriers for policy makers.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), University College London (UCL).
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Abstract
This focus of this thesis is employer ownership: the challenges of incentivising employers to invest their money, time and expertise into apprenticeship, and the barriers which prevent the state from addressing and overcoming these challenges. I found that many of these challenges have been created by the interventions of the state, not by a failure of the state to act. Paradoxically, in the name of free markets, and facing little expert or political challenge to an approach championed by vested interests, the state has taken control of apprenticeship away from employers and the labour market since 1994. It has imposed its will over prices, outcomes and providers, through complex regulations hidden within a quasi-market designed to deliver political targets which are unrelated to demand or productivity. In an empirical study which illustrates the detailed workings of this quasi-market, first-hand accounts from large employers reveal their shock and disappointment at how risky, costly and difficult they found it to work as partners in a common purpose with the state, and how this affected their sense of ownership. Employers were seen to mitigate their risks by distancing themselves. Although the traditional literatures of economics and political science may explain the market and non-market challenges of employer ownership, the thesis shows how the third lens of comparative capitalism is required to explain the barriers which prevent policy makers from addressing and overcoming them. This perspective shows how ideology interacts with power, in the distinctive political economy of the English liberal market state, to damage the credibility of apprenticeship policies and limit the solutions available. A better understanding of these factors could enable policy makers to develop more appropriate incentives for both the state and employers, and the study concludes with some principles to underpin future reforms.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Employer Ownership: The barriers for policy makers |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149794 |
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