A satisfactory and healthy integration of work with other life domains is one of the key challenges of modern society. Work-life balance and work-life integration have become focal points of today's human resource management practice and theory. Professionals who have been described as "extreme workers" regarding their work hours and engagement are under particular pressure to balance work and "the rest of life."

This collection maps the increasingly extensive discussion of work-life issues for professionals and discusses key aspects in depth. What is work-life integration? What are the specific challenges for professionals? How do they manage their blurred work-life boundaries? How can companies intervene? Internationally leading authors discuss antecedents and individual and organizational outcomes of work-life integration, gender-specific perspectives and challenges as well as the use and usefulness of corporate work-life balance initiatives. In five sections distinguished researchers from across the world present experiences and research findings to provide a compendium of academic and applied research on the work-life integration of professionals. Cutting-edge research and novel theoretical perspectives make this collection a source of knowledge and inspiration for academic and business audiences interested in work-life integration issues in general and in the case of professionals in particular.

This book identifies a major threat to the productivity, profitability, and competitiveness of American business. This threat is the deteriorating relationship between managers and employees in the face of repeated downsizing, cost-cutting, and demands to accomplish more with fewer resources. Stress brings out dysfunctional, abusive behavior in managers, and a form of generic harassment results. Emily S. Bassman creates a vision of the antithesis of an abusive environment: one that is enpowering, where fair treatment is lived out in daily practices, where employees choose to exert discretionary effort, creating a peak performance culture. In creating this vision, the author applies principles from Total Quality Management to human relationships in the workplace, especially to those between managers and subordinates. The unique contribution is putting W.E. Deming's quality principles into behavioral terms based on psychology and learning theory. The author effectively documents that a transformation of how employees are treated is necessary, and not primarily to increase employee satisfaction. Rather, the primary reason to use these principles is to create the conditions whereby every employee can reach their full potential, thereby maximizing their contribution to the business and achieving transformational, rather than incremental improvements in productivity.

Bassman begins by mapping out the problem-defining and describing the various forms of abuse that surface in organizations, and clarifying how employee victims of abuse behave very similarly to victims of other forms of abuse. The unique elements of employee abuse are explained in terms of the nature of power in organizations. Why we persist in self-defeating, punishing interactions is explained with reference to principles of learning, and strategies are outlined for breaking the cycle of punishment and methods of negative behavior control. The author then moves from a consideration of individual abusive relationships to institutional abuse. How employees are treated is positioned as an ethical issue, and related to aspects of corporate culture, policies, and management practices. This leads into a discussion of the impact of employee abuse on organizations. Bassman documents the costs incurred by organizations that tolerate abuse, and describes some of the corporate programs that can be used to assess the extent to which employee abuse exists in the organization. The last section of the book deals with solutions, offering guidance for senior management teams that choose to involve themselves in an assessment and cultural change effort. This book is designed to educate management and senior leadership about the issues, and provide a roadmap for change, both for leaders and managers, and for those change agents (consultants, human resource managers) who may work with them.

From 2007 to 2009, French food and beverage giant Danone and Chinese entrepreneur Zong Qinghou -- who is ranked number one on Forbes' China Rich List 2012 -- were embroiled in a highly rancorous dispute over their joint venture, Hangzhou Wahaha. It transpired that even French President Sarkozy reportedly found time in his 2007 three-day state visit to China to discuss the 'Wahaha' dispute with his Chinese counterpart, President Hu.Behind the melodrama of the 'Wahaha' dispute lies an important lesson for foreign companies in China. As a result of the global shift in power, the imperative for a foreign company to manage its Chinese Partner has never been stronger since China re-opened its doors for business in 1978. By drawing on the experiences of Danone, Nestle, Coca-Cola and SABMiller, this book provides an insight into why, as well as, how the managing of a Chinese Partner can deliver sustainable value for a joint venture in China.

Moving beyond polemical debates on globalization, this study considers complex intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and class within the field of globalized labor. As a significant contribution to the on-going debate on the role of neoliberal states in reproducing gender-race-class inequality in the global political economy, the volume examines the aggressive implementation of neoliberal policies of globalization in the Philippines, and how labor export has become a contradictory feature of the country's international political economy while being contested from below. Lindio-McGovern presents theoretical and ethnographic insights from observational and interview data gathered during fieldwork in various global cities-Hong Kong, Taipei, Rome, Vancouver, Chicago and Metro-Manila. The result is a compelling weave of theory and experience of exploitation and resistance, an important development in discourses and literature on globalization and social movements seeking to influence regimes that exploit migrant women as cheap labor to sustain gendered global capitalism. Globalization, Labor Export and Resistance: A Study of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities, is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, community organizers, students of globalization, trade and labor politics. It will be useful in the fields of women/gender studies, labor studies, transnational social movements, political economy, development, international migration, international studies, international fieldwork and qualitative/feminist research.

This volume examines the anxieties that caused many nineteenth-century writers to insist on literature as a laboured and labouring enterprise. Following Isaac D'Israeli's gloss on Jean de La Bruyere, it asks, in particular, whether writing should be 'called working'. Whereas previous studies have focused on national literatures in isolation, this volume demonstrates the two-way traffic between British and French conceptions of literary labour. It questions assumed areas of affinity and difference, beginning with the labour politics of the early nineteenth century and their common root in the French Revolution. It also scrutinises the received view of France as a source of a 'leisure ethic', and of British writers as either rejecting or self-consciously mimicking French models. Individual essays consider examples of how different writers approached their work, while also evoking a broader notion of 'work ethics', understood as a humane practice, whereby values, benefits, and responsibilities, are weighed up.

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.

This book explores how structures of social inequality are linked to the social connections that people hold. The authors focus upon occupational inequalities where they see, for example, that the typical friendship patterns of people from one occupation are often very different to those of people from another. Social Inequalities and Occupational Stratification leverages empirical data about differences in social connections to chart structures of social distance and social inequality. Several of its chapters provide coverage of the long-standing Cambridge Social Interaction and Stratification scale (CAMSIS) project and its approach to analysing social interaction patterns in terms of a single dimension related to social inequality.

This book argues that we need to focus attention on the ways that workers themselves have invested subjectively in what it means to be a worker. By doing so, we gain an explanation that moves us beyond the economic decisions made by actors, the institutional constraints faced by trade unions, or the power of the state to interpellate subjects. These more common explanations make workers and their politics visible only as a symptom of external conditions, a response to deregulated markets or a product of state recognition. Instead - through a history of retailing as a site of nation and belonging, changing legal regimes, and articulations of race, class and gender in the constitution of political subjects from the 1930s to present-day Wal-Mart - this book presents the experiences and subjectivities of workers themselves to show that the collective political subject 'workers' (abasebenzi) is both a durable and malleable political category. From white to black women's labour, the forms of precariousness have changed within retailing in South Africa. Workers' struggles in different times have in turn resolved some dilemmas and by other turn generated new categories and conditions of precariousness, all the while explaining enduring attachments to labour politics.

The book explores the debates surrounding sustainable livelihood in the neoliberal era effected through transformation of the nature of work and the role of institutions, particularly in the Global South. By creating gainful work and employment opportunities through formal and informal institutions using progressive instruments and innovations within rural and urban economies, livelihood becomes 'sustainable', thereby reducing inequality and increasing resilience among households. Based on both theoretical and empirical studies from Asia and Africa, the book establishes the relationship between three broad concepts - work, institutions and sustainable development. The content has been divided into three broad sections: Rural Economy and Its Transformations; Urbanisation and Sustainable Livelihood; and Innovations and Instruments of Transformation. This book is a valuable resource for scholars of development studies, rural and urban studies, labour studies besides economics, sociology, political science and policymaking.

This thought-provoking monograph analyzes long- medium- and short-term global cycles of prosperity, recession, and depression, plotting them against centuries of important world events. Major research on economic and political cycles is integrated to clarify evolving relationships between the global center and its periphery as well as current worldwide economic upheavals and potential future developments. Central to this survey are successive waves of industrial and, later, technological and cybernetic progress, leading to the current era of globalization and the changes of the roles of both Western powers and former minors players, however that will lead to the formation of the world order without a hegemon. Additionally, the authors predict what they term the Great Convergence, the lessening of inequities between the global core and the rest of the world, including the wealth gap between First and Third World nations. Among the topics in this ambitious volume: * Why politics is often omitted from economic analysis. * Why economic cycles are crucial to understanding the modern geopolitical landscape. * How the aging of the developed world will affect world technological and economic future.< * The evolving technological forecast for Global North and South. * Where the U.S. is likely to stand on the future world stage. Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery will inspire discussion and debate among sociologists, global economists, demographers, global historians, and futurologists. This expert knowledge is necessary for further research, proactive response, and preparedness for a new age of sociopolitical change.

Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors presents eye-opening theory, literature review and original research on the mutual influence of branding strategies and consumer response. Contributors use multiple methods to analyze consumers' psychosocial needs and the extent that their fulfillment goes beyond the usefulness or value of the items they purchase as well as the fashion industry's means of communicating brand identity and enhancing brand loyalty. Along the way, these studies raise important questions about consumer behaviors, consumer welfare, environmental ethics and the future of consumer research. Included in the coverage: * A symbolic interactionist perspective on fashion brand personality and advertisement response.* Optimizing fashion branding strategies in a fluctuating market.* An analysis of fashion brand extensions by artificial neural networks.* Domestic or foreign luxury brands? A comparison of status- and non-status- seeking teenagers.* The impact of consumers' need for uniqueness on purchase perception.* How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity and the marketing mix.A breakthrough volume on the complexities of how and why we buy, Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors will captivate researchers and practitioners in the fields of consumer psychology, marketing and economics.

This book discusses boundaries for organizational humour as well as the jokers and jesters that enliven modern workplaces. It has long been accepted that humour and tragedy can occupy the same space and that is eloquently demonstrated in this book. Using ethnographic research techniques, a selection of stories, ruminations, cartoons, and narratives of events is combined with theoretical conceptions of humour and fun to create a comprehensive analysis of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly in organizational humour.

This text offers a fresh look at Taiwan's state workers in from the postwar period to the present day and examines the rise and fall of labor insurgency in the past two decades. Challenging the conventional image of docile working class, it unearths a series of workers resistance, hidden and public, in a high authoritarian era.

Using the concept of fulfilment and the framework of the serious leisure perspective, this book examines the signposts marking the fulfilment career. This career begins with an interest in a serious pursuit, leading to an efflorescence many years later in amateurism, hobbyism, volunteering, or devotee work - and ultimately deeper fulfilment.

This book examines international labour migrants in the context of South-South migration with a focus on Bangladeshi migration to Singapore. Two principal questions in the South-South migration are addressed: Why and how individuals migrate for work; and what impact this temporary form of migration has for migrants and their families. The book adopts a relatively new methodological approach to labour migration by linking different phases that migrants undergo in the migration process and by combining migrants in the host country with their families in the origin country. This is achieved through identifying and addressing six key areas: (i) migration policy, (ii) social imperatives of migration (iii) recruitment, (iv) social worlds of the migrants, (v) remittance process, and finally, (vi) family development dynamics. This book introduces the bari to migration research as a unit of analysis over and above individual and family units. The book reveals how social and cultural forces both initiate and perpetuate migration, and later on influence bari dynamics.

Grounded in extensive and original ethnographic fieldwork, this book makes a novel contribution to migration studies by examining a European labour migration to the Global South, namely contemporary Portuguese migration to Angola in a postcolonial context. In doing so, it explores everyday encounters at work between the Portuguese migrants and their Angolan "hosts", and it analyses how the Luso-African postcolonial heritage interplays with the recent Portuguese-Angolan migration in the (re-)construction of power relations and identities. Based on ethnographic interviews, the book describes the Angolan-Portuguese relationship as characterized not only by hierarchies of power, but also by ambivalence and hybridity. This research demonstrates that the identities of the ex-colonized Angolan and the Portuguese ex-colonizer are shaped by a history of unequal and violent power relations. Further, it reveals how this history has produced a sense of intimacy between the two, and the often fraught nature of this relationship. Combining a strong connection to the field of migration studies with a postcolonial perspective, this original work will appeal to students and scholars of migration, postcolonial studies, the sociology of work and African Studies.

2012 Americo Paredes Book Award Winner for Non-Fiction presented by the Center for Mexican American Studies at South Texas College Selected as a 2012 Outstanding Title by AAUP University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries This is Olivia's story. Born in Los Angeles, she is taken to Mexico to live with her extended family until the age of three. Olivia then returns to L.A. to live with her mother, Carmen, the live-in maid to a wealthy family. Mother and daughter sleep in the maid's room, just off the kitchen. Olivia is raised alongside the other children of the family. She goes to school with them, eats meals with them, and is taken shopping for clothes with them. She is like a member of the family. Except she is not. Based on over twenty years of research, noted scholar Mary Romero brings Olivia's remarkable story to life. We watch as she grows up among the children of privilege, struggles through adolescence, declares her independence and eventually goes off to college and becomes a successful professional. Much of this extraordinary story is told in Olivia's voice and we hear of both her triumphs and setbacks. We come to understand the painful realization of wanting to claim a Mexican heritage that is in many ways not her own and of her constant struggle to come to terms with the great contradictions in her life. In The Maid's Daughter, Mary Romero explores this complex story about belonging, identity, and resistance, illustrating Olivia's challenge to establish her sense of identity, and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in her life. Romero points to the hidden costs of paid domestic labor that are transferred to the families of private household workers and nannies, and shows how everyday routines are important in maintaining and assuring that various forms of privilege are passed on from one generation to another. Through Olivia's story, Romero shows how mythologies of meritocracy, the land of opportunity, and the American dream remain firmly in place while simultaneously erasing injustices and the struggles of the working poor. A happy ending for the maid's daughter: Hector Tobar's profile of Olivia for the LA Times

This book examines change processes and the challenge of ambidexterity in military organizations. It discusses how military organizations can better adapt to the complex, and at times chaotic, environments they operate in by developing organizational ambidexterity. The authors identify various multiple tasks and functions of military organizations that require multi-dimensional and often contradictory operational, technological, cultural, and social skills. In analogy to the often-opposed functions performed by the right and left hand of the body, modern military organizations are no longer one-dimensional fighting machines, but characterized by a duality of tasks, such as fighting and peacekeeping which often make part and parcel of one and the same mission. The military is both a "hot" and a "cold" organization (a crisis management organization and a bureaucracy). As such, the book argues that these dualities are not necessarily opposed but can serve as complementary forces, like the yin and yang, to better the overall performance of these organizations. As a consequence, ambidextrous organizations excel at complex tasking and are adaptable to new challenges. Divided into four parts: 1) structures and networks; 2) cultural issues; 3) tasks and roles; 4) nations and allies, it appeals to scholars of military studies and organization studies as well as professionals working for governmental or military organizations.

Contributing to the debate on work performance evaluation in a time of technological transformation, this book explores the impact of digitisation on production and organisation models, as well as on the rights and interests of the stakeholders involved. As organisations down-size, merge with other companies and become decentralised, the boundaries in employer-employee-customer relationships are blurred and new models for the organisation and assessment of work performance have emerged. With these new models, innovative regulatory approaches are sorely needed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on theoretical concepts from organisation studies, human resource management, sociology and labour economics, this all-encompassing collection is not only essential reading for academics and students, but also for policy-makers and employers who are looking for innovative and practical solutions to the challenges of modern employment relations.

This book reflects the development of Latin American labour history across broad geographical, chronological and thematic perspectives, which seek to review and revisit key concepts at different levels. The contributions are closely linked to the most recent trends in Global Labour History and in turn, they enrich those trends. Here, authors from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Spain take a historical and sociological perspective and analyse a series of problems relating to labour relations. The chapters weave together different periods of Latin American colonial and republican history from the vice-royalties of New Spain (now Mexico) and Peru, the Royal Audiencia de Charcas (now Bolivia), Argentina and Uruguay (former vice-royalty of Rio de La Plata) and Chile (former Capitania General).

Primarily on the basis of ethnographic case-studies from around the world, this volume links investigations of work to questions of personal and professional identity and social relations. In the era of digitalized neoliberalism, particular attention is paid to notions of freedom, both collective (in social relations) and individual (in subjective experiences). These cannot be investigated separately. Rather than juxtapose economy with ethics (or the profitable with the good), the authors uncover complex entanglements between the drudgery experienced by most people in the course of making a living and ideals of emancipated personhood.

Early in the 19th century the work of American newspaper journalists was intertwined with the work of politicians. Journalists were primarily printers and editors, and newspapers were largely political organs, funded and used by politicians for political reasons. As the 19th century progressed, not only journalists, but politicians, were involved in newspaper work.

Dooley explores the transformation of journalism, examining how journalists established occupational boundaries separating their work from that of politicians. She focuses on how an occupational group that had been inseparable from party politics early in the 19th century grew to be seen by many in society as more distant and independent from parties by the end of the century and became accepted as the citizenry's primary provider of political news and editorial opinion. This study of how journalists established occupational boundaries will be of interest to scholars and researchers of journalism history, political communication, and the sociology of work.

This book examines the experiences of the first graduates from The Doctor of Social Sciences (DSocSci) program at Royal Roads University, Canada's first applied research doctorate designed exclusively for working professionals. The program was developed in response to a growing demand nationally and internationally for scholar-practitioners who are leaders in their professional fields and who want to incorporate dedicated research and writing into their professional lives. Contributors describe their unique experiences in framing and conducting research that was outside the boundaries of discipline-based research and that was driven by issues on the ground.