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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
Human Resource Development (HRD) involves the design, delivery and evaluation of learning and/or training interventions within organisations to improve the work performance of individuals and groups. This edited collection will demonstrate the potential of identity theorising for problematizing and reconceptualising HRD activities. Identity will thus be established as a foundation for enhancing HRD policy and practice. While identity has emerged as a key focus for theoretical debate and for empirical research within management and organisational studies, the potential of identity as a new paradigm for understanding learning and for examining HRD more broadly is still emergent. That identity has such potential can be seen in the increasing recognition that training and development for many contemporary occupations represents nothing less than a "project of the self". Identity as a Foundation for Human Resource Development will complete a gap in the market providing sound, single source, theoretical foundations from the latest trends in identity theorising, now a key area of organisation studies, and apply these to HRD policy and practice. The emphasis throughout will be on informing HRD policy and practice, research and education the book includes a chapter on resources and techniques for HRD educators. In short, the book will "put identity to work" for HRD scholars. The intended audiences are Human Resource Development scholars, academics, students and professionals, this exciting new volume will provide a thoughtful theoretical analysis and operational practise for modern HRD.
Mainstream public relations overvalues noise, sound and voice in public communication. But how can we explain that while practitioners use silence on a daily basis, academics have widely remained quiet on the subject? Why is silence habitually famed as inherently bad and unethical? Silence is neither separate from nor the opposite of communication. The inclusion of silence on a par with speech and non-verbal means is a vital element of any communication strategy; it opens it up for a new, complex and more reflective understanding of strategic silence as indirect communication. Drawing on a number of disciplines that see in silence what public relations academics have not yet, this book reveals forms of silence to inform public relations solutions in practice and theory. How do we manage silence? How can strategic silence increase the capacity of public relations as a change agent? Using a format of multiple short chapters and practice examples, this is the first book that discusses the concept of strategic silence, and its consequences for PR theory and practice. Applying silence to communication cases and issues in global societies, it will be of interest to scholars and researchers in public relations, strategic communications and communication studies.
"Social Dreaming" is the name given to a method of working with dreams that are shared and associated to within a gathering of people, coming together for this purpose. Its immediate origins date back to the early 1980s. At that time, the author was on the scientific staff of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. He was a core membe
2020 will mark thirty years since the first publication of Judith Butler's ground-breaking book, Gender Trouble. Here, and in subsequent work, Butler argues that gender and other forms of identity can best be understood as performative acts. These acts are what bring our subjectivities into existence, enabling us to be recognized as viable employable social beings, worthy of rights, responsibilities and respect. The three decades since the publication of Gender Trouble have witnessed Butler become one of the most widely cited and controversial figures in contemporary feminist thinking. While it is only in her most recent work that Butler has engaged directly with themes such as work and organization, her writing has profound implications for thinking, and acting, on the relationship between power, recognition and organization. Whilst her ideas have made important in-roads into work, organization and gender studies that are discussed here, there is considerable scope to explore further avenues that her concepts and theories open up. These inroads and avenues are the focus of this book. Judith Butler and Organization Theory makes a substantial contribution to the analysis of gender, work and organization. It not only covers central issues in Butler's work, it also offers a close reading of the complexities and nuances in her thought. It does so by 'reading' Butler as a theorist of organization, whose work resonates with scholars, practitioners and activists concerned to understand and engage with organizational life, organization and organizing. Drawing from a range of illustrative examples, the book examines key texts or 'moments' in the development of Butler's writing to date, positing her as a thinker concerned to understand and address the ways in which our most basic desire for recognition comes to be organized within the context of contemporary labour markets and workplaces. It examines insights from Butler's work, and the philosophical ideas she draws on, considering the impact of these on work, organization and management studies thus far; it also explores some of the many ways in which her thinking might be mobilized in future, considering what scope there is for a non-violent ethics of organization, and for a (re)assembling of the relationship between vulnerability and resistance within and through organizational politics.
This handbook provides an overview on major developments that occurred in the field of economic sociology after its rebirth since the 1980s in the US. It offers new insights on the uniqueness of European economic sociology compared to US economic sociology which emerged at the end of the 20th century. The handbook presents economic sociology as a developing field which started with certain foundations as new economic sociology, widening the perspective by introducing social factors thereby focusing more on general belief systems, social forms of coordination and the relationships between society and the economy. It offers an outstanding portrait of the research field helping to identify major foundations and trajectories as well as new research perspectives for a globalized economic sociology. This makes the handbook appeal to specialized researchers of the field, researchers from other disciplines interested in economic phenomena, as well as graduate and postgraduate students.
This book is among the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the implementation of soft skills in universities in the developing country, Vietnam. The context is unique as the implementation is taking place within the distinctive socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics of the country, amidst several simultaneously-executed educational reforms. Tran lays down the foundation for discussion by providing readers with a comprehensive review of how soft skills implementation has come into existence in higher education across the globe, before diving into the implementation of soft skills in Vietnamese universities. He goes on to highlight the interesting differences in the conceptualization of soft skills between Vietnamese universities and those in the West. The book depicts and compares how university leaders and managers tackle contextual factors, submit to constraints enforced by political forces, and how they use institutional advantages available for implementation. It goes further to examine how personal and contextual factors affect teachers' and students' engagement with the implementation, and highlights the role of work-integrated learning and extra-curricular activities in developing soft skills for students. Finally, the book investigates the contribution of external stakeholders, such as alumni, employers, skills experts, and local authorities, to the implementation and obstacles that prevent their participation. This book will be a valuable reference for the implementation of soft skills in higher education around the world.
This book focuses on workplace innovation, which is a key element in ensuring that organizations and the people within them can adapt to and engage in healthy, sustainable change. It features a collection of multi-level, multi-disciplinary contributions that combine theory, research and practical perspectives. In addition, the book presents new perspectives from a number of nations on policies with novel theoretical approaches to workplace innovation, as well as international case studies on the subject. These cases highlight the role of leadership, the relation between workplace innovation and well-being, as well as the do's and don'ts of workplace innovation implementation. Whether you are an experienced workplace practitioner, manager, a policy-maker, unionist, or a student of workplace innovation, this book contains a range of tips, tools and international case studies to help the reader understand and implement workplace innovation.
This book provides an empirical investigation of the employment status of Non- English-Speaking Background (NESB) and Australia-born women. The analysis adds to the work of Australian authors who have found that NESB women are und- represented in occupations that have relatively high pay and congenial working conditions, and are over-represented amongst the unemployed. This study dev- ops a de?nition of primary sector employment from the occupation categories in the 1996 Census, and uses the ANU2 occupational prestige scale and earnings data from the Census. The book constructed univariate probit models for labour market participation, and primary sector employment and unemployment for both groups of women. The models were estimated using the 1% sample from the 1996 Australian C- sus. The Census provided useful information regarding labour market status and a range of human capital and demographic variables that were relevant to the ana- sis. These models suggested that NESB women faced disadvantages in the labour market if they had poor English language skills or had arrived in Australia comp- atively recently. The models tended to support the works of other authors who have found that education and labour market experience were signi?cant in improving the labour market position of individuals.
A small but growing group of today's knowledge workers actively seek a lifestyle of freedom, using technology to perform their jobs, traveling far and wide, and moving as often as they like. These digital nomads have left their local coffee shops behind and now proudly post their "office of the day" photos from exotic locales, but what do their lives really look like? In Digital Nomads, Rachael Woldoff and Robert Litchfield take readers into an expatriate digital nomad community in Bali, Indonesia to better understand this growing demographic of typically Millennial workers. Through dozens of interviews and several stints living in a digital nomad hub, Woldoff and Litchfield present new answers to classic questions about community, creativity, and work. They further show why digital nomads leave their conventional lives behind, arguing that creative class and Millennial workers, though successful, often feel that their "world class cities" and desirable jobs are anything but paradise. They first follow their transitions into freelancing, entrepreneurship, and remote work, then explain how digital nomads create a fluid but intimate community abroad in the company of like-minded others. Ultimately, Woldoff and Litchfield provide insight into digital nomads' efforts to live and work in ways that balance freedom, community, and creative fulfillment in the digital age. A sympathetic yet critical take on this emerging group of workers, Digital Nomads provides a revealing take on the changing nature of work and the problems of the new economy.
What does it mean to have a "good" or "bad" reputation? How does it create or destroy value, or shape chances to pursue particular opportunities? Where do reputations come from? How do we measure them? How do we build and manage them? Over the last twenty years the answers to these questions have become increasingly important-and increasingly problematic-for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand the creation, management, and role of reputation in corporate life. This Handbook intends to bring definitional clarity to these issues, giving an account of extant research and theory and offering guidance about where scholarship on corporate reputation might most profitably head. Eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as management, sociology, economics, finance, history, marketing, and psychology, have contributed chapters to provide state of the art definitions of corporate reputation; differentiate reputation from other constructs and intangible assets; offer guidance on measuring reputation; consider the role of reputation as a corporate asset and how a variety of factors, including stage of life, nation of origin, and the stakeholders considered affect its ability to create value; and explore corporate reputation's role more broadly as a regulatory mechanism. Finally, they also discuss how to manage and grow reputations, as well as repair them when they are damaged. In discussing these issues this Handbook aims to move the field of corporate reputation research forward by demonstrating where the field is now, addressing some of the perpetual problems of definition and differentiation, and suggesting future research directions.
This book looks back over the last forty years of change and development in Ecuador, showing how macro level changes have impacted families and workplaces on the local level. Traditionally a dependent economy reliant on agricultural exports, the impact of neoliberalism and new sources of income from oil have transformed the informal and artisanal sectors in Ecuador. Exploring these dynamics using a combination of micro and macro analyses, this book demonstrates how the social relations of the sector are connected to the wider social, economic and political systems in which they operate. The book dives into the links between micro-production and the wider economy, including the relationships between different types of artisanal enterprises and their customers, their connections to the private sector and the state, the importance of social networks and social capital and the relevance of finance capital in microenterprise development. Overall, the analysis investigates how artisans, entrepreneurs and family-based enterprises seek to protect their interests when faced with neoliberal policies and the impacts of globalisation. This remarkable longitudinal study will be of considerable interest to researchers of development studies, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography and Latin American Studies.
This book is a fascinating investigation into how communalism plays out in everyday India. Using the metaphor of tana-bana - the warp and the weft of the Banarasi sari - the author reproduces the interwoven life of Hindu-Muslim relations in the Banarasi sari industry. As the city of Banaras in Uttar Pradesh takes the centre stage as the site of this ethnographic study, the author documents the dissonance in representations of Banaras as a sacred Hindu city and its essential plural character. The volume * examines in-depth the lives of Banaras Muslims in the social and economic matrix of the sari industry; * highlights how women negotiate between home, family and their place in the artisanal industry; and * sheds light on their fast-changing world of the Banaras weavers and their responses to it. With a new introduction and fresh data, the second edition looks at the subsequent developments in the weaving industry over the last decade. This volume will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of social anthropology, gender studies, development studies, sociology and South Asian studies.
This book introduces a coherent perspective on the self-regulatory career meta-capacities that individuals, as career agents, need to successfully manage their career development in a boundaryless occupational world. Enriched by empirical data and case studies by subject specialists in the fields, it serves as a cutting-edge benchmark for specialists, professionals and post-graduate students in the careers field to study. This book allows an in-depth view of the most recent research trends on the critical psycho-social constructs influencing the adaptation, adaptivity, adaptability and employability of individuals in a turbulent, uncertain and chaotic work world. In addition, it offers the practising professional new perspectives of career constructs and measures to consider in career counseling and guidance for the contemporary career.
Work orientations and work attitudes have to do with the productive capacities in society. Insofar as individuals are positively oriented towards contributing their labour, we can expect a great amount of work to be done and to be carried out efficiently, carefully and responsibly. These subjective factors are thus very vital in modern working life. Work Orientations: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings offers up-to-date research on people's commitment to work and employment and job satisfaction in economically advanced countries. It will also analyse changes that have taken place in these respects over the last decades. Among the key issues in Work Orientations are questions about whether patterns of work centrality and employment commitment tend to remain stable or have changed across time in various countries. Moreover, we assume that the circumstances under which people participate in the social division of labour colour their subjective relationships to their jobs and to employment in general. A major aim of the book is to explore the impact of factors such as occupation, education, age and gender on work orientations and work attitudes. Work Orientations will be invaluable for researchers and scholars in the fields or organizational studies, the sociology of work, employee engagement and related disciplines.
In recent years, volunteering and voluntary organizations have come to play an increasingly important role in British society. But this recognition has come at the cost of losing sight of the distinctive characteristics of voluntary action and its claims to independence of thought and action. Drawing on 45 years' experience of working in and researching the sector, Colin Rochester shows how conventional wisdom about how voluntary action is understood and undertaken ignores a variety of important activities which have contributed so much to our quality of life and living conditions. He revisits the history of voluntary action; identifies the forces that have created modern misunderstandings and misrepresentations; explores the role of voluntary action and the forms it takes; and argues that the reality of voluntary activity is very different from the picture painted by contemporary researchers and practitioners. In a final chapter Rochester spells out the implications of his vision for research and practice.
In the second half of the 1980s Japan has emerged as one of the new major destination countries for migrants from Asia. The migrant labour pool was then joined by Japanese descendants from South American countries in the 1990s. Japan's policy of keeping the labour market closed to foreign unskilled workers has remained unchanged despite the 1990 immigration policy reform, which met the growing need for unskilled labour not by opening the 'front-door' to unskilled workers but by letting them in through intentionally-provided 'side-doors'. This book throws light on various aspects of migration flows to Japan and the present status of migrant workers as conditioned by Japan's immigration control system. The analysis aims to explore how the massive arrival of migrants affected Japan's immigration policy and how the policy segmented the foreign labour market in Japan.
Learning outcomes in Lebanon have been lower than the international average and with a declining trend since 2007. This volume uses a political economy approach and a system-level analysis to uncover why the education system in Lebanon is not reaching its full potential.
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21st century Western neoliberalism has seen the transformation of self-interest from an economic imperative to a centrally constitutive part of dominant modes of subjective existence. Against this celebration of competitive individualism, Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy stands as a haunting reminder of an ethics that passively disturbs the self from its egoistic slumber, awakening it to the incessant demands of the other. Ethics stands as an anxious affective state of being where one is held to account by others, each one demanding care, attention and respect. Focussing on business activities and organizations, this book explores how this ethical demand of being for the other becomes translated, in a necessarily impure way, into political action, contestation and resistance. Such a response to ethics invokes a disturbance of organizational order, including an order that might itself be labelled 'ethical'. On these grounds, the book offers an explication of an ethics for organizations which disturbs the selfishness of neoliberal morality, and can inform a democratic politics rested on a genuine concern for the other and for justice. Disturbing Business Ethics: Emmanuel Levinas and the Politics of Organization offers an unconventional and enlightening approach to ethical thinking and practice in politics and organisations, and will be of interest to students of business, management, leadership, political science and organizational theory.
This book analyses the circular migration of care workers in Central Europe using the example of Slovak carers in 24-hour care provision for the elderly in Austria. Challenging analyses that focus primarily on care drain and care regimes, Bahna and Sekulova supplement quantitative methodology with qualitative fieldwork to demonstrate the importance of the sending country's economic context. The authors discuss the dynamics of economic differences between Austria and its post-communist neighbors as preconditions of the crossborder care provision, bridging analyses of policy and legal frameworks with approaches from labor migration study. Even as they scrutinize the relevance of care drain-based analyses, Bahna and Sekulova bring to the fore the interplay of economic differences, social policies, gender and migration regimes with geographic proximity to study long-term impacts of care work, including an analysis of employment after care work.
The notion of microfoundations has received growing interest in neo-institutional theory (NIT) along with an increasing interest in microfoundational research in disciplines such as strategic management and organizational economics. However, despite reference to the same term, there are decisive differences in how microfoundations have been addressed across different disciplines. The aim of this double volume is to explore in more depth what the microfoundations of institutions are and what it takes to actually develop sound microfoundations. To this end, this double volume sets off by exploring the recent well-spring of micro-level research in NIT (i.e., research on the individual, practice and group level). While intimately related, micro-level research and microfoundations are not necessarily the same thing. Hence, the double volume seeks to bring to the fore different perspectives in micro-level research in order to tease out what these perspectives imply for building microfoundations, where they converge and where they diverge.
This title was first published in 2003. The problem of illegal labour immigration is one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues to confront the EU. This book examines the Scandinavian model of social partnership by which labour market relations are governed, creating an effective barrier to the employment of illegal immigrants. Using Denmark, Portugal and Germany as case studies it questions the impact of illegal immigrants and whether they pose a serious threat to the free movement of labour, capital and commodities. It will prove invaluable to those interested in labour market relations throughout the world.
Seismic changes in ideology and economic policy in China followed the death of Mao Zedong but one aspect of culture has remained constant: the use of 'Model Workers' for the purposes of propaganda and more recent public relations campaigns. In both a political and commercial context, the use of these individuals continues to thrive, and although the messages they promote have largely changed, their continued use indicates the extent to which they are believed to be an effective form of persuasion. Model Workers were deployed at key points in China's recent history and served to embody the Party's vision of the ideal Chinese citizen as they attempted to reshape the nation following a 'Century of Humiliation,' a ruinous war with Japan and a divisive civil war. This volume utilises the detailed analysis of posters, cinema and translations of related propaganda material to explore the extent of the influence of the Model Worker as a concept, on both propaganda and national policy.
Inextricably linked to neoliberal market economies, public relations' influence in our promotional culture is profound. Yet many aspects of the professional role are under-researched and poorly understood, including the impact on workers who construct displays of feeling to elicit a desired emotional response, to earn trust and manage clients. The emotionally demanding nature of this aspirational work, and how this is symptomatic of "always on" culture, is particularly overlooked. Drawing on interviews with practitioners and agency directors, together with the author's personal insights from observations in the field, this book fills a significant gap in knowledge by presenting a critical-interpretive exploration of everyday relational work of account handlers in PR agencies. In underscoring the relationship-driven, highly contingent nature of this work, the author shows that emotional labour is a defining feature of professionalism, even as public relations is reconfigured in the digital age. In doing so, the book draws on a wide range of related contemporary social and cultural theories, as well as critical public relations and feminist public relations literature. Scholars, educators and research students in PR and communications studies will gain rich insights into the emotion management strategies employed by public relations workers in handling professional relationships with clients, journalists and their colleagues, thereby uncovering some of the taken-for-granted aspects of this gendered, promotional work.
Bringing together important contributions from leading Israeli Jewish and Palestinian scholars, this comprehensive and multi-disciplinary volume addresses the most recent developments and outcomes of the labor market integration of the Palestinian minority inside Israel. The volume covers a wide range of topics (ethnicity, religion, racism, gender, and spatial segregation), groups (Jews and Palestinians, men and women), disciplines (sociology, law, and geography), and methodologies (quantitative and qualitative). The authors examine the sources of labor market inequality in terms of employment and unemployment, occupational concentration, segregation, exclusion, and wages. They provide insight into recent trends and analyze changing patters of inequality and economic activity within households. The chapters further underscore the role of residential segregation in producing labor market inequalities between Jews and Palestinians, who are separated both socially and spatially. |
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