What have jobs really been like for the past 40 years and what do the workers themselves say about them? In What Workers Say, Roberta Iversen shows that for employees in labor market industries-like manufacturing, construction, printing-as well as those in service-producing jobs, like clerical work, healthcare, food service, retail, and automotive-jobs are often discriminatory, are sometimes dangerous and exploitive, and seldom utilize people's full range of capabilities. Most importantly, they fail to provide any real opportunity for advancement. What Workers Say takes its cue from Studs Terkel's Working, as Iversen interviewed more than 1,200 workers to present stories about their labor market jobs since 1980. She puts a human face on the experiences of a broad range of workers indicating what their jobs were and are truly like. Iversen reveals how transformations in the political economy of waged work have shrunk or eliminated opportunity for workers, families, communities, and productivity. What Workers Say also offers an innovative proposal for compensated civil labor that could enable workers, their communities, labor market organizations, and the national infrastructure to actually flourish.

This book addresses a wide range of migration-related issues in the European context and examines the socioeconomic consequences of migratory flows throughout Europe, focusing on a number of emblematic European countries. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the tension between migrants and their integration processes in the receiving country, which is deeply influenced by the attitude of the local population and the different approach to highly and less skilled immigrants. The second part analyses the impact of migration on the economic structure of the receiving country, while the third part explores the varying degree of immigrants' socioeconomic integration in the country of destination. The book offers an essential interdisciplinary contribution to the issue of migration and provides readers with a better understanding of the effects that different forms of migration have had and will continue to exert on economic and social change in host countries. It also examines migration policy issues and builds on historical and empirical case studies with policy recommendations on labour market, integration and welfare policy issues. The book is addressed to a wide audience, including researchers, academics and students of economics, sociology, politics and history, as well as government/EU officials working on migration topics.

The transformation of China's economy from a centrally planned to a market-oriented system has had a profound impact on management systems and practices at the firm level, particularly changes to the organization of work. One of the consequences of this is increasing social disparity reflected through inequality of employees' income and employment conditions. This book, based on extensive original research including interviews and questionnaire surveys in different regions of China, explores the exact nature of these changes and their effects. It examines state-owned enterprises, foreign-owned enterprises and domestic private enterprises, discusses the extent to which employees are satisfied with their employment conditions and whether they think their employment conditions are fair and outlines how managers and employees in China expect conditions to change in future.

The Industrial Democracy in Europe project offers a unique opportunity to assess the changes in European industrial relations systems in general, and participation schemes in particular. In 1981 the Industrial Democracy in Europe team (IDE) reported their findings on the extent of industrial democracy in ten European countries during the 1970s. The present volume reports the findings for the subsequent decade. It is particularly useful to have a longitudinal research project that analyses the changes in participation schemes. The research team have looked at ten European countries (including Poland) and also comment on the situation in Israel and Japan. Contributors: B. Wilpert, E. Rosenstein, P. Drenth, R. Peccei, F. Heller, M. Warner

This comprehensive four-volume collection of previously published papers sets out to examine the most important issues in the study of unemployment; its causes, consequences and policies designed to tackle the problem. The books present a wide range of different perspectives on the causes of unemployment including classical/neoclassical, radical, Keynesian and new Keynesian; the role of structural and technological change; the impact of international trade; political business cycles; the influence of institutions; empirical issues on unemployment differentials, including youth, immigrant and indigenous unemployment; economic and social costs/benefits of unemployment; and policies which have been, or could be, implemented to alleviate the problems of unemployment. The Economics of Unemployment will be an essential reference source for students, professional economists and policymakers concerned with the problem of unemployment.

This book offers a critical and comparative understanding of post-industrial development, highlighting the driving forces and limitations, strategies, sources of funding, tools and technologies for its implementation. It presents the results of research on the formation and functioning of post-industrial development institutions in developed countries and developing countries as integral elements of the national innovation system, and implementation of economic modernization and transformation of business models taking into account contradictions between modern productive forces and getting out of date production relations. This book also explores the widespread impact of new technologies on various areas of modern society, which is often impaired by its conservatism. Comprising contributions from experts across various disciplines including economics, public administration, law, and psychology, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and challenges associated with the modern development of society, production, and consumption. It is a book with appeal to scholars and students of economics, business and public administration, interested in post-industrial development in developed and developing countries, and the specifics of implementing strategies for technological improvement in industry and the service sector.

Most workers are conditioned to view themselves as one-dimensional in relation to their company—as a salesperson, or an engineer, or a manager. But imagine the possibilities if everyone in your organization started thinking and acting like entrepreneurs—like owners of the business. Imagine if your employees shared the same beliefs, both in their abilities and in the purpose of your business, and focused all their energies on making that business successful—knowing that they, in turn, would become successful as well. That is the power of an ownership culture, and this book will show you how to mobilize human intellect and ingenuity for competitive advantage.

Act Like an Owner is an action guide to building a culture of employee ownership within an organization. Authors Blonchek and O'Neill present their business model, "Act Like an Owner," which grew out of their experience building information technology service businesses. This model is a roadmap for applying today's most important management practices in a competitive, rapidly changing environment. The authors use this approach as part of their consulting practice, and are the first to detail how to implement such a program company-wide.

Act Like an Owner introduces the internal franchise framework that can be used for unlocking the entrepreneurial spirit in your organization. From this book, you'll learn how to define your company's operating model—the way you choose to do business—and then extend the model to your employees. The authors then explain how to link employee behaviors to each element of business performance. They demonstrate how to focus your entire organization on a business goal while addressing employees' individual needs for opportunity and growth. You'll learn how to attract and hire people with a positive, entrepreneurial attitude who can create an environment that establishes the values and behaviors you need.

At the heart of the internal franchise is the ownership culture, a corporate culture built on principles and values that compel everyone in your organization to think and act like an owner of the business. The authors describe the impact of an ownership culture on an organization, illustrating how you can build equity in that culture and make it part of your company's brand identity. They explore the power of such a culture to create an environment of shared values and goals. You'll learn the formula for creating an ownership culture and putting it to work in your organization, and you'll hear the perspectives of senior executives at companies currently adopting the "Act Like an Owner" program, including those at Aspen Systems, CACI, STAC, PSINet, and ConSonics. In addition, the authors apply the ownership culture model to one of the most pressing problems facing business today: attracting and retaining skilled workers.

Filled with examples, anecdotes, and techniques, Act Like an Owner will motivate anyone trying to build a successful business that starts with people. "What a wonderful book. The only way organizations will be able to compete in the future is if their people act like owners and they create an ownership culture. A must read for the 21st century." —Ken Blanchard, coauthor, The One Minute Manager.

"A terrific addition to any library. Marty O'Neill and Robert Blonchek have crafted an elegantly simple and uniquely powerful approach to enhancing the performance of any organization—large or small. I wholeheartedly recommend it." —Douglas R. Conant, President, U.S. Foods Group, Nabisco.

"The new workplace demands that businesses find effective ways to release the power of people. Blonchek and O'Neill's 'Internal Franchise' idea turns the franchise concept inside out and provides a roadmap for ownership and empowerment in any organization." —Alan Randolph, coauthor, Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute.

"Act Like an Owner gives you a treasure map to unlocking the fortunes that lie throughout an organization." —Bill Toler, President, Campbell Sales Company.

"An insightful look at the elements of an ownership culture and how to put them to work in your company in order to attract, retain and motivate talented people." —J. Robert Beyster, Founder, Chairman and CEO, SAIC.

"Act Like an Owner gives you the tools you need to develop and empower your employees to think and act like entrepreneurs." —Andrew C. Taylor, President and CEO, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and 1997 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner.

This book addresses the educational, occupational, and income progress of Jews in the American labor market. Using theoretical and statistical findings, it compares the experience of American Jews with that of other Americans, from the middle of the 19th century through the 20th and into the early 21st century. Jews in the United States have been remarkably successful; from peddlers and low-skilled factory workers, clearly near the bottom of the economic ladder, they have, as a community, risen to the top of the economic ladder. The papers included in this volume, all authored or co-authored by Barry Chiswick, address such issues as the English language proficiency, occupational attainment and earnings of Jews, educational and labor market discrimination against Jews, life cycle and labor force participation patterns of Jewish women, and historical and methodological issues, among many others. The final chapter analyzes alternative explanations for the consistently high level of educational and economic achievement of American Jewry over the past century and a half. The chapters in this book also develop and demonstrate the usefulness of alternative techniques for identifying Jews in US Census and survey data where neither religion nor Jewish ethnicity is explicitly identified. This methodology is also applicable to the study of other minority groups in the US and in other countries.

Respectable Professionals contains the contributions of fifteen experts about the birth of new professions and the modernization of working practices in old trades in nineteenth-century Spain. The authors consider that professionalism and respectability were the most relevant elements which structured the bourgeois society in the nineteenth century. The economic changes resulting from the abolition of guilds, the extension of the competences of the State and the liberalization of the economy contributed greatly to the renewal of the labour market. This process took place while some other transformations gave rise to the bourgeois society, such as the urbanization, the updating of the educational system or the organization of professional networks and associations. Starting from the sociology of professions, the book reflects on the historical and sociocultural elements that influenced the development of professional society through different case studies that allow us to compare with other European countries. Nowadays we are living through similar changes in the labour market that should lead us to look back and learn from the challenges faced by professionals in the past.

Organized labor is about the collective efforts of employees to improve their economic, social, and political position. It can be studied from many different points of view historical, economic, sociological, or legal but it is fundamentally about the struggle for human rights and social justice. As a rule, organized labor has tried to make the world a fairer place. Even though it has only ever covered a minority of employees in most countries, its effects on their political, economic, and social systems have been generally positive. History shows that when organized labor is repressed, the whole society suffers and is made less just. The Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor looks at the history of organized labor to see where it came from and where it has been. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a glossary of terms, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on most countries, international as well as national labor organizations, major labor unions, leaders, and other aspects of organized labor such as changes in the composition of its membership. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about organized labor."

This volume explores the work environment in multinational corporations. To do so, it integrates studies on the organizational sciences, cross-cultural management, positive psychology and sociology within a single comprehensive framework. Twenty-two authors from six countries identify the challenges in multicultural workplaces, the positives of interactions, cultural clashes and their organizational preconditions. They add inter-organizational, institutional and critical perspectives to the analysis within the framework of multinationals and complex, hybrid cultural environments. The book addresses the needs of researchers in the areas of intercultural management, and those of practitioners in international human resource management.

This book demonstrates how rethinking and adapting basic employment services into labor intermediation services can help address the many labor market disconnections of developing country economies. It addresses how scarce resources required to escape poverty - good jobs, schools, and training - more often go to the privileged and well-connected than to those who need them most. With jobs now at the top of development debates, this is a rare book on how to practically adapt one key labor market policy to very different developing and emerging country markets. It shows through examples how developing countries can build in stages from basic employment services to diverse labor intermediation services - opening up job listings, stimulating public-private partnerships, and making job connections for those who don't have a "cousin Vinny who knows a guy". This book is for policy practitioners, development organizations, and academics who are ready to think differently about one of the policies that needs to change so that developing economies can better meet the employment and higher skill challenges of the global age.

This handbook provides an overview of research related to smart technologies and how they permeate the economic and social fabric. It covers a wide spectrum of topics and issues raised in the debate surrounding the increasing importance of smart technologies. It takes on a strongly multi- and interdisciplinary perspective, providing readers from different backgrounds and with varying knowledge of this topic with a comprehensive and comprehensible overview of the main upcoming technological trends from a scientifically eclectic viewpoint. This handbook draws together an international team of researchers from different scientific disciplines. The list of contributors comprises authors from Europe, North America, Australia and South Korea, and includes both internationally outstanding scientists and experts from a more policy-related and/or industry-related background.

Employment relations, traditionally known as industrial or labour relations, forms an integral part of the activities of labour, employers and the government in business, and centres on balancing, integrating and reconciling the partly common and partly divergent interests of these parties. South African employment relations has reached the milestone of having been available for nearly a quarter of a century and is the longest running book in this field in South Africa. This edition of South African employment relations refines the human resource interface with employment relations and the strategies required by management to make informed decisions in thie fluid situation within organisations. It also brings into sharper focus the direction the labour market is going with regards to collective bargaining, employment equity, affirmative action and fair workplace relations. It deals with the latest legislative developments, union activities and other contemporary issues. Case studies and a comprehensive glossary are included, and an instructor's guide with extra questions in various formats is available. South African employment relations is aimed at both students and practitioners in this field.

An overview of many currently topical issues around food and agriculture, with particular emphasis on their implications for development. These include Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel's discussion of nutritional standards and the implications of new theories of evolution in assessing the extent of malnutrition. Historical analysis informs contemporary surveys, including Yair Mundlak's comparison of the postwar record of 130 countries in agricultural technology and outputs. The important implications of labour markets, income distributions and the impact of welfare states on these issues are considered by a number of papers. The contributors include many leading academics from North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Israel.

In recent years, there has been an increase in new forms of employment. Namely, thanks to the use of platforms in business and the emergence of the ""gig economy"", there are gradual changes in this domain. These include part-time, temporary, informal, and unpaid family work. This type of employment can be defined as any job, but only of short or uncertain duration. The experiences gained by the countries of the European Union, as well as the countries of the Western Balkans from the COVID-19 crisis, during which they used new technologies in work, should in the future make working systems even more adapted to the digital age. At last, whether working from home is the product of one's own choice or is the result of a pandemic or other environmental shock, the change in the way work is done is real and governments must understand the implications and take steps to position their economies accordingly.

This is the first comparative study of the background, development, laws, structure, and impact of teacher unionism in nations around the world. This ground-breaking analysis offers an international perspective on the world's most populous profession--teaching--and its halting but powerful efforts to form unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to win a decent living for its millions of members. Teachers, union leaders, policymakers, and all who are interested in the issues surrounding education as a profession, the operation of schools, the role of government in education, and the complexities of labor relations in education should make this book must reading. An introduction provides an overview of labor relations in education world-wide, and then separate chapters by experts on education and labor relations in fifteen different countries analyze current policies and problems in places as diverse as China, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States. Specific country studies and the overall conclusion at the end of the book point to past trends and future possible reforms. This unique study emphasizes the importance of unions in national affairs and describes the relationships between governments and the labor movement. A bibliographic essay completes the work.

This book explores the highly significant and contested area of graduate employability and employment which is paid so much attention by those in the media and policy-makers. This is driven largely by concerns over the wider economic impact and value of graduates as increasing numbers complete their studies in higher education. At a time when graduates are seen as key to economic success, the critical question remains as to how their employability plays out in a changing labour market. This book brings together innovative approaches and research to present an extensive survey of the field. It provides insight on what is a complex and often elusive social and economic problem, ranging from how graduate employability is constructed as an economic and policy agenda to explorations of how graduates manage the transition from higher education to paid employment and finally to suggest future directions for curricula, policy and research.

Following the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s, this is the first book to examine the structure and transformation of the labor markets and social stratification of contemporary East Asia, namely Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China, focusing in particular on gender inequality. It deals with social mobility and gender differences in unemployment, temporary employment and self-employment. Additionally, gender segregation, social identity and suicide rates are also addressed. Taken together, the issues raised in this volume reinforce the advantage of a comparative approach to East Asian Studies. The findings, supported by strong statistical analysis, clearly call into question a longstanding view that East Asian gender regimes and class structure are homogeneous. Indeed, this is demonstrably not the case, as Labor Markets, Gender and Social Stratification in East Asia shows, revealing as it does considerable diversities in labor markets, gender regimes, and social mobility within East Asian societies due to historical and institutional differences. Contributors include: Chang Chin-Fen, Kim Young-Mi, Oda Akiko, Phang Hanam, Sakaguchi Yusuke, Shibata Haruka, Takamatsu Rie, Takenoshita Hirohisa, Tarohmaru Hiroshi, Xie Guihua, and Yamato Reiko.

Contesting Inequality and Worker Mobilisation: Australia 1851-1880 provides a new perspective on how and why workers organise, and what shapes that organisation. The author's 2018 Origins of Worker Mobilisation examined the beginning of worker organisation, arguing inequality at work, and regulatory subordination of labour, drove worker resistance, initially by informal organization that slowly transitioned to formal organisation. This new volume analyses worker mobilisation in the period 1851-1880, drawing data from a unique relational database recording every instance of organisation. It assesses not only the types of organization formed, but also the issues and objectives upon which mobilisation was founded. It examines the relationship between formal and informal organisation, including their respective influences in reshaping working conditions and the life-circumstances of working communities. It relates the examination of worker mobilisation to both historical and contemporary contexts and examines mobilisation by different categories of labour. The book identifies important effects of mobilisation on economic inequality, hours of work (including the eight-hour day and the beginnings of the weekend) and the development of democracy. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of social mobilisation, social and economic history, industrial relations, labour regulation, labour history, and employment relations.

This book addresses one of the most important research activities in empirical macroeconomics. It provides a course of advanced but intuitive methods and tools enabling the spatial and temporal disaggregation of basic macroeconomic variables and the assessment of the statistical uncertainty of the outcomes of disaggregation. The empirical analysis focuses mainly on GDP and its growth in the context of Poland. However, all of the methods discussed can be easily applied to other countries. The approach used in the book views spatial and temporal disaggregation as a special case of the estimation of missing observations (a topic on missing data analysis). The book presents an econometric course of models of Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations (SURE). The main advantage of using the SURE specification is to tackle the presented research problem so that it allows for the heterogeneity of the parameters describing relations between macroeconomic indicators. The book contains model specification, as well as descriptions of stochastic assumptions and resulting procedures of estimation and testing. The method also addresses uncertainty in the estimates produced. All of the necessary tests and assumptions are presented in detail. The results are designed to serve as a source of invaluable information making regional analyses more convenient and - more importantly - comparable. It will create a solid basis for making conclusions and recommendations concerning regional economic policy in Poland, particularly regarding the assessment of the economic situation. This is essential reading for academics, researchers, and economists with regional analysis as their field of expertise, as well as central bankers and policymakers.

This book explains the role of formal labour market institutions in keeping the labour utilisation in Central and Eastern Europe above the level characteristic for Western European states. It provides an innovative and enriching take on labour utilisation at large and how various formal labour market institutions can affect the ongoing trend in labour utilisation in a way that is not covered by the extant literature. The impact of labour market institutions on labour market outcomes is analysed throughout 12 chapters, both from a cross-country perspective and in detailed case-studies, by 21 labour market experts from various CEE countries. Most chapters are based on empirical methods yet are presented in an easy-to-follow way in order to make the book also accessible for a non-scientific audience. The volume explores three key questions: How can labour utilisation be increased by labour market institutions? Which CEE countries managed to create a labour market institutional framework beneficial for labour utilisation? How should the labour market institutions in CEE countries be reformed in order to increase labour utilisation? The book argues that the legacy of transition reforms and a centrally planned past is still relevant in explaining common patterns among CEE countries and concludes that increasing the stock of skills accumulated by the employed and improving utilisation of these skills seems to be the first-best solution to increase labour utilisation. The book will be of interest to post-graduate researchers and academics in the fields of labour economics, regional economics, and macroeconomics as well as scholars interested in adopting an institutional analysis approach. Additionally, due to the broader policy implications of the topic, the book will appeal to policymakers and experts interested in labour economics.

This book reappraises the Japanese employment system, characterized by such practices as the periodic recruiting of new graduates, lifetime employment and seniority-based wages, which were praised as sources of high productivity and flexibility for Japanese firms during the period of high economic growth from the middle of the 1950s until the burst of bubbles in the early 1990s. The prolonged stagnation after the bubble burst induced an increasing number of people to criticize the Japanese employment system as a barrier to the structural changes needed to allow the economy to adjust to the new environment, with detractors suggesting that such a system only serves to protect the vested interests of incumbent workers and firms. By investigating what caused the long stagnation of the Japanese economy, this book examines the validity of this currently dominant view about the Japanese employment system. The rigorous theoretical and empirical analyses presented in this book provide readers with deep insights into the nature of the current Japanese labor market and its macroeconomic impacts.