Competing claims on time in work and family life have become inherent, unavoidable features of the Western world. As households increasingly juggle competing responsibilities, and as job expectations and parenting standards intensify, many people feel torn between work and family. This book aims to deepen our understanding of a variety of conditions that influence the successes and difficulties experienced in attempting to equally accommodate both work and private lives. The contributors argue that conditions which create competing claims on time can originate from the organization, from the household, or from both; a multi-level and multi-actor approach is thus applied to the problem. Paying detailed attention to time use and time pressures, the contributors focus not only on the causes of disturbed balances between work and care, but also on solutions to these competing claims. The conclusions reached provide policymakers and implementers with evidence that certain elements of the organization and the household can be seen as parameters that are susceptible to directed policy-based intervention. This comprehensive, multinational and multi-disciplinary study encompasses sociology, economics, geography and urban science perspectives from across Europe, US, and Australia. It will prove essential reading for students of social scientific disciplines, including family and organizational sociology and economics, and for policymakers and researchers focusing on work-family issues.

This book provides a fundamental and practical introduction to Enterprise Engineering, demonstrating how to employ this approach to map the essence of an organization at the core level of internal cooperation. It then explains how, based on these insights, organizations can benefit from opportunities for improvement that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Further, the book explains how to adapt the structure of an organization to the needs of its management and offers valuable tools for improving and perfecting it, along with guidelines on implementing profound and sustainable organizational changes. The examples and cases it presents show an increase in efficiency of up to 70% and increases in productivity and sales performance of more than 40%, once the flaws in an organization's structure have been identified and resolved.

This edited volume assesses from a variety of perspectives the policies introduced to support the development of household services across Europe. It highlights the impact of these costly policies on the creation of low quality jobs and on labour market dualisation, and questions their social and economic outcomes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Most contemporary organizations use management teams to manage and coordinate their businesses at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Management teams typically set overall goals, strategies, and priorities, making vital organizational decisions. They discuss issues, solve problems, offer advice, and ensure various processes and units are aligned and interact efficiently. Although management teams are vital for overall organizational performance, research indicates that they are largely underused and less effective than their potential would suggest for value creation. This book provides a research-based and practical model of the characteristics of effective management teams. It looks in depth at each factor of the model, discusses the supporting research, provides examples of how the factors influence the work and effectiveness of management teams, and shares tips and tools for successfully working with management team development. It provides researchers, academics, and students of organizational behavior with an overview of the variables that empirical research has found to be robustly related to management team effectiveness and will enable leaders and management consultants to develop more effective management teams.

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.

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.

From a leading crisis management expert, a breakthrough book about performance under pressure that will change the way you think about stress Upshift 1. a movement of a variable to a higher level e.g. of performance, growth, frequency. When we experience too much stress, we often feel like shutting down and escaping the source. Neurologists call this 'downshifting', where your thinking shifts from the cognitive and creative areas in the brain to the domains associated with survival. But with too little stress, we become disengaged and apathetic. So what happens in the middle zone - when we experience what psychologists call positive stress - and how can we best make use of it? In Upshift, international thought leader Ben Ramalingam takes readers on an epic journey from early humans' survival of the ice age to present times in our inescapable, pernicious and ever-shifting digital landscape. You will hear remarkable stories from a vast range of backgrounds, including scientists, gamers, performers and artists, athletes and health professionals and everyday people, all of whom carved new routes around perceived barriers using their powers to upshift. Whether discussing how city commuters navigate train cancellations to how astronauts deal with life-threatening incidents, Ramalingam presents a fascinating argument that we all have the power to innovate, whether or not we identify ourselves as creative or extraordinary. In a runaway world that is an engine for perpetual crisis, Upshift is not only an essential toolkit for survival, it is a roadmap for positive, and potentially life-changing transformation and influence. You don't have to shut down - you can upshift.

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.

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.

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.

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 highlights the vital necessity for combining sustainable development processes from different areas, with applications in areas such as science, education and production sectors. These sectors have previously been separated by linguistic and technological barriers. Breaking down these barriers will allow an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary flow of information, leading to greater efficiency, and towards a more real resilient and sustainable economy development. This book fills in the gap in respect of publications addressing aspects of innovation and sustainable development and focuses on a range of areas, such as I. Gradual transition to innovative development; II. Continuity of technology in education, science and industry; III. Convergency directions, interdisciplinary relations in scientific research; IV. Digital technologies for sustainable development; V. Global trends and regional aspects of innovation and traditions in environmental management; VI. International legal regulations and environmental and economic relations among business communities. The publication fosters the global efforts towards taking better advantage of the many opportunities which innovation in specific areas may offer.

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.

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.

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.