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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
Public accountants are being attacked from all sides. Stock and bond holders, the United States Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, clients, and even members of the profession itself, all accuse accountants of failing in their watchdog duties as auditors and of approving financial statements that follow questionable accounting rules. Academic as well as other critics fault the profession for failing to innovate, particularly in respect to accounting for the effects of inflation. The attacks often take the form of litigation that has resulted in the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in damages by firms and their liability insurers. This situation is not unique to the United States. Similar attacks can be observed in Canada, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Indeed, the viability of the external audit is today in question, as public accountants increasingly seek to avoid potentially ruinous engagements and diversify into other activities. Drawing on his long and extensive experience as both practitioner and academic, the author traces the history of accounting and auditing, analyzing the factors---domestic and international---that have led to the contemporary problems of the profession. He prescribes measures that can and should be taken in order to restore public accounting to its former status and esteem. He proposes major changes in federal and state legislation, the current system of accountancy education and training, accounting and auditing standard setting, and existing models of historical financial reporting. In addition, he presents a blueprint for a new type of financial report designed to improve the utility of financial statements for investment decisions.
Family researchers have long recognized the interconnected nature of work and family. Around the globe, there is a clear recognition that the paid labor experiences of individuals will affect their families and familial relationships, often in unanticipated ways. Likewise, family relationships and family structures can significantly influence the work experience of individuals. As experiences of both families and work vary considerably across cultures, and over time, the nature of the work-family interface continues to change. The work-family interface impacts not only adults within families, but also children, and the interwoven nature of work and family yields significant consequences for all family members and relationships. In order to better understand these issues, this multidisciplinary volume addresses such topics as: parental employment and parenting, paid labor and marital quality, the integration of work-family domains, childcare and child development, dating and mate selection at work, work stress and family violence, health consequences of work-family conflict, relationship roles among dual-earner couples, family determinants of job performance, gender differences in work-family demands and consequences, and work stressors and family functioning; among others. The chapters in this volume provide substantial insight into our understanding of the work-family interface, and provide meaningful directions for both future research and policy.
This book addresses changes in socio-economic systems. To do so, it employs the evolutional approach, which views changes in socio-economic systems from an evolutionary standpoint connecting the past, present and future, and focuses on preventing sudden, high-risk changes. The changes in socio-economic systems are also studied with the help of the system approach, which calls for assessing complex economic subjects, characterized by the sustainable connections between their elements, as socio-economic systems. Combining these two approaches in the context of studying the changes in socio-economic systems is unprecedented in modern economic science. The book studies various issues that cover both fundamental aspects of the system organization of economy and management and applied aspects of managing changes in socio-economic systems. The target audience of the book includes scholars and experts whose work involves studying the dynamic process of modern socio-economic systems' development. The scientific conclusions and practical recommendations that the book provides can be applied to the development and implementation of state economic policy in various countries around the world.
Did miners really owe their souls to the company store? Did they receive lower pay than in other jobs, despite the constant danger they faced? Was the quality of life in mining towns uniformly dismal? Soft Coal, Hard Choices answers these and other questions. The book contradicts many myths using evidence ranging from company records to oral histories to statistics collected by state and federal governments. While most studies of labor in the coal industry focus on union struggles, Fishback discloses the beneficial impact of competition among employers for labor. He further examines the impact of legal environment and the development of institutions like company towns. Careful analysis using economic theory and statistics reveals numerous insights about the welfare of coal miners in the early 1900s. Unions helped miners obtain higher wages, but so did competition among employers. Employers were unable to exploit local and housing monopolies because the miners had the option of moving from town to town. Workers choosing between mining and other jobs faced a hard choice between similar alternatives. High hourly earnings and freedom from close supervision in mining helped compensate miners for accepting more risk of accidents and layoffs. The combination of narrative and analysis in Soft Coal, Hard Choices will interest historians, economists, and the general reader alike.
As the rich have got richer and households have become busier, demand for commoditized household services has increased. While much is known about maids and nannies, this book is distinctive in focusing on masculinized domestic services. Through two case-studies - Polish handymen in the UK and the households that employ them and Mexican jardineros in the USA - the book demonstrates how, by outsourcing, householders can mitigate the "father time-bind" arising from tensions between new expectations for involved fathering, economic expectations regarding working hours, and a highly gendered and neo-liberal social policy regime, and shows how the consequences of this reaches beyond the households into the lives of the migrant men who work for them. Through the focus on male domestic work, the book identifies distinctly gendered understandings of domestic work and care, and shows how these influence the differential economic value of and emotional attachment to different forms of domestic work, and the gendered identities of those supplying and buying these services. In doing so, the book reveals much about the dynamic and varied understandings of masculinity.
How do workers fare in a continually changing labor market? This volume contains fifteen original scientific papers each examining how socio-economic changes affect worker wellbeing. Among the findings are: most increases in female labor force participation occur among women with high husbands' earnings, dispelling the myth that shrinking husbands' relative earnings cause women's work activities to rise; increased globalization equalizes pay between but expands pay within corporate establishments; high quality colleges widen the earnings distribution for top earners but only negligibly affect earnings for low wage earners; mathematical success depends on school quality more so than verbal learning; and adult daughters who visit ailing parents daily in a nursing home decrease their annual labor supply by about 1,000 hours implying a welfare loss of 180,000 dollars. Findings are: physical and/or sexual abuse appear to afflict over 30 per cent of the population leading to a 15 per cent drop in employment probability and a 32 per cent loss in wages; and, training workers in an entirely new occupation raises an employee's wage growth while training workers in the same occupation decreases their wage growth, at least during the Russian economy's recent transition.
This innovative book explores the different ways in which dual-earner couples in contemporary welfare states plan for, realize and justify their divisions of work and care during the transition to parenthood. Providing a unique comparative, longitudinal and qualitative analysis of new parents in eight European countries, this timely book explicitly locates couples' beliefs and negotiations in the wider context of national institutional structures. Compelling evidence is provided, demonstrating that the ways and degrees to which new parents can realize their work-care plans and ideals systematically relate to the support structures and resources available from employers, families and the state. A key focus is on couples that act in a non-normative way compared to their national, gender cultural context. New Parents in Europe will be of great value to sociology, political science and economics scholars alike and, with its use of cutting-edge methodology, will prove to be a valuable resource for policy makers. Contributors include: J. Alsarve, S. Bertolini, K. Boye, S. Buchler, A. Dechant, M. Evertsson, N. Girardin, D. Grunow, D. Hanappi, M.J. Gonzalez, T. Jurado-Guerrero, I. Lapuerta, J.-M. Le Goff, T. Martin-Garcia, R. Musumeci, M. Naldini, O. Nesporova, M. Reimann, A. Rinklake, C. Roman, E.-M. Schmidt, M, Seiz, P.M. Torrioni, S. Vogl, U. Zartler
Creativity, innovation and change are vital to the development and sustainability of all organizations. Yet, questions remain about exactly how novelty comes about, and what dynamic processes are involved in its emergence? Ideas of emergence and process, drawn from a variety of different philosophic traditions, have been the focus of increasing attention in management and organization studies. These issues are brought to bear on novelty and innovation in this volume by examining new organizational and product development processes, whether planned or unplanned. The contributions in this volume offer both theoretical insights and empirical studies on, inter alia, innovation, music technology, haute cuisine, pharmaceuticals and theatre improvisation. In doing so, they throw light on the importance of emergence, improvisation and learning in organizations, and how both practitioners and scholars alike can best understand their own assumptions about process. In addition, the volume includes general essays on process perspectives in organization studies.
There are many lessons to be learned about work-family interaction. It is clear that some people have learned how to combine work and family in ways that are mutually supporting--at least much of the time--and some employers have created work environments and policies that make positive interdependence of these two spheres more likely to occur. This book discusses measures of work-family, conflict, policies designed to reduce conflict, comparisons with other industrialized nations, and reasons why family-friendly work-policies have not been adopted with enthusiasm. The purpose is to consider a broad range of topics that pertain to work and family with the goal of helping employers and working families understand the work-life options that are available so they can make choices that offer returns-on-investments to employers, families, and society at large that are consistent with personal and societal values. This book brings together a superb panel of experts from different disciplines to look at work and family issues and the way they interact. Part I is an overview--with a brief discussion by a psychologist, economist, and a political scientist--each of whom provide their own interpretation of how their discipline views this hybrid field that none exclusively "owns." Part II considers the business case of the question of why employers should invest in family-friendly work policies, followed by a section on the employer response to work family interactions. Families are the focus of the Part IV, followed by a look at children--many of whom are at the heart of work and family interaction.
There are many lessons to be learned about work-family
interaction. It is clear that some people have learned how to
combine work and family in ways that are mutually supporting--at
least much of the time--and some employers have created work
environments and policies that make positive interdependence of
these two spheres more likely to occur. This book discusses
measures of work-family, conflict, policies designed to reduce
conflict, comparisons with other industrialized nations, and
reasons why family-friendly work-policies have not been adopted
with enthusiasm. The purpose is to consider a broad range of topics
that pertain to work and family with the goal of helping employers
and working families understand the work-life options that are
available so they can make choices that offer
returns-on-investments to employers, families, and society at large
that are consistent with personal and societal values.
This book explores the extent to which a transformation of public employment regimes has taken place in four Western countries, and the factors influencing the pathways of reform. It demonstrates how public employment regimes have unravelled in different domains of public service, contesting the idea that the state remains a 'model' employer.
Privatization and Economic Efficiency assesses the economic content of many of the beliefs surrounding privatization. It develops a new and novel inter-disciplinary approach linking economic and organizational dimensions.A series of case studies examines the theory, evidence and policy experience of privatization in developed and developing nations. These studies focus on the UK, US, Egypt and Jamaica. The book concludes that privatization is an appealingly simple phrase concealing many difficulties and problems for analysts, researchers and policymakers.
This book is a reflection of the discussion and debates on globalization and state autonomy in China. These debates, dated back to early 1990s, witnessed China s gradual involvement in globalization. Like other developing countries, China faced tremendous pressure when globalization intensified in the 1990s. As it turned out, China arduously made up its mind to embrace globalization, which reached its height when China was finally adopted as a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001.Thus, the articles in this book record the anxiety, concerns, uncertainty and enthusiasm of Chinese scholars in the face of China s embracing of globalization. In other words, this book presents a unique Chinese perspective on globalization and state autonomy.
In short, the 24 selected and representative articles written in English by the author over the past 30-odd years, mainly published in international leading journals and now collected and compiled in this monograph, could be deemed the products of international academic debates. They record, reflect and embody the author s personal views on a number of contemporary basic issues in international economic law & the international economic order. These personal views with Chinese characteristics are deeply rooted in China s specific national situation and the common position of the world-wide weak groups, and are significantly and substantially different and independent from some existing voices from strong western powers, which is why the book bears the title The Voice from China . On the basis of their specific themes and content, the 24 representative articles are divided into six parts: 1) Jurisprudence of Contemporary International Economic Law; 2) Great Debates on Contemporary Economic Sovereignty; 3) China s Strategic Position on Contemporary International Economic Order Issues; 4) Divergences on Contemporary Bilateral Investment Treaty; 5) Contemporary China s Legislation on Sino-Foreign Economic Issues; and 6) Contemporary Chinese Practices on International Economic Disputes (Case Analysis)."
In this book, the functions and dynamics of enterprises are explained with the use of anthropological methods. The chapters are based on anthropological research that has continued mainly as an inter-university research project, which is named Keiei Jinruigaku, of the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan) since 1993. These studies have a twofold aim: to clarify that enterprises are not only actors in economic activity but also actors that create culture and civilization; and to find the raison d'etre of enterprises in a global society. Business anthropology is an approach to the investigation of various phenomena in enterprises and management using anthropological methodology (e.g., participant observations and interviews). Historically, its origin goes back to the 1920s-30s. In the Hawthorne experiments, the research group organized by Elton Mayo recruited an anthropologist, Lloyd W. Warner, and conducted research on human relations in the workplace by observation of participants. Since then, similar studies have been carried out in the United States and the United Kingdom. In Japan, however, such research is quite rare. Now, in addition to anthropological methods, the authors have employed multidisciplinary methods drawn from management, economics, and sociology. The research contained here can be characterized in these ways: (1) Research methods adopt interpretative approaches such as hermeneutic and/or narrative approaches rather than causal and functional explanations such as "cause-consequence" relationships. (2) Multidisciplinary approaches including qualitative research techniques are employed to investigate the total entity of enterprises, with their own cosmology. In this book, the totality of activities by enterprises are shown, including the relationship between religion and enterprise, corporate funerals, corporate museums, and the sacred space and/or mythology of enterprises. Part I provides introductions to Keiei Jinruigaku and Part II explains the theoretical characteristics of Keiei Jinruigaku. In addition, research topics and cases of Keiei Jinruigaku are presented in Part III.
Drawing on case studies of 23 men in mid-career, this unique book examines the various meanings of work and their relationship to work stress and coping.
This book offers detailed comparative analyses of graduate employment and work, drawn from a survey of graduates in 11 European countries and Japan. The book shows how transition to employment, job assignments, employee assessments of the quality of employment and work vary by the graduates socio-biographic and educational background. It demonstrates more substantial differences in the relationships between study and subsequent employment between various countries than previous debates and analyses have suggested.
This is the official account of the experiments carried out at the Hawthorne Works of the Eastern Electric Company in Chicago. These were divided into test room studies, interviewing studies and observational studies. The test room studies were experiments into what variables in a workplace environment might affect worker fatigue. The findings of these tests led to extensive interviewing on the attitudes of the workers. The final phase of the Hawthorne experiment focused on social factors, using techniques of cultural anthropology to observe small working groups. The results of these experiments profoundly influenced the Human Relations movement.
This edited collection includes contributions by Mary Parker
Follett, Henri Fayol, James D. Mooney and Henry S. Dennison, L. J.
Henderson, T. N. Whitehead, and Elton Mayo.
Exploring major questions such as what people want from their work and why, Just Work discusses both new and enduring themes, examining to what extent this is accounted for by a changing environment of work since the 1970s.
A nurse inserts an I.V. A personal care attendant helps a quadriplegic bathe and get dressed. A nanny reads a bedtime story to soothe a child to sleep. Every day, workers like these provide critical support to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. "Caring on the Clock" provides a wealth of insight into these workers, who take care of our most fundamental needs, often at risk to their own economic and physical well-being. "Caring on the Clock" is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research on a wide range of paid care occupations, and to place the various fields within a comprehensive and comparative framework across occupational boundaries. The book includes twenty-two original essays by leading researchers across a range of disciplines--including sociology, psychology, social work, and public health. They examine the history of the paid care sector in America, reveal why paid-care work can be both personally fulfilling but also make workers vulnerable to burnout, emotional fatigue, physical injuries, and wage exploitation. Finally, the editors outline many innovative ideas for reform, including top-down and grassroots efforts to improve recognition, remuneration, and mobility for care workers. As America faces a series of challenges to providing care for its citizens, including the many aging baby boomers, this volume offers a wealth of information and insight for policymakers, scholars, advocates, and the general public.
The work and family revolution of the latter part of the 20th century has profoundly changed the social structures, institutions, and cultures that constitute the fabric of our lives. Given the nature of work and family changes, it is little wonder that numerous social science researchers have studied these changes and their impacts on society. This bibliography seeks to identify the primary thematic and topical strands that have contributed to the understanding of the work-family field. The bibliography is organized by major themes and topics. Within each chapter, entries for articles, books, chapters, reports, and other materials are organized alphabetically and provide full citations as well as annotations. This will be a major research tool for students, academics, and professionals with interests in the contemporary family and work-family roles.
An encompassing socio-historical survey of the political and sociological nature of groups, communities and societies. A transdisciplinary study of crowds, masses and groups as historical, sociological, psychological and psychosocial phenomena. A unique combination of sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis in the study of social formations. An inquiry into the enigma of crowds and mass psychology with the history of group analytic and group relations' advances in England, especially the study of large groups in the research on group processes. A comprehensive presentation of the social unconscious theory in association with the study of large groups and the Incohesion theory as new group analytic tools for understanding contemporary crowds and masses. In today's world, flooded by social conflicts and polarizations and the mass impact of social media, this book enables the reader to map out the field of the unconscious life of crowds illuminating the darkness of twenty-first century collective movements.
This is the tenth volume in a series discussing research on occupations and professions. Topics covered in this title include: rural Chinese household workers in Beijing; immigration, tradition, community and gender; the professionalization of real estate sales work; and, legal practice boundaries. |
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