Drawing on a selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this book discusses globalisation and digitalisation as drivers for structural change and examines the implications for labour. It explores the role of digital technology in new business models and how it can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South.

Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models and how it can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

From executives complaining that their teams don't contribute ideas to employees giving up because their input isn't valued--company culture is the culprit. Courageous Cultures provides a road map to build a high-performance, high-engagement culture around sharing ideas, solving problems, and rewarding contributions from all levels. Many leaders are convinced they have an open environment that encourages employees to speak up and are shocked when they learn that employees are holding back. Employees have ideas and want to be heard. Leadership wants to hear them. Too often, however, employees and leaders both feel that no one cares about making things better. The disconnect typically only widens over time, with both sides becoming more firmly entrenched in their viewpoints. Becoming a courageous culture means building teams of microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates working together. In our world of rapid change, a courageous culture is your competitive advantage. It ensures that your company is "sticky" for both customers and employees. In Courageous Cultures, you'll learn practical tools that help you: Learn the difference between microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates and how they work together. See how the latest research conducted by the authors confirms why organizations struggle when it comes to creating strong cultures where employees are encouraged to contribute their best thinking. Learn proven models and tools that leaders can apply throughout all levels of the organization, to reengage and motivate employees. Understand best practices from companies around the world and learn how to apply these strategies and techniques in your own organization. This book provides you with the practical tools to uncover, leverage, and scale the best ideas from every level of your organization.

Practising Learning and Development in South African Organisations 4e offers an outcomes-based, occupation-directed and work-based L&D approach to workplace learning design.

Integrating theoretical and practical perspectives, this book gives a comprehensive overview of the National Skills Development Framework. It further presents a new chapter on online learning design which caters to the needs of a digital society.

Key Benefits:

• An updated overview of skills development legislation and the implications for workplace learning design, delivery, assessment, evaluation and quality assurance in the South African context
• Insight into the psychology of adult learning, motivation and performance
• Guides students and L&D professionals through the classical Dynamic Learning Cycle
• Practical guidelines for both modern online learning design and outcomes and work-based learning design, delivery, assessment and evaluation
• Explores the dynamics and methods of effective learning and development needs analysis, and how a needs analysis informs the workplace skills plan
• Explores L&D management from an HRD strategic and value-adding perspective
• Guides L&D professionals regarding the profession, ethical standards and values, and their continued professional development

The issue of gender in organizations has attracted much attention and debate over a number of years. The focus of examination is inequality of opportunity between the genders and the impact this has on organizations, individual men and women, and society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the case that progress has been made with women participating in organizational life in greater numbers and at more senior levels than has been historically the case, challenging notions that senior and/or influential organizational and political roles remain a masculine domain. The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations is a comprehensive analysis of thinking and research on gender in organizations with original contributions from key international scholars in the field. The Handbook comprises four sections. The first looks at the theoretical roots and potential for theoretical development in respect of the topic of gender in organizations. The second section focuses on leadership and management and the gender issues arising in this field; contributors review the extensive literature and reflect on progress made as well as commenting on hurdles yet to be overcome. The third section considers the gendered nature of careers. Here the focus is on querying traditional approaches to career, surfacing embedded assumptions within traditional approaches, and assessing potential for alternative patterns to evolve, taking into account the nature of women's lives and the changing nature of organizations. In its final section the Handbook examines masculinity in organizations to assess the diversity of masculinities evident within organizations and the challenges posed to those outside the norm. In bringing together a broad range of research and thinking on gender in organizations across a number of disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual perspectives, the Handbook provides a comprehensive view of both contemporary thinking and future research directions.

Cut 50% of your meetings and improve the ones that remain.

Meetings are essential to collaboration and decision making, but they are often irrelevant, time consuming and badly run. People spend an average of 2 days per week in meetings and 50% of it is wasted. This book will help you win back that wasted day a week by cutting out the half of face to face and virtual meetings that do not need to happen and radically improving the ones that remain.

The two authors, one an experienced CEO and consultant to major multinationals, the other a millennial line manager working within one of the world’s largest companies, find common ground, and occasional disagreements on creating new ways of meeting both face to face and through technology that are far more engaging and effective for everyone.

The book focuses on three main areas:

• Dealing with the business and corporate cultural challenges in changing the way we meet
• Cutting out the unnecessary topics and participants that make up 50% of todays meetings
• Designing and running faster and more focused face to face and online meetings with more relevant content; clearer decisions and actions, and much higher levels of participation

Full of examples and practical tools that will improve everything from your regular team meetings to management meetings, online conferences, global meetings and big events. This book will lead you through practical actions and targets to kill the meetings that do not need to happen and radically improve the ones that remain.

Mission in the world of work has been neglected by the churches within the UK for decades. The Kingdom at Work Project addresses this crippling failure. It sets out a new and comprehensive model of mission for the transformation of the workplace. The model is founded on a radical theology of community and related spirituality which guide and empower an innovative process of discernment and intervention. The last covers individual and collective action, dialogue, the use of symbols, prayer and worship. Mentoring, the role of chaplains and ministers in secular employment, and the responsibilities of the gathered church are key issues covered in depth. This book is the most thorough and imaginative exploration of mission in the world of work to appear for many years.

This is an ambitious and engaging book. It lays the foundations for a methodology that bridges entrepreneurship researchers?' need to provide explanations and practitioners?' need to make their local world comprehensible --? by calling the researcher to also practise as an entrepreneur. Disclosing Entrepreneurship as Practice outlines and demonstrates this '?enactive?' approach and its outcomes in terms of a proposed practice theory of entrepreneurship. Presenting entrepreneurship as a sense-making, stabilising force in a liquid and ambiguous world, accordingly addressed as ?'entrepreneuring?', Bengt Johannisson argues that the duality of shrewdness and prudence provides the appropriate knowledge needed to practice entrepreneurship. By generalising entrepreneurship as creative organizing in multiple arenas beyond just the market, and conceptualising entrepreneurship as practice, this book presents a compelling rationale for considering entrepreneuring as ?'routinized improvisation?' dealing with situations as they arise. Reflective and thoughtful, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of entrepreneurship concerned with theoretical and methodological matters, as well as those engaged with qualitative methodology in the social sciences.

The definitive guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Find out why Adam Grant says "If every leader took the ideas in this book seriously, the world would be a less miserable, more productive place."

Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.”

Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.

Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process (while still trying to clean it up).

'Kind, realistic and genuinely helpful' Observer 'Bravo on the publication of this witty, wise guide to solo working' Alice Lascelles 'Filled to the brim with advice . . . Such a brilliant book' Emma Gannon Whether by choice or circumstance, as a freelancer or a company employee working from home, more of us are becoming solo workers than ever before. But once you've made the leap, how to do you actually work well in isolation? And how can you thrive while working alone? Picking up where the freelancer bibles stop, Solo addresses what we gain but also miss when we shift from the structure of an office environment to the solitary confines of our homes or studios. Blending the latest research in psychology, economics and social science with guided self-examination and more than ten years of freelance experience, Rebecca Seal shows you how to stay resilient, productive and focused in a company of one. Practical and inspiring, she also explores the idea of meaningful work and helps you define your own success.

Large-scale interconnected systems have become more prominent in society due to a higher demand for sustainable development. As such, it is imperative to create effective methods and techniques to control such systems. Large-Scale Fuzzy Interconnected Control Systems Design and Analysis is an innovative source of academic research that discusses the latest approaches to control large-scale systems, and the challenges that occur when implementing them. Highlighting a critical range of topics such as system stability, system stabilization, and fuzzy rules, this book is an ideal publication for engineers, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in the design of large-scale interconnected systems.

This book focuses on rules for teleworking generated by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) that exist without a national strategy. The research goes further to address implications for everyday situations, many that already existed before the pandemic. The research offers an opportunity to take a new look at teleworking in all situations regardless of the reasons that make it necessary or prudent. This book addresses telework issues and answers: trustworthiness, performance, productivity, employee risk, achievement, accountability, emotional intelligence, and radical change. It addresses the need for and the existence of a shared understanding where leaders and employees openly discuss the challenges presented by teleworking. It also asks whether there are impediments or obstacles that organizations could remove or reduce to enable employees to accomplish the same amount of work they are currently doing in the office, but in a shorter duration of time while teleworking. This work conducts a deeper evaluation of telework than is currently available in relevant literature so that we can understand how to build strengths and mitigate weaknesses in trustworthiness and performance as they are applied in organizational development. The evaluation begins with a description of the current state of teleworking. This examination identifies plans and resources that can be used to improve teleworking tomorrow. This book also collects and analyzes LMX - leader-member exchange - to ensure the lens of evaluation is focused on all parties from member to leader to CEO. It examines whether organizations have made decisions to mandate or encourage teleworking formally and informally, making the possibility of participation available to the whole organization.

With the globalization and growth of world economic markets, the importance of a strong workforce has become paramount to business success. Organizations cannot achieve this global reach unless they intend to tackle issues regarding equality in the workplace. In a time when sustainability and corporate responsibility have become the norm, organizations value the creation of an egalitarian workplace. Macro and Micro-Level Issues Surrounding Women in the Workforce: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly resource that voices issues and challenges faced by women and provides guidance for organizations in developing strategic initiatives to involve women in decision-making processes and improve women's wellbeing in the workplace. The book explores macro (socio-economic) and micro-level (organizational) issues in relation to women's positions at work including occupational segregation, gender pay gap, diversity management, and socio-cultural roles attached to women. It is essential for executives, managers, executive board members, human resources professionals, policymakers, business practitioners, academicians, researchers, corporate professionals, and students.

Although the Latin American region has shown an impressive growth in educational attainment over the past two decades, that education has failed to yield expected benefits. A mounting body of research and policy debates argues that the quantity of education is not an adequate metric of human capital acquisition. Rather, individuals' skills - what they actually know and can do - should stand as policy targets and be fostered across the life course. Evidence from around the world shows that both cognitive and socio-emotional skills are demanded by employers and favorably affect a range of outcomes, including educational attainment and employment outcomes. Through original empirical research investigating the role of cognitive and socio-emotional skills in shaping adults' labour market outcomes in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru, supplemented by similar studies in other Latin American countries, this review confirms that cognitive skills matter for reaping labour market gains in terms of higher wages and formal jobs in Latin America; but so do socio-emotional skills. Moreover, socio-emotional skills seem to particularly influence labour force participation and tertiary education attendance as a platform to build knowledge. The study also presents a policy framework for skills development by: (i) providing insights by developmental psychologists about when people are neuro-biologically, socio-emotionally, and situationally ready to develop socio-emotional skills, and (ii) suggesting new directions in cognitive development.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the home as a workplace became a widely discussed topic. However, for almost 300 million workers around the world, paid work from home was not news. Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021) includes contributions from scholars, activists and artists addressing the past and present conditions of home-based work. They discuss the institutional and legal histories of regulations for these workers, their modes of organization and resistance, as well as providing new insights on contemporary home-based work in both traditional and developing sectors. Contributors are: Jane Barrett, Janine Berg, Eloisa Betti, Chris Bonner, Eileen Boris, Patricia Conoman Carrilo, Janhavi Dave, Saniye Dedeoglu, Laura K Ekholm, Jenna Harvey, Frida Hallander, K. Kalpana, Srabani Maitra, Indrani Mazumdar, Gabriela Mitidieri, Silke Neunsinger, Malin Nilsson, Narumol Nirathron, Asa Norman, Leda Papastefanaki, Archana Prasad, Maria Tamboukou, Nina Trige Andersen, and Marlese von Broembsen.

The development of any organization is deeply connected with the influences of its employees. By implementing new competencies in the workforce, both the employees and the business overall can thrive. The Handbook of Research on Human Factors in Contemporary Workforce Development is a pivotal source for the latest scholarly perspectives on social aspects and employee influences on modern business environments. Including a range of topics such as gender diversity, performance appraisal, and job satisfaction, this publication is an ideal reference for academics, professionals, students, and practitioners seeking content on optimizing development in contemporary organizations.

Managing employees in today’s rapidly evolving workplace can sometimes feel like negotiating a minefield. Such recent new trends as flextime, telecommting, 360-degree feedback, the flattening of hierarchies, and the increased use of temps and contract workers present tough new challenges for supervisors in every field. This timely, completely revised and updated edition of Ferdinand Fournies’s classic management coaching bible shows you proven ways to get workers to perform at the highest level while eliminating the self-destructive kinds of behaviors that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years.

In this book, you’ll be taught specific face-to-face interventions you can use to enhance performance in every kind of workplace situation--from sales to creative brainstorming. There are also interventions uniquely suited to resolving problems ranging from low productivity to absenteeism to conflicts between individuals. You’ll learn precisely what to say and do so that each person you supervise will want to give you his or her best work--even when that person was previously thought to be a problem employee. Packed with brand-new case studies from Fournies’s latest research into the dynamics of the modern workplace, this classic guide takes all the guesswork out of becoming the kind of inspired, hands-on manager that every company today is looking for!

A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented experiment that reshaped white-collar work and turned remote work into a kind of "new normal." Now comes the hard part. Many employees want to continue that normal and keep working remotely, and most at least want the ability to work occasionally from home. But for employers, the benefits of employees working from home or hybrid approaches are not so obvious. What should both groups do? In a prescient new book, The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face, Wharton professor Peter Cappelli lays out the facts in an effort to provide both employees and employers with a vision of their futures. Cappelli unveils the surprising tradeoffs both may have to accept to get what they want. Cappelli illustrates the challenges we face by in drawing lessons from the pandemic and deciding what to do moving forward. Do we allow some workers to be permanently remote? Do we let others choose when to work from home? Do we get rid of their offices? What else has to change, depending on the approach we choose? His research reveals there is no consensus among business leaders. Even the most high-profile and forward-thinking companies are taking divergent approaches: Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies say many employees can work remotely on a permanent basis. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and others say it is important for everyone to come back to the office. Ford is redoing its office space so that most employees can work from home at least part of the time, and GM is planning to let local managers work out arrangements on an ad-hoc basis. As Cappelli examines, earlier research on other types of remote work, including telecommuting offers some guidance as to what to expect when some people will be in the office and others work at home, and also what happened when employers tried to take back offices. Neither worked as expected. In a call to action for both employers and employees, Cappelli explores how we should think about the choices going forward as well as who wins and who loses. As he implores, we have to choose soon.

Organizations are rapidly shifting the way that individuals conceptualize, participate, and engage in work. A significant change is how organizations are coordinating, arranging, and organizing the activities of their employees for the accomplishments of organizational goals. Communication, Relationships and Practices in Virtual Work characterizes the nuanced communication, relational, and practical dynamics that characterize virtual working in contemporary organizations. This reference work addresses virtual teams, peer relationships in virtual work, mentoring, vertical mobility, diversity in the virtual workspace, productivity and the postmodern aesthetic, and the communication practices and processes of dispersed work configurations.

Identity matters. Who we are in terms of our intersecting identities such as gender, race, social class, (dis)ability, geography, and religion are integral to who we are and how we navigate work and life. Unfortunately, many people have yet to grasp this understanding and, as a result, so many of our work spaces lack appropriate responses to what this means. Therefore, Identity Intersectionalities, Mentoring, and Work?life (Im) balance: Educators (Re)negotiate the Personal, Professional, and Political, the most recent installment of the work?life balance series, uses an intersectional perspective to critically examine the concept of work?life balance. In an effort to build on the first book in the series, that focused on professors in educational leadership preparation programs, the authors here represent educators across the P?20 pipeline (primary and secondary schools in addition to higher education). This book is also unique in that it includes the voices of practitioners, students, and academics from a variety of related disciplines within the education profession, enabling the editors to include a diverse group of educators whose many voices speak to work?life balance in unique and very personal ways. Contributing authors challenge whether the concept of work?life balance might be conceived as a privileged -and even an impractical?endeavor. Yet, the bottom line is, conceptions of work?life balance are exceptionally complex and vary widely depending on one's many roles and intersecting identities. Moreover, this book considers how mentoring is important to negotiating the politics that come with balancing work and life; especially, if those intersecting identities are frequently associated with unsolicited stereotypes that impede upon one's academic, professional and personal pursuits in life. Finally, the editors argue that the power to authentically "be ourselves" is not only important to individual success, but also beneficial to fostering an institutional culture and climate that is truly supportive of and responsive to diversity, equity, and justice. Taken together, the voices in this book are a clarion call for P?12 and higher education professionals and organizations to envision how identity intersectionalities might become an every?day understanding, a normalized appreciation, and a customary commitment that translates into policy and practice.

Information Management is useful to students who are currently involved in handling information in any office environment.

The aim of this module is to equip office employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to manage information in the office relating to budgeting, buying and selling, wages and salaries, petty cash, banking and insurance. The credit calculation is based on the assumption that students are already competent in terms of the following outcomes or areas of learning when starting to study towards this section standard, namely: a senior certificate or equivalent NQF level 4 qualification; the ability to study independently and communicate effectively in the language of instruction; and the ability to perform basic arithmetic calculations.

The module is set to enable one to:

• understand the financial function of an organisation;
• understand the basic concepts of financial management;
• draw up and manage the office budget;
• manage the buying and selling activities in an office;
• manage the wages and salaries in an office;
• manage the petty cash in an office;
• understand the banking issues related to an organisation; and
• understand the basics of insurance in an organisation.

The way we manage organizations seems increasingly out of date. Survey after survey shows that a majority of employees feel disengaged from their companies. The epidemic of organizational disillusionment goes way beyond Corporate America-teachers, doctors, and nurses are leaving their professions in record numbers because the way we run schools and hospitals kills their vocation. Government agencies and nonprofits have a noble purpose, but working for these entities often feels soulless and lifeless just the same. All these organizations suffer from power games played at the top and powerlessness at lower levels, from infighting and bureaucracy, from endless meetings and a seemingly never-ending succession of change and cost-cutting programs. Deep inside, we long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion, and purpose. The solution, according to many progressive scholars, lies with more enlightened management. But reality shows that this is not enough. In most cases, the system beats the individual-when managers or leaders go through an inner transformation, they end up leaving their organizations because they no longer feel like putting up with a place that is inhospitable to the deeper longings of their soul. We need more enlightened leaders, but we need something more: enlightened organizational structures and practices. But is there even such a thing? Can we conceive of enlightened organizations? In this groundbreaking book, the author shows that every time humanity has shifted to a new stage of consciousness in the past, it has invented a whole new way to structure and run organizations, each time bringing extraordinary breakthroughs in collaboration. A new shift in consciousness is currently underway. Could it help us invent a radically more soulful and purposeful way to run our businesses and nonprofits, schools and hospitals? The pioneering organizations researched for this book have already "cracked the code." Their founders have fundamentally questioned every aspect of management and have come up with entirely new organizational methods. Even though they operate in very different industries and geographies and did not know of each other's experiments, the structures and practices they have developed are remarkably similar. It's hard not to get excited about this finding: a new organizational model seems to be emerging, and it promises a soulful revolution in the workplace. Reinventing Organizations describes in practical detail how organizations large and small can operate in this new paradigm. Leaders, founders, coaches, and consultants will find this work a joyful handbook, full of insights, examples, and inspiring stories.

Never before has the world witnessed the phenomenon of severe stress and burnout on such a large scale as in recent years. Globalization, technological advances and economic meltdown have brought about a plethora of unprecedented challenges for industry and organizations across the globe. Consequently, executives have been under growing stress due to economic uncertainties, mergers and acquisitions, role erosion and restructuring, resulting in increased workloads, longer hours and demands for greater productivity and efficiency. This changing environment has created job insecurity, anxiety, dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion causing a rapid increase in executive burnout. This book provides the most comprehensive analysis of the construct of burnout, including its magnitude, a global research review, a typology of models, comparisons between professions and consequences of burnout for individuals and organizations. In addition, it provides the views of mental health professionals, empirically derived causes, symptoms and coping techniques, while throwing light on preventative measures and comparing Eastern and Western approaches to mitigate the effects of burnout.