This book gives a comprehensive survey of the field of Industrial Relations, focusing on general principles and problems. Illustrations are drawn from the practices adopted in many parts of the world such as Australia, France, Germany and the USA.

Contents include chapters on the following:
* Personnel Management
* Training
* Methods of Wage Payment
* Job Evaluation
* Profit-Sharing and Co-partnership
* Trade Unionism
* Employers' Organizations
* Collective Bargaining
* Wage Bases
* Equal Opportunities
* Conciliation and Arbitration

Leading experts examine, for the first time, the impact of New Labour policies on the labor market over the past five years. Looking behind the "good news" implied by the lowest headline unemployment rates since the 1970s and by a low and stable rate of inflation, it examines the impact of policies such as the minimum wage, the New Deal, Working Family Tax Credit scheme, policies on lone parents, and changes in the education system.

Economic disparity between ethnic and racial groups is a ubiquitous and pervasive phenomenon internationally. Gaps between groups encompass employment, wage, occupational status and wealth differentials. Virtually every nation is comprised of a group whose material well-being is sharply depressed in comparison with another, socially dominant group.
This collection is a cross-national, comparative investigation of the patterns and dynamics of inter-group economic inequality. A wide range of respected experts discuss such issues as:
*a wide range of groups from the Burakumin in Japan to the scheduled castes and tribes in India
*policy attempts to remedy intergroup inequality
*race and labor market outcomes in Brazil.

Under the impressive editorship of William Darity Jr and Ashwini Deshpande, this collection forms an important book. It will be of interest to students and academics involved in racial studies, the economics of discrimination and labor economics as well as policy makers around the world.

Contents:
Tables, Figures, Introduction, 1. Labour supply 2. Labour demand and productivity 3. Wage determination and inequality 4. Personnel economics 5. Human capital 6. Labour market discrimination 7. Trade unions and labour markets 8. Labour market flexibility 9. Job search and vacancy analysis 10. Unemployment 11. Globalisation and labour markets, Notes, Bibliography, Index

This comparative study of industrial relations provides an analysis of a wide range of phenomena, with a view to uncovering the origins of national diversity. It takes into account the notion of strategic choice, set within a series of constraints of environment, organizational and institutional conditions and power relationships. The book: covers a wide range of examples from the UK, USA, France, Germany Italy, Sweden, Eastern Europe, Latin America, India and Japan; includes a comprehensive analysis of management and employers' associations, labour and trades unions; and examines the role of the state in comparative perspective.

This highly topical study reflects on the current problems faced by social democratic parties in government when espousing policies of severe pragmatism and fiscal prudence, and provides an historical medium-term perspective to both parties' substantial changes in labour market policies. There is now a good deal of interest in the Third Way and the Neue Mitte, and this book provides much needed empirical detail, and solid analysis of the substance of these ideas. It will be of great interest to students and researchers in comparative politics, social democracy and economic policy.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203417542

Evaluation of social programs is now performed with greater frequency and with more methodological rigor than ever before. Yet it is not clear that the programs' effectiveness has improved because of this, or even that evaluation results have a rationalizing effect on policymaking. The author of this volume—which is based on a study of evaluation of U.S. employment and training policy from the passage of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1963 to the welfare reforms of the 1980s and 1990s—argues that the increasing use of social scientific evaluations nonetheless has profound political consequences. Rather than influencing the programs themselves, evaluation research shapes the political discourse surrounding these programs, setting the terms in which the policy is known and discussed, and establishing conditions for entry into the debate. This study shows that even the most technical features of evaluation methodology are objects of a politics of knowledge and are by no means neutral with regard to the politics of the policies themselves. By applying ideas from the sociology of science to the area of applied social science, this work yields new insights that will be of interest to both of these areas. For the sociology of science, it demonstrates the value of this approach beyond the study of the natural sciences. For policy studies, it stimulates reflection on the political implications of methods normally assumed to be politically neutral. The conclusions about the political significance of evaluation research will also be of interest to political sociologists, who will find a novel way of looking at the role of social science in the formation of social policy.

Seninger here identifies and examines the analytical connections between regional growth and development processes and the characteristics of the regional labor force. According to the author, although the idea that a region's economic progress is partly determined by its labor resources is widely accepted, formal economic analyses and policy prescriptions have not always taken this link into consideration--and have therefore failed to generate effective policies for encouraging growth. In an attempt to provide a practical basis for such policies, Seninger draws upon the regional development literature, presenting alternative models in terms of strategies and tactics for policy practice. Scholars and practitioners of regional development will find this a coherent, systematic view of the analytical and policy linkages between economic development, employment, and the work force--one which can serve as the foundation for successful policy design and program implementation.

Seninger's emphasis throughout is on the qualitative, human resource characteristics of a region's work force and its active role in the growth and development process. The applied policy focus of the discussion places the role of labor resources in the context of labor market institutions, theories of regional change, and a region's economic development path. Arguing that the prevailing economic ideology of export-led growth and resource mobility is responsible for labor policies which are reactions to growth rather than initiators of growth, Seninger attempts to provide a workable foundation for policies which both utilize a region's labor resource advantages and extend the income/employment growth objective to other goals, including employment stability and enhanced job quality.

This book, adopting a multidisciplinary approach, investigates the definition of autonomous work and the kind of protection it receives and should receive in a global perspective. The book advocates for the existence of genuine autonomous work to be distinguished from employment and false self-employment. It deserves specific attention from legislators in the view of removing any obstacles to the exercise of freedom of association and collective action at large. The book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the evolving notion of autonomy and its consequences on social protection, offering a theoretical frame from an organizational, political and legal point of view. The second aims at discovering new regulatory and protective horizons for autonomous work, in the light of blockchain, platform work, EU Competition Law, social security and liberal professions. Finally, the authors offer insights and recommendations on how to protect work beyond categories.

This is the tenth volume in a series discussing research on occupations and professions. Topics covered in this title include: rural Chinese household workers in Beijing; immigration, tradition, community and gender; the professionalization of real estate sales work; and, legal practice boundaries.

This book explores the gender issues associated with international migration in dual career households. Adopting a feminist approach, the author links research in economics, sociology, management and business and human geography to explore post-industrial managerial and professional careers. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which social mobility and spatial mobility are entwined.
The author explores the location and mobility decisions of dual career households, examining their personal and household biographies as well as published statistics.
The chapters examine the following aspects of the subject:
Of essential interest to scholars of human geography, sociology and gender studies, this book will also interest those working in organizational, migration and urban studies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203470753

The emergence of voluntary corporate codes of conduct since the early 1990s is both a manifestation of and a response to the process of globalization. They have been part of a more general shift away from state regulation of transnational corporations towards and emphasis on corporate self-regulation in the areas of labour and environmental standards and human rights. This work provides a critical perspective on the growth and significance of corporate codes with a particular focus on working conditions and labour rights. It brings together work by academics, practitioners and activists.

'All in all, the chapters of the volume provide insightful material 'about how different forms of precarious work are linked to speci?c institutional changes in the labour market and laws governing it but also how they are linked to each other'. . . Situated in the ?eld of Global Labour Studies, the volume goes beyond one of the most central weaknesses of the discipline: its optimistic bias. By systematically including cases in which trade failed or chose not to engage in the organization of precarious workers, the contributions pave the way to a deeper understanding of the challenges within this ?eld.' - British Journal of Industrial Relations With the renaissance of market politics on a global scale, precarious work has become pervasive. This edited collection explores the spread across a number of economic sectors and countries worldwide of work that is invariably insecure, dirty, low-paid, and often temporary and/or part-time. The first part of this cross-disciplinary book analyses the different forms of precarious work that have arisen over the past thirty years in both the Global North and South. These transformations are captured in ethnographically orientated chapters on sweatshops, day labour, homework, Chinese construction workers unpaid contract work, the introduction of insecure contracting into the Korean automotive industry, and the insecurity of Brazilian sugarcane cutters. The case studies all shed light upon how the nature of work and the workplace are changing under the pressures of neoliberal capitalism and what this means for workers. In the second part the editors and contributors then detail some of the ways in which precarious workers are seeking to improve their own situations through their efforts to counter the growth of precarity under neoliberal capitalism, efforts that involve collectively exploring forms of resistance to work restructuring and the failures of traditional trade unions to fully engage with precarious work's growth. Illustrating the impacts of the expansion of precarious work, this book will appeal to students, academics and those generally interested in the issues of the global economy, the reworking of labour markets, the impacts of neoliberal capitalism and ethnographies of the working poor in various parts of the world. Contributors include: L.L.M. Aguiar, M.J. Barreto, S. Chauvin, J. Cock, B. Garvey, M. Gillan, D. Hattatoglu, A. Herod, L. Huilin, K. Joynt, R. Lambert, P. Ngai, J. Tate, M. Thomas, E. Webster, A. Yun

My interest in X-Efficiency (XE) dates back to 1978. At the time, I was writing the dissertation for my Ph. D. at Washington State University. My dissertation was concerned with the role of attitudes in the school-to-work transition among young men. I was advised by Professor Millard Hastay (a member of my committee) to look at Leibenstein's "new" book, Beyond Economic Man. One of the things that caught my attention was his be havioral description of (selective) rationality. It seemed that Leibenstein's behavioral description of a (selectively) rational individual was very similar to what psychologists such as Abraham Maslow were reporting as being the product of a particular motivational system. In other words, I was im pressed with the idea that what Leibenstein was referring to as X-ineffi ciency was being discussed by psychologists as "the way it (often) is. " So from the beginning I always considered the concept of X-(in)efficiency to be a valuable one for understanding human behavior. I have since come to believe that this is particularly true when considering behavior in non market environments, i. e., within the firm. Work on this book, however, can most realistically said to have started with work which I began in 1982 while I was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Professor Leibenstein suggested that I consider how some em pirical evidence which was being cited as evidence for the role of property rights might also be consistent with XE theory."

Wage setting has historically been a deeply political and cultural as well as economic process. This informative and accessible book explores how US wage regulations in the twentieth century took gender, race-ethnicity and class into account. Focusing on social reform movements for living wages and equal wages, it offers an interdisciplinary account of how women's work and the remuneration for that work has changed along with the massive transformations in the economy and family structures.
The controversial issue of establishing living wages for all workers makes this book both a timely and indispensable contribution to this wide ranging debate, and it will surely become required reading for anyone with an interest in modern economic issues.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held to assess the current state of the analysis of the labour market and of industrial relations and their relationship to economic performance.;The matters covered include the value of the corporatist approach versus alternatives, for example, a sort of sector corporatism or a corporatist approach at the level of the firm; the future scenarios for industrial relations with a series of county studies with special reference to incomes policies and the departures from various neocorporatist models; the importance of institutions and public structures in industrial relations; labour market flexibility and unemployment.

This text provides an essential introduction to the ideas and skills of creative problem solving. It shows how and why people are blocked in their thinking, how this impairs the creative problem solving process, and how creative problem solving techniques can help overcome these difficulties. Theories of creative thinking are critically examined and used to justify the variety of techniques which can be used to find insights into difficult management problems. Contents include: * paradigm shift and the need for creative thinking in management * blocks to creativity and how to overcome them * defining and redefining problems * Extensive explanations and illustrations of the methods and techniques of the creative problem solving process - Lateral Thinking, Morphological Analysis and Synectics * evaluating ideas - qualitative and quantitative approaches * implementing and managing ideas. Using case-studies and case histories, together with extensive diagrams, examples and thought-provoking questions, this textbook provides the most up-to-date and extensive approach to this important topic.

Het is mogelijk dat het orimogelijk is om iets nieuwer enjuister te zeggen, maar over al het geschrevene daalt het stof der tijden neer, en ik peins daarom dat het goed is als er om de 10 jaar een andere een kruis trekt over al die oude dingen, en de wereld-van-vandaag opnieuw uitspreekt 1 met andere woorden. -Louis Paul Boon (1972) 1.1 THE PROBLEM The distribution of labor incomes is a problem with two aspects, each of which has received ample attention in the literature. The first aspect relates to the shape of the frequency distribution of individuals according to their (labor) incomes. Analytical contributions include the so-called stochastic theories of income dis- tribution, such as Gibrat's law of proportionate effect, Champernowne's and Rutherford's Markov-chain models, and Pigou's puzzle. The question is, If abil- ities are normally distributed, why should the distribution of incomes deviate from this shape? This deviation is the basic fact that these theories explain: in- come distributions, whatever the time and place of observation, are positively skewed. 2 CHAPTER 1 The second aspect of the distribution of labor incomes is the problem of wage differentials: why do wages differ, why do all workers not earn the same wage? This question has been a standard problem ever since Adam Smith dealt with it.

This book challenges some of the fundamental tenets of "free market" economics that have had a profound impact on public policy and the plight of the American worker. These include the beliefs that high wages inevitably mean low profits; that a "free" market will automatically reduce discrimination and pay inequality; that anti-trust legislation hinders competitive market forces; and that minimum wage laws and trade unions negatively impact the economy.

Using both theoretical analysis and real-life examples, the author shows that these myths are a product of unrealistic behavioral assumptions on the part of "free market" economists about the typical worker. In fact, as the author makes clear, the level of workers' satisfaction with their jobs, as a reflection of how well they are paid and treated by their employers, has a direct impact on the quality level of the products they produce and, inevitably, the economic performance of the firms.

In many countries, the number of people working beyond pension age is increasing. This volume investigates this trend in seven different countries, examining the contexts of this development and the consequences of the shifting relationship between work and retirement.

The emergence of open unemployment is an unavoidable consequence of postcommunist transition. Some countries - notably in the former Soviet Union - initially slowed economic contraction. But in the longer run slower reformers have generally sustained deeper and more prolonged recessions than faster reforming central European countries. Moreover, the initially low unemployment rates in the former Soviet Union are now rising, and may stabilize at higher post-transition equilibrium rates than in Central Europe. Across the region, real wages reacted in unexpected ways, with significant effects for employment. Productivity gains in Central European industry tended not to be passed along into proportional real wage increases, slowing inflows into unemployment. In addition, and contrary to some earlier assessments, the restructuring process affected not only wage structures, but also the level of unemployment over time. An important constraint on post-socialist countries' response to unemployment is the role served by EU social insurance and labour law standards as guides to countries' progress toward "normal" economic systems. When considering the possible impact of EU integration and ha

This book discusses skill formation, upskilling of workers, and their interaction with technological change in Gulf countries. Heavy dependence on oil, the 'Dutch Disease', and the high incidence of unskilled foreign workers have caused serious structural imbalances in the labour market in the Gulf. The author shows that success of economic development strategies to address such imbalances are all contingent upon the development of adequate and appropriate skills in the region. This book confirms the role and impact of the deficiencies in the educational system alongside the well established effects of the excessive use of uneducated foreign workers and lack of incentives in the labour market. A comprehensive investigation of the skill problem and an elaborate in-depth analysis to assess the causes, consequences and relationships between poor skills and technological performance are highlights of this book. This is an ideal resource for policy makers in the Gulf region and researchers of the topic.

John Hicks's writing on monetary economics spans over 50 years. This book draws together the common threads of his work in a single succinct statement of the basics of monetary theory. It also outlines a theory of competitive markets which can be linked to the monetary sector; neither standard classical or neo-classical value theory can , on its own, fill the gap between monetary and non-monetary economics. In reviewing his own work, Hicks explains the way in which economic theory has been adjusted to reflect developments in the real economy. He sees these changes, sometimes quite major, as the discovery of truths which have become more appropriate, rather than the the discovery of completely new truths.

The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450-1800" looks at the growth of a professional working class from the Tudor period to the early nineteenth century, a working class vital in the development of a recognizably modern world. "Examines the differences between the 'lettered' and the leisured classes and explores the lives of lawyers, politicians, physicians, teachers and clerics. Those interested in British or social history. Hardcover - 0-582-29265-4 $ 84.95 y