These proceedings from the 2012 symposium on "Chaos, complexity and leadership" reflect current research results from all branches of Chaos, Complex Systems and their applications in Management. Included are the diverse results in the fields of applied nonlinear methods, modeling of data and simulations, as well as theoretical achievements of Chaos and Complex Systems. Also highlighted are Leadership and Management applications of Chaos and Complexity Theory.

Focusing on the ILO, this volume explores its role as creator of international social networks and facilitator of exchange between various national and international actors since its establishment in 1919. It emphasizes the role played by the ILO in the international circulation of ideas, expertise and practices that foster the emergence and shaping of international social models, and examines the impact of its methods and models on national and local societies. By analysing the case of the ILO, the authors rethink the influence of international organizations in the shaping of the contemporary world and the emergence of a global civil society.

This collection brings together a variety of new scholarship by a group of highly qualified and internationally renowned scholars and supplemented by a set of young researchers entering the field of global history and the history of international organizations.

This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

Based on new empirical evidence, this book provides a comparative analysis of the transition from school to work across the European Union. It examines the negative impacts of the recent employment turbulences on school leavers' integration into the labour market, as well as identifying the individual, social, and economic factors that facilitate smooth transitions.

Based on an extensive national survey of workers and four separate industry-specific surveys, Generations and Work will examine and provide answers to the most common issues and problems of multi generational work by assessing differences and commonalities between and among generations.

This book is a timely revival of the social and political importance of meaningful work, which explores a philosophy of work based upon the value of meaningfulness and argues for the institution of a new politics of meaningfulness.

Sorting Letters, Sorting Lives offers an examination of a workplace that for many years has employed an extraordinarily diverse workforce: the United States Postal Service. In the post-civil rights era, the Postal Service took a leading role in managing a diverse workforce, seeking to acknowledge and honor the different groups and cultures represented among its workforce. The USPS has constantly been looking for ways to motivate its employees, to create a sense of fairness and belonging, and to minimize interpersonal and inter-group conflicts. Linda Benbow examines the organizational culture and levels of diversity found in an urban United States Postal Service mail processing facility. She shows how employee perceptions of social differences and their interactions with coworkers contribute to their identity and work life within the organization. Painting detailed portraits of race, social class, and gender in a mail processing facility, Benbow looks at ways employees of diverse backgrounds relate to one another, identifying the issues and occasions that provoke conflict, the ways that participants view one another, and the forces and strategies that mitigate and conciliate conflicts. This richly detailed account of a historically diverse urban post office provides a fascinating look at the dynamics of race and gender in the workplace.

Using two longitudinal survey projects as examples, the authors describe how to use organizational surveys to assesses employee attitudes and to develop and improve quality of work life programs.

Have de-industrialization, expanding services and occupational upgrading put an end to class divisions? Drawing on extensive empirical research, this book adds new insights to the debate about the end of class and shows that Western European societies remain decidedly stratified with respect to material advantages and citizenship rights. Well grounded in theory, it offers a highly original account of today's social stratification and presents novel findings about working conditions, political preferences and pension coverage of different classes in contemporary Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.

"Europeanization, Care and Gender" addresses the recent underexamined developments concerning care as a crucial part of the restructuring of care labour markets in Europe, including contents of care and different forms of care that range from EU legislation level to individual care workers' and cared for experiences. Through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this collection examines and further develops current theoretical and political debates about complexities of care and the impact of multilevel changes in Europe. This book provides a foundation for understanding the major restructuration of care that is taking place at the European level as part of the global phenomena of care markets and the complexity of care within research and how it is no longer restricted to the domain of social policy but a pertinent issue within political science, sociology, legal studies and feminist research.

This volume contains the lectures given by prominent civil servants and representatives of the "International Employers' Association" (IOE) and the "International Confederation of Free Trade Unions" to law students from various European countries at the occasion of their visit to the "International Labour Organization". The purpose of these lectures is to expand on the major problems the ILO, as the social conscience of the world, will be confronted with in the next century. These lectures open a panorama of worldwide trends, which will co-determine the future outlook of our societies. The "Geneva Lectures" deal with following important topics: the world of work; the informal economy; globalization and the confrontation it involves; the future of the trade union movement; the role of the employer's associations; the ILO Declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work (1998), child labour; international labour standards and the codes of conduct of multinational enterprises. They give the reader an insight in the world of tomorrow and how one of the leading international bodies reflects on how to deal with them.

This edited collection provides a structured and in-depth analysis of the current use of quota strategies for resolving the pressing issue of gender inequality, and the lack of female representation on corporate boards. Filling the gap in existing literature on this topic, the two volumes of Gender Diversity in the Boardroom offers systematic overviews of current debates surrounding the optimisation of gender diversity, and the suggested pathways for progress. Focusing on sixteen European countries, the skilled contributors explore the current situation in relation to women on boards debates and approaches taken. They include detailed reflections from critical stakeholders, such as politicians, practitioners and policy-makers. Volume 1 focuses on eight European countries having adopted quotas and is a promising and highly valuable resource for academics, practitioners, policy makers and anyone interested in gender diversity because it examines and critiques the current corporate governance system and national strategies for increasing the share of women not only on boards, but within companies beyond the boardroom.

The book explores various aspects of cognitive and motivational psychology as they impact entrepreneurial behavior. Building upon the 2009 volume, Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind, the editors and contributors explore the cognitions, motivations, passions, intentions, perceptions, and emotions associated with entrepreneurial behaviors, in each case preserving their original chapters and enhancing them with thoughtful and targeted updates, reflecting on the most recent developments in theory and practice, telling the story of what has transpired in the last decade in the field of entrepreneurial psychology. The volume addresses such questions as: Why do some people start business and others do not? Is entrepreneurship a natural quality or can it be taught? Do entrepreneurs think differently from others? While there is a great deal of literature exploring the dynamics of new firm creation, policies to promote innovation and technology transfer, and the psychology of creativity; research on entrepreneurial mindset or cognition is relatively new, and draws largely from such related fields as organizational behavior, cognitive and social psychology, career development, and consumer research. In this book, editors Brannback and Carsrud have reassembled the contributors to Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind to discuss new research paradigms given their vantage point years after the original volume was published. Featuring the most current literature references, Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Mind continues to challenge conventional approaches to entrepreneurship and articulate an agenda for future research.

This collection explores the dynamics of the modern, middle-class American family and its near-constant state of transition. The editors introduce the book by situating it within the context of work, family, and ethnographic research on middle-class families in the United States. Emerging and established scholars contributed chapters based on their original field research, following each chapter with a personal reflection on doing field work. The volume concludes with an original essay by Kathryn Dudley, an anthropologist who has spent decades studying the intersections of work, family, and class in American culture. As a whole, the volume highlights how culture shapes family life amid shifting social and economic landscapes. The authors, working in the fields of anthropology and sociology, observed daily life at workplaces and in homes, interviewing people about their work, their children, and their ideas about what makes a good family. They report on their fieldwork in essays rich with the detail of everyday life, revealing the fascinating diversity of American middle-class families through chapters about gay co-father families, African American stay-at-home mothers, first-time fathers, rural refugees from corporate America, well-off white mothers, Taiwanese immigrant churches, the fetal ultrasound, and more. The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class is an excellent text for classes in anthropology, sociology, American culture, family studies, work and family, and gender studies.

Since the 1950s, social scientists have devoted serious attention to the relationship between alcohol and the workplace. In recent years, awareness of the tremendous costs, both human and financial, associated with alcoholism has led to a dramatic increase in both scholarly and practical interest in the field. Although researchers working in this area are relatively few, they have sustained a lively interest in the alcohol/work nexus and have attracted others to the field through conferences where ideas and research strategies are exchanged. The larger part of "Alcohol Problem Intervention in the Workplace" provides an up-to-date thorough examination of the problem, the research, and the possible solutions.

This volume is directed toward both practitioners and researchers, providing a wide range of new data and new ideas that bear upon coping with alcohol problems in the workplace. Part I addresses issues regarding the distribution and correlates of alcohol problems and alcohol use among employees. Part II is centered on issues associated with Employee Assistance Programs. And Part III is a general conclusion and overview offering suggestions and implications for the practitioner in the workplace. Because this collection supplies the most current thinking and information on controlling alcohol problems in the workplace, it will be of particular interest to human resource management and to employee assistance specialists, who are now required to pass a certification examination.

This volume features sociological research and theory on gender and sexuality in the workplace, and identifies how organizations can achieve a gender-balanced and sexually-diverse work force. While identifying characteristics of work organizations that have made important strides to achieving equality in the workplace, articles also detail how women and sexual minorities continue to face discrimination, harassment, and exclusion. Special attention is paid to how race and class shape the experience of discrimination for these groups. Topics discussed are wide-ranging and include: gender discrimination and the wage gap; sexual minorities (LGBT workers); homophobic and 'gay friendly' workplaces; sexual harassment; sex in the workplace; sex work and sex workers; gender equity policies; transgender workers; men and women in non-traditional jobs; occupational gender segregation; and, gender difference in work hours. "The Research in the Sociology of Work" series is proud to publish the works of new and established scholars on these important topics, including both quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as review essays that set the agenda for future sociological analysis.

Middlemen in international markets are one of the most critical components of firms' international marketing strategy. They constitute the main link between the exporter and the local market, and are thereby the "extended arm" of the exporter organisation. This volume of AIM analyses different aspects of relations between exporters and their middlemen: selection and governance, information exchange and learning, cultural aspects and finally the dynamics of such relations. The volume should be seen as a continuation of a stream of literature that has emerged over the last five to ten years.

This volume is more concerned with the phenomena under study than with casting light on one particular theoretical perspective. The contributions represented here are therefore drawing on a number of different theoretical streams: agency theory, transaction cost economics, network theory, economic sociology, resource base theory and its applied "offspring," Internationalisation Process school of thought. It features researchers from universities in nine different countries, representing both well-established and young academicians. This is a manifest indication of the importance of this field of research.

The book is an invaluable asset to students both at the graduate and doctoral levels, and should be a must for researchers in this particular field. Also practitioners will find this book stimulating in their quest for improvements to their relations with their foreign middlemen.

Drawing on Marxism and engaging with theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Gilles Deleuze, and Slavoj i ek, John Michael Roberts argues that a new expressive ideology has coalesced within the contemporary workplace around the theme of 'competence'. The 'competence' agenda encourages management and workers to build networks of trust, cooperation and dialogue between one another. By examining the competent public sphere as it appears in the global economy, the author takes to task the competence agenda, relates this agenda to the hegemony of global finance and to the fetishism of the new economy, exposes the dilemmas and contradictions of the competence agenda, and through everyday examples from the UK and USA illustrates how competence is played out and resisted in the contemporary workplace. This bookprovides a fascinating critical account of how the way we work today is debated and discussed by management and workers.

Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.

Economic globalization, the adoption of export-oriented industrialism strategies and the global restructuring of manufacturing have resulted in the increased participation of women in the manufacturing sector in Asia. This collection, edited by Armajit Kaur, is an important comparative study that covers the major East, South and Southeast Asian countries. It explores the diversity of women's work in factory and small-batch production and home-based work. It also focuses on women's employment and health conditions in the context of internationally accepted core labor standards.

Established by the Mexican government in 1965 to provide employment for Mexican citizens in the cities along the U.S. border, the maquiladora program is now one of the fastest growing industries in that area. This pioneering volume presents an in-depth examination of the maquiladora phenomenon written by experts on the subject. The contributors focus on three vital dimensions of the maquiladora issue: the impact of the maquilas on workers and economic development in both the United States and Mexico; the success or failure of the maquilas on an industry by industry basis; and the strategic aspects of the maquiladora program from geopoltical and macroeconomic perspectives. The controversial aspects of the maquilas--their impact on local pollution, unemployment, and labor market exploitation--also receive extended coverage.

Divided into six sections, the volume begins with descriptive essays on the history and current status of maquilas and the special provisions of U.S. and Mexican laws dealing with production sharing. The bulk of the volume is devoted to an analysis of the industry from various perspectives. The contributors examine the impact of maquilas on United States and Mexican border regions; describe the financial issues involved, including debt-equity swaps and other types of foreign investment; explore the use of maquiladoras by non-American countries; and look at the impact of maquiladoras on Mexico's balance of payments. A series of chapters assess the impact of maquilas in particular industries, including the automobile and apparel industries. Finally, the contributors turn toward the future of the maquiladora industry, addressing key issues such as the sociological impact of the maquiladoras, and the managerial issues facing maquiladora executives responsible for training and motivating workers in a multicultural environment. Scholars in Latin American studies, and development economics will find this volume a timely and provocative look at a subject of profound economic significance for both Mexico and the United States.

This book focuses on the subjectivities of stock market investors to explore tensions within the Chinese state's engagement in contemporary financial capitalism. It adopts a genealogical method to investigate how the production of foreign-trained financial experts (haigui) and informal experts (sanhu) points to paradoxes in China's efforts to cultivate financial expertise. Chinese financialisation relates to the state's project of financialising human capital in reaction to a contractualised labour market and the vanishing welfare state. Through ethnographic inquiry, Dal Maso shows the Chinese stock markets are crucial to the new redistributive regime where wage labour risks losing its primacy. Here, one can observe how the relationship between money and wages in China is being reworked and witness the development of a new economic order in which the state's legitimacy becomes increasingly dependent on its capacity to jiushi-to rescue the market in times of crisis.

The contributors to this edited collection argue that a flexible Job Guarantee program able to react to an economy's fluctuating need for work would stabilize the labor standard, the value of employment in relation to money. During economic downturns, the program would expand to provide more public sector jobs in response to private sector layoffs. It would then contract when economic growth offered private sector employment opportunities. This flexible full employment program would create a balanced, perpetually active labor force, providing the macroeconomic stability necessary to define a functioning labor standard. Just as the gold standard measured the worth of money against gold reserves, John Maynard Keynes argued, so a labor standard ought to measure the value of money in terms of its labor equivalent. However, he failed to account for the fact that, unlike a gold standard, a labor standard does not have any kind of surety that money will continue to match its value in paid work over time. Together, the contributors argue that full employment would provide this missing security and allow authorities to define the value equivalencies of money and labor, the way that money once represented its exact equivalent in gold.