Social capital has been hailed as a means of virtuous, effective and enjoyable productivity through which firms can flourish. But it also confines advantage to network members and discriminates against non-members. This paper, drawing on detailed qualitative research into work in the UK film and TV industry, reveals the advantages and the disadvantages of social capital. Social capital aided recruitment, policed quality standards and ensured behavioural norms with the sort of speed and flexibility it would be hard to identify in other forms of organizing. However, it also advantaged white, middle-class men and ensured that middle-class signals came to be proxies for the most sought-after jobs. Professionals who were women, members of ethnic minorities or working class were less likely to secure jobs and were often restricted in the type of jobs they held. Significantly, the members of disadvantaged groups who succeeded did so after long periods employed by the terrestrial broadcasters or after extended apprenticeships. This is worrying, given the increasing insecurity of the labour market in this sector.

Learning at, and through, work is a key part of the skills literature. However, the idea and ideal of the ‘community of practice’ assumes that workplaces are coherent communities where the skilful are available for novices to consult and observe. This is not always the case. This research note, drawing on three months of detailed ethnographic research in a TV production company, explores the way communities of practice function in a labour market dominated by small firms and freelancers. It argues that the experienced workers who would normally be central to skills development are simply not available to consult or observe, since they are employed on freelance contracts. The novices’ community is one with a ‘missing middle’.

It is popular to assume that there is a link between skill and performance, yet the evidence is tenuous. Both terms defy simple definition and much current work aggregates findings, conflating firms that compete on the basis of skill with those that do not. This article provides a detailed review of the difficulties involved. Skill may indeed contribute to performance on the shop floor but the performance of the organization as a whole is not the same as that of the shop-floor writ large, while soft skills are difficult to assess and judgments may be contaminated by prejudice. It concludes with suggestions for better research designs that could capture this relationship.

This research investigates innovation in how film producers use social digital tools to engage consumers, reduce demand uncertainty and respond to the challenge of digital disruption that affects the traditional film value chain. Through three empirical case studies of film production and exploitation, we examine examples of innovation in product, service, distribution, marketing and process, each having important implications at the organizational level. Our findings show that innovations in one area have important implications for other areas, distribution impacting on concepts of product and service, for example. We also show that internal firm micro-process dynamics impact directly on external interactions between the firm, consumers en masse and partner firms. Our research thus lies at the nexus of innovation, social media and uncertainty management, and questions the boundaries found in innovation 'types' or dominant taxonomies in traditional R&D frames. *This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council Capacity Building Cluster Grant RES 187-24-0014Introduction Film production is facing increasing challenges caused by declining revenues from DVD and TV rights exploitation. Digital tools, applied in new marketing and distribution models, form innovative strategic responses to major threats to film businesses caused by digital disruption (UKFC, 2010). These interventions, however, occur far earlier in the product life cycle and are undertaken by different parties than has traditionally been the case and can be seen as the active management of consumer demand uncertainty (Miller & Shamsie, 1999;Dempster, 2006). We ask how social digital tools are applied to manage uncertainty in the UK film business and adopt an empirical case study approach to investigate this. In doing so, we address a gap in the literature at the nexus of innovation, social media and uncertainty management in a specific creative industry, film. Whilst Dempster (2006) explores risk and uncertainty management in theatre and Sgourev (2012) deals with risk and innovation in opera, the specific 'spreadable' nature of digital media (Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2012) has not been explored in an innovation context for managing uncertainty in this setting.

In this long awaited biography, John Kelly attempts to shed some light on the life of one of the most important figures in British industrial relations who, with a handful of others, shaped both its intellectual and political direction. A note of caution, however: this is not a classical biography, and the reader who expects to learn about the personal life of Allan Flanders, about his childhood, his relationship with his parents and partners, or about his social life in general, will be disappointed. The sole focus of this biographic sketch is the intellectual life of the man himself, his development from a Leninist revolutionary in the 1920s to a centre-right social democrat reformist in the 1950s and 1960s and the influence he exerted on British industrial relations thinking and practice. It is, therefore, understandable that the narration begins from 1928, 18 years after Flanders's birth, when he first came in contact with the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK-or Militant Socialist International, MSI), a small revolutionary socialist organization that would leave an indelible mark on his thought. In the course of nine chapters, Kelly describes in much detail the forces that shaped Flanders's thought and work, with due reference to the political and social background of his era. The narration is chronological, starting from the late 1920s and the years Flanders spent in the MSI training school, to the 1970s and his involvement in the reform of British industrial relations institutions. His years in Germany, and his acquaintance with the MSI leader Leonard Nelson's ethical socialist philosophy, would prove fundamental for his later development. Although on his return to Britain he gradually abandoned the group's Leninist orientation and adopted a strict anti-Marxist and anti-USSR stance, the moral bases of Nelson's teachings would accompany him forever. Evidence of this early training, for instance, could be found in his industrial relations work and in his general conceptualization of social reality. Although not explicitly described as such by Kelly, one is left with the impression that Flanders was a passionate person, with firm beliefs on some matters and an equally firm dismissal towards people and ideas that did not conform to his worldview. A dreamer, naive in some ways-especially in his interpretations of the political situation-sensitive, and driven by a morality that balanced on the fringes between ethics and metaphysics, he did not seem to have been able to penetrate the harsh realities of political life. His almost Book reviews