Focusing on public administration activities in the field of national labour policy, this timely book provides detailed analyses of labour administration reforms, innovations and challenges in different countries, including detailed case studies from Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the US. Combining rigorous research and practical policy recommendations, the book contains contributions from top scholars in the fields of economics, employment relations, labour law and public administration, as well as officials from the International Labour Organization (ILO). Chapters offer wide-ranging investigations of topics such as labour inspection, social dialogue involving employer organizations and trade unions, and the role of performance management and new technologies in labour administration. The book further demonstrates the vital role of labour administration in upholding employment rights and promoting employment, emphasizing the ways in which it can contribute to good governance, sustainable development and decent work. This will be a critical read for employment relations, global labour studies and public administration scholars. Policy makers and practitioners working in and around employment policy and labour law will also find this book beneficial, particularly with its in-depth case studies.

Actors in the world of work are facing an increasing number of challenges, including automatization and digitalization, new types of jobs and more diverse forms of employment. This timely book examines employer and worker responses, challenges and opportunities for social dialogue, and the role of social partners in the governance of the world of work. Through interviews and surveys, the volume provides direct evidence on three central questions: how can we cultivate autonomous, bipartite social dialogue in order to meet these critical challenges? How can the social partners strengthen their representativeness and membership, and extend their influence? What role can social partners and social dialogue play regarding digitalization, and what best practices can be identified? The volume also addresses significant trends such as demographic changes, migration flows, global supply chain management and environmental objectives. It covers the current EU member states while extending analysis to EU candidate and potential candidate countries, thus enlarging coverage to 34 European nations. The detailed evidence by theme and by individual country will provide a unique source of ideas on social actors' innovative roles in ensuring sustainable and inclusive practices in the future world of work. This will be an invigorating read for labour economics and labour policy scholars looking for a better understanding of the new world of work. Labour organizations, employers, trade unions and representatives of national and supranational institutions will also benefit from the detailed case studies in the volume.

Every workplace is a potential ’Marikana’ – a place where tension brews and threatens to erupt and disrupt, if ignored. You, the employee, can change that. No employee joins the workplace thinking: ‘I can’t wait to one day hate my job, be a demanding, depressed, stressed-out and unproductive employee with a bad and negative attitude towards my work, colleagues, superior and clients.’ Employees are not simply complaining about horrible bosses, irritating colleagues, difficult clients, or suffocating workplaces. They are indirectly asking for truths to be revealed about themselves; truths which will enable them to be and feel significant - confident in themselves, compassionate towards others, and competent in expressing God’s call on their lives through work. Common acts of significant employees introduces you to eight basic Acts which, through You, will transform your workplace into a place where you don’t have to be, but want to be.

Searching for paid tasks via digital labour platforms, such as Uber, Deliveroo and Fiverr, has become a global phenomenon and the regular source of income for millions of people. In the advent of digital labour platforms, this insightful book sheds new light on familiar questions about tensions between competition and cooperation, short-term gains and long-term success, and private benefits and public costs. Drawing on a wealth of knowledge from a range of disciplines, including law, management, psychology, economics, sociology and geography, it pieces together a nuanced picture of the societal challenges posed by the platform economy. Chapters present a comprehensive, multidisciplinary overview of the rise of gig work, reflecting on long-term developments in the gig economy and incorporating contemporary developments into the rich theoretical and empirical literature on the topic. Charting new research territory, the book addresses key academic and policy challenges, arming readers with relevant analytical tools and practical solutions to face common problems. This book comprises a key reference for future research on the topic as well as critical policy measures for addressing challenges relating to gig work. Offering an integrated outline of the latest insights, this book is crucial reading for scholars and researchers of the platform economy and gig work, outlining academic insights and empirical research, and illustrating a research agenda for future scholarship. The book's comprehensive approach will also benefit policy-makers, managers and workers as they confront the platform economy's wide variety of legal, economic and management challenges.

Providing an insightful analysis of the key issues and significant trends relating to labour within the platform economy, this Modern Guide considers the existing comparative evidence covering all world regions. It also provides an in-depth look at digital labour platforms in their historical, economic and geographical contexts. Highlighting the diversity of experience of platform work, case studies illustrate how general trends play out, both in online and location-based labour platforms, across the globe. Chapters illustrate a need for a post-pandemic regulatory requirement of digital labour platforms at different policy levels, whilst providing a general overview of key topics. Interlinking contributions with a global scope and coverage identify the challenges faced and offer thoughtful regulatory solutions. This engaging book will be an invaluable resource for academics of labour economics, legal and business studies and sociology. It will also benefit policy makers in social and political geography and political science looking for a deeper understanding of the topic.

This groundbreaking book examines the growing phenomenon of internships, and the policy issues that they raise, during a time when internships or traineeships have become an important way of transitioning from education into paid work. Featuring contributions from established and emerging scholars in a range of disciplines, the book presents important new research on the use, benefits and regulation of such arrangements. It considers how various countries around the world are meeting the challenge of ensuring decent work for interns, and what more needs to be done to realise that objective. Additionally, the case for new forms of regulation to minimise or prevent the exploitation of interns is explored, against the background of a possible new international labour standard. Presenting new data and analysis on whether internships can - and to what extent do - provide an effective bridge from education to employment, Internships, Employability and the Search for Decent Work Experience will be a key resource for policy-makers and academics in labour law, industrial relations, labour economics, human resource management and education.

In recent decades, due to unprecedented technological advancements, Europe has seen a move towards on-demand service economies. This has allowed the growth of self-employed professionals who are able to satisfy an increasing demand for flexible and high-skilled work. This book explores the need for reform of regulations in Europe, studying the variance in legal status, working conditions, social protection and collective representation of self-employed professionals. It provides insights into ways that policy could address these important challenges. Presenting the results of a wide-reaching European survey, this book highlights key issues being faced across Europe: the implementation of universal social protection schemes; active labour market policies to support sustainable self-employment and the renewal of social dialogue through bottom-up organisations to extend the collective representation of self-employed professionals. With its theoretically-informed, empirical and interdisciplinary comparative analysis, this book identifies and explains key strategies to resolve these challenges. This book will be of great benefit to both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of labour and economic sociology, political science, industrial relations, human resource management and social law. It will also appeal to scholars, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the labour market and self-employment in the European context.

Sweden has gained a worldwide reputation for its family friendly policies and the high share of women in paid employment. This book discusses the particular importance of early activation policies in the increase of women's paid employment and in changing gender and family relations. It explores how the integration of women into paid work was actually accomplished: on what ideational grounds, and using what concrete measures, were the conditions created for increasing the employment ratio of women? A number of activation measures are analyzed in more detail: vocational training, opinion-shaping, persuading activities and the work done by activating inspectors, specially installed to initiate housewives into paid labor. The book showcases how early activation policies contributed to the transformation of gender and family relations and thus to a farewell to male breadwinning. The book will appeal to undergraduates as well as graduate students, lecturers and researchers in gender studies, social and public policy and across the fields of politics, European studies, and contemporary history.

New information and communications technologies have revolutionized daily life and work in the 21st century. This insightful book demonstrates how telework has evolved in the last four decades, as technological developments have improved our capacity to work remotely. Based on a new conceptual framework, this book explores the global variations in telework, examining the effects on working conditions and individual and organizational performance. Breaking the traditional intellectual conception that telework is performed only in the home, this book surveys the full breadth of working environments, as technology allows employees increased working mobility. Contributors expose a profound ambiguity surrounding the effects of 21st-century telework, revealing that its advantages and disadvantages may simply be two sides of the same coin. This timely book is crucial reading for researchers of labour and employment interested in the evolution of contemporary telework and the influence of modern technologies in the workplace. Policy-makers will also benefit from this book's concrete policy recommendations to improve the practice of telework. Contributors include: S. Boiarov, P. D'Cruz, A. Dal Colletto, L. Gschwind, T. Harnish, K. Lister, A. Mello, J.C. Messenger, E. Noronha, A. Sato, O. Vargas

The main original aim of the European Union was to promote convergence towards higher economic growth and social standards. However, EU countries have sometimes experienced different trajectories, due in part to their different starting points and the fact that their convergence on particular socio-economic indicators has varied. At the same time, little evidence has so far been presented on cross-country convergence within the EU. This book aims to answer a number of important questions. To what extent have European countries converged or diverged with EU-wide economic and social indicators over the past 20 years? What have been the drivers of convergence? Why do some countries lag behind, while others experience continuous upward convergence? Why are these trajectories not always linear? Particular attention is paid to the role of institutions, actors and industrial relations - focusing on the resources and strategies of governments, employers and trade unions - in nudging EU countries onto an upward convergence path. This book provides a unique analysis of socio-economic indicators to identify convergence trends in the EU. It defines a number of clusters that help to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of national socio-economic models and the European Social Model. Cross-country case studies help to identify the possible impact of global movements (migration, foreign investment) and policies (social protection, social dialogue, employment) on cross-country convergence. This book offers a timely assessment of convergence within the EU, identifying its drivers in the world of work and in institutions and industrial relations. It presents examples of where institutions and industrial relations can change convergence outcomes and proposes a range of useful policy options. Scholars and researchers will find it an invaluable reference for studies of European affairs and social policies. Contributors include: D. Anxo, B. Bembic, G. Bosch, V. Ciampa, P. Courtioux, C. Erhel, K. Espenberg, A. Figueiredo, P. Gonzalez, D. Grimshaw, I. Marx, J. Masso, I. Mierina, R. Munoz de Bustillo Llorente, P.J. O'Connell, W. Salverda, A. Simonazzi, V. Soloviov, D. Vaughan-Whitehead, R. Vazquez-Alvarez, L. Villamaina

In the neoliberal world, rising individualism has frequently been linked to rising inequality. Drawing on social theory, philosophy, history, institutional research and a wealth of contemporary empirical data, this innovative book analyzes the tangled relationship between individualism and inequality and explores the possibilities of rediscovering individualism's revolutionary potential. Ralph Fevre demonstrates that a belief in individual self-determination powered the development of human rights and inspired social movements from anti-slavery to socialism, feminism and anti-racism. At the same time, every attempt to embed individualism in systems of education and employment has eventually led to increased social inequality. The book discusses influential thinkers, from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer and John Dewey, as well as the persistence of discrimination despite equality laws, management and the transformation of individualism, individualism in work and mental illness, work insecurity and intensification. This multi-disciplinary book will be essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, economics, philosophy, political science, management science and public policy studies, among other subjects. It will also be of use to policymakers and those who want to know how the culture and politics of the neoliberal world are unfolding.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution revolves around cyber-physical systems and artificial intelligence. Little is certain about this new wave of innovation, which leaves industrialists and educators in the lurch without much guidance on adapting to this new digital landscape. Society must become more agile and place a higher emphasis on lifelong learning to master new technologies in order to stay ahead of the changes and overcome challenges to become more globally competitive. Promoting Inclusive Growth in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a collection of innovative research that focuses on the role of formal education in preparing students for uncertain futures and for societies that are changing at great speed in terms of their abilities to drive job creation, economic growth, and prosperity for millions in the future. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including economics, higher education, and safety and regulation, this book is ideally designed for teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, economists, policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, and professionals in the fields of human resources, organizational design, learning design, information technology, and e-learning.

Wages are the main determinant of living standards for the vast majority of workers and families around the world. This manual describes a new methodology to measure what constitutes a decent but basic standard of living and how much workers need to earn to afford this, making it possible for researchers to estimate comparable living wages around the world and determine gaps between living wages and prevailing wages. The new, practical methodology in this manual draws on 10 years of research and experience to clearly explain each step in the estimation process, based on standards for a low cost nutritious diet, healthy housing, and all other needs including decent health care and children's education. It stresses transparency and the need for time and place specific living wage estimates, and is replete with examples from country studies that have put it to the test. The authors describe how living wages can be estimated in locations and countries where secondary data are limited and make new, practical recommendations on how to value in kind benefits as partial payment of a living wage. An essential tool for Researchers and NGOs interested in wages, poverty, living standards, and corporate social responsibility issues, this manual will also serve company professionals responsible for corporate social responsibility and human resources. It is also an excellent tool for Bank governments and unions, and international organizations such as the United Nations, UNDP, ILO and World Bank involved in setting minimum wages, poverty alleviation programs and trade policies.