The #1 New York Times Bestseller From the bestselling author and columnist behind The Atlantic's popular "How to Build a Life" series, a guide to transforming the life changes we fear into a source of strength. In the first half of life, ambitious strivers embrace a simple formula for success in work and life: focus single-mindedly, work tirelessly, sacrifice personally, and climb the ladder relentlessly. It works. Until it doesn't. It turns out the second half of life is governed by different rules. In middle age, many strivers begin to find success coming harder and harder, rewards less satisfying, and family relationships withering. In response, they do what strivers always do: they double down on work in an attempt to outrun decline and weakness, and deny the changes that are becoming more and more obvious. The result is often anger, fear, and disappointment at a time in life that they imagined would be full of joy, fulfillment, and pride. It doesn't have to be that way. In From Strength to Strength, happiness expert and bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks reveals a path to beating the "striver's curse." Drawing on science, classical philosophy, theology, and history, he shares counterintuitive strategies for releasing old habits and forming new life practices, showing you how to: - Kick the habits of workaholism, success addiction, and self-objectification - Meditate on death-in order to beat fear and live well - Start a spiritual adventure - Embrace weakness in a way that turns it into strength. Change in your life is inevitable, but suffering is not. From Strength to Strength shows you how to accept the gifts of the second half of life with grace, joy, and ever deepening purpose.

This book is a timely revival of the social and political importance of meaningful work, which explores a philosophy of work based upon the value of meaningfulness and argues for the institution of a new politics of meaningfulness.

Volume 19 of Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being explores and enhances our understanding of how stress and well-being at work can change over time. Much of the prior literature in occupational stress and well-being is designed to look at antecedents of stress and well-being, treating them as dependent variables. Although these models implicitly acknowledge the dynamic nature of stress and well-being, they are often assessed at a single time point and treated as a static end-state. This volume moves beyond this approach by explicitly examining stress and well-being as a dynamic phenomenon by examining changes in stress and well-being that happen developmentally, because of intentional interventions on the part of organizations, in response to job role or job status transitions, or which examine the ways in which changes in stress and well-being is conceptualized and assessed.

A comprehensive collection by Professor Cary Cooper and his colleagues in the field of workplace stress and wellbeing, which draws on research in a number of areas including stress-strain relationships, sources of workplace stress and stressful occupations.
Split into two volumes, the chapters present a range of research and theories linked to the field of occupational stress and wellbeing. It charts the flow from concerns about specific occupations to the widening of the concept of stress into the more positive arena of wellbeing. By showing where we came from to where we are now, we hope it will help to develop the field of identifying and helping people who have to cope with the excessive pressures of work in a more insecure and less stable economic climate.
Volume 1
Theory and Reviews of Stress and Wellbeing
Stress-Strain Relationships
Sources of Workplace Stress
Stressful Occupations
Research Methods in Stress and Wellbeing
Volume 2
Stress Management
Stress and Wellbeing Issues
Work-life Balance
Wellbeing

A comprehensive collection by Professor Cary Cooper and his colleagues in the field of workplace stress and wellbeing, which draws on research in a number of areas including stress-strain relationships, sources of workplace stress and stressful occupations.
Split into two volumes, the chapters present a range of research and theories linked to the field of occupational stress and wellbeing. It charts the flow from concerns about specific occupations to the widening of the concept of stress into the more positive arena of wellbeing. By showing where we came from to where we are now, we hope it will help to develop the field of identifying and helping people who have to cope with the excessive pressures of work in a more insecure and less stable economic climate.
Volume 1:
Theory and Reviews of Stress and Wellbeing
Stress-Strain Relationships
Sources of Workplace Stress
Stressful Occupations
Research Methods in Stress and Wellbeing
Volume 2
Stress Management
Stress and Wellbeing Issues
Work-life Balance
Wellbeing

Female Ambition traces the development of women in the workplace, and focuses on a host of critical issues such as current governmental legislation and the family unit, family-responsible companies, personal leadership and the management of time in the workplace and at home. In a comprehensive manner, the book addresses the challenges that women face as they seek to combine careers with a balanced and fulfilling family life. This book also provides practical tips on achieving this goal, and includes numerous real-life examples.

"Contributing to feminist approaches to masculinities, this book examines men's contextual experiences of masculine identity. Drawing on new data which compares men as they move across and between public and domestic spaces, it explores the implications of this for the nature of contemporary masculinity"--

Bringing together contributions from international scholars, this book explores the changing nature of young people's transitions and challenges assumptions about pathways from education into employment in contemporary society.

Machines dominate our lives, from alarm clocks that wake us up in the morning to radios that lull us to sleep. Most of our interactions with automated machines and computers are problem-free, but more often than we would like, they can be irritating and confusing. This is frequently harmless, such as a VCR recording the wrong show, but when it involves a critical system like an autopilot or medical device it can be a matter of life or death. Taming HAL seeks to explain these miscommunications between humans and machines by exploring user interfaces. Degani examines twenty-five different systems for human use, including watches, Internet applications, automobiles, medical equipment, and autopilots onboard commercial airplanes. Readers will discover why interfaces between people and machines all too often do not work and what needs to be done to avoid potential tragedies.

This book investigates the extent of gender inequality in the division of labor in the modern household. Through comparisons of the time allocations of single couple families without children, couple families with children and lone parents, a comprehensive account of the evolution of gender inequality over a typical lifecourse is presented.

This volume provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.

Today's workforce represents individuals of various backgrounds and experiences. The influence of such individuals is becoming an important component in the workplace and researchers continue to explore the challenges of understanding the connection between employee profiles and the overall success of a company. Impact of Diversity on Organization and Career Development brings together a reflective discussion on the previous approaches and strategies of companies in relation to the paradigm shift in workplace equity of today's workforce. By examining both old and new strategies, the research included in this publication will present a unique approach for future company enhancement and employee success. This publication is an essential reference source for researchers, practitioners, managers, and students interested in the effects of multicultural representation on both a company and its employees through professional growth and advancement.

Flexibility has become a key concept in discourses on developments in working life. However, it is an ambiguous concept in several ways, and theoretical clarity is lacking. Further, large parts of the literature are prescriptive and ideological rather than empirical and analytical. This book contributes both theoretically and empirically to expound the importance of clearer concepts in the national and international debates on economic systems, labour markets, work organisations, and experiences of work.

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.

Analysts are generally agreed - dramatic changes are unfolding in the character of work, managerial authority, and the employment relationship. However, there is little agreement as to precisely how such changes are reshaping people's working lives, the nature of their careers, and the distribution of opportunity among members of different classes, genders, and ethnic groups. Confronting these issues head on, this text focuses on a series of critical questions concerned with the restructuring of work under capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century. The papers collected here address a wide array of workplace settings, from traditional manufacturing settings to "knowledge work" in high tech and university contexts. The volume devotes attention to the impact of production concepts in various national settings, ranging from Germany to Mexico and Australia. Among other themes, the volume also examines the linkage between gender inequality and efforts to establish innovative, "flexible" forms of work organization.

Emotional Abuse and Neglect in the Workplace tackles the big questions: How does emotional neglect of employees affect an organization? How can management effectively manage while restoring an organization's health? When trust is gone, only reliable behavior by senior managers can help - and this takes time. The author explores striking similarities between the symptoms of ailing organizations and abusive or neglectful families. This book explores not only a new theory of neglected organizations, but also a set of methods enabling OD practitioners to restore employees' trust. It also provides diagnostic tools and guidelines for change agents who confront organizational neglect head-on and includes case studies and real-life experiences of OD practitioners.

This book contains a clear message: Every boss wants an effective worker to do what most needs to be done without having to be asked. Simple? Perhaps. Easy? Not on your life. But thanks to Bob Nelson, employers and employees everywhere will be empowered by this vital message, and in the process achieve their goals and create a mutually rewarding experience.

As brief, to the point, and inspiring as his previous best-selling titles, Nelson's commonsense advice can be applied to any situation, from the mailroom to the boardroom, and is illustrated with a wide array of examples and anecdotes from real life, such as:

When Amy's Ice Cream in Austin ran out of application forms, an employee handed each applicant an empty bag with instructions to do something creative with it. This brainstorm allowed the applicants to be creative and entertain others -- important job attributes to the company. The bags quickly became a standard part of the company's interview process.

Helping readers tap into their own intelligence, resourcefulness, and pride, Nelson demonstrates how acts of initiative both big and small can make an enormous difference in the way an employee is viewed -- and rewarded -- by his or her boss; he also shows how the effects of those actions benefit the entire organization. It's a perfect "first day on the job" book; a useful resource for any HR department; and a worthwhile investment for anyone who wants to learn more and go farther in a job, in a career, and in life.

Traditional notions of work are transforming rapidly as we enter into the global workspace. Through interviews with leading experts, The Worldwide Workplace gives readers a practical understanding of how to prepare for and capitalize on changes to the working environment.

Work-life balance isn't about where or how you spend your time. At least not solely. It's about where and how you use and replenish your energy. Work matters. Life matters. Work-life matters. As we start to navigate life during and after the pandemic, employers and employees are increasingly re-evaluating how work can be made more sustainable and more fulfilling. Many employees - particularly Gen X and Gen Z - are seeking a new psychological contract with their employers. Putting these trends into context and offering practical solutions, this book takes a deep dive into why work matters as part of a healthy and fulfilling life. The authors present a new and different way of thinking about the matter of balance, arguing that there is no hard divide between 'work' and life' because 'work' takes place entirely within 'life' and you can't balance two things when one is a subset of the other. To achieve the balance required for a healthy existence, we need to recognise that there are activities in all parts of work-life that drain our energy and others that give us a buzz. Rather than trying to solve the drain of hard work by living it large at the weekend - or compensating for an unfulfilling home life by working like a demon, we need to create balance at work and balance at home. Now is a golden opportunity to re-examine the world of work and job-craft to make them more satisfying, less draining and more energising. The ideas in this book provide a practical guide to help that process.

At a time when companies face increasing cost pressures, offshoring IT work to India not only offers the opportunity to reap factor cost savings, but also to industrialize the IT delivery process. "Intelligent IT-Offshoring to India" is a roadmap approach which enables organizations to discuss and organize the 'India option' in a learned manner.
The book opens with an explanation of offshoring, industrialization, and the role India plays in this context; it considers offshoring as a lifecycle and explores how it can help to achieve a company's business and IT priorities. Providing a framework for assessing the organizational and technical offshore readiness as well as the risks involved, the book moves on to suggest a practical and lean provider selection process, which is centered around successfully running the offshore project by managing the relationship with the provider. This requires adopting a stringent construct of measures to improve the offshore link.

Anyone who has ever had a job has probably experienced work-related stress at some point or another. For many workers, however, job-related stress is experienced every day and reaches more extreme levels. Four in ten American workers say that their jobs are very or extremely stressful. Job stress is recognized as an epidemic in the workplace, and its economic and health care costs are staggering: by some estimates over $ 1 billion per year in lost productivity, absenteeism and worker turnover, and at least that much in treating its health effects, ranging from anxiety and psychological depression to cardiovascular disease and hypertension.

Why are so many American workers so stressed out by their jobs? Many psychologists say stress is the result of a mismatch between the characteristics of a job and the personality of the worker. Many management consultants propose reducing stress by redesigning jobs and developing better individual strategies for coping with their stress. But, these explanations are not the whole story. They don t explain why some jobs and some occupations are more stressful than other jobs and occupations, regardless of the personalities and coping strategies of individual workers. Why do auto assembly line workers and air traffic controllers report more job stress than university professors, self-employed business owners, or corporate managers (yes, managers )?

The authors of "Work and Mental Health in Social Context" take a different approach to understanding the causes of job stress. Job stress is "systematically "created by the characteristics of the jobs themselves: by the workers occupation, the organizations in which they work, their placements in different labor markets, and by broader social, economic and institutional structures, processes and events. And "disparities" in job stress are "systematically" determined in much the same way as are other disparities in health, income, and mobility opportunities.

In taking this approach, the authors draw on the observations and insights from a diverse field of sociological and economic theories and research. These go back to the nineteenth century writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim on the relationship between work and well-being. They also include the more contemporary work in organizational sociology, structural labor market research from sociology and economics, research on unemployment and economic cycles, and research on institutional environments. This has allowed the authors to develop a unified framework that extends sociological models of income inequality and status attainment (or allocation) to the explanation of non-economic, health-related outcomes of work. Using a multi-level structural model, this timely and comprehensive volume explores what is stressful about work, and why; specifically address these and questions and more:

-What characteristics of jobs are the most stressful; what characteristics reduce stress?

-Why do work organizations structure some jobs to be highly stressful and some jobs to be much less stressful? Is work in a bureaucracy really more stressful?

-How is occupational status occupational power and authority related to the stressfulness of work?

-How does the segmentation of labor markets by occupation, industry, race, gender, and citizenship maintain disparities in job stress?

- Why is unemployment stressful to workers who don t lose their jobs?

-How do public policies on employment status, collective bargaining, overtime affect job stress?

-Is work in the current Post (neo) Fordist era of work more or less stressful than work during the Fordist era?

In addition to providing a new way to understand the sociological causes of job stress and mental health, the model that the authors provide has broad applications to further study of this important area of research. This volume will be of key interest to sociologists and other researchers studying social stratification, public health, political economy, institutional and organizational theory.

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This text offers a detailed and entertaining analysis of the daily interactions between managers and employees in creative knowledge intensive organizations. Based on vivid examples, it shows how both managers and employees entertain contradictory understandings of their mutual commitment.

What can you learn from the most successful companies in the world? The NBA Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled the exciting basketball league to become the powerhouse it is today. Today's NBA is filled with larger-than-life figures, like LeBron James, James Harden and Stephen Curry, who effortlessly dominate the courts. But it wasn't always so glamorous. The multi-billion-dollar league has grown from humble roots into a sports powerhouse that is loved around the world due to savvy digital marketing and a global focus. Thanks to the popularity of individual players and team rivalries, the NBA has survived league mergers and financial crisis. Teams have earned the respect of millions of loyal fans who are dedicated to the success of each and every organization within the league. Through the story of the NBA, you'll learn: How to keep a dream alive when it seems like no one wants to see it come true. How a company can find their way out of a financial crisis. How presentation is the secret sauce to the success of any show. And how a company can build a loyal fanbase who will do anything to keep them on top.

Organizational culture isn't just a hot topic--it's an untapped asset and potential liability for all businesses. And yet, for all its potential to make or break, few know how to manage cultures with proficiency. Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work provides the much-needed "how-to" with Design of Work Experience (DOWE). Tapping into human-centered design, interdisciplinary innovation concepts, and other research, this leading edge approach partners employees and their employers in unprecedented ways to co-create solutions and differentiating experiences that are customized, relevant, and profoundly impactful to the organizations for which they are intended--all while building employee engagement, learning agility, and capability. Be open to changing mindsets, for this is not your typical business book. Part-business case, part-instructional, and part-commentary, the guidance offered here puts your organization--not some detached case studies--at the center to envision how DOWE can help you design solutions and experiences unique to your context. Culture will no longer be esoteric or intangible, but overt, meaningful, fully leveraged, and truly experienced. No more hacking through trial and error to a culture that lacks sustainability. We can practice the management of culture and organizational change through lived experiences, with intention, rigor, and discipline. Leaders, managers, teams, and employees alike will benefit from understanding the need for this approach, how it's defined, why it works, and what to do to successfully tackle business challenges and positively influence lives with this innovative model--if you are willing to do the work to get there.