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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
Against the background of a growing tendency among state and local governments in the United States to vie against one another, spending public funds, and foregoing corporate tax revenues in order to attract private investment, this book offers an analysis of local economic development and business recruitment in the automotive industry. Asking why localities felt they could - and, more importantly, should - make deals with private capital in the first place, this book examines the shift toward entrepreneurial local governance from a global and historically informed perspective. Through a study of the 19 greenfield automotive assembly plants constructed in the United States during the neoliberal era, the author draws on interviews with corporate and government elites, to chart the connections between increasingly global competitive industry pressures and changing attitudes toward "incentivizing" private investment. Studying the development of an approach that has partially reoriented local governments away from managing localities and towards helping manage transnational capital flows by absorbing some of the increasing risk of long-term capital investment, Entrepreneurial Governance in the Neoliberal Era will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, and urban studies with interests in globalization, the sociology of work and industry, the sociology of development, and neoliberal governance.
The 2004 reunification of Eastern and Western Europe and the subsequent economic crisis caused a surge in intra-European labour mobility and a profound shift in preceding patterns of migration in Europe. While previous decades of European integration brought very modest cross-border flows of labour, the past decade has engendered the largest European movements of labour in modern time - mostly from East to West, but eventually also from South to North. In a situation of record high European unemployment, this has sparked controversy about the very notion of free movement, one of the basic foundations of the European Community, and has unleashed heated debates about the conditions, causes, and consequences of large-scale labour migration for receiving as well as sending societies. Against this background, this volume of Comparative Social Research will contribute to improve our understanding of the drivers, mechanisms, and effects of the past decade's surge in cross-border labour mobility and work related migration within Europe.
How can we overcome the rapidly ageing postmodernist paradigm, which has become sterile orthodoxy in marketing? This book answers this crucial question using fresh philosophical tools developed by New Realism. It indicates the opportunities missed by marketing due to the pervasive postmodernist ideology and proposes a new and fruitful approach pivoting on the significance of reality to marketing analyses and models. Intensifying reference to reality will boost marketing research and practice, rather than impair them; conversely, neglecting such a reference will prevent marketing from realising its full potential, in several contexts. The aim of the book is foundational: its purpose is not a return to traditional realism but to break new ground and overcome theoretical obstacles in marketing and management by revising some of their assumptions and enriching their categories, thereby paving the way to fresh approaches and methodological innovations. In that sense, the book encourages theoretical innovation and experimentation and introduces new concepts, like invitation and attrition, which can find fruitful applications in marketing theory and practice. That is meant to be conductive to the solution of important difficulties and to the uncovering of new phenomena. The last chapter of the book applies the new approach to eight case studies from business contexts. This book will be of interest to philosophers interested in New Realism and to researchers, scholars and marketing professionals sensitive to the importance and fruitfulness of reference to reality, for their own purposes.
Whilst only in the second decade of the 21st century, we have seen significant and fundamental change in the way we work, where we work, how we work and the conditions of work. The continued advancements of (smart) technology and artificial intelligence, globalisation and deregulation can provide a 'sleek' view of the world of work. This paradigm can deliver the opportunity to both control work and provide new challenges in this emerging virtual and global workplace with 24/7 connectivity, as the boundaries of the traditional organisation 'melt' away. Throughout the developed world the notions of work and employment are becoming increasingly separated and for some this will provide new opportunities in entrepreneurial and self-managed work. However, the alternate or 'bleak' perspectives is a world of work where globalisation and technology work together to eliminate or minimise employment, underpinning standardised employment with less and less stable or secure work, typified by the rise of the 'gig' economy and creating more extreme work, in terms of working hours, conditions and rewards. These aspects of work are likely to have a significant negative impact on the workforce in these environments. These transformations are creating renewed interest in how work and the workforce is organised and managed and its relationship to employment in a period when all predictions are that the pace of change will only accelerate.
Modern attitudes to work are closely interwoven with the ways in which people think about the temporal organization of their lives. In this important book, the authors examine the relations between work and time and explore the possibilities of developing new and more flexible working patterns.
Accounting education ought to prepare future professionals to enter a principles-based, rules-oriented field of activity wherein technical knowledge of accounting standards (principles, rules and decision procedures) and ethical awareness (the capacity to discern moral issues and resolve ethical dilemmas) are crucial. Accounting education is best performed by the accountant's adherence to the principles of the accounting profession and by individuals and firms following the appropriate rules, act according to the codes of conduct adopted by their profession, exercise clear judgment whenever they address financial transactions and consider/assess the state of a given business. Accounting Ethics Education: Making Ethics Real gathers a diversity of contributions from invited well-known experts and other specialists. It promotes comprehensive reflection around key trends, discussing and highlighting the most updated research on accounting ethics education, being an essential and useful reference in the field. In the performance of accounting tasks, the accountant should be educated and supported in the skills development and habit formation to solve accounting problems, recognize moral issues and resolve ethical dilemmas that will be encountered in their special tasks. Also, this book provides a moral map for identifying and acting on values when difficult situations arise. Examining multiple perspectives, the book improves the scholarly debate by providing cutting-edge and insightful research vital for all those interested and immersed in these matters. It will be of great value to academics, students, researchers and professionals in the fields of accounting, accounting education and ethics.
Human resource management (HRM) is the predominant apparatus for people management across the world. Since its inception, HRM has nevertheless been subjected to critical scrutiny. This work has produced a corpus of literature now referred to as 'Critical HRM'. This book on Critical HRM traces the development of the critical scholarly tradition in people management. It analyzes, organizes and synthesizes the various perspectives, ideas and arguments that constitute this critical tradition. The book identifies the current status and future trends of Critical HRM, and explores its ethico-political role in contemporary organizations, especially in the context of widespread public concern about making business more ethical. Incorporating under-researched and emerging issues of people management, such as the Global South and Critical HRM, with more established themes of Critical HRM, this book introduces Critical HRM's critique of mainstream HRM and its underpinning assumptions. It illustrates how interventions have the potential to transform organizational policies and practices of managing people at work. The book will be of interest to professionals, researchers, and academics focusing on critical issues in people management across the Global South and North.
Gendered Power Dynamics and Exotic Dance examines the social phenomenon of exotic dancing. Presenting a compelling multilevel analysis of dancer interactions, organizational practices, and institutional forces, this book challenges our understanding of sexuality and power. Centering the voices and experiences of exotic dancers, this book explores the relationship between exotic dancing and power at the micro-interactional, meso-organizational, and macro-institutional levels, informing a feminist theory of power that seeks out systems of domination in order to challenge and change them. Through direct interviews and observations collected between 1993 and 2021 from 40 different clubs in the United States, Deshotels and Forsyth demystify the seemingly contrary findings about exotic dancing and power. They show how and why individual dancers can be simultaneously empowered and exploited beyond individual traits, interactions, or settings in the nexus of gender and power in exotic dancing. The book will be useful for scholarly readers in the subject areas of sociology, cultural studies, gender/sexualities studies, sex work, and organizations theory. Written in a clear, accessible manner, this book will also appeal to a general audience interested in understanding the complex interactions of gender, power, feminism, and exotic dance.
Gendered Power Dynamics and Exotic Dance examines the social phenomenon of exotic dancing. Presenting a compelling multilevel analysis of dancer interactions, organizational practices, and institutional forces, this book challenges our understanding of sexuality and power. Centering the voices and experiences of exotic dancers, this book explores the relationship between exotic dancing and power at the micro-interactional, meso-organizational, and macro-institutional levels, informing a feminist theory of power that seeks out systems of domination in order to challenge and change them. Through direct interviews and observations collected between 1993 and 2021 from 40 different clubs in the United States, Deshotels and Forsyth demystify the seemingly contrary findings about exotic dancing and power. They show how and why individual dancers can be simultaneously empowered and exploited beyond individual traits, interactions, or settings in the nexus of gender and power in exotic dancing. The book will be useful for scholarly readers in the subject areas of sociology, cultural studies, gender/sexualities studies, sex work, and organizations theory. Written in a clear, accessible manner, this book will also appeal to a general audience interested in understanding the complex interactions of gender, power, feminism, and exotic dance.
In the early 1980s world recession and widespread unemployment had accentuated an existing trend - more people retiring from work early and living longer after doing so. Some were adequately prepared for a life of well-earned 'leisure' in retirement, but too many were not. The policies of employers, unions and governments on retirement needed to be challenged in societies where work opportunities were collapsing but where leisure activities and values were not yet strong enough to take their place. Originally published in 1982, Dr Parker, a sociologist, provides a careful and critical examination of what we knew about retirement and discusses possible alternative answers to the various problems involved at the time. The history of retirement is first considered, followed by a conceptual analysis of types of retirement. There are chapters on preparation for retirement, the capacity of older people to work, and on the varying experiences of retirement. Separate consideration is given to the question of work after retirement age and whether retirement is actually experienced as leisure. The concluding chapter examines various policy alternatives for dealing with the problems raised earlier in the book. Work and Retirement was intended for students of industrial sociology and industrial psychology, for personnel and human resource professionals, for trade unionists and for all those who had an interest in understanding the developments in the field of retirement and the older working population. Now it can be read in its historical context.
This book explores the daily survival strategies of people within the context of failed states, flourishing informal economies, legal uncertainty, increased mobility, and globalization, where many people, who are forced by the circumstances to be innovative and transnational, have found their niches outside formal processes and structures. The book provides a thorough theoretical introduction to the link between labour mobility and informality and comprises convincing case studies from a wide range of post-socialist countries. Overall, it highlights the importance of trust, transnational networks, and digital technologies in settings where the rules governing economic and social activities of mobile workers are often unclear and flexible.
Humans at Work in the Digital Age explores the roots of twenty-first-century cultures of digital textual labor, mapping the diverse physical and cognitive acts involved, and recovering the invisible workers and work that support digital technologies. Drawing on 14 case studies organized around four sites of work, this book shows how definitions of labor have been influenced by the digital technologies that employees use to produce, interpret, or process text. Incorporating methodology and theory from a range of disciplines and highlighting labor issues related to topics as diverse as census tabulation, market research, electronic games, digital archives, and 3D modeling, contributors uncover the roles played by race, class, gender, sexuality, and national politics in determining how narratives of digital labor are constructed and erased. Because each chapter is centered on the human cost of digital technologies, however, it is individual people immersed in cultures of technology who are the focus of the volume, rather than the technologies themselves. Humans at Work in the Digital Age shows how humanistic inquiry can be a valuable tool in the emerging conversation surrounding digital textual labor. As such, this book will be essential reading for academics and postgraduate students engaged in the study of digital humanities; human-computer interaction; digital culture and social justice; race, class, gender, and sexuality in digital realms; the economics of the internet; and technology in higher education.
This book argues that society must rethink the notion of formal employment and instead introduce and spread the notion of "meaningful work" so that societies can become independent of economic growth. The excessive consumption of natural resources and the immense emissions resulting from our growth-oriented economic system surpass the planetary boundaries. Despite this, society and the economy still strive for economic growth in order to generate jobs, to finance the social security system and to assure tax income. However, these expectations are increasingly unrealistic, not least because technological developments such as digitalisation and robotisation will change and limit formal employment opportunities as well. Against this backdrop, the book introduces the notion of meaningful activities that embrace various kinds of work, paid and unpaid, sequential or in parallel, which are meaningful for the worker as well as society as a whole. At the same time, the authors argue in favour of reduced working time in formal employment. Furthermore, the book also describes the necessary transformations in companies and for consumers, for social and tax systems, for social services and agriculture. Innovative and timely, this book will be a key resource for professionals and scholars interested in sustainability, economics, work, transformation and post-growth studies.
This book examines change processes and the challenge of ambidexterity in military organizations. It discusses how military organizations can better adapt to the complex, and at times chaotic, environments they operate in by developing organizational ambidexterity. The authors identify various multiple tasks and functions of military organizations that require multi-dimensional and often contradictory operational, technological, cultural, and social skills. In analogy to the often-opposed functions performed by the right and left hand of the body, modern military organizations are no longer one-dimensional fighting machines, but characterized by a duality of tasks, such as fighting and peacekeeping which often make part and parcel of one and the same mission. The military is both a "hot" and a "cold" organization (a crisis management organization and a bureaucracy). As such, the book argues that these dualities are not necessarily opposed but can serve as complementary forces, like the yin and yang, to better the overall performance of these organizations. As a consequence, ambidextrous organizations excel at complex tasking and are adaptable to new challenges. Divided into four parts: 1) structures and networks; 2) cultural issues; 3) tasks and roles; 4) nations and allies, it appeals to scholars of military studies and organization studies as well as professionals working for governmental or military organizations.
This book introduces and reviews recent advances in the field in a comprehensive and non-technical way by focusing on the potential of emerging citizen-science and social-computation frameworks, coupled with the latest theoretical and modeling tools developed by physicists, mathematicians, computer and social scientists to analyse, interpret and visualize complex data sets. There is overwhelming evidence that the current organisation of our economies and societies is seriously damaging biological ecosystems and human living conditions in the short term, with potentially catastrophic effects in the long term. The need to re-organise the daily activities with the greatest impact - energy consumption, transport, housing - towards a more efficient and sustainable development model has recently been raised in the public debate on several global, environmental issues. Above all, this requires the mismatch between global, societal and individual needs to be addressed. Recent advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can trigger important transitions at the individual and collective level to achieve this aim. Based on the findings of the collaborative research network EveryAware the following developments among the emerging ICT technologies are discussed in depth in this volume: * Participatory sensing - where ICT development is pushed to the level where it can support informed action at the hyperlocal scale, providing capabilities for environmental monitoring, data aggregation and mining, as well as information presentation and sharing. * Web gaming, social computing and internet-mediated collaboration - where the Web will continue to acquire the status of an infrastructure for social computing, allowing users' cognitive abilities to be coordinated in online communities, and steering the collective action towards predefined goals. * Collective awareness and decision-making - where the access to both personal and community data, collected by users, processed with suitable analysis tools, and re-presented in an appropriate format by usable communication interfaces leads to a bottom-up development of collective social strategies.
This volume challenges the concept of the 'new African middle class' with new theoretical and empirical insights into the changing lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Diverse middle classes are on the rise, but models of class based on experiences from other regions of the world cannot be easily transferred to the African continent. Empirical contributions, drawn from a diverse range of contexts, address both African histories of class formation and the political roles of the continent's middle classes, and also examine the important interdependencies that cut across inter-generational, urban-rural and class divides. This thought-provoking book argues emphatically for a revision of common notions of the 'middle class', and for the inclusion of insights 'from the South' into the global debate on class. Middle Classes in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, as well as NGOs and policy makers with an interest in African societies.
Multigenerational Communication in Organizations explores generational differences in the changing workplace from a communication perspective. Starting from the reality that a workplace can contain up to five different generations, these chapters examine topics like generational perceptions on the job search process; organizational culture; organizational identification; organizational crises; the dark side of workplace communication; remote working; and future challenges. Outlines of best practices and suggestions for application are provided based on the most recent data and corresponding literature. The authors also develop a data-forward understanding of Generation Z in context. This book is ideal for both scholars and practitioners in organizational communication and management, as well as for workplace managers and supervisors.
In a period of about 20 years, Latin America (LATAM) moved from having highly unstable closed economies ruled by authoritarian regimes, to becoming more democratic, stable and open to investment and trade, attracting by 2020 close to 11% of world total foreign direct investment. In parallel, the region has seen the emergence of large multinational companies (so called multilatinas), which have become true global players. There is still relatively little knowledge about how to manage employees in these countries and there is a need for more research addressing people management problems. In comparison with other world regions, Human Resource Management research on Latin America remains scarce. Focusing on this region, this book seeks to offer a more up to date review of the main developments in HRM and talent management that have recently occurred in Latin America, paying attention to local cultural and institutional factors; illustrate examples of idiosyncratic problems or issues that require approaches to TM that differ significantly from those commonly established in current literature; and describe and reflect on the transfer of Talent Management policies from and to LATAM within the context of local and foreign multinational companies. Talent Management in Latin America updates main HRM topics in Latin America, with a local focus on culture and institutions. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest both to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of human resource management, critical management studies, and international business.
Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850-1940 is a history of the gendered corporation, a study that examines how ideas and ideals about domesticity and the cultures of sewing and embroidery, being gender-specific, shaped the US-headquartered Singer Sewing Machine Company's operations around the world. In contrast to production-driven and culture-neutral analyses of the multinational enterprise, this book focuses on both the supply and the demand side to argue that consumers and the cultural worlds of those-mainly women-using the sewing machine for personal purposes or for the market shaped corporate organization. This book is a global history of Singer, but it also focuses on the cases of Spain and Mexico to highlight nations where the sewing machine multinational never established manufacturing operations. Casa Singer was a mostly profitable and a long-term selling and marketing operation in both countries. Gendered Capitalism demonstrates that local Spanish and Mexican agents, both men and women, developed and expanded Singer's selling system to the extent that the multinational company was seen as domestic, both in the location sense, and because of its focus on the private sphere of the home. By bringing the cases of Spain and Mexico, and the cultural, everyday realm of practices related to sewing and embroidery that the sewing machine was part of, to the center of the study of international business, Gendered Capitalism further reveals the layers of complexities and multitudes that conform the history of global capitalism. This book will be of interest to readers and scholars in the fields of business history, economic cultural history, management studies, international business, women's history, gender studies, and the history of technology.
Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850-1940 is a history of the gendered corporation, a study that examines how ideas and ideals about domesticity and the cultures of sewing and embroidery, being gender-specific, shaped the US-headquartered Singer Sewing Machine Company's operations around the world. In contrast to production-driven and culture-neutral analyses of the multinational enterprise, this book focuses on both the supply and the demand side to argue that consumers and the cultural worlds of those-mainly women-using the sewing machine for personal purposes or for the market shaped corporate organization. This book is a global history of Singer, but it also focuses on the cases of Spain and Mexico to highlight nations where the sewing machine multinational never established manufacturing operations. Casa Singer was a mostly profitable and a long-term selling and marketing operation in both countries. Gendered Capitalism demonstrates that local Spanish and Mexican agents, both men and women, developed and expanded Singer's selling system to the extent that the multinational company was seen as domestic, both in the location sense, and because of its focus on the private sphere of the home. By bringing the cases of Spain and Mexico, and the cultural, everyday realm of practices related to sewing and embroidery that the sewing machine was part of, to the center of the study of international business, Gendered Capitalism further reveals the layers of complexities and multitudes that conform the history of global capitalism. This book will be of interest to readers and scholars in the fields of business history, economic cultural history, management studies, international business, women's history, gender studies, and the history of technology.
This book offers practical insight into the changing ways in which organizations operate today. Building on a groundbreaking concept of teal organizations, the book illustrates the practicality of advocating a lack of hierarchy of predetermined positions and the introduction of roles that come with clear responsibilities constantly defined according to current needs. First described by Frederic Laloux, a teal organization is a ground-breaking approach to managing organizations that is being adopted around the world, which turns everyone into a leader. This new paradigm rests on the ideas of wholeness, evolutionary purpose, employee autonomy, and self-management based on peer relationships. Its main assumption is the empowerment of the employee resulting in a change in workplace relationships and a more soulful and purposeful work environment. Drawing on the authors' research across six different countries, it presents the evolution of self-management and entrepreneurial culture in the current age of Economy 4.0 and examines how the teal concept has been implemented around the world. It examines misconceptions surrounding this novel approach and diagnoses the practical problems connected with implementing it in the current uncertain times. It will be of value to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of management and organizational studies.
Professions and professionalism have played an integral part in business and society. In this book, Mike Saks provides a thorough overview of this field through an analysis of a range of professions, including, amongst others, accountants, doctors and lawyers. The book offers a critical analysis of such privileged occupational groups in modern societies. Anticipating a positive if changing role for such groups in the years ahead, the book outlines conflicting theoretical perspectives on professions and discusses current developments in an accessible, multi-disciplinary style. The book documents their evolution and contemporary transformation from medieval guilds to fully-fledged professions and international professional service firms, while pointing a path towards their future in the world of work and beyond. With insights into the recent challenges provided by clients, citizens, the state and corporations in neo-liberal societies, Professions provides a concise overview that will be essential reading for students, academics and others interested in the operation of these key occupational groups in business and society.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003108436, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This book argues that the expansion of administrative activities in today's working life is driven not only by pressure from above, but also from below. The authors examine the inner dynamics of people-processing organizations-those formally working for clients, patients, or students-to uncover the hidden attractions of doing administrative work, despite all the complaints and laments about "too many meetings" or "too much paperwork." There is something appealing to those compelled to participate in today's constantly multiplying and expanding administration that defies popular framings of it as merely pressure from above. Hidden Attractions of Administration shows in detail the emotional attractiveness, moral conflicts, and almost magical features that administrative tasks often entail in today's organizations, supported by ethnographic studies consisting of over 200 qualitative interviews and participant observations from ten organizational settings and contexts across Sweden. The authors also question and complement explanations in administration-related research that have previously been taken for granted, arguing that it is a simplification to attribute all aspects of the change to New Public Management and instead taking into account what the classic sociologist Georg Simmel called an Eigendynamik: a self-reinforcing tendency that, under certain circumstances, needs only a nudge in an administrative direction to get going. By applying ethnography to issues of bureaucratization and meeting cultures and by drawing on findings in emotional sociology and social anthropology, this volume contributes to both the sociology of work and the study of human service organizations and will appeal to scholars and students working across both areas.
Introducing the notion of boredom into the academic context, Boredom and Academic Work proposes a fresh sociological perspective on boredom and academic work alike. It invites a reader to reflect on the essence of boredom and the nature of academic work from the sociological perspective. It constitutes methodological and conceptual guidance for all those interested in their own emotions both at work and outside. It also provides an original, interactional and essential definition of boredom and a novel standpoint for observing academic work, both in its systemic and practical level, and shows how the academic system influences its subjects' well-being, motivation, emotions, and practices. Covering various approaches from the qualitative methodology, linguistics, sociology of work, emotions, and higher education, and telling a story of research and teaching university staff, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas and the general academic public as well.
This book takes a Marxist approach to the study of media piracy - the production, distribution, and consumption of media texts in violation of intellectual property laws - to examine its place as an endemic feature of the cultural economy since the rise of the Internet. The author explores media piracy not in terms of its moral or legal failings, or as the inevitable by-product of digital technologies, but as a symptom of a much larger restructuring of cultural labor in the era of the Internet: labor that is digital, entrepreneurial, informal, and even illegal, and increasingly politicized. Sketching the contours of this new political economy while engaging with theories of digital media, both critical and celebratory, Mueller reveals piracy as a submerged social history of the digital world, and potentially the key to its political reimagining. This significant contribution to the study of piracy and digital culture will be vital reading for scholars and students of critical media studies, cultural studies, political theory, or digital humanities, and particularly those researching media piracy, digital labor, the digital economy, and Marxist theory. |
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