Looking at the change in work brought about by globalization, this text examines how global competitive pressures in Asia are transforming workplace relations and impacting on strategies of managers as well as the responses and behaviours of trade unions and employees. The volume brings together research from Australia and New Zealand, as well as from China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, to illuminate our understanding of what is actually happening to organizations, workforces, employee groupings and individual employees as a result of globalization and the intensification of global competition in Pacific Asia.

Looking at the change in work brought about by globalization, this text examines how global competitive pressures in Asia are transforming workplace relations and impacting on strategies of managers as well as the responses and behaviours of trade unions and employees. The volume brings together research from Australia and New Zealand, as well as from China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, to illuminate our understanding of what is actually happening to organizations, workforces, employee groupings and individual employees as a result of globalization and the intensification of global competition in Pacific Asia.

Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market. This book also seeks to illuminate what actors/groups are mostly benefited by the digitalization/digital transformation and which actors/groups that are put at risk by it. This book takes its point of departure from a 2016 OECD report that contends that the impact digitalization has on the future of labor is ambiguous, as on the one hand it is suggested that technological change is labor-saving, but on the other hand, it is suggested that digital technologies have not created new jobs on a scale that it replaces old jobs. Another 2018 OECD report indicated that digitalization and automation as such does not pose a real risk of destroying any significant number of jobs for the foreseeable future, although tasks would by and large change significantly. This would affects welfare, as most of its revenue stems from taxation, and particularly so from the taxation on labor (directly or indirectly). For this reason, this book will set out to explore how the future technological and societal advancements impact labor conditions. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching and controversial take on how various aspects of the labor market can be (and are) affected the ongoing digitalization trend in a way that is not covered by extant literature. As such, this book intends to cater to a wider readership, from a general audience and students, to specialized professionals and academics wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the possible future developments of the labor market in light of an accelerating digitalization/digital transformation of society at large.

Unemployment is one of Southern Europe's most serious political problems. Though much has been written about unemployment's causes and cures, systematic attention to its consequences is lacking. This collection of original essays deals with the effects of unemployment on regimes, parties, immigrants, economies and families, highlighting the differences and the similarities among Southern European states and offering lessons about the profound human consequences of unemployment in general.

In recent decades, the problem of unemployment has generated fierce political and academic discussion on how national governments should address this issue. This book sheds light on a key debate in unemployment policy - that of whether unemployment benefits should be insurance-based or means-tested. It carefully compares the impact of the British and German benefit systems on poverty, the duration of unemployment and the spread of workless households during the 1990s. In Germany unemployment is regarded as a risk which individuals insure themselves against through the state, whereas in Britain compensation for the unemployed is allocated primarily through means-tested benefits paid for from tax revenue. These contrasting welfare scenarios make this study of the differences in welfare provision and the effect on the lives of the unemployed especially valuable. The author combines an in-depth study of unemployment policies with extensive statistical analysis, to examine the experience over time of unemployed individuals and the households in which they live. In particular, she focuses on the important interactions between the state, labour markets and household structures. This book presents a large amount of new empirical material and employs an innovative methodology by applying event history analysis to social policy questions. Academics and policymakers working in the fields of unemployment, comparative welfare analysis and labour market sociology will welcome this rigorous and highly rewarding volume.

The Job-Generation Controversy shows precisely how anyone -- economists, policymakers, and the general public -- can fall victim to statistical fallacy and improperly manipulated data. Sometimes, as this book highlights, the consequences can be serious for millions of Americans.

For more than twenty years, the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), using erroneous data, have developed and perpetuated the belief that "Small business creates all the new jobs". Since the early 1990s, this belief has become a mantra allowing the SBA and NFIB to lobby effectively, under the law, for preferential treatment such as low-interest loans and exemption from mandated employee benefits and worker safety regulations. However, as this book shows, while small businesses have created some new jobs, big businesses, those with more than 500 employees, remain the primary source of job generation in the United States.

Bringing together diverse approaches and case studies of international health worker migration, Global Migration, Gender, and Health Professional Credentials critically reimagines how we conceptualize the transfer of value embodied in internationally educated health professionals (IEHPs). This volume provides key insights into the economistic and feminist concepts of global value transmission, the complexity of health worker migration, and the gendered and intersectional intricacies involved in the workplace integration of immigrant health care workers. The contributions to this edited collection uncover the multitude of actors who play a role in creating, transmitting, transforming, and utilizing the value embedded in international health migrants.

Unemployment is one of Southern Europe's most serious political problems. Though much has been written about unemployment's causes and cures, systematic attention to its consequences is lacking. This collection of original essays deals with the effects of unemployment on regimes, parties, immigrants, economies and families, highlighting the differences and the similarities among Southern European states and offering lessons about the profound human consequences of unemployment in general.

The implications of globalization for labour are more often asserted than analyzed. This collection, and its companion volume "The Global Economy, National States and the Regulation of Labour" edited by by Paul Edwards and Tony Elger, seek to remedy this deficiency by presenting contemporary research on the relationship between the globalization of production and the regulation of labour. It examines the relations between specific pattens of labour control (production regimes) and approaches to national labour (regulatory regimes). The contributors assess the nature and form of labour resistance and accommodation across a range of manufacturing industries in different national contexts.

The implications of globalization for labour are more often asserted than analyzed. This collection, and its companion volume "Globalization and Patterns of Labour Resistance" edited by Jeremy Waddington, seek to remedy this deficiency by presenting contemporary research on the relationship between the globalization of production and the regulation of labour. It considers the ways in which national and supra-national regimes of labour regulation are being actively reconstructed in the context of the internationalization of production. The contributors analyze the implications of changes in different national labour regimes for relations between state, capital and labour, and for class and gender segmentation, and discuss the scope and limits of recent initiatives in the implementation of international labour standards.

This book exposes how the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), using erroneous data, have developed and perpetuated the belief that "small business creates all the new jobs". It shows further that, since the early 1990s, this belief has become a mantra for allowing the SBA and NBIF to lobby effectively for preferential treatment such as low-interest loans and exemption from mandated employee benefits and worker safety regulations.

Illegal immigrants constitute a major issue in southern European countries. This book is the first piece of published research in this area and gives a comparative analysis of southern European immigration policies. Detailed accounts of each country's pattern of informal immigrant employment are located within a broader setting of contemporary immigration controls.

Welfare-to-work or activation policies refer to programmes aimed at promoting the employability, labour-market and social participation of benefit recipients of working age. Frontline workers delivering these policies are conceived of as policy implementers, as policy makers, and as actors mediating politics in an arena where conflicting interests are at stake. Frontline work plays a crucial role in determining what welfare-to-work practically means and how it affects the lives of the people it targets. Yet few books have deliberatively focused on comparing what happens when frontline workers, some of whom are professional social workers, meet clients. Pioneering the provision of scholarly reflections on both theoretical and policy relevance of studying frontline practices of delivering activation, internationally renowned researchers present the first comparative analysis of how activation policies are actually delivered by frontline staff in selected EU countries and in the United States. In trying to understand and interpret frontline practices in activation, each contribution provides insights into what 'activation in practice' looks like, what services are provided and how they are enacted. This involves examining processes of client selection, monitoring, sanctioning and motivating, as well as the role of external service providers. This book is an important acquisition for scholars and researchers of social policy, public administration, public management, social work and policy implementation.

This text explores the impact of information and communications technologies on the changing economic relationship between Europe and the Developing World, in the context of telematics-related trade, work organization and distance education. The contributors elucidate the reasons why the phenomenon of globalization need not be a battleground of competing nations. The essays written by researchers and practitioners, from the European Union and Developing Countries, identify the areas where policy interventions could lead to "co-operative competition" between the EU and the developing world. The book contains empirical data and should be of particular interest to scholars and policymakers engaged with the questions of spatial division of labour, emerging trading links, information processing work, the "brain-drain" and tele-education.

Published in 1999, this text is influenced by two sets of theories, namely regulation theories and theories on social citizenship. Regulation theories are mainly used as an overall guideline - a frame of reference - in the analysis of changed, unchanged and new types of integration and differentiation in working life and its social modes of regulations. The perspective on social citizenship is concentrated on participation in working life - what are the changes in working life (unemployment and non-standard employment) and what are the conditions and the outcome of social regulation? These questions are thematized in two articles and analyzed in chapter 7 which focuses on four welfare state models represented by Portugal, England, the Netherlands and Denmark. The book aims to contribute material on labour market segmentation and social policies to combat labour market marginalization in four countries studies representing typical European welfare state models.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The deregulation of labour law in the European Union was thought to be a spur to lasting growth of employment and an increase in labour market efficiency. In particular, it was hoped that facilitating fixed-term contracts would help many Europeans out of continued unemployment and back into the workforce. Based on data from the European Labour Force Survey. This text reveals that the results of such policies have been far from those expected. This study provides a country by country overview of the legal regulations concerning employment protection and fixed-term employment in the 12 Member States of the European Union (prior to its expansion in 1995). Employment patterns of fixed-term employees are compared with those of employees in standard employment relationships, with the analytical focus on age-, gender- and industry specific patterns and assess the probability of fixed-term employment within the European Union. They offer hypotheses concerning the impact upon the labour market of deregulation and of regulation.

The growth in part-time employment has been one of the most striking features in industrialized economies over the past forty years. This work discusses the controversial debates surrounding the subject - is part-time work better than unemployment or is social welfare a disincentive to taking up part-time work, is this kind of work becoming an increasingly normal part of most people's working lives, or does it remain a female ghetto of low pay, low pensions and low labour standards. The book presents a systematically comparative analysis of the common and divergent patterns in the use of part-time work in Europe, America and the Pacific Rim. It brings together sociologists and economists in this wide-ranging and comprehensive survey, tackling such areas as gender issues, ethnic questions and the differences between certain national economies.

The growth in part-time employment has been one of the most striking features in industrialized economies over the past forty years. Part-Time Prospects presents for the first time a systematically comparative analysis of the common and divergent patterns in the use of part-time work in Europe, America and the Pacific Rim. It brings together sociologists and economists in this wide-ranging and comprehensive survey. It tackles such areas as gender issues, ethnic questions and the differences between certain national economies including low pay, pensions and labour standards.

Teleworking is an up-to-date, groundbreaking and comprehensive assessment of teleworking. It includes
* multidisciplinary contributions drawing on sociology, management science, economics, philosophy and information technology
* analysis of post-modern and post-industrial theoretical contexts
* a selection of empirical studies from across the world
* accounts of different modes of teleworking, from homeworking to centre-based working
* examination of the links between teleworking and the virtual organisation
Wide-ranging, detailed and original, this book is a valuable introduction to teleworking and an important contribution to the debate on the future of the labour market.

This up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of teleworking is based upon a conference at Brunel University, which was sponsored by BT and the European Commission. The book features contributions from a range of international and interdisciplinary perspectives. As well as an original analysis of the theoretical context of the post-industrial and postmodern world, it also contains detailed empirical studies of telworking in a number of different countries. Contributors explore many of the main issues in teleworking drawing on insights from business, economics, sociology and information systems. These include: conceptualizing teleworking; the management of spatial, temporal and cultural boundaries; the possibility of the virtual organization; integrating teleworking into an organizational perspective. This work provides an introduction to teleworking and a contribution to the debate on the future of the labour market.

First published in 1982. Unemployment was a major scourge of the advanced capitalist countries in the 1930s, but in the golden age of post-war expansion which lasted until 1973, it had seemingly been vanquished by enlightened economic policy. Since 1973, unemployment has re-emerged as a major problem, along with accelerated inflation and problems of structural adjustment imposed by soaring energy prices. The rise in European unemployment came in two surges as a result of the generalised recessions of 1974-5 and 1980-1. At the beginning of 1982 unemployment in the European Community was running close to 10% of the labour force compared with a 'norm' of under 2% in the 1960s. These abrupt and serious changes in the labour market have created major new dilemmas for economic policy and have stirred significant and acrimonious theoretical controversy. For this reason it is useful to analyse the policy issues and the academic debate in a comparative perspective. The present volume contains three comparative papers on the employment policy discussions in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK as well as papers examining the theoretical adequacy of Keynesian, monetarist, structuralist and Marxist reactions to the new issues. The papers are all accompanies by a critique from the discussants.

Originally published in 1970. During the times of planned population movements and new towns, with a growing interest in specifically regional policies by government, this book considers the problems of development within regions. It presents research on the facts and trends of employment generated by the regional economy and its relationship with the size and socio-economic character of local workforce, using the example of the West Midlands as testing ground for policy. The authors come from the viewpoint of needing to develop understanding of population, housing, employment and communications - the way our regional economy and society worked, before organised de-centralisation could be planned appropriately. Within the field of economic planning they ask what analysis of the information available tell us about development possibilities within a region. The book looks at trends in employment growth, the character and distribution of manufacturing industries and service industries and the locational consequences, to build a picture of the regional economic system. It then considers supply and demand and measures the ways towns vary in detailed case studies.

The problem of mass unemployment in Western Europe has persisted since the early 1980s. Clearly the policies implemented by national governments and the EU have not been successful in adequately tackling this important social, economic and political issue. This volume presents a comparative analysis of the present situation. It looks at how the orthodox unemployment policies of contemporary governments have failed and what new policies might be introduced. A number of radical unemployment policies, from Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and the EU, are outlined. These are investigated with a view to identifying the conditions under which they might become standard components of national and EU strategies to bring down unemployment.

The problem of mass unemployment in Western Europe has persisted since the early 1980s. Clearly the policies implemented by national governments and the EU have not been successful in adequately tackling this important social, economic and political issue. This volume presents a comparative analysis of the present situation. It looks at how the orthodox unemployment policies of contemporary governments have failed and what new policies might be introduced. A number of radical unemployment policies, from Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and the EU, are outlined. These are investigated with a view to identifying the conditions under which they might become standard components of national and EU strategies to bring down unemployment.