This book captures a range of important developments that have occurred in Information Systems over the last forty years, with a particular focus on India and the developing world. Over this time, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Information Systems (IS) have come to play a critical role in supporting, complementing and automating managerial decisions, shaping and transforming industries, and contributing to deep societal and economic change. This volume examines a range of topics for those interested in the adoption and use of these technologies across varied situations. It combines empirical studies on the application and impact of IS with commentaries, debates and insights on the transformative role that IT and the IT industry have played, and continue to play, within India as well as globally. The book draws attention to issues and challenges that organizations grapple with in tech-enabled environments, and provides insights on the role of automation and computational techniques. It explores the global impact of the technology revolution on economic growth and development, electronic globalization, and the wider opportunities and challenges of a hi-tech world. The chapters cover various themes such as e-government in India, internet-based distribution systems, internet banking, and use of collaborative IT tools and functions to support virtual teams in the software industry and the business process outsourcing industry. Other chapters focus on methodological advances, such as systems thinking which finds applications in organizational decision-making, and the use of fuzzy logic. This volume will interest professionals and scholars of information technology and information systems, computer studies, IT systems, economics, and business and management studies.

A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on the French Riviera, and $40,000 bottles of champagne. In today's New Gilded Age, the world's moneyed classes have taken conspicuous consumption to new extremes. In Very Important People, sociologist, author, and former fashion model Ashley Mears takes readers inside the exclusive global nightclub and party circuit-from New York City and the Hamptons to Miami and Saint-Tropez-to reveal the intricate economy of beauty, status, and money that lies behind these spectacular displays of wealth and leisure. Mears spent eighteen months in this world of "models and bottles" to write this captivating, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking narrative. She describes how clubs and restaurants pay promoters to recruit beautiful young women to their venues in order to attract men and get them to spend huge sums in the ritual of bottle service. These "girls" enhance the status of the men and enrich club owners, exchanging their bodily capital for as little as free drinks and a chance to party with men who are rich or aspire to be. Though they are priceless assets in the party circuit, these women are regarded as worthless as long-term relationship prospects, and their bodies are constantly assessed against men's money. A story of extreme gender inequality in a seductive world, Very Important People unveils troubling realities behind moneyed leisure in an age of record economic disparity.

The Midwest experienced an upheaval over labor rights beginning in the winter of 2011. For most commentators, the fallout in the Midwest and unions' weak showing in the 2016 presidential election a few years later was just more evidence of labor's emaciated state. In Heartland Blues, Marc Dixon provides a new perspective on union decline by revisiting the labor movement at its historical peak in the late 1950s. Drawing on social movement theories and archival materials, he analyzes campaigns over key labor policies as they were waged in the heavily unionized states of Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin-the very same states at the center of more recent battles over labor rights. He shows how many of the key ingredients necessary for less powerful groups to succeed, including effective organization and influential political allies, were not a given for labor at the time, but instead varied in important ways across the industrial heartland. Thus, the labor movement's social and political isolation and their limited responses to employer mobilization became a death knell in the ensuing decades, as unions sought organizational and legislative remedies to industrial decline and the rising anti-union tide. Showing how labor rights have been challenged in significant ways in the industrial Midwest in the 1950s, Heartland Blues both identifies enduring problems for labor and forces scholars to look beyond size when seeking clues to labor's failures and successes.

Originally published in 1976. This study deals with crime as social history in Germany and France during the nineteenth century. It establishes the broad statistical patterns of crime over the century so that the crime phenomenon can be analysed in the light of the other main trends of economic and social life. One basic concern is the relationship between crime and economic condition. The second main issue is to establish whether specifically rural and urban patterns of crime can be isolated. The third main concern is to establish whether any relationship existed between patterns of delinquency and the social upheaval which accompanied industrialisation and urbanisation. These three main issues continue as important questions in considering modern day crime. Nineteenth century Germany and France provide an excellent context in which to examine them because of the substantial urbanisation and industrialisation which occurred between 1830 and 1914. As well as providing an important contribution to the history of nineteenth century society this book also indicates important lessons for the contemporary world.

In recent years, a critically oriented sub-stream of research on Muslim consumers and businesses has begun to emerge. This scholarship, located both within and outside the marketing field, adopts a socio-culturally situated approach to Islam and investigates the complex and multifaceted intersections between Islam and markets. This book seeks to reflect various unheard and emerging critical voices from within the Muslim world, and provide a series of critical insights on how, if and why Islam matters to marketing theory and practice. It questions the existing assumptions and polarising discussions which underpin the portrayal of Islam as the 'other' of Modernity, while acknowledging that Muslims themselves are partially responsible for creating stereotyped representations of Islam and 'the Muslim'. This wide-ranging and insightful collection will advance emerging critical perspectives, and provide new insights that will influence the generation and application of knowledge in the context of Muslim societies. It will open up fresh conversations for scholars in marketing as well as the broader humanities and social sciences.

A timely work that reviews the phenomenon of gender and its many manifestations of equality. Well-suited for increasing awareness and justice in academic and professional environments, this collective work addresses long-standing and ongoing social problems such as discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice, as well as a plethora of societal and industry influences that sustain the trend of gender imbalance. Aiming to span a broad scope in time, backgrounds and implementation, this book presents a wide variety of topics, including a historical overview, contemporary gender-based Issues, gender approaches across the disciplines, and cultural influences. The reader is guaranteed to confront existing biases when digesting topics related to gender communication differences, stereotypes, tensions and resistances, assigned social roles, transgenderism, non-binary identities, tension fields between equality and equity, relational aggression, and more. A critical underlying aim of this book is to contribute constructively and progressively to the dialogue on the definition of gender, thus addressing an ongoing challenge for policy makers, organizational leaders, and scholars.

Containing interviews with more than 100 middle-class working parents in the Boston area, Bookman vividly illustrates the inherent conflicts faced by today's two-working-parent families and the often unfortunate consequences for the community. In an important departure from the ongoing debate, she offers a new paradigm for the relationship between paid and unpaid work that could invigorate both family life and the quality of civil society.

The literature on gender and professions shows that professional careers continue to be impacted by gender - albeit with important differences among professions and countries. Much less researched is the issue of the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work. Gender, Age and Inequality in the Professions explores men's and women's experiences of professional work and careers through an intersectional lens by focusing on the intersection of gender and age. The chapters explore different professions - including Medicine, Nursing, Law, Academia, Information Technology and Engineering - in different Western countries, in the present and over time. Through original research, and critical re-analysis of existing research, each of the chapters explores the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work, with particular attention to professionals just entering professional careers, those building professional careers, and comparisons of men and women in professions across generational cohorts. The book contributes to literature on inequalities in the professions by demonstrating the ways in which gender and age converge to confer privilege and produce disadvantage, and the ways in which gender inequality is reproduced, and disrupted, through the activities of professionals on the job. The book constitutes a departure point for future research in terms of theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on how gendered and age-related processes are produced and reproduced in particular organisational, professional and socio-cultural contexts. To enhance generational understanding, relationships and collaboration in educational institutions, organisations and professions, the book ends with a section on policy recommendations for educators, professionals, professional organisations as well as policy- and decision-makers. This book will also appeal to students and researchers in the fields of Sociology, Gender Studies, Organisational and Management Studies, Law, Medicine, Engineering and Information Technology as well as related disciplines.

Dear Reader This is a book about mobile virtual work. It aims at clarifying the basic concepts and showing present practices and future challenges. The roots of the book are in the collaboration of few European practitioners and - searchers, who met each other under the umbrella of the Swedish SALTSA programme (see next page) in January 2002 in Stockholm. The group was first called 'ICT, Mobility and Work Organisation' but redefined itself quickly as 'Mobile Virtual Cooperative Work' group. The change of the name reflects the development of reasoning in the group. We could not find much material on mobile work, certainly not systematic studies, - though a growing interest in mobile technologies and services could be found. Practices of telework and virtual organizations were better known, but we were convinced that the combination with mobile work was so- thing different and new. Our main target became to understand what it was all about. The next step was an expert meeting in October 2004 at Ranas Castle again in Sweden. A wider group of experts was invited to present their views on mobile virtual work and ideas about book chapters from different perspectives of working life. Some of the expertise could be found through the network of the AMI@Work family created by the New Working En- ronments unit of the European Commission's Information Society Dir- torate-General. Also close collaboration was developed with the related MOSAIC program."

Published in 1998. This text focuses on "three-job" (two paid and one unpaid housework job) families. It investigates the way in which partners experience and handle the contradictions in the daily running of the household - contradictions which result from the conflicting features within and between society and the family. An equal division of household labour remains at the heart of these contradictions as women take on the responsibility of running the family home in addition to paid employment.

Originally published in 1924, Unemployment Relief in Great Britain takes up the history of unemployment relief in Great Britain, focusing on the after effects of the post-war period and the Great Depression. Primarily, the book provides a detailed study of England's experience with compulsory unemployment insurance and public employment exchanges. The book provides an intriguing study that will appeal to sociologists and historians alike, adeptly weaving practical aspects of the insurance acts, and the administration of employment exchanges.

First published in 1989. In the decade before this book was originally published, employee share ownership and profit sharing had increased markedly as successive governments introduced fiscal legislation promoting their uses. Yet how successful had 'people's capitalism' been? The Glasgow study was a major empirical investigation into this issue and was a response to the need for an independent assessment. It discusses how attitudes to ownership had changed and how these, in turn, related to attitudes to work. It also addresses the implications of profit sharing and employee share ownership for industrial relations both for individual companies and at a national level.

Shortlisted for the CMI Management Books of the Year Awards.

An expert on innovation argues that many capable women are losing out at work, and that this harms businesses, individuals, and society.

Women now outperform men at every level of education, yet in the workplace they are under-promoted and under-paid. Here, Tom Schuller examines why this happens, and asks what we can do about it.

Schuller identifies the five factors which prevent women from achieving their full potential. He argues convincingly that addressing these will not only make society fairer but also make workplaces function more effectively ― yet this will only happen if men change their patterns of work and attitudes to careers.

This book is required reading for anyone who would like to see the world of work become more dynamic and fulfilling.

Intersectionality and Ethnic Entrepreneurship brings together a group of eminent and up-and-coming young scholars who apply an intersectional perspective to the study of ethnic entrepreneurship. Against the traditional approach's emphasis on ethnicity and its primacy, which tends to conflate ethnicity with other social groupings (i.e., social class), considers their effect as an additive or secondary consequence only (i.e., gender), or ignores their influence altogether (i.e., race), the studies in this volume recognize that multiple dimensions of identity intermix to condition entrepreneurial outcomes. Starting with the premise that systems of oppression and privilege, specifically capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, are endemic to the American social structure, the works in this volume recognize that these interlocking systems of inequality condition the life chances of entrepreneurs from diverse social locations differently, even among members of the same ethnic group. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This title was first published in 2001. Addressing a significant gap in existing literature, this book presents a gender-informed analysis of the post-fordist economy. It incorporates a gender dimension into the economic restructuring debate on both a theoretical and a practical level, and explores the implications of economic restructuring in the workplace for gender relations..

Over the last fifty years women's employment has increased markedly throughout developed countries. Women of younger generations are much more likely than their mothers and grandmothers to enter the labour market and stay in it after they marry and have children. Are these changes due only to changes in women's investments and preferences, or also to the opportunities and constraints within which women form their choices? Have women with higher and lower educational and occupational profiles combined family responsibilities with paid work differently? And have their divisions changed? With an innovative approach, this book compares Italy and Great Britain, investigating transformations in women's transitions in and out of paid work across four subsequent birth cohorts, from the time they leave full-time education up to their 40s. It provides a comprehensive discussion of demographic, economic and sociological theories and contains large amounts of information on changes over time in the two countries, both in women's work histories and in the economic, institutional and cultural context in which they are embedded. By comparing across both space and time, the book makes it possible to see how different institutional and normative configurations shape women's life courses, contributing to help or hinder the work-family reconciliation and to reduce or reinforce inequalities. "Women in and out of paid work" will be valuable reading for students, academics, professionals, policy makers and anyone interested in women's studies, work-family reconciliation, gender and class inequalities, social policy and sociology.

With China's rapid advancements in urbanization and industrialization, there has been significant labor movement away from agriculture in the rural regions. Using four village case studies, Song examines how this restructuring process affects the rural population. Much of her research is centered on their various perceptions and reactions towards the market reforms. How are their lives reshaped through the employment transition? Along with the changes of family life and the diversification of development models, how do an individual's gender and background play a role in determining employment? These are the broad questions that Song addresses through detailed analysis of four different villages, in light of China's move towards decentralization of its rural economy.

This study, first published in 1997, examines the relationship between the style of management used and the level of productivity, measured in terms of the organization's financial stability. Other variables examined include the age of the top level managers, their educational level, the size and age of the organization, and the organization's physical parameters. By determining whether or not productivity is affected by the use of a participative style of management, the author is laying the groundwork for making companies more competitive.

This pivot provides a conceptual statement of an approach to understanding the interrelationships of work, leisure, and "chore" activities in daily life, and how they are managed in practice. Drawing on the sociology of everyday life, Stebbins puts forward the notion of Pondering Everyday Life (PEA), a thinking process/activity in which we routinely understand, coordinate, organize, remember, and compare our involvements in work, leisure, and non-work obligations. This perspective demonstrates how the interrelation between these three domains helps bring meaning and continuity to everyday life. As a micro- and meso-level conception that takes into account social, cultural and historic context, Stebbins contemplates how and what PEA can tell us about an individual's view of their own life. Pondering Everyday Life will be of interest to students and scholars across leisure studies, social psychology, and the sociology of leisure and work.

This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles.

At the end of the 20th century, with the economy booming and unemployment at historic lows, the American economy was a job-producing marvel. The first decade of the 21st century was entirely different as the worst economy in 70 years, the Great Recession, crushed the lives of tens of millions of workers and their families, forestalled careers, scrapped hopes for a college education, delayed retirements, and foreclosed family homes. American workers experienced the best and worst of times and have endured an entire "lost decade" of high unemployment, stagnant or declining incomes, and anxiety. Working Scared draws upon nearly 25,000 interviews with employed and unemployed Americans conducted from, 1998 to 2012. These "voices" of American workers tell a compelling story about wrenching structural changes and recessions during one of the most volatile periods in U.S economic history. This book represents one of the most comprehensive social science research portraits of the views of American workers' about their jobs, the workplace, and government's role in the labor market. Working Scared will help citizens, policy makers, educators, business, union, and community leaders better understand what is happening to the United States workforce. It also describes the essential national priorities and policies that will assist frustrated, angry and scared American workers and the reforms that will help restore the American dream of secure employment and inter-generational progress.

This book explores three major changes in the circumstances of the migrant working class in south China over the past three decades, from historical and comparative perspectives. It examines the rise of a male migrant working population in the export industries, a shift in material and social lives of migrant workers, and the emergence of a new non-coercive factory regime in the industries. By conducting on-site fieldwork regarding Hong Kong-invested garment factories in south China, Hong Kong and Vietnam, alongside factory-gate surveys in China and Vietnam, this book examines how and why the circumstances of workers in these localities are dissimilar even when under the same type of factory ownership. In analyzing workers' lives within and outside factories, and the expansion of global capitalism in East and Southeast Asia, the book contributes to research on production politics and everyday life practice, and an understanding of how global and local forces interact.

In past decades, most democratic European countries sought to achieve a more equal division of labour between men and women, both within families and organisations. At the same time, they wanted to offer individuals and families sufficient freedom to determine their own roles. But how far can the basic values of 'equality' and 'freedom' be realised in the daily division of labour in a complex modern society? How can they be linked with other principles, such as 'solidarity' and 'efficiency'? "Towards a democratic division of labour?" starts from the challenge of balancing these values in all sections of modern society, introducing the Combination Model as a scientific tool for studying the division of professional and family work. Following an integrated conceptual approach, the book explains the historical evolution of the division of labour in modern welfare states. Three policy models are developed to illustrate how a democratic division of labour can be conceived in the long-term and the Complete Combination Model is presented as the most suitable for the development of an integrated policy programme. "Towards a democratic division of labour?" offers inspiration to all scientists, policy makers, representatives of societal organisations and managers who are searching for new theoretical, empirical and policy perspectives.

In past decades, most democratic European countries sought to achieve a more equal division of labour between men and women, both within families and organisations. At the same time, they wanted to offer individuals and families sufficient freedom to determine their own roles. But how far can the basic values of 'equality' and 'freedom' be realised in the daily division of labour in a complex modern society? How can they be linked with other principles, such as 'solidarity' and 'efficiency'?"Towards a democratic division of labour" starts from the challenge of balancing these values in all sections of modern society, introducing the Combination Model as a scientific tool for studying the division of professional and family work. Following an integrated conceptual approach, the book explains the historical evolution of the division of labour in modern welfare states. Three policy models are developed to illustrate how a democratic division of labour can be conceived in the long-term and the Complete Combination Model is presented as the most suitable for the development of an integrated policy programme. "Towards a Democratic Division of Labour" offers inspiration to all scientists, policy makers, representatives of societal organisations and managers who are searching for new theoretical, empirical and policy perspectives.

From the perspective of trade unions, European integration makes it more necessary than ever before to establish common political positions. At the same time, increasing heterogeneity between the member states makes the crafting of such positions more and more difficult. Can, under these circumstances, a joint political line among European trade unions emerge? To answer this question, the book sheds light on transnational trade union cooperation in the three most important policy fields: the debate around the Freedom of services, the discussion over a European minimum wage, and the efforts of international wage coordination. Drawing on the results of extensive field research based on a qualitative study among trade unions from Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, as well as representatives from the European level, this book points to a significant gap in European trade union politics between pretensions and reality. The findings provide a solid theoretical framework, suitable not only to explain current dynamics in the field of European trade unionism, but also promising for further research on the topic. With its focus on a contested political field, Trade Unions in the Course of European Integration contributes to practical and theoretical debates within European trade unionism. As an adequate understanding of European trade unionism in general and collective bargaining requires a twofold perspective on European integration and the role of trade unions in European labor relations, two fields of scholarly interest are being addressed. Moreover, with its focus on European trade unionism as an internationalist project of labor politics, the book will also appeal to those interested in the field of Global Labor Studies.