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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
Organizations increasingly use temporary designs. Many temporary organizations are assembled by "mixing and matching" building blocks from static, bureaucratic, parent organizations into a temporary configuration. At the same time, such "mixed and matched" temporary organizations often operate under difficult and dangerous circumstances. During operations, these temporary organizations can experience numerous internal problems: ranging from friendly fire in a military context to budget and time issues in construction projects and problematic coordination in a crisis management context. This book develops insight into the relationship between a "mixing and matching" temporary design strategy and operational problems. To so do, military and crisis management contexts are systematically studied from a sociotechnical design perspective that emphasizes self-organization to develop organizational controllability. Operating Under High-Risk Conditions in Temporary Organizations demonstrates that a "mixing and matching" design strategy can be related to system failure. Furthermore, it is shown that a process of self-design emerged in which operators attempted to create ad-hoc networks for meaningful, safe and controllable operations. The analyses result in a model that shows mechanisms between characteristics of organizational design and controllability of operations. Not only does this model have relevance to the military and crisis management contexts, relevance is also demonstrated for a broader family of temporary organizations and application of sociotechnical network design theory.
With contributions from thirty authors from fifteen countries, this is a 'white book' for international work-family research and practice. The authors offer a bold look at the future and provide guidelines for future research, focusing on applied, international work-family research.
This book explores various forms of highly skilled mobility in the European Union, assessing the potential for this movement to contribute to individual and societal development. In doing so, the authors illustrate some of the issues arising from the opening up of Europe's borders, and exposing its education systems and labour markets to international competition. While acknowledging the potentially positive aspects of mobility, they also reveal many of the negative consequences arising from flaws in mobility governance and inequalities in access to opportunities, arguing that when the management of mobility goes 'wrong', we are left with a heightened level of precariousness and the reproduction of social inequality. This discussion will be of interest to those working within Europe's mobility infrastructure, as well as policymakers in the mobility field and students and scholars from across the social sciences.
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.
Moving beyond the individualisation paradigm in sociological theory, this book develops an approach to the analysis of human activities and the social phenomena produced by them that centres on the processes that generate coordinated behaviours among individuals. Emphasising the relational and processual character of social phenomena, as well as the importance of a broader cultural and historical context for analysing them, the author questions the view of contemporary society that sees individuals acting in a context in which social bonds are dissolving, and unveils the rationale hidden behind the chaos of everyday activities. Through an analysis of the continued importance of cooperation and the consequent emergence in society of various kinds of communities, this volume examines the changing character of social ties. An overview of transformation of social bonds and the intensification of mutual influences among individuals as they seek to address social dilemmas in new contexts, The Individual after Modernity will appeal to social scientists with interests in social theory.
What fuels capitalism and what stops it from collapsing? Does marketing communications support and sustain the economic and political status quo? This book is not about describing the ways in which businesses can optimize the messages they put across or about adding to the marketing communicator's toolkit. This book argues that marketing communications plays an increasingly important role in bolstering contemporary capitalism. Drawing on conceptualizations of the 'market' from political economy and sociology, it focusses on five logics that underpin and sustain the form of capitalism in which we live: the logic of competition, the logic of sustainability, the logic of individualism, the logic of objectivity, and the logic of distraction. It does this by exploring those arenas which are increasingly dominated by the communicative activities of business: sport, CSR, social media, statistics, and entertainment. Bringing theories from marketing and consumer research, sociology, cultural studies, technology and media studies to bear on marketing communications, this book is necessary reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics who wish to understand the broader role of marketing communications in the reproduction of contemporary capitalism.
What fuels capitalism and what stops it from collapsing? Does marketing communications support and sustain the economic and political status quo? This book is not about describing the ways in which businesses can optimize the messages they put across or about adding to the marketing communicator's toolkit. This book argues that marketing communications plays an increasingly important role in bolstering contemporary capitalism. Drawing on conceptualizations of the 'market' from political economy and sociology, it focusses on five logics that underpin and sustain the form of capitalism in which we live: the logic of competition, the logic of sustainability, the logic of individualism, the logic of objectivity, and the logic of distraction. It does this by exploring those arenas which are increasingly dominated by the communicative activities of business: sport, CSR, social media, statistics, and entertainment. Bringing theories from marketing and consumer research, sociology, cultural studies, technology and media studies to bear on marketing communications, this book is necessary reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics who wish to understand the broader role of marketing communications in the reproduction of contemporary capitalism.
This book is a reaction to the reductionist and exploitative ideas dominating the mainstream contemporary management discourse and practice, and an attempt to broaden the horizons of possibility for both managers and organization scholars. It brings together the scholarly fields of humanistic management and organizational aesthetics, where the former brings in the unshakeable focus on the human condition and concern for dignity, emancipation, and the common good, while the latter promotes reflection, openness, and appreciation for irreducible complexity of existence. It is a journey towards wholeness undertaken by a collective of management and organization theorists, philosophers, artists, and art curators. Reading this book's contributions can help both academics and practitioners work towards building organizational practices aimed at (re)acquiring wholeness by developing aesthetic awareness allowing for more profound understandings of performativity, insights into the dynamics of power, appreciation of ambiguity and ambivalence, and a much needed grasp of complexity. The varied ways of engaging with art explored by the authors promote imaginative insights into and reflection on the beauty and vicissitudes of organizing, of management knowledge and collective expression. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of organizational theory and practice, business and management history, human resource management, and culture management.
This book is about accounting in an alternative libertarian socialist economic system. It explores what information and transactions we need to enable democratic and effective financial decisions by those affected by the decisions. Based on the economic model, participatory economics, the author proposes a set of accounting principles for an economy comprised of common ownership of productive resources, worker and consumer councils, and democratic planning, promoting the model's core values. The author tackles questions such as how accounting could be organised in an economy with no private equity owners or private lenders and creditors that is not based on greed and competition but instead on cooperation and solidarity. A large part of the book is focused on issues regarding investments; thus, he asks how and on what basis decisions are made about the allocation of an economy's production between consumption today and investments that enable more consumption in the future, and how investments are accounted for. He also considers how investments in capital assets and production facilities would be decided, financed, and valued if they are not owned by private capital owners and if allocation does not take place through markets but through a form of democratic planning. In answering these questions and more, the author demonstrates that alternative economic systems are indeed possible, and not merely lofty utopias that cannot be put into practice, and inspires further discussion about economic vision. By applying accounting to a new economic setting and offering both technical information and the author's bold vision, this book is a comprehensive and valuable supplementary text for courses touching on critical accounting theory. It will also appeal to readers interested in alternative kinds of economies.
The second edition of Leadership offers a unique, highly-applied academic treatise on leadership, uniquely blending a chronological analysis of the last 100 years of leadership theory with exclusive CEO interviews. The case studies, expert insights and other teaching aids are timely and hard hitting, making this textbook relevant, insightful and informative, while a research chapter empowers the reader to competently question the leaders that shape our world. The world has turned on its political and corporate axis since the first edition of Leadership was published, and it became necessary to produce a second edition that fully encapsulated, respected and observed these changes. Numerous new case studies, discussion starters and examples subsequently reflect today's volatile technological, political, financial and social shifts, while exclusive interviews with successful CEOs powerfully blend theory with practice. Readers will learn the importance of navigating leadership in the most testing of times. A new chapter, 'Researching leadership', offers the reader the opportunity to develop significantly as a leadership researcher and to ably question reality in a post-truth world. A self-leadership chapter equips the reader to develop their own leadership capabilities, while retaining the ability to avoid destructive leadership. Ultimately, readers will become empowered to appreciate the complex, intersectional nature of leadership and to learn what it takes to lead in today's politically, technologically and socially tumultuous world. This book will be particularly engaging for students and educators at secondary school, college, undergraduate and postgraduate level, and for leadership/management consultants. While the book's primary role remains as a core text for leadership, management and business modules, it will also be of interest to students on many other courses (e.g. psychology, politics, sociology). Packed with teaching resources which educators will find particularly useful, Leadership is the only textbook of its kind to offer such an applied view of this subject via the inclusion of 12 (mostly CEO) expert insights. The first edition was an "Amazon Hot New Release", so this second edition might also hold interest for a general readership.
Accounting Ethics Education: Teaching Virtues and Values gathers a diversity of contributions from invited, well-known experts. It promotes a comprehensive reflection around how ethics can and should be taught to accounting students, discussing and highlighting the most updated research on accounting ethics education, and it is an essential reference in the field. The subject of accounting ethics education is critical to foster ethical awareness that may prevent the way in which one acts or behaves, especially towards others. The point is that accounting education cannot exist without ethical education and accountants must be technically proficient and ethically sensible since ethical behavior is vital to the status and credibility of the accountancy profession. And this sensibility must be developed while the future professional is still cultivating his or her moral and intellectual structure within the school learning environment: character and practical reasoning are crucial because they include not only knowledge of rules and principles, and their correct application but also values and virtues. Examining multiple perspectives, Accounting Ethics Education: Teaching Virtues and Values advances the scholarly debate by providing cuttingedge and insightful research vital for all those interested and immersed in these matters. It begins with a historical perspective of accounting ethics education and continues by exploring challenges, opportunities and developments in the area. It will be of great value to academics, students, researchers and professionals in the fields of accounting, accounting education and ethics.
Organizational diversity has become a topic of interest for practitioners and academics alike. This book explores how diversity in organizations is, and can be researched, providing readers with insights into the potential research designs for studies in contemporary organizations. This includes paying attention to methods but also to the role of the researcher and research bodies in the field, their potential as activists as well as to the theoretical question of standpoints in researching organizational diversity. Chapters also consider the diversity of research participants, inclusive research, and intersectionality. All contributors are experts in diversity research, and in their contributions, they reflect upon the appropriate methods for the specific type of diversity research they conduct, noting strengths and weaknesses and illustrating their arguments with practical examples from their work. This handbook will be of great value to academics, students, researchers, practitioners, and professionals with an interest in broadening their understanding of how to research organizational diversity in contemporary organizations or seeking to develop their awareness of diversity when researching management and organization, more generally.
As governments increasingly legalize and expand the availability of casinos, hoping to offset the impacts of manufacturing decline through the advancement of gambling commerce, this book examines what casinos do-and do not do-for host communities in terms of economic growth. Examining the case generally made by those seeking to establish casino developments-that they offer benefits for the "public good"-the author draws on a case study of Canada's automotive capital (Windsor, Ontario), which was a pilot site for potential further casino development in the region. The author asks whether casinos do, in fact, offer good jobs, revenue generation, and economic diversification. A study of the benefits of casino developments that considers the question of whether they constitute a ready answer to the problems of industrial and economic decline, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology and urban studies, with interests in the gambling industry, economic sociology, the sociology of work, and urban regeneration.
Men Still at Work explores the reasons why many men are continuing to work well beyond the traditional retirement age. In today's challenging economy, they are the second-fastest growing group of workers (just behind older women). Filled with profiles of older working men, as well as dynamic interview quotes, Men Still at Work explores thorny issues such as masculinity and the "need to provide," as well as economic issues, job satisfaction, and more.
This book investigates the life, working conditions, and urban experiences of support service workers, such as janitors, security guards, culinary workers and carpool drivers, in the information technology (IT) sector of India. Largely omitted from academic discourse, support service workers are crucial to the Indian IT industry. Drawing on interviews with such workers in seven Indian cities with a large concentration of software service companies, this volume: Uses quantitative and qualitative analyses to map and assess workers' responses to migration from rural occupations to a modern urban employment setting; Explores the everyday grind of migrant workers in the context of the homogenizing effects of globalization in an alienating urban environment and discusses how their dislodgment from the structures of rural life - gender and caste roles - has placed them in a space of contestation between traditions and the opportunities and challenges offered by digital society in the form of freedom, individualism, flexibility and innovation; Traces the evolution of new areas of class, and identity formations, as well as the hegemonic relations within that ethos imposed by contractors and corporations. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, urban studies, development studies, labour studies, social exclusion and South Asian studies.
Closing the gender pay gap begins with awareness and understanding of the state of the gap. This hybrid book that serves as a resource for both the academic and corporate communities, builds the reader's awareness of the gender pay gap, its magnitude and ramifications, and provides action plans to address the challenge. Much of the existing literature on the gender pay gap provides an excellent foundation in stating facts and inferences; yet, the reader is often left wondering "now what?" This book tells the story of the state of the gap by the numbers and then offers specific actions that can be taken to achieve equity. The authors combine backgrounds in statistics and management/HR to provide a unique perspective in painting a broader overview of the issue, examining the history of the gender pay gap, its global impact, and how nations are addressing the issue. The book shines a light on the wide-ranging effects of the gap, including women's poverty rates, student loans, economic growth, childhood poverty, and corporate profits, and offers insights to help close it with best practices of select organizations. Upper-level undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education students will appreciate the clarity and conciseness of this guide to understanding and solving an important human resources issue. The inclusion of a brief instructor's manual and PowerPoint slides for each chapter differentiates this book and adds to the ease of adoption in both the academic and corporate setting.
Closing the gender pay gap begins with awareness and understanding of the state of the gap. This hybrid book that serves as a resource for both the academic and corporate communities, builds the reader's awareness of the gender pay gap, its magnitude and ramifications, and provides action plans to address the challenge. Much of the existing literature on the gender pay gap provides an excellent foundation in stating facts and inferences; yet, the reader is often left wondering "now what?" This book tells the story of the state of the gap by the numbers and then offers specific actions that can be taken to achieve equity. The authors combine backgrounds in statistics and management/HR to provide a unique perspective in painting a broader overview of the issue, examining the history of the gender pay gap, its global impact, and how nations are addressing the issue. The book shines a light on the wide-ranging effects of the gap, including women's poverty rates, student loans, economic growth, childhood poverty, and corporate profits, and offers insights to help close it with best practices of select organizations. Upper-level undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education students will appreciate the clarity and conciseness of this guide to understanding and solving an important human resources issue. The inclusion of a brief instructor's manual and PowerPoint slides for each chapter differentiates this book and adds to the ease of adoption in both the academic and corporate setting.
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.
Forty-five contributions from renowned international specialists in the field provide readers with expert analysis of the core issues related to the welfare state, including regional depictions of welfare states around the globe. The second edition of the Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State combines essays on methodologies, core concepts and central policy areas to produce a comprehensive understanding of what 'the welfare state' means around the world. In the aftermath of the credit crunch, the Handbook addresses some of the many questions about the welfare state. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include an in-depth analysis of societal changes in recent years. New articles can be found on topics such as: the impact of ideas, well-being, migration, globalisation, India, welfare typologies, homelessness and long-term care. This volume will be an invaluable reference book for students and scholars throughout the social sciences, particularly in sociology, social policy, public policy, international relations, politics and gender studies.
Our individuality is partly shaped by encounters with the external world so it is inconceivable that we are unaffected by the planned management of public communications which manages much of our external experience. Exploring one of the most important mediators between organizations and individual encounters - public relations (PR) - is long overdue. By developing new ways to create and connect with us as members of particular target audiences, has it changed our interior existence by altering perceptions of the world outside ourselves? PR's massive impact on groups, society or organizations is rightly explored, but its immense influence on our individuality is neglected. In an age where new media makes deepening connections to individuals, the relationship of PR to individuality is one of the field's most profoundly important issues. This provocative book will assist scholars and advanced students in PR and communication research to develop a clear, structured, disciplined understanding of this phenomenon and its implications.
This edited volume builds on the previously published Self-Initiated Expatriation: Individual, Organizational, and National Perspectives, which served to give in-depth insights into the concept and the processes of self-initiated expatriation and presented different groups undertaking self-initiated foreign career moves. While more than a hundred articles on self-initiated expatriation (SIE) have been published in the meanwhile, an examination of the research questions and samples of SIEs in published SIE research shows that the role of context and its impact on SIEs' career-related decisions and behaviors has not been explored sufficiently. This raises the question in how far existing research results are comparable. The aim of this follow-up volume is to deepen the understanding of SIEs' careers, focusing on the contextual influences of space, time, and institutions on the heterogeneous SIE population. More specifically, the editors aim to shed light on spatial conditions in terms of the home and host country conditions on the self-initiated expatriation experience and examine developments over time in terms of temporality of conditions and SIEs' life-course. Moreover, the influence of the institutional context in terms of occupational, organisational, and societal specificities will be analysed. All chapters are based on strong theoretical foundations that serve to conceptualise "context" and are written by both established and emerging global academics and researchers. Self-Initiated Expatriates in Context contributes to conceptual clarity in the burgeoning field of SIE research by drawing attention to the importance of exploring context and, thus, boundary conditions to careers. It offers specific guidance for an improvement of future SIE-related research in order to enhance the validity of future empirical studies as well as for an improvement of managerial practice. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of international business, human resource management, organisational studies, and strategic management.
This book discusses the role of inclusive innovation for development in rural India. It uses the evidence of innovation in the context of skewed or limited livelihood options and multiple knowledge systems to argue that if inclusive innovation is to happen, the actors and the nature of the innovation system need reform. The book presents cases of substantive technological changes and institutional reforms enabling inclusive innovation in rural manufacturing, sustainable agriculture, health services, and the processes of technological learning in traditional informal networks, as well as in formal modern commodity markets. These cases offer lessons to enable learning and change within the state and formal science and technology (S&T) organizations. By focusing on these actors central to development economics and innovation systems framework, the book bridges the widening conceptual gaps between these two parallel knowledge domains, and offers options for action by several actors to enable inclusive innovation systems. The content is thus of value to a wide audience consisting of researchers, policy makers, NGOs and industry observers.
Bureaucracy is a curse - it seems we can't live with it, we can't live without it. It is without doubt one of the fundamental ideas which underpin the business world and society at large. In this book, Tom Vine observes, analyses and critiques the concept, placing it at the heart of our understanding of organisation. The author unveils bureaucracy as an endlessly emergent phenomenon which defies binary debate - in analysing organisation, we are all bureaucrats. In building an experiential perspective, the book develops more effective ways to interact with bureaucracy in theory and practice. Empirical material take centre stage, whilst the book employs ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods to illuminate the existential function of bureaucracy. Taking examples from art, history and culture, this book provides an entertaining alternative academic analysis of bureaucracy as a key idea in business and society which will be essential reading for students and scholars of work and organisation
There has been an increasing interest in financial markets across sociology, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and related disciplines over the past decades, with particular intensity since the 2007-2008 crisis which prompted new analyses of the workings of financial markets and how "scandals of Wall Street" might have huge societal ramifications. The sociologically inclined landscape of finance studies is characterized by different more or less well- established homogeneous camps, with more micro-empirical, social studies of finance approaches on the one end of the spectrum and more theoretical, often neo-Marxist approaches, on the other. Yet alternative approaches are also gaining traction, including work that emphasizes the cultural homologies and interconnections with finance as well as work that, more broadly, is both empirically rigorous and theoretically ambitious. Importantly, across these various approaches to finance, a growing body of literature is taking shape which engages finance in a critical manner. The term "critical finance studies" nonetheless remains largely unfocused and undefined. Against this backdrop, the key rationales of The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies are firstly to provide a coherent notion of this emergent field and secondly to demonstrate its analytical usefulness across a wide range of central aspects of contemporary finance. As such, the volume will offer a comprehensive guide to students and academics on the field of Finance and Critical Finance Studies, Heterodox Economics, Accounting, and related Management disciplines. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138079816_oachapter14.pdf
This book presents the most comprehensive discussion of emerging trends in higher education in the Asia Pacific, ranging from graduate attributes to integrated workplace learning, with an in-depth focus on work readiness, employability and career development. It draws on the relationship between graduate attributes and employability, as well as vocational training or internship programs. It offers theoretical and empirical analyses that institutions, decision-makers or academics can work on together to enhance job employability. This volume will also include issues such as development of emerging and employability skills, as well as directions for the changing nature in real-world settings. The book consists of contributions from experienced international authors, offering detailed insights for those who want a timely understanding of the latest trends in higher education. |
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