This article introduces a special issue on Situating Human Resource Management (HRM) Practices in their Political and Economic Contexts. We develop a novel multilevel framework for exploring the political economy of HRM and use this to position the articles in this special issue. We argue that the study of HRM is often too narrowly constructed within a psychological, positivistic paradigm and at an organisationlevel, and that situating HRM in its political and economic context requires a more inclusive, interdisciplinary approach that includes the use of kaleidoscopic imagination and meta-theoretical bricolage. By embracing a theoretically pluralist approach to studying HRM, researchers are better able to analyse how different levels of the political economy interact with specific HRM practices to impact value creation. We conclude by discussing the contribution of this article and the special issue, as well as highlighting avenues for future research.

IntroductionThis article takes as its starting point the position that neoliberalism has become the hegemonic ideology of the current era (Harvey 2005(Harvey , 2010 Brownlee, 2005). It goes on to examine the extent to which trade unions have been influenced by neoliberal ideological hegemony. It does so, first, by analysing the hegemonic construction of the pension crisis and, second, by then exploring, through the use of interviews, how leading British trade union general secretaries understand the pension crisis, and how they have responded to the hegemonic construction of the UK pension crisis.In doing so it examines why the neoliberal construct of the crisis reached hegemonic status over the past 10 years (despite claims like Blake's (2000) to the contrary), but also why trade unions (under a New Labour government) often found themselves becoming unlikely collaborators in supporting the neoliberal construct. Literature ReviewThis paper ties together themes from various literatures in order to advance a new understanding of the pension crisis. To engage with this synthesis, it is first necessary to analyse the constituent parts of the literatures that have given rise to it. Whilst the literature discussed below was intended by its respective authors to provide a particular contribution, a review of this literature that is orientated towards developing an understanding of the ideological aspects of the pension crisis swiftly reveals the utility of linking together various approaches to neoliberalism, pensions, and labour organisation in order to present an account of the pension crisis that runs contrary to the hegemonic one now dominant. This alternative account can be used as a lens through which to analyse the challenges that the dominance of neoliberal ideology has presented not only for pensions, but also for trade unionism.Thus it allows us to examine the growing dominance of neoliberal ideology, and in doing so to ask why it has been so difficult to challenge neoliberal hegemony. Finally, we begin to understand better the reasons why organisations like trade unions have become unlikely collaborators in neoliberalism. Neoliberal Ideology and DiscourseThis article relies on the concept of ideology to provide an alternative analysis of the pension crisis.In short it argues that the pension crisis, as widely understood in the UK, is based on a number of misleading and/or narrow discourses. Building on the argument put forward by Grady (2010), this article argues that the dominant (hegemonic) narrative of the pension crisis is based on a neoliberal According to Thompson (1990), ideology seeks to legitimate the power of a dominant social group or class. For Thompson, to study ideology is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification)serves to sustain relations of domination, and it is this understanding of ideology that this paper employs. Furthermore, Eagleton (1991: 5-6) outlines the process through which ideologies are legitimated and argues that a dominant power may legitimate itself through six di...

Despite the international reach, and increasing global importance, of the free market provision of military and security services -which we label the Private Security Industry -management and organisation studies has yet to pay significant attention to this industry. Taking up Grey's (2009) call for scholarship at the boundaries between security studies and organisation studies and building on Banerjee's (2008) treatment of the PSI as a key element in necrocapitalism, in this paper we aim to trace the long history of the PSI and argue that it has re-emerged over the last two decades against, and as a result of, a very specific politico-economic backdrop. We then suggest that the PSI operates as a mechanism for neoliberal imperialism; demonstrate its substitution for and supplementing of the state; and count some of the costs of this privatisation of war.Finally, we take seriously Hughes's (2007) thesis of the growth of a new securityindustrial complex, and of the intersecting elites who benefit from this phenomenon.

This articles re-examines evidence that trade unions in the UK have struggled to renew themselves despite considerable investment of time and effort. It argues that financialisation in the realms of capital accumulation, organisational decision making and everyday life has introduced new barriers to building the solidarities within and between groups of workers that would be necessary to develop a stronger response to the catastrophic effects on labour of financialisation in general, and the financial crisis specifically. The crisis highlighted the weaknesses of trade unions as institutions of economic and industrial democracy, but has also given some opportunities to establish narratives of solidarity in spaces and platforms created within a financialised context.

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century did much to bring discussions of economic inequality into the intellectual and popular mainstream. This paper indicates how business, management and organization studies can productively engage with Cap21st. It does this by deriving practical consequences from Piketty's proposed division of intellectual labour in general and his account of 'supermanagers' in particular. There are organizational specificities to inequality which Piketty's framework does not address, however. Cap21st's account of corporate governance, of tax avoidance policy and of financialisation, in particular, requires significant conceptual and empirical supplementation. We argue that business, management and organisational scholars should contribute to the cross-disciplinary inequality research project which Cap21st proposes not despite these limitations but because of them.