Two pioneering researchers identify key causes of workplace burnout and reveal what managers can do to promote increased productivity and health. Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue-a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why this is not the case. Burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace. Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity. Maslach and Leiter provide useful tools for identifying the signs of employee burnout, most often exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. They also advise managers on assembling and interpreting worker self-evaluation surveys, which can reveal workplace problems and potential solutions. And when it comes to implementing change, Maslach and Leiter offer practical, evidence-driven guidance. The key, they argue, is to begin with less-taxing changes that employees nonetheless find meaningful, seeding the ground for more thorough reforms in the future. Experts estimate that more than $500 billion and 550 million workhours are lost annually to on-the-job stress, much of it caused by dysfunctional work environments. As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.

Flexible Work: Designing Our Healthier Future Lives examines flexible working through the lens of social science, in particular using psychological perspective to address not only what forms of flexible working there are and how they are evolving but also their prospect in the future of work. Bringing together views from thought-leaders and underpinned by research evidence, this book addresses two of the most fundamental business challenges for large and medium organisations - mental health and productivity - calling for the bridging of science and policy to design flexible working for our future healthier lives. Growing from these foundations, this book explains the latest landscape in flexible working, looking at employee psychological health and productivity, including showing up for work sick. Perspectives are provided from around the world on leadership, line management, 'over attachment' with technology, commuting, skill-based inequality and control over working time. Readers are offered insights into the relevance of flexible working for a diverse workforce - invisible disabilities, disabilities, older workers and blended families. Throughout, the book offers suggestions for shaping future policy, practice and research. Each chapter concludes with recommendations, making this essential reading for students, academics, human resource practitioners, policy-influencers, policymakers and professionals interested in flexible work.

This is a short guide on sit-stand working in the office. It reviews the research on sitting and standing at work from the 1950s to present and provides guidance for specialists, therapists, practitioners, and managers. The book is illustrated with many photos and figures, provides guidance for active working at the end of every chapter, and is understandable to the layman as well as the specialist. With the increased emphasis on healthy lifestyles, coupled with the obesity and overweight epidemic, many are claiming that we should spend more time standing at work. Some have even claimed that sitting is the new smoking. Readers of the book will learn and understand what is behind these claims, what stacks-up, what doesn't, and be able to make informed decisions about whether to invest in new facilities, and what to invest. This book is of value to human factors specialists, physical therapists, chiropractors and occupational health practitioners, architects, and facilities managers. Features Explains the origins of sedentary office work Summarizes the health risks of sitting and standing and how to avoid them Reviews new research on active working and practical ways of developing active working habits in the office Discusses the obesogenic workplace, and how to avoid it Includes over 60 key points to help you decide how to be more active at work

Stuck in a job that’s boring you to tears? Slogging away at a business that’s never quite taken off? Still can’t decide what you’d rather do? It’s time to say ‘enough’.

The world has changed. It’s now possible for anyone to make a living from doing the things they love. The only problem is that no one has shown you how. Until now.

Based on life-changing ideas and tools proven with tens of thousands of people over the last decade, F**k Work Let’s Play is your blueprint to create a work-life full of fun, freedom and creativity; something more like play than work.

Packed full of stories from people who turned a passion into a living – or even a multi-million-pound business – you’ll discover 10 secrets to transform your working life, starting today.

There’s no need to suffer unfulfilling work a moment longer. Whether you want to start a business, create your ideal job, or change the world, F**k Work, Let’s Play is your guide to doing what you love and getting paid for it.

Organizational culture is a quiet, but driving, influence on our perception of a company, whether as a consumer or as an employee. For instance, we know Southwest Airlines as laid back and friendly. We think of Google as innovative. To almost every well-known company we can assign a character. It is now well recognized that corporate culture has a significant impact on organizational health and performance. Yet, the concept of corporate culture and culture management is too often tantalizingly elusive.
In this book, Flamholtz and Randle define culture, identifying and explaining the five key dimensions that determine it: a customer orientation; a people orientation; a process orientation; strong standards of performance and accountability; innovation and openness to change. They explain why culture is a critical factor in organizational success and failure--a key determinant of financial performance. Then, they provide a theoretically sound, highly practical, and field-tested method for managing corporate culture--presenting a set of international and domestic cases that show how actual companies have leveraged culture as the ultimate source of sustainable competitive advantage. In addition to well-known companies such as Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, IBM, and Toyota, the text presents lesser known culture stars, such as Smartmatic and Infogix.
While other titles on culture have focused too heavily on the organization as a psychological being, or on academic studies of culture as a business lever, "Corporate Culture" draws on empirics to present a go-to, must-read guide for leveraging corporate culture as a source of competitive advantage and as a means of impacting the bottom line.

Every customer-facing corporation has at least one call center. In the United States, call centers handle a billion calls per year. Call Center Operation gives you complete coverage of the critical issues involved in the design, implementation, organization, and management of a customer call center. Sharp provides information on advanced technology tools for workforce management, workshop examples for training call center staff, and an analysis of the significance of the call center to overall corporate customer relationship strategies.
A special feature of the book is its focus on call center case studies, describing a number of successful call center strategies and best practices, selected from various business sectors - financial, retail, healthcare, travel, technology, and others. These case studies provide useful guidelines based on successful corporate call centers that will guide you in establishing and maintaining the most effective call center operation for your enterprise.
-Presents key concepts and techniques, including a formal development process, in a real-world context
-Provides extensive management guidelines
-Stresses the importance of staff selection and training

There are 60 million health care workers globally and most of this workforce consists of nurses, as they are key providers of primary health care. Historically, the global nurse occupation has been predominately female and segregated along gendered, racialised and classed hierarchies. In the last decade, new actors have emerged in the management of health care human resources, specifically from the corporate sector, which has created new interactions, networks, and organisational practices. This book urgently calls for the reconceptualisation in the theoretical framing of the globalised nurse occupation from International Human Resource Management (IHRM) to Transnational Human Resource Management (THRM). Specifically, the book draws on critical human resource management literature and transnational feminist theories to frame the strategies and practices used to manage nurses across geographical sites of knowledge production and power, which centralise on how and by whom nurses are managed. In its current managerial form, the author argues that the nurses are constructed and produced as resources to be packaged for clients in public and private organisations.

Strategy is becoming more 'open' - more transparent and more inclusive. Opening Strategy tells the story of how corporate strategists and strategy consultants have worked since the middle of the last century to open up the strategy process. First strategic planning, then strategic management, and now 'open strategy' have all brought more people into the strategy process and provided more strategic information, for the benefit of both business and society at large. Informed by interviews with corporate strategists and consultants at leading firms such as General Electric and McKinsey & Co, and drawing on the historical archives of strategy's pioneers, this book provides vivid insights into the trials and tribulations of practice change in the strategy profession. Above all, it stresses the hard work of the little recognized and sometimes eccentric individuals who have been leaders in practice change. By building on a wide range of illustrations, covering both successes and failures, the book draws out general lessons for practice innovation in strategy. Those studying the topic will be able to set standard strategy techniques in historical and social context and develop new areas for investigation, while practising executives and consultants should gain a sense of how to innovate in strategy - and how not to.

Is your organization strategically prepared for the digital and distributed workplace? Technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence already impact how people work and engage with organizations. A dispersed workforce, greater transparency, social change, generational shift and value chain disruptions are driving new behaviors and expectations from the workplace. Together, these trends are shaping a new era of distributed and digitally enabled network of workers where the work comes to workers instead of the workers going to work. In Humans at Work, employee and workplace experience experts Anna Tavis and Stela Lupushor advocate for the adoption of human-centric practices as a critical and necessary part of adapting work and workplaces to the future of work. Outlining the four factors (digitization of work, distributed workplaces, organizational redesign and changing workforce) driving the dramatic changes in the workplace, each chapter provides examples of how innovative companies are building workplace infrastructure and reshaping norms, serving new markets and adopting new technologies. Filled with examples from both start-ups and established companies, Humans at Work is the workplace leader's guide to building a workplace that creates market value by making work more human.

Whether you call it "harvesting intangible assets" or "intellectual property management," organizations must make the most of everything they have to remain competitive and experience continual growth. In this thought-provoking book, author Andrew J. Sherman shares insights and expertise gleaned from his work with some of the world's leading companies who have capitalized on intellectual assets such as patents, trademarks, customer information, software codes, databases, business models, home-grown processes, and employee expertise. Featuring instructive examples from organizations including Proctor & Gamble, IBM, and Google, Harvesting Intangible Assets reveals how companies large or small can uncover their intellectual property rights that are hiding just below the strategic surface. You'll learn how to implement IP-driven growth and licensing strategies, foster a culture of innovation, turn research and development into revenue, and maximize your company's profits. Smart companies reap what they sow. This book gives readers the tools they need for a profitable harvest.

Ever feel like you're so busy and stressed that you forget to breathe? Right now life has never seemed more overwhelming. The COVID pandemic, working from home and lockdowns have turned our working lives upside down, further blurring the line between work and home. We are taking less annual leave, working longer hours than ever and worried about redundancies. There are so many physical and emotional demands on us at the moment it makes it hard not to feel like we are all edging closer and closer to burnout. Dr Bill Mitchell is here to help - a psychologist with decades of experience specialising in helping the overwhelmed, overstressed and overscheduled rebalance their personal and professional lives. In Time to Breathe, Dr Bill brings you invaluable tried and tested, practical solutions from his clinical practice that will help you prioritise what is most important and ensure you stay in a happy, energised space - no matter what is going on around you. Find out how to build resilience in yourself and your family, and how to prevent the drift towards burnout and poor mental health that so many of us suffer from in our busy modern lives. Your family - and your boss - will thank you.

Homework; work that is categorised as informal employment, performed in the home, mainly for subcontractors and mostly undertaken by women. The inequities and injustices inherent in homework conditions maintain women's weak bargaining position, preventing them from making any improvements to their lives via their work. The best way to tackle these issues is not to abolish, but to bring equality and justice to homework. This book contributes a gender justice framework to analyse and confront the issues and problems of homework. The authors propose four justice dimensions - recognition, representation, rights and redistribution - to examine and analyse homework. This framework also takes into account the structures and processes of capitalism and the patriarchy, and the relations of domination that are widely held to be the major factors that determine homework injustice. The authors discuss strategies and approaches that have worked for homeworkers, highlighting why they worked and the features that were beneficial for them. Homeworking Women will be of interest to individuals and organisations working with or for the collective benefit of homeworkers, academics and students interested in feminism, labour regulation, informal work, supply chains and social and political justice.

Collective bargaining between employers and trade unions has profoundly changed working conditions in companies around the globe. But why do we start work at the age of 10, 16, 18 or 24? Why do we work 6, 8, 10 or more hours a day? These questions are becoming increasingly pertinent as working norms are fractured and fragmented by country. This book brings an entirely new perspective to our understanding of changes in working time. In both the UK and the US, effective legal or collectively-bargained regulation of working time has been limited over the last 20 years, to the extent that its disappearance is seen as almost unproblematic. Here author Jens Thoemmes sheds light on this transition and its economic implications with a fully evidenced sociological account, based particularly on original research into cases of working time standards in France and Germany. This book addresses the whole process of working time regulation over the last twenty years, evaluating the activities of trade unions, employers, and the State. While theories of industrial relations have already addressed the issue of markets in the context of collective bargaining, this book draws connections between time and markets, places these transitions in their historical contexts, and illustrates the importance of this movement crossing borders and cultures.

Work that used be tied to offices, cubicles and desks is undergoing a major transformation in terms of where, when and how it is carried out. Space and materiality of workplaces have long been taken for granted amongst organization studies scholars. But the changing definition of work and workspace has, in recent years, inspired a growing number of scholars to reconsider organizational theories and practices. By combining new research on leadership and workspaces, Leadership in Spaces and Places argues for a radical reconceptualization of leadership. Leadership is not only defined by leaders themselves, but is also affected by the built environment. With contributions from both scholars and practitioners alike, the authors discuss leadership in six different contexts: workspaces in change open office spaces virtual workspaces service spaces cultural spaces institutional spaces. The book is aimed at two audiences: leadership, organization and management scholars interested in cutting-edge leadership research; and managers, architects and workplace designers who want to update their knowledge on how workplace design contributes to organizational purposes and leadership. Contributors: S.H. Blakstad, G. Burrell, K. Dale, D. De Paoli, K. Greenlees, T. Grenness, R. Hoeykinpuro, A. Ropo, P. Salovaara, E. Sauer, N. Uolamo, A.L. Vaagaasar, M. Vartiainen

This title was first published in 2002. Call centres are a type of service work that stand at the interface between corporations and consumers. They exemplify more general tendencies present within service work. They also have a particular public image - being associated in the public mind with low skilled and regimented work. This volume presents contributions from British and German management academics and industrial sociologists based on primary research on call centres in both countries. The contributions cover the genesis and development of call centres as a new form of organization, or indeed a new industry; the rationalization and control strategies of organizations that establish call centres; and the nature of service work and service interactions. The findings of this volume challenge the common public image of call centres and finds that call centre employment is in fact very diverse. So, for example, skilled advising and consulting services are often performed over the phone. Along with the sometimes skilled nature of call centre work, work organization and working conditions vary as well. The text also seeks to contrast the British and German experience of call centre work and employment. In Germany clerical work has traditionally been embedded in the specific traditions of co-operative industrial relations that define the German model. Call centres present a strategic challenge to this model, and the expansion of call centres has been at the forefront of changes aimed at making employment more flexible in Germany. This work offers a choice of country cases, which permit a comparison of service employment within both a liberal capitalist and a socially embedded economy.

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.

The increasing globalization, the battle for talents, and global trends are changing the work patterns in organisations around the globe. Enterprises are working across country and cultural borders alongside complex supply and demand networks. Global incidents such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have forced global organizations to find innovative ways to continue to connect globally and maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, innovative enterprises have established global and virtual organisations including members of the value chain on supply and demand side. This book outlines these new work and leadership styles, and agile organisations, which are necessary to work virtually and globally. It provides case studies and experiences from different global organizations in different industries and sectors with a focus on value-adding processes and services.

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.

Corporate Social Performance In The Age Of Irresponsibility - Cross National Perspective is authored by a range of international experts with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives and provides a collection of ideas, examples and solutions on CSP implementation in the time of irresponsibility. Although Corporate Social Performance (CSP) has become important part of the management agenda of many enterprises and many companies adding socially responsible statements to their websites and mission statements some firms behave irresponsibly while at the same time acting positively on some dimensions- "corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and responsibility can exist at the same time in the same firm." (Gonzalez-Perez, 2011). This volume is aimed at presenting Corporate Social Performance concept from distinct cultural perspectives with the reference to responsible and irresponsible practices of various entities from different parts of the world.

Organizations are implementing virtual teams using web technologies as a cost-effective measure for training and project development. In Working at a Distance, Cassandra Smith provides a detailed, comprehensible virtual team business model for managers, professionals, teachers or students involved globally with such initiatives. The author argues that guidance for members of such teams is generally lacking. They are left to figure out their places on the team and face a host of other issues, the impact of which can be ameliorated with a virtual team business model that anyone working at a distance can follow. Cassandra Smith has taught courses online and facilitated virtual teams. The model she has created based on that experience maximizes the benefit to be gained from individual members' skills, personality styles, and the strengths of each active participant. It will enable teams to set up viable working plans and work cohesively at a distance. The model also provides for conflict management in virtual environments. Built on research and practical experience, the empirical data and subject experts' views captured by the author and the model offered here will help all stakeholders of businesses or educational institutions where managers, employees and clients; or teachers and students are working at a distance to achieve desired outcomes.

'This comprehensive volume provides excellent coverage of the scholarly landscape for virtual teaming. Ivanaj and Bozon have integrated a variety of research streams and practical techniques that should prove to be very useful for anyone studying or working in virtual teams. The chapter on leadership and conflict management is an especially thoughtful and welcome addition to the literature, given we know less about these arenas, and yet they tend to be critical roadblocks for many teams. I commend the authors on developing an excellent resource!' - Cristina Gibson, University of Western Australia The book Managing Virtual Teams explores the critical elements that must be considered in managing virtual teams in organizations from structural, managerial, and process points-of-view. Based in solid research, the book provides a deep look at the nature of virtual teams and the factors that enable their success. Using a text-analysis method, the book consolidates results from both academic and practitioners' sources about virtual team inputs, processes, and outcomes. It lays out in clear detail the key characteristics of virtual teams and traces their emergence within organizations and research literature. Managing Virtual Teams addresses the particular practices of virtual teams, not only technological-focused but also socio-emotional, including the managerial attitudes required in virtual environments seeking well-performing teams. Incorporating case studies and research results, this book demonstrates how academic research can be used to successfully manage businesses in a virtual context. This book is a valuable contribution with clear guidelines for managerial practice, both for researchers interested in learning about virtual teams and to managers and organizations dealing with the challenges of managing them. Students will also benefit from this book as they learn how to become effective and operational virtual team members, and in future, successful managers.

The Research in Careers series is designed in five volumes to provide scholars a unique forum to examine careers issues in today's changing, global workplace. What makes this series unique is that the volumes are connected by the use of Mainiero and Sullivan's (2006) Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM) as the organizing framework and the theme underlying the volumes. In this volume, Striving for Balance, we consider how individuals seek a healthy alignment between work and nonwork. In addition to building upon the established literature on work/family conflict, the chapters in this volume also examine the reciprocal positive influences between work and nonwork, considering such issues as balancing work with commitments to others, including spouse/partner, children, elderly relatives, friends, and the community. Chapters 1 and 2 of this volume focus on macro?issues surrounding work/nonwork balance, specifically studying the effectiveness of organizational policies. In Chapter 1, Westring, Kossek, Pichler and Ryan explore if there is a gap between an organization's adoption of work/nonwork policies and its offering of a supportive environment for the employees' use of such policies. In Chapter 2, Purohit, Simmers, Sullivan and Baugh draw from social exchange theory and the compensation literature to examine how employees' satisfaction with their organization's discretionary (i.e., not legally required) support initiatives influences their work?related attitudes and personal well?being. Chapters 3 and 4 examine balance from a micro perspective, focusing on generational differences in balance as well as how individuals' reactions to work?nonwork conflicts influence career outcomes. In Chapter 3, Stawiski, Gentry and Baranik study balance using the lens of generational differences, exploring the relationship between work?life balance and promotability for members of the Baby Boom generation and Gen X. In Chapter 4, Boyd, Keeney, Sinha and Ryan discuss their qualitative analysis of how 1,359 university alumni's reactions to work?life conflict events shaped their career choices, including entry, participation, and attrition decisions. Their approach offers a different lens to examine work?life conflict. Chapters 5 and 6 provide two perspectives on where scholars should focus their future research efforts in studying work/nonwork balance. In Chapter 5, van Emmerik, Bakker, Westman and Peeters provide a conceptual examination of the processes that affect work?family conflict, family?work conflict, and the overall resulting work/nonwork balance or imbalance. In Chapter 6, Bataille offers a multi?dimensional definition of work?family balance and develops a framework, which recognizes the dominant dimensions of work-family balance.

From Chinese factories making cheap toys for export, to sweatshops in Bangladesh where name-brand garments are sewn - studies on the impact of globalization on workers have tended to focus on the worst jobs and the worst conditions. But in When Good Jobs Go Bad, Jeffrey Rothstein looks at the impact of globalization on a major industry - the North American auto industry - to reveal that globalization has had a deleterious effect on even the most valued of blue-collar jobs. Rothstein argues that the consolidation of the Mexican and U.S.-Canadian auto industries, the expanding number of foreign automakers in North America, and the spread of lean production have all undermined organized labor and harmed workers. Focusing on three General Motors plants assembling SUVs - an older plant in Janesville, Wisconsin; a newer and more viable plant in Arlington, Texas; and a ""greenfield site"" (a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility) in Silao, Mexico - When Good Jobs Go Bad shows how global competition has made nonstop, monotonous, standardized routines crucial for the survival of a plant, and it explains why workers and their local unions struggle to resist. For instance, in the United States, General Motors forced workers to accept intensified labor by threatening to close plants, which led local unions to adopt ""keep the plant open"" as their main goal. At its new factory in Silao, GM had hand-picked the union - one opposed to strikes and committed to labor-management cooperation - before it hired the first worker. Rothstein's engaging comparative analysis, which incorporates the viewpoints of workers, union officials, and management, sheds new light on labor's loss of bargaining power in recent decades, and highlights the negative impact of globalization on all jobs, both good and bad, from the sweatshop to the assembly line.

Traditionally, organizations have consisted of collections of people who physically gather together in one place to carry out some kind of coordinated activity. Today, however, business is increasingly relying on "virtual" processes in which people engage in internet-mediated interactions that often span the globe. These processes create intangible "imaginary organizations" that exist largely as a concept in the minds of electronically interacting individuals. As more and more high value-added work is performed by knowledge workers interacting through electronically mediated networks, however, managers and management researchers must evolve new concepts for monitoring, interpreting, assessing, and managing activities carried out in such virtual settings. This volume presents an important multidisciplinary approach to understanding these new kinds of imaginary organizations and their processes. Close reading of the papers in this volume should reward the reader with new insights into the inner workings of the new kinds of virtual organizations and processes that are gaining increasing prominence in business.

This book provides insight into the potential for the market to protect and improve labour standards and working conditions in global apparel supply chains. It examines the possibilities and limitations of market approaches to securing social compliance in global manufacturing industries. It does so by tracing the historic origins of social labelling both in trade union and consumer constituencies, considering industry and consumer perspectives on the benefits and drawbacks of social labelling, comparing efforts to develop and implement labelling initiatives in various countries, and locating social labelling within contemporary debates and controversies about the implications of globalization for workers worldwide. Scholars and students of globalisation, development, corporate social responsibility, human geography, labour and industrial relations, business ethics, consumer behaviour and fashion will find its contents of relevance. CSR practitioners in the clothing and other industries will also find this useful in developing policy with respect to supply chain assurance.