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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, and regular corporate scandals, there has been a growing concern with the moral and ethical foundations of business. Often these concerns are limited to narrow accounts of governance codes, regulatory procedures or behaviour incentives, which are often characterized by neoliberal bias underpinned by western masculine logics. This book challenges these limited accounts of ethics and responsibility. It looks at the writing of Gayatri C. Spivak who takes globally networked markets, people and ideas and provides tools to rethink subjectivity, ethics and corporate governance. Eschewing strict hierarchical notions of authority and identity, Spivak's work invites us to consider who speaks for whom and for what in organizational contexts. Relationality is also to be found in the radical politics and feminist ethics of Judith Butler who continues to draw on and develop her account of performativity to interpret contemporary organizations, management and work. While popular accounts of corporate ethics often concern themselves with the aims and actions of those at the top of organizations, Lauren Berlant focuses on the struggles of those at the bottom of the new social structures created by contemporary forms of capital. Finally, the book also considers ecological challenges through the work of Val Plumwood, who spent a lifetime considering the threats and responsibilities we face in environmental terms, and developed a feminist ecological philosophy for understanding social and species differences. This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.
Revolutionary feminism is resurging across the world. But what were its origins? In the early 1970s, the International Feminist Collective began to organise around the call for recognition of the different forms of labour performed by women. They paved the way for the influential and controversial feminist campaign 'Wages for Housework' which made great strides towards driving debates in social reproduction and the gendered aspects of labour. Drawing on extensive archival research, Louise Toupin looks at the history of this movement between 1972 and 1977, featuring unpublished conversations with some of its founders including Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, as well as activists from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Canada. Encompassing rich theoretical traditions, including autonomism, anti-colonialism and feminism, whilst challenging both classical Marxism and the mainstream women's movement, the book highlights the power and originality of the campaign. Among their many innovations, these pathbreaking activists approached gender, sexuality, race and class together in a way that anticipated intersectionality and had a radical new understanding of sex work.
The contributions to this 1989 volume are concerned with the patterns of continuity and change in industrial labour conflicts in major industrialized countries before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The articles have been conceived as part of a series of efforts to assist the further development of comparative labour history, and in particular the application of quantitative techniques to the analysis of industrial labour conflicts in comparative perspective. The intensive examination of strike waves in the volume offers a nuanced critique of economic models of strike activities. Political and organizational explanations come in for trenchant analysis as well.
Donald Filtzer's new book is the study of industry and labor during Late Stalinism, covering the entire post-war period from 1945 to Stalin's death. He has uncovered a wealth of previously inaccessible archive material and analyzes it to show that the post-war period was one of "political victory and historical defeat". This subtle and compelling study will be of interest to all scholars of Russian history.
Chapter 9 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Since their first appearance in 2011, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been at the centre of a great deal of media attention, owing to their disruptive potential in education. As university-level courses delivered free-of charge on digital platforms, they have also been the occasion of conflicting views regarding the quality of education and the future configuration of higher education systems. Based on new empirical research, including qualitative interviews as well as quantitative data from learners across several MOOCs, this book contributes to the debate by providing a comparative study of the diffusion and social implications of MOOCs in the USA, where everything started, and in Europe, where MOOCs were belatedly adopted by higher education institutions but now exhibit remarkable growth. Investigating the impact of MOOCs at macro level, on national higher education systems, as well as the social implications of MOOCs at micro level, with particular attention to the opportunities offered to learners to acquire knowledge and skills The Diffusion and Social Implications of MOOCs provides an encompassing comparative investigation of the specificity and social implications of the diffusion of MOOCs in two geographically and institutionally diverse contexts. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in new technologies and higher education.
Exploring pressing questions around Canadian citizenship, Canada in Question delves into contemporary issues that come into play in identifying what it means to be Canadian. Beginning with an update on the status of Canadian citizenship, Peter MacKinnon acknowledges that with the exception of Indigenous peoples, most Canadians migrated to Canada in the last 400 years. In surveying the status of citizenship, the author addresses the impact of these newcomers on Indigenous peoples, and the subsequent impression that the following influx of new immigrants and migrants has had on citizenship. MacKinnon investigates the ties that bind Canadians to their country and to their fellow citizens, and how these ties are often challenged by global influences, such as identity politics and social media. Shedding light on the connection between economic opportunity and citizenship, and on the institutional context in which differences must be accommodated, Canada in Question examines current circumstances and new challenges, and looks to the unique future of Canadian citizenship.
Exploring pressing questions around Canadian citizenship, Canada in Question delves into contemporary issues that come into play in identifying what it means to be Canadian. Beginning with an update on the status of Canadian citizenship, Peter MacKinnon acknowledges that with the exception of Indigenous peoples, most Canadians migrated to Canada in the last 400 years. In surveying the status of citizenship, the author addresses the impact of these newcomers on Indigenous peoples, and the subsequent impression that the following influx of new immigrants and migrants has had on citizenship. MacKinnon investigates the ties that bind Canadians to their country and to their fellow citizens, and how these ties are often challenged by global influences, such as identity politics and social media. Shedding light on the connection between economic opportunity and citizenship, and on the institutional context in which differences must be accommodated, Canada in Question examines current circumstances and new challenges, and looks to the unique future of Canadian citizenship.
This book explores the identified research gap and new field of study of organizational reliability. It develops a definition and theoretical internal structure of the notion of organizational reliability as well as a theoretical background describing the structure of its three pillars, and it showcases a set of organizational solutions dedicated for the enhancement of organizational reliability. The book explores the idea that there are new capabilities needed in every organization: reliability capabilities aiming at enhancing and sustaining the reliability of entire organizations and reliability of management, information technology and human resources. The reliability capabilities are understood as the abilities to anticipate and explore potential and occurring hazards, prevent and resolve disruptions, and learn from the problems in order to maintain a proper organizational performance in both normal and abnormal situations. Based on these three pillars, the book concerns the issue of various organizational solutions in order to indicate a set of them, which supports obtaining and maintaining organizational reliability. The book is recommended reading for researchers, academics and students in the fields of management, and entrepreneurs trying to boost the reliability of their organizations.
This book sets new trajectories for language-sensitive business and management research and pedagogy. The existence of language plurality characterises these. Empirical studies have been established as important and relevant for contemporary research. It has shifted language-sensitive research from the periphery to the centre of international management research. However, this field is rapidly changing, and new thematic approaches have begun to emerge. By addressing this, the book offers genuine and more nuanced insights into existing themes and comes with applications of emergent conceptual developments in different settings. The second part of the book covers methodologies and gives examples and cutting-edge insights into the role of translation in the execution of empirical research and theorising arising from it. Finally, the book draws together innovative ways of how to address the challenges of a multilingual teaching classroom and how to innovate in order to incorporate such diversity through pedagogic practice. This book provides a source that unites insights from multilingual empirical research, methodological considerations and pedagogic practice in order to advance knowledge and debate. It will be a 'handy source' of information that offers direct access to the latest guidance on language-sensitive management challenges. It will, therefore, appeal to an internationally-minded and mobile audience, including scholars, students and decision-makers.
In many European countries, the process of financialisation has been exacerbated by the project of closer EU integration and accelerated as a result of austerity policies introduced after the Euro crisis of 2010-2012. However, the impact has been felt differently in core and peripheral countries. This book examines the case of Portugal, and in particular the impact on its economy, work and social reproduction. The book examines the recent evolution of the Portuguese economy, of particular sectors and systems of social provision (including finance, housing and water), labour relations and income distribution. In doing so, it offers a comprehensive critical analysis of varied aspects of capital accumulation and social reproduction in the country, which are crucial to understand the effects of the official 'bail-out' of 2011 and associated austerity adjustment program. The book shows how these have increasingly relied on deteriorating pay and working conditions and households' direct and indirect engagement with the global financial system in new domains of social reproduction. Through its exploration of the Portuguese case, the book presents a general theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of financialisation processes in peripheral countries. This text is essential reading for students and scholars of political economy, development, geography, international relations and sociology with an interest in examining the uneven mechanisms and impacts of global finance.
The development of international business and of globalization in every field of activity requires the interaction of individuals and groups with diverse cultural, religious, ethnic and social characteristics in different institutional contexts. Cross-cultural Challenges in International Management addresses the various difficulties that may impede smooth communication and cooperation of those involved in such interactions. It examines what types of resources are mobilized to overcome such difficulties. The cultural and societal challenges of international management must be considered at different levels, the one of strategy, which the first part of the book is devoted to, but also that of management and business practices, addressed in the third part of the book. Both strategic decisions and daily business practices, however, in the particularly fluctuating and incompletely defined international context, gain from being framed by ethical and corporate social responsibility, which the second part of this book is devoted to. Cross-cultural Challenges in International Management provides an analysis of specific situations revealing such cultural or societal challenges. Thus, the reader will benefit not only from advanced theoretical knowledge in the field, but also from practical applications in various professional context and various countries. Practitioners, students in various fields of social sciences, particularly in management, communication, international relations, and researchers will widely benefit from this book.
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 book explores the meaning and practice of empowering methodologies in organisational and social research. In a context of global academic precarity, this volume explores why empowering research is urgently needed. It discusses the situatedness of knowing and knowledge in the context of core-periphery relations between the global North and South. The book considers the sensory, affective, embodied practice of empowering research, which involves listening, seeing, moving and feeling, to facilitate a more diverse, creative and crafty repertoire of research possibilities. The essays in this volume examine crucial themes including: * How to decolonise management knowledge * Using imaginative, visual and sensory methods * Memory and space in empowering research * Empowerment and feminist methodologies * The role of reflexivity in empowering research By bringing postcolonial perspectives from India, the volume aims to revitalise management and organisation studies for global readers. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of management studies, organisational behaviour, research methodology, development studies, social sciences in general and gender studies and sociology.
Debate surrounding the employability of graduates has been around for many decades, and interest in this area has grown particularly since the start of this century. Tackling this relevant area of scholarship, this book uses an innovative approach to analyse the relationship between the university and the labour market from different perspectives, taking into account both sociological and economic theories. Key areas explored include work transition, graduate employability, and the effects of public interventions/initiatives which are aimed at matching the competences of graduates to labour market needs. The chapters summarise several years of author original research, including study on the employability of graduates in Poland more specifically, and the effects of their public interventions to increase graduate employment and facilitate entry into the workforce (e.g. Commissioned Fields of Study, Competences Development Programme). More generally, university - labour market relations are analysed from three perspectives: micro (understood as individual characteristics shaping educational and occupational choices and decisions), and meso and macro (e.g. features of the education system and such as the strength of the signal sent by HE diplomas; the macroeconomic situation and the condition of the labour market and the state of debate on general and employability competences and its implications). The conclusions made are pertinent given ongoing debates around graduate mismatch in the labour market, as well as the questioning of tuition fees and the role of the university in society more broadly. The interdisciplinary nature of this book makes it of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of sociology, economy, public policy, and also to practitioners designing educational interventions themselves.
Concise expert guide to a key research topic Unique shortform premium literature review Essential reading for early career researchers and established scholars new to the topic
The Theory of the Firm is commonly viewed as axiomatic by business school academicians. Considerations in spanning organizational structures, their boundaries and roles, as well as business strategies all relate to the Theory of the Firm. The dominant Theory of the Firm poses that markets act perfectly to maximize the well- being of society when people act to maximize the personal utility of their individual purchases and firms act to maximize financial returns to their owners. However, burgeoning evidence and discourse across the scientific and policy communities suggests that the economic, social, and environmental consequences of accepting and applying this theory in the organization of business and society threaten the survival of the human species, among countless others. This book provides the latest thinking on alternatives to the Theory of the Firm as cornerstone of managerial decision-making. Authors explore and elucidate theories that help us understand a firm differently and suggest alternatives to the Theory of the Firm. This book will be of value to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in leadership, strategic management, and the intersection of corporate interests and the well-being of the society.
* It offers an original answer to this question: evaluation spreads because we want to be evaluated. * Developing a critical reflection from a psychoanalytic perspective, it argues that workers are not mere victims of evaluation systems but are complicit in them. * Benedicte Vidaillet focuses on the aspects of our subjectivity that come into play in evaluation at work -our expectations, desires, need for recognition, our conceptions of ourselves at work, as well as our relationship with others such as colleagues, managers or clients - to explore how evaluation affects us, where it gets its evocative power, and what it stirs within us to make us want it, despite its detrimental effects in its currently practiced form. * Chapters draw on real-life examples, case studies from a variety of organizations, and observations from clinical practice, to provide insight into the many mechanisms that have enabled evaluation to spread unimpeded through our subjective complicity in the process, revealing how they came to seem so innocuous. * This book will be of interest to scholars studying the topic of evaluation at work from a critical perspective as well as professionals who use evaluation systems or are under the pressure of evaluation in all sectors and organizations. * By exposing the psychological mechanisms that evaluation uses to appeal to us, it gives each of us the tools we need to break free of its grasp.
The volume: * Approaches global labour history from a South Asian perspective * will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of global history, especially labour history, literature, culture studies, sociology and social anthropology
The world changes like the patterns in a kaleidoscope: trends expand, contract, break up, melt, disintegrate and disappear, while others are formed. Change - as opposed to stasis - is our normal condition, the only certainty in our lives, hence the need to create tools that provide organizations with the means to tackle change and navigate complexity. We must accept the reality of constant change and be prepared for a heavy shift in perspective: interconnection versus separation, acceleration versus linearity and discontinuity versus continuity. Anticipating the future requires more than the traditional predictive models (forecasting) based on the forward projection of past experiences. Advanced methods use anticipation logic (foresight) and build probable scenarios taking into account weak signals, emerging trends, coexisting presents and potential paths of evolution. Corporate foresight is fundamental to interpret and lead change. The two cornerstones of foresight are organization and management. As concerns organization, the authors advocate the separation of research (oriented to the market of tomorrow) from development (oriented to the market of today), the establishment of a foresight unit and the concentration of research activities mainly on the acquisition and recombination of external know-how. As regards management, after an overview of state-of-the-art literature on forecasting methods, the authors propose the implementation of a "future coverage" methodology, which enables companies to measure and verify the consistency between trends, strategic vision and offered products. These organizational and managing tools are then tested in a case study: the Italian company Eurotech SpA, a leader in the ICT sector.
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.
Media attention is often focused on the very richest, the 1%, and their capacity to influence politics and shape society. But they are not the only ones who drive politics, the public conversation and much of the private sector. The focus of this book is on the larger group between the 1% and the 10%. These are the managers and professionals of our media, business, the third sector, political parties and academia and are just as influential. However, many would not recognise themselves as high earners at all. In fact, earning around £60,000 a year in Britain places you in the top 10% of income earners. Maybe you’re surprised you fall into this category, or are not as far off as you thought. Despite this group’s relative advantage and comfort, these high earners don’t always feel politically empowered. They worry about their income and are anxious about the future. Most of them are more likely to move down the income ladder than up it. Drawing attention to this powerful section of society, this book explains why, even if you are relatively near the top, it is in your interest that inequality is reduced, and how you can make that happen.
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.
Made to Work analyses the conditions of mobile knowledge work (MKW) in contemporary worklives, contrasting and drawing parallels among three highly significant sectors of the Knowledge Economy: academia, information communication technology (ICT) management, and digital creative work. It introduces the concept of 'corollary work' to characterise the elusive work underpinning the configuration of workers, informational, technological, relational and infrastructural resources in (re)producing liveable worklives. It ultimately illuminates the myriad strands of corollary work that enable MKW to take place and contributes to emergent debates on how exploitation, at least in the domain of MKW, can be named, resisted and creatively subverted. In so doing, it opens up a conversation about the complex ways in which contemporary worklives are 'made to work', and about potential interventions to bring about more just worklife conditions in the future.
Italy is not a country for young people. Why? This book provides a unique and in-depth collection of empirical and theoretical material providing multiple answers to this question whilst investigating the living conditions of young people in Italy today. By bringing together a variety of approaches and methods, the authors of this collection analyze Italian youth through the lenses of three dimensions: 'Activism, participation and citizenship', 'Work, Employment and Careers' and 'Moves, Transitions and Representations'. These dimensions are the analytical building blocks for challenging stereotypes and unveiling misinterpretations and taken-for-granted assumptions that portray young people in Italy as selfish, 'choosy', and unwilling to make sacrifices, commit and manage an independent life. These prejudices often underplay the role of constraints they are facing in the transition to adulthood. Studying Italian youth, therefore, not only allows us to capture their peculiar characteristics but also to reflect more broadly on the conceptual toolbox we need in order to understand contemporary youth more generally. By doing so, the volume aims to contribute to international discussion on the youth condition in Europe.
This international book analyses the impact of digitisation in labour markets, on labour relationships and also on labour processes. The rapid progress of modern disruptive technologies and AIs and their multiple applications to each phase of the labour production system, are changing the production rules on a global scale with significant impacts in every aspect of work. As new technologies transform work patterns and change the type of jobs available - destroying some while creating others - and even the nature of the tasks performed, numerous legal problems arise which are challenging to legislators and legal scholars who need to find appropriate solutions to them. Considering the labour law issues which have been created by technological developments and currently affect the work of millions worldwide, this book highlights the full scope of these issues, suggesting solutions to emerging problems and ways to mitigate the risks brought about through technological advancement. Approaching the present debate with perspectives on legal problems with expertise from a wide range of different countries, this book presents informed and scholarly studies which answer the challenges that new technologies present in labour markets, private lives and labour processes. |
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