Bringing together leading international scholars within the fields of social and political theory and philosophy, this book explores how we should understand work and its role(s) in our lives and wider society. What challenges are posed by work in our changing economy and the new economic forms that are beginning to emerge, and how can we best address these challenges? In what ways do patterns of working, as well as work technologies, shape people's lives within and outside work, in particular their life opportunities and their social and natural environment? How might we organize-or seek to reorganize-workplaces so that the experience of work better reflects our shared ethical ideals and normative principles? This volume examines these vital questions in a comprehensive and systematic manner in order to provide much needed theoretical insight and practical guidance in reflecting on the nature, problems, and possibilities of work currently. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and established academics in the areas of contemporary political theory and philosophy, social theory, legal philosophy, labour studies, the sociology of work, practical ethics, critical theory, and political activism.

In recent years, trust has enjoyed increasing interest from a wide range of parties, including organizations, policymakers, and the media. Perennially linked to turbulence and scandals, the damaging and rebuilding of trust is a contemporary concern affecting all areas of society. Comprising six thematic sections, The Routledge Companion to Trust provides a comprehensive survey of trust research. With contributions from international experts, this volume examines the major topics and emerging areas within the field, including essays on the foundations, levels and theories of trust. It also examines trust repair and explores trust in settings such as healthcare, finance, food supply chains, and the internet. The Routledge Companion to Trust is an extensive reference work which will be a vital resource to researchers and practitioners across the fields of management and organizational studies, behavioural economics, psychology, cultural anthropology, political science and sociology.

Marriages that involve the migration of at least one of the spouses challenge two intersecting facets of the politics of belonging: the making of the 'good and legitimate citizens' and the 'acceptable family'. In Europe, cross-border marriages have been the target of increasing state controls, an issue of public concern and the object of scholarly research. The study of cross-border marriages and the ways these marriages are framed is inevitably affected by states' concerns and priorities. There is a need for a reflexive assessment of how the categories employed by state institutions and agents have impacted the study of cross-border marriages. This collection of essays analyses what is at stake in the regulation of cross-border marriages and how European states use particular categories (e.g., 'sham', 'forced' and 'mixed' marriages) to differentiate between acceptable and non-acceptable marriages. When researchers use these categories unreflexively, they risk reproducing nation-centred epistemologies and reinforcing state-informed hierarchies and forms of exclusion. The chapters in this book offer new insights into a timely topic and suggest ways to avoid these pitfalls: differentiating between categories of analysis and categories of practice, adopting methodologies that do not mirror nation-states' logic and engaging with general social theory outside migration studies. This book will be of interest to researchers and academics of Sociology, Politics, International Relations, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Human Geography, Social Work, and Public Policy. Barring one, all the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

This book examines partnerships between commercial banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs). It demonstrates that when set up properly, these partnerships have the potential to develop and enhance the financial inclusion agenda, and further support sustainable development. MFIs provide access to finance predominantly for those who are poor but economically active, and therefore their expansion is imperative for inclusive economic development. However, MFIs are faced with enormous challenges. The book discusses how partnering with a commercial bank can meet these challenges and the process of interaction contributing to the enhancement of institutional robustness of MFIs. Through two distinct case studies, in Cambodia and Australia, the book discusses the motivations, objectives and operational dynamics of a partnership, as well as the challenges, success factors, and potential benefits, from the increase in outreach and sustainability, to the transference of knowledge and potential for capacity building. Similarly, the partnering banks benefit in line with the intended objectives-commercial or social besides help embedding social consciousness and improving staff engagement. Concluding with elucidating the characteristics of a partnership model that can succeed across different global contexts, the book will interest a range of researchers and students across development economics, banking, finance, and sustainable development.

This book illustrates two approaches for firms to shape successful circular strategies, namely, the Circular Economy and Circular Districts. The former considers firms' challenges when turning theoretical circular models into practice. Thus, it discusses the opportunities and difficulties in reshaping corporate strategies by reflecting on circular economy principles. The latter approach plays a new role within the new economy systems and this book conceptualizes and operationalizes its definition. The circular district can represent an effective way to accelerate the energy transition process by developing industrial collaborations and exploiting technology synergies to enhance circularity and achieve economic, environmental, and social targets. The book highlights how firms should adjust their strategic thinking, redesign their network of relationships, and reconsider the value creation process when the circular economy is a concrete option. Furthermore, it examines the evolution from circular economy to circular districts by revealing the motivations that push firms and supply chains to redesign their strategies by considering the perspective of a circular district. The book ends by analyzing business experiences in these two areas and proposes advancements for both the scientific community and the business world. The book offers a blend of theoretical frameworks and practical applications and will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of sustainable operations, closed-loop supply chain, green supply chain management, and circular supply chains. Also, the operationalization of the concept of circular districts, offers a genuine and original theoretical contribution, thus targeting students from Executive programs, MBA programs, and PhD programs. The book will also attract managers, practitioners and professionals interested in real-world cases and experiences as well as practical developments in the domain.

Career Dynamics in a Global World takes on a major question in the global research and practice of career development and adopts a distinctive approach in response. The authors address the question of how and to what extent a predominant influence of Western thinking about careers interferes with our understanding of careers in other parts of the world. The approach involves identifying career topics for further exploration, recruiting teams of Indian and Western scholars on each topic to share their insights, and laying out those insights to help both careers researchers and practitioners see their significance. As a result, in this remarkable collaboration the reader is invited to compare views on self-awareness and careers from traditional Indian Ayurvedic and alternative Western perspectives, alongside contrasting Indian and Western reports on women stepping off their career ladders, the motivation of social entrepreneurs, the careers of IT workers, MBA holders and management scholars and other topics. Career and cross-cultural researchers and career and HR practitioners will be fascinated by the comparative analysis of career dynamics.

Crisis in the Professions: The New Dark Age presents a wide, panoramic view into the state of modern professional work in the United States. Struggling labor markets, growing inequalities, and increasing amounts of cultural and political mistrust are but a few major changes undermining the people seen as essential in society and needed to compete in a globalized, highly-skilled world. The authors explore this profound dilemma through a variety of methods, each one allowing them to identify significant areas of change and concern. They address macro-level social, political, and economic forces at the root of these changes and pair these explanations with illustrative vignettes of young, would-be professionals to paint a comprehensive, albeit complicated picture of professional work in the 21st century. Amid a backdrop of increasing globalization, technological advance, and cultural devaluation of expertise, the authors point attention to the mounting implications these shifts have for new generations of professionals and consider alternative models to address signs of precarity and instability within the professions. With piercing insight and compelling evidence, Crisis in the Professions probes deeply enough to stimulate scholars and researchers invested in the sociological study of work and provides a valuable, versatile read for advanced students in these areas as well.

First published in 1989, The Competitiveness of European Industry helps in developing our understanding of the process of improving and measuring industrial competitiveness. The contributors focus on the competitiveness of European industry. Three main topics are discussed: the concept of competitiveness itself; what can be learned about competitiveness at the level of an individual national economy; and processes and strategies in forms which might contribute to improved competitive performance. The first two papers critically assess concepts and measures of national competitiveness and review the performances of the economies of Britain, France, and the Federal German Republic. Then follow accounts of industrial competitiveness in three smaller economies (Belgium, Switzerland, and Sweden), which develop a series of methods and techniques for the analysis of industrial structures and indicate significant policy implications. The three concluding papers look at the competitiveness of British industry at the firm level, focusing on the strategic changes, the competitive process, and technical innovation. This book will be of interest to policy makers, business school teachers, and researchers in the area of strategy, industrial economics, organization behaviour, and innovation management.

Equips readers with research-based information on leader failure and success Provides an alternative to overly optimistic books on leadership explores six factors that cause leaders to fail and provides examples and approaches to avoid

This edited book emerges from the observation that the current literatures on migration in China are constrained by a series of shortfalls, including a relative topical homogeneity centred on domestic labour migration; relatively narrowly conceived and institutionalist conceptions of migration and migrants, without adequate attention paid to the identities, agencies and everyday experiences of migrants; and finally a lack of engagement with theoretical models and paradigms in the broad discipline of migration studies. Assembling eight fine-grained research works engaging with a broad variety of migratory trajectories and experiences, this book addresses these shortfalls by: (1) investigating diverse forms of domestic and transnational migration in and to China; (2) problematising, rethinking and innovating well-established analytical tools and categories to move beyond their epistemological fixity and highlight their socially and dynamically constructed nature; and (3) underscoring the centrality of identity, subjectivity and everyday experiences, rather than mechanical causality between institutions and migration outcomes, to theoretical understandings of migration in China. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Sociology, Politics, Human Geography, Social Work and Urban Studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Lobbying is an integral part of the political reality of the European Union and a highly competitive and dynamic field of interest groups. This book takes a systematic look at lobbyists in order to broaden our understanding of the staff entrusted with the responsibility of influencing European politics. Who are the European lobbyists? What are their professional backgrounds, career patterns, practices and beliefs? The study uses a sociological framework to explore the professionalisation and professionalism of the field across national proveniences, policy fields and interest groups, and develops a systematic analysis that considers three different dimensions: occupational patterns, shared knowledge and common convictions . Based on original research that combines in-depth interviews with survey data, European Lobbying demonstrates that European lobbying is a firmly established and highly professionalised metier. In an organisational field characterised by growth, pluralisation and increasing competition, the professional staff contributes to the homogenisation of European lobbying and the marginalisation of other, non-professionalised forms of interest representation. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology and politics with interest in European studies, EU politics and the sociology of the professions.

The public relations profession positions itself as expert in building trust throughout global markets, particularly after crisis strikes. Successive crises have tainted financial markets in recent years. Calls to restore trust in finance have been particularly pressing, given trust's crucial role as lubricant in global financial engines. Nonetheless, years after the global financial crisis, trust in financial markets remains both tenuous and controversial. This book explores PR in financial markets, posing a fundamental question about PR professionals as would-be 'trust strategists'. If PR promotes its expertise in building and restoring trust, how can it ignore its potential role in losing trust in the first place? Drawing on examples from state finance, international lending agencies, trade bodies, financial institutions and consumer groups in mature and emerging financial centres, this book explores the wide-ranging role of PR in financial markets, including: State finance and debt capital markets Investor relations, M&A and IPOs Corporate communications for financial institutions Product promotion and consumer finance Financial trade associations and lobbying Consumerism and financial activism. Far reaching and challenging, this innovative book will be essential reading for researchers, advanced students and professionals in PR, communication and finance.

This book explores the representation of women and their interests in the world of work across four trade unions in France and the UK. Drawing on case studies of the careers of 100 activists and a longitudinal study of the trade unions' struggle for equal pay in the UK, it unveils the social, organizational, and political conditions that contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities or, on the contrary, allow the promotion of equality. Guillaume's nuanced evaluation is a call to redefine the role of trade unions in the delivering of gender equality, contributing to broader debates on the effectiveness of equality policies and the enforcement of equality legislation.

What are the possibilities for a radical politics of universal humanity, at a time when the politics of identity increasingly defines the agenda of the left? What are the political and conceptual implications of such an emancipatory form of universality emerging through the struggles of Indigenous peoples on the extractive frontiers of global capitalism? How do such battles play out on the ground, and how should they be researched and conveyed? Extractivism and Universality takes an unorthodox approach to these timely questions. It tells the inside story of a spontaneous uprising in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 2017, in which mestizo, Black, and Indigenous workers and communities confronted the combined forces of a multinational oil company and a militarized state. The book documents a rapidly evolving battle that achieved a remarkable victory and captures the flourishing of an insurgent form of political universality in which racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions were suddenly and powerfully overcome. Intervening in debates on the resistances and alternatives developed by the inhabitants of resource extraction zones, it takes the reader deep inside a rebellion on an Amazonian oil frontier and offers a unique insight into insurgent universality in the lived reality of its material existence. It argues that the dominant decolonial dichotomy between Eurocentric universalism and an Indigenous pluriverse should be replaced by an approach that is attentive to manifestations of universality performed by diverse subaltern subjects. And it does so through a fast-paced fusion of radical political theory with the raw first-person style of gonzo journalism. It will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in political and social theory, social movements, labor relations, and the political ecology of extractivism.

Long known as the world's factory, China is the largest manufacturing economy ever seen, accounting for more than 10% of global exports. China is also, of course, home to the largest workforce on the planet, the crucial element behind its staggering economic success. But who are China's workers who keep the machine running, and how is the labor process changing under economic reform? Pun Ngai, a leading expert in factory labor in China, charts the rise of China as a world workshop and the emergence of a new labor force in the context of the post-socialist transformations of the last three decades. The book analyzes the role of the state and transnational interests in creating a new migrant workforce deprived of many rights and social protection. As China increases its output of high-value, high-tech products, particularly for its own growing domestic market of middle-class consumers, workers are increasingly voicing their discontent through strikes and protest, creating new challenges for the Party-State and the global division of labor. Blending theory, politics, and real-world examples, this book will be an invaluable guide for upper-level students and non-specialists interested in China's economy and Chinese politics and society.

Using a philosophical and interdisciplinary approach, this book looks at how accountability can provide solutions to our current environmental and global political problems. When a social system has external elements imposed upon it, or presented to it, political problems are likely to emerge. This book demonstrates that what is needed are connecting social elements with a natural affinity to bring people together despite their differences. This book is different from others in the field. It provides new insights by critiquing the extant understandings of accountability and expands the possibilities by building on Charles Taylor's philosophies. Central to the argument of the book are perspectives on authenticity and expressivism which are found to provide a radical reworking of our understanding of being in the world, and a starting point for rethinking the way individuals and communities ought to be dealing politically with accountability and ecological crises. The argument builds to an accountability perspective that utilises work from interpretivism, liberalism, and postmodern theory. The book will be of interest to researchers in environmental philosophy, critical perspectives on accounting, corporate governance, corporate social reporting, and environmental accounting.

In today's highly globalized and regulated economy, private and public organizations face myriad complex laws and regulations. A process designed to detect and prevent regulatory compliance failures is vital. However, such an effective process cannot succeed without development and maintenance of a strong compliance and legal risk management culture. This wide-ranging handbook pulls together work from experts across universities and industries around the world in a variety of key disciplines such as law, management, and business ethics. It provides an all-inclusive resource, specifying what needs to be known and what needs to be further pursued in these developing areas. With no such single text currently available, the book fills a gap in our current understanding of legal risk management, regulatory compliance, and ethics, offering the potential to advance research efforts and enhance our approaches to effective legal risk management practices. Edited by an expert on legal risk management, this book is an essential reference for students, researchers, and professionals with an interest in business law, risk management, strategic management, and business ethics.

With the dramatic changes in the extent to which women and men contribute to unpaid domestic work and paid employment, work and family life reconciliation has become more prominent than ever on the European Union agenda. This comparative study examines the Europeanisation patterns of work and family life reconciliation policies in a longstanding candidate country, Turkey and a founding member state, Germany, over the last decade, with a particular emphasis on intervening domestic actors and factors. Combining Europeanisation literature and New Institutionalism theory, it draws on document analysis and interviews with EU representatives, German and Turkish political elites and representatives of civil society organisations to shed light on the diverging nature of the Europeanisation process in different countries. A study of the influence of local actors on the push for stronger convergence among member and candidate states on EU work and family life reconciliation policies The Politics of Europeanisation will appeal to social scientists with interests in social policy, gender studies, EU politics and the Europeanisation process.

Where presidents or members of affluent families were previously seen, it is increasingly the case that car manufacturers are owned by banks and investment funds which have taken control of the entire economic life of these firms. This has significant impact on the terms of employment and layoffs, wages and precarious work, growing inequalities in income strata, compensation levels for executives, and the implementation of short-termist strategies across business operations. This book explores this increasing financialisation - the predominance of the financial sector over the productive sector - in the automotive industry. In particular it is shown that the financial operations of these companies through leasing, insurance, loans and other financial instruments is now much more profitable than the manufacturing aspects of the business, which was originally the raison d'etre for these fi rms. The chapters demonstrate how there are great demands to increase the return to shareholders as a main concern, despite other metrics and/ or other stakeholders. The work studies the impact of financialisation at the world's five largest automakers which together represent almost 50% of car production, providing an exploratory analysis of profitability, shareholder composition, compensation to executives, workers' salaries, dividend payments to shareholders and employment. Encouraging debate on contemporary economy, this book marks a significant addition to the literature on financialisation, contemporary forms of capitalism, labour and economic sociology more broadly.

As we become more and more of a global trading world, the challenges of leading and managing within this turbulent environment and its associated, complex, interconnected markets and disconnected relationships are indisputable, so just how far can any change requirements be practically engaged with, whilst also keeping the employee at the organisation's central core? Today's business world cries out for people who can lead with a cross-cultural global perspective, who can lead from the heart as well as the mind and address and manage problems on not just an integrated local level, but also with a healthy, holistic perspective. The subject of spirituality has long been discussed within academic research, but there still seems to be a misunderstanding and stagnation of both its real meaning and application amongst business academics, the population and organisations alike. This book aims to provide a realistic message to help those who are looking for some answers; for those who are looking for a way to advance their own skill-set and progress both their careers and the organisation's current standing; to move from being confused and insecure about strategies and tactics, to positively contributing to not only their own, but also to the employees' well-being and the business's overall purpose and intention. By basing the content upon real and relevant, interesting, modern-day perspectives, applications, requirements, opportunities and benefits, all combined into a manual for thought and a practical framework for action, this book will significantly and realistically move the subject of spirituality forward. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics and students with a special interest in the, positive, influence of spirituality within the workplace and everyday healthy living.

Sexuality in the Swedish Police is based on the experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual police officers and the author's observations of police work. Written at the intersection of organizational, gender and police studies, the book analyses how processes of exclusion and inclusion of LGB sexuality coexist in the Swedish police, how these processes are related to the culture and characteristics of police work, and how police management attempts to create an inclusive organisation. How and under what conditions does the exclusion and inclusion of LGB officers and LGB sexuality take place in the Swedish police? By delving into this question, the author seeks to answer, among other things, how it is that there are so few openly gay male police officers and how barriers to inclusion can be understood. The book contributes to a better understanding of the problems and activities associated with diversity issues, particularly with a focus on sexual orientation, but also more generally; many of the insights in the book can be used to understand the inclusion and exclusion of other groups in society. A key insight from the book is that inclusion and exclusion are collective processes characterized by struggle, a struggle that according to the author can be understood through the concept of "peripheral inclusion". Sexuality in the Swedish Police will be of great interest to scholars and students as well as practitioners with an interest in diversity issues and policing. The book is also relevant to those working in or interested in diversity, inclusion and equality in other similarly "masculinized" organizations, such as the armed forces and certain sports organisations.

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

The contributions to this timely volume explore the social implications of labour market reforms, and assess the complex relationship between the economic and non-economic aspects of labour institutions. The authors ascertain that labour market systems have important social dimensions, including social benefits and effects on psychological well-being and on social relationships. They go on to argue that the evaluation of reforms should take into consideration this social impact. The book examines the requirements for increased flexibility in contractual associations whilst maintaining social protection and job security. Using new utility criteria, guidelines for evaluating labour market and social protection system reform policies are recommended. It is argued that policy evaluations should consider whether social benefits are compatible with the increased flexibility demanded by the marketplace, taking into account the complex social and cultural rules which affect human behaviour, and the fact that individuals are concerned with issues such as fairness, status and the well-being of their fellow citizens. Policymakers involved in government, international institutions, professional associations for social work and labour relations, unions and employer federations will find this book to be a useful and fascinating read. It will also be of great interest to academics involved in labour economics, industrial relations and industrial economics.

Examines the ongoing process of how labor and work are understood in the contemporary marketplace Offers important sociological, political, and economic analysis of labor, management, organization, and work as a social phenomena Contributions from key scholars across an array of disciplines

This leading, comprehensive text for courses on the sociology of work covers many vital new topics since the last edition (2015), just as it continues to offer foundational writings and discusses different types of jobs, inequality and intersectionality, work and family, and more. New to this edition: * The gig economy and new digital platforms and their effects on how work is organized. * Precarious work and precarious workers, changes that reflect fundamental changes in employment relationships, increased job insecurity, and how people think about their jobs. * The new retail, from customer interactions to a world where consumption is driven by data science. * The latest research on call centers as the archetypal 21st-century workplace, illustrating many important issues about interactive work, transnational workplaces, gender, etc. * The post-pandemic workplace, including essential workers and frontline workers, healthcare work and care workers; job flexibility, and implications for gender, work, and family.