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.

The economic crisis has revealed the dark side of deregulation in the labour market: rising unemployment, limited access to social security and, due to low wages, no savings to count upon in bad times. This book casts light on the empirical relationship between labour market deregulation through non-standard contracts and the three main dimensions of worker security: employment, income and social security. Focusing on individual work histories, it looks at how labour market dynamics interact with the social protection system in bringing about inequality and insecurity. In this context Italy is put forward as the epitome of flexibility through non-standard work and compared with three similar countries: Germany, Spain and Japan. Results show that when flexibility is carried out as a mere cost-reduction device and social security only relies on insurance principles, deregulation leads to insecurity. 'The political economy of work security and flexibility' is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in the outcomes of labour market developments in advanced economies over the past twenty years.

Precarity is a key theme in political discourse, in media and academic discussions of employment, and within the labour movement. Often, the prevailing idea is of an endless march of precarity, rendering work ever more contingent and workers ever more disposable. However, this detailed study of the UK labour force challenges the picture of rising precarity and widespread use of temporary employment, suggesting instead that employment tenure and the extent of temporary work have proved stubbornly stable over the past four decades. Choonara offers a new approach to labour markets, drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of Marxist political economy to interrogate research data from the UK. This book examines why, despite the deteriorating conditions in work, employment relations have remained stable, and offers insight into the extent of subjective insecurity among workers. Insecurity, Precarious Work and Labour Markets will be of use to students and scholars across the sociology of work, labour economics, industrial relations and political economy.

This unique handbook brings together a team of leading scholars and practitioners in order to map, synthesize and assess key perspectives on cooperation and rivalry between regional and global organizations in world politics. For the first time, a variety of inter-disciplinary theoretical and conceptual perspectives are combined in order to assess the nature, processes and outcomes of inter-organizational partnerships and rivalries across major policy areas, such as peace and security, human rights and democratisation as well as finance, development and climate change . This text provides scholars, students and policy-makers of International Relations with an exhaustive reference book for understanding the theoretical and empirical dimensions of an increasingly important topic in International Relations (IR), Global Governance and related disciplines.

Employer branding is a concept which was introduced in 1996 and is defined as "the package of functional, economic and psychological benefits provided by employment, and identified with the employing company" (Amber & Barrow, 1996). Even though the concept was originally introduced as a marketing term, latterly the employer branding terminology has entered the human resource management world. Organizations have to work on the desired level of employer branding internally and also externally to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. Organizations focused mostly on attracting and recruiting talents in a wide range of competitive environment which is influenced by a "war for talents". Employer branding is also known as an effective mechanism which is related to the internal value perceptions on the organizations. The Higher Education industry, which is one of the biggest service industries in the world, has to give importance to the term "employer branding" for external and also internal stakeholders. Since the idea of the universities has changed, it forces universities to be one of the growth industries. This growth generates some important and critical challenges on working conditions of academics and also administrative personnel in higher education institutions (HEIs).

Just One More Hand tells a story that workers all over can relate to: an industry that promised a solid and stable livelihood is being transformed by competitive pressures, causing employees to lose their economic footing. What seemed like a good job one day becomes a bad job the next. Incorporating the real experiences of casino employees, the book demonstrates the difficulties for local communities that are building new casinos in the hopes of luring tourists. Local communities placing all their chips on casinos as an economic development strategy face increasingly long odds. Life stories of individual workers in Atlantic City are explored in the context of the history of the city and the now-global gaming industry. With more and more casinos competing for customers, employees are feeling the brunt of cost-cutting measures, including the wholesale closure of some casinos. While long-time employees are fighting against concessions and wage stagnation, younger workers juggle multiple part-time and seasonal jobs at several casinos. Policy makers hoping to offset these trends are trying to rebrand Atlantic City for a younger, hipper, and more well-to-do clientele using public-private partnerships. Unfortunately, scant attention is being paid to the core issue in economic development-the need for sustainable livelihoods and meaningful work. Here, Ellen Mutari and Deborah Figart explore the realities of the industry and the lives and challenges the workers within it are facing.

Originally published in 1998, Neighbourhood Jobs, Race, and Skills argues that race is a powerful and persistent barrier to employment. Analysing existing literature, this book outlines how racial discrimination in hiring against African Americans appears to remain a contributor to high unemployment rates in black neighbourhoods. The book also discusses how issues such as poor schools and physical and social isolation compound employment problems, as well as changes in policy on skill requirements and the location of jobs. The book argues that combined, this is a major contributor to concentrated urban employment and poverty.

In 2004, the U.S. State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90 percentOCofrom more than 80,000 in 2004 to just over 8,000 today. To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parreas counters that this drastic declineOCowhich stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoodsOCois in truth a setback.
Parreas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo's red-light district, serving drinks, singing karaoke, and entertaining her customers, including members of the "yakuza," the Japanese crime syndicate. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parreas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. But this is not to say that the hostesses were not vulnerable in other ways.
"Illicit Flirtations" challenges our understandings of human trafficking and calls into question the U.S. policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problemsOCoincluding laws that push dependence on migrant brokers, guest worker policies that bind migrants to an employer, marriage laws that limit the integration of migrants, and measures that criminalize undocumented migrantsOComany women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. It is not the jobs themselves, but the regulation that makes migrants susceptible to trafficking. If we are to end the exploitation of people, we first need to understand the actual experiences of migrants, not rest on global policy statements. This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This edited volume examines how economic processes have worked upon social lives and social realities in Latin America during the past decades. Through tracing the effects of the neoliberal epoch into the era of the so-called pink tide, the book seeks to understand to what extent the turn to the left at the start of the millennium managed to challenge historically constituted configurations of inequality. A central argument in the book is that in spite of economic reforms and social advances on a range of arenas, the fundamental tenants of socio-economic inequalities have not been challenged substantially. As several countries are now experiencing a return to right-wing politics, this collection helps us better understand why inequalities are so entrenched in the Latin American continent, but also the complex and creative ways that it is continuously contested. The book directs itself to students, scholars and anyone interested in Latin America, economic anthropology, political anthropology, left-wing politics, poverty and socio-economic inequalities.

Originally published in 1984, The World of Waiters provides a close look at the area of everyday working life, focusing on the profession of waiters. The book addresses the complex world of waiters, look at the insecurities, hierarchies and 'the politics of serving' that come into play in the everyday working life of a waiter. The book addresses the issues facing waiters in everyday life, including the placing and spacing of customers, the process of ordering and tipping, and customer complaints - all of these are looked at through the lens of the rules adhered to by waiters. The book is created from data compiled by the from 5 English hotels at varying grades. This book provides an interesting case study of the restaurant industry, and will be of interest to any academics working in the field of sociology, in particular the field of the sociology of work and anthropology.

Euro-commuters' have emerged as a new group of migrants since the onset of the economic crisis in the EU. These people work in one country but live in another. This book analyses the characteristics of these migrants, their motivations and how commuting influences their personal, family and social lives.

Today’s economics offers us a far too narrow perspective on the role that paid work plays in our lives, as individuals and as a society. This book examines the urgent workplace challenges we’re facing today, from automation to AI and climate change, with an interdisciplinary and historical analysis that challenges and broadens the scope of existing economic literature. Exploring the current economic proposals to address these issues, it advocates for a more egalitarian and sustainable future that builds workers’ protections into the very fabric of our economic systems. This is a resounding call for greater economic social justice and equality at work and a valuable resource for social scientists from fields like heterodox economics, business and sociology.

Migrant Citizenship from Below explores the dynamic local and transnational lives of Filipina and Filipino migrant domestic workers living in Schoenberg, Germany. Shinozaki examines their irregular migrant citizenship status from 'above', which is produced by complex interactions between Germany's welfare, care, and migration regimes and the Philippines' gendered politics of overseas employment. Despite the predominant representation of these workers as invisible, these spatially immobile migrants maintain sustained transnational engagements through parenting and religious practices. Shinozaki studies the reverse-gendered process of international reproductive labor migration, in which women traveled first and were later joined by men. Despite their structural vulnerability, participant observations and biographical interviews with the migrants demonstrate that they enact and negotiate migrant citizenship in the workplace, transnational households, religious practices and through accessing health provisions.

The lack of women on boards has galvanised much public and policy interest, which has led to many countries introducing quotas for women on boards, or to concerted voluntary action. However the way that directors are appointed remains opaque and prone to the influence of gender. Using a social constructionist understanding of gender and a discourse analysis, Gender and Corporate Boards explores the board appointment process through the experiences of women and men seeking non-executive board roles. The book is unique in that it traces board-ready candidates, who have been vetted by an executive search firm, over an 18-month period. By taking a longitudinal and prospective view rather than retrospective and snapshot, it provides deep analysis of how the board appointment process is gendered. This volume privileges the voices of those who are seeking board roles to show how they make sense of an unpredictable and complex process. Gender and Corporate Boards first analyses how aspirant board candidates see themselves in relation to the market, through exploring their perceptions of the ideal board member and how they position themselves towards this ideal. Second, the book shows how candidates must leverage their networks to get board appointments, and that the process is gendered: women and men receive different benefits from their networks. Third, the book explores how the participants make sense of success and failure and how their justifications are also gendered. The book will be of interest to those seeking to understand dynamics of gender on boards as well as those interested in gender and leadership more broadly.

Originally published in 1989 this book is a valuable contribution to the development of a non-technological approach in the study of technology and work. The studies compare the introduction and implementation of new technology at work in similar enterprises throughout Europe. The contributors share the basic assumption that the impact of technology varies greatly according to the characteristics of the country and its socioeconomic system. They view changes in work as the result of the complex combinations and interactions of such conditions and technology, rather than of technology per se, and their focus is therefore on the mechanisms and processes which come into play when new technology is being introduced. The book's international scope makes it a rich empirical source of comparative material.

Whilst only in the second decade of the 21st century, we have seen significant and fundamental change in the way we work, where we work, how we work and the conditions of work. The continued advancements of (smart) technology and artificial intelligence, globalisation and deregulation can provide a 'sleek' view of the world of work. This paradigm can deliver the opportunity to both control work and provide new challenges in this emerging virtual and global workplace with 24/7 connectivity, as the boundaries of the traditional organisation 'melt' away. Throughout the developed world the notions of work and employment are becoming increasingly separated and for some this will provide new opportunities in entrepreneurial and self-managed work. However, the alternate or 'bleak' perspectives is a world of work where globalisation and technology work together to eliminate or minimise employment, underpinning standardised employment with less and less stable or secure work, typified by the rise of the 'gig' economy and creating more extreme work, in terms of working hours, conditions and rewards. These aspects of work are likely to have a significant negative impact on the workforce in these environments. These transformations are creating renewed interest in how work and the workforce is organised and managed and its relationship to employment in a period when all predictions are that the pace of change will only accelerate.

This book takes a life course perspective, analysing and comparing the biographies of mothers and fathers in seven European countries in context. Based on an innovative, cross-national EU study, it examines the ways in which working parents negotiate the transition to parenthood and attempt to find a 'work-life balance'. Using in-depth qualitative biographical data, the book offers a deep understanding of working parents' real lives by locating them within diverse national, workplace and family contexts. It provides rich insights into how policies and practices at the institutional level play out in individual and family lives, how they shape the decisions during both transition phases and in parents' daily experiences of juggling work and family life. It highlights some difficult and complex issues about the sustainability of contemporary working practices for bringing up children that are highly relevant in times of economic retrenchment. 'Transitions to parenthood in Europe' will be of interest to an academic readership at all levels of the social sciences, as well as employers, managers, trade unions and policy makers.

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated 'double shift' that result in widespread calls to either 'lean in' or 'opt out'? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves? In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as 'individuals' and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter. Bueskens' theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women's duality, drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and 'rewriting the sexual contract'. Bridging this gap, Bueskens' interviews ten 'revolving mothers' to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disrupts the gendered dynamics of household work. A provocative and original work, Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Motherhood and Social and Political Theory.

Young Working Class Men in Transition uses a unique blend of concepts from the sociologies of youth and masculinity combined with Bourdieusian social theory to investigate British young working-class men's transition to adulthood. Indeed, utilising data from biographical interviews as well as an ethnographic observation of social media activity, this volume provides novel insights by following young men across a seven-year time period. Against the grain of prominent popular discourses that position young working-class men as in 'crisis' or as adhering to negative forms of traditional masculinity, this book consequently documents subtle yet positive shifts in the performance of masculinity among this generation. Underpinned by a commitment to a much more expansive array of emotionality than has previously been revealed in such studies, young men are shown to be engaged in school, open to so called 'women's work' in the service sector, and committed to relatively egalitarian divisions of labour in the family home. Despite this, class inequalities inflect their transition to adulthood with the 'toxicity' of neoliberalism - rather than toxic masculinity - being core to this reality. Problematising how working-class masculinity is often represented, Young Working Class Men in Transition both demonstrates and challenges the portrayal of working class masculinity as a repository of homophobia, sexism and anti-feminine acting. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as youth studies, masculinity studies, gender studies, sociology of education and sociology of work.

This book examines the structural changes in the labour market in North-East India. Going beyond the conventional study of tea and agricultural sectors, it focuses on the nature, pattern and structure of work and employment in the region as well as documents emerging shifts in the labour force towards farm to non-farm dynamics. The chapters explore historical developments in employment patterns, labour market policies, issues of gender and social-religious dimensions, as well as point to growing forms of casual, informal and contractual labour across sectors. Through large-scale data and detailed case studies on unfree labour in plantations and those employed in crafts, handloom and the manufacturing industry, the book provides insights into labour and employment in the region. It also delves into the temporal and spatial dimensions of non-farm employment and its relationship with rural income distribution and labour mobility. By bringing interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars working on North-East India, this work fills a major gap in the political economy of the labour market in the region. The volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, North-East India studies, labour studies, economics, sociology and political science as well to those involved with governance and policymaking.

This book explores the connection between British and German officer cadets' perceptions of the past and their motivations for enlisting in the military forces in the United Kingdom and Germany. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and survey data conducted at officers' academies in the UK and Germany, the author offers a comparative analysis using differing approaches towards history and memory in Britain and Germany, while considering the roles of individual goals and societal orientations in the decision to enlist. Employing the notion of pragmatic professionalism, which reflects the fact that occupational and institutional reasons for enlisting are not opposite points on a single scale, Professionalism, Memory and Identity examines history-orientated reasons for enlistment by shedding light on officer cadets' values, beliefs and wider cultural understandings of the past. With attention to differences in motivation as a result of differing national backgrounds and former military training, as well as the extent to which these divergences contribute to the emergence of different types of soldiers in the two countries, this comparative, international study will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and war studies with interests in the military profession and the role of history in contemporary Britain and Germany.

Coffee from East Africa, wine from California, chocolate from the Ivory Coast - all those every day products are based on labour, often produced under appalling conditions, but always involving the combination of various work processes we are often not aware of. What is the day-to-day reality for workers in various parts of the world, and how was it in the past? How do they work today, and how did they work in the past? These and many other questions comprise the field of the global history of work - a young discipline that is introduced with this handbook. In 8 thematic chapters, this book discusses these aspects of work in a global and long term perspective, paying attention to several kinds of work. Convict labour, slave and wage labour, labour migration, and workers of the textile industry, but also workers' organisation, strikes, and motivations for work are part of this first handbook of global labour history, written by the most renowned scholars of the profession.

Based on long-term fieldwork, six vivid ethnographies from Colombia, India, Poland, Spain and the southern and northern U.S. address the dwindling importance of labor throughout the world. The contributors to this volume highlight the growing disconnect between labor struggles and the advancement of the greater common good, a phenomenon that has grown since the 1980s. The collection illustrates the defeat and unmaking of particular working classes, and it develops a comparative perspective on the uneven consequences of and reactions to this worldwide project. Blood and Fire charts a course within global anthropology to address the widespread precariousness and the prevalence of insecure and informal labor in the twenty-first century.

Professional Emotions in Court examines the paramount role of emotions in the legal professions and in the functioning of the democratic judicial system. Based on extensive interview and observation data in Sweden, the authors highlight the silenced background emotions and the tacitly habituated emotion management in the daily work at courts and prosecution offices. Following participants 'backstage' - whether at the office or at lunch - in order to observe preparations for and reflections on the performance in court itself, this book sheds light on the emotionality of courtroom interactions, such as professional collaboration, negotiations, and challenges, with the analysis of micro-interactions being situated in the broader structural regime of the legal system - the emotive-cognitive judicial frame - throughout. A demonstration of the false dichotomy between emotion and reason that lies behind the assumption of a judicial system that operates rationally and without emotion, Professional Emotions in Court reveals how this assumption shapes professionals' perceptions and performance of their work, but hampers emotional reflexivity, and questions whether the judicial system might gain in legitimacy if the role of emotional processes were recognized and reflected upon.

Why do so many Americans-working harder and longer and with less security than ever before-question the price of success demanded by today's hot-wired economy? Can you work and still have a life? Paula Rayman says, is yes. In this timely book, she offers a powerful blueprint for transforming the world of work, family, and community that is the downside of our relentlessly competitive culture. In this much-needed wake-up call to corporate America, Rayman shows why companies must go beyond the bottom line to survive and thrive. Drawing on her experience as a leading advocate for a more responsive workplace, she demonstrates how companies can organize for profit, productivity, and the desire of workers for a more rewarding quality of life. In a win-win agenda for changing outmoded organizations, she demonstrates convincingly that all successful transformations create workplaces that respect the need for dignity: security, self-respect, and the time and freedom to care for family and community.