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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
'Pop-up' is a fully-fledged, new urbanism. Celebrated as a flexible and exciting new form of place making, pop-up culture includes temporary or nomadic sites such as cinemas, container malls, supper clubs, even pop-up housing and is now ubiquitous in cities across the world. But what are the stakes of the 'pop-up' city? Traversing a wealth of fascinating case studies, Rebranding Precarity shows how pop-up works to rebrand insecurity and encourages us to embrace precarity as the new normal. Revealing how urban crisis has particular temporal and spatial characteristics, defined by uncertainty, instability, fractures and gaps, it illuminates how those markers of crisis have been optimistically reimagined over the last few years, through an examination of seven logics that rebrand insecurity including within housing, labour economies and gentrifying areas. In doing so, it paints a frightening picture of how crisis conditions have become not just accepted, but are in fact desired, in today's metropolis.
This edited collection explores different strands of social constructionist theory and methods to provide a critique of the prevailing discourse of work stress, and introduces a radical new approach to conceptualizing suffering at work. Over the last three decades, stress and other forms of suffering at work (including burn-out, bullying, and issues relating to work-life balance) have emerged as important social and medical problems in Western countries. However, stress is a contested category, not (as many argue) a well-defined clinical, biological and psychological state that affects people in the same way in different cultures and at different times. Thus, a social constructionist perspective helps to shed light on new approaches to prevention and interventions of work stress. This book will be of great interest for students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, social history, history of science, psychology, communication and management, as well as to practitioners (doctors and psychologists), policy makers and employers.
This book explores new forms of popular organisation that emerged from strikes in India and Brazil between 2011 and 2014. Based on four case studies, the author traces the alliances and relations that strikers developed during their mobilisations with other popular actors such as students, indigenous peoples, and people displaced by dam projects. The study locates the mass strikes in Brazil's construction industry and India's automobile industry in a global conjuncture of protest movements, and develops a new theory of strikes that can take account of the manifold ways in which labour unrest is embedded in local communities and regional networks. "Joerg Nowak has written an ambitious, wide-ranging and very important book. Based on extensive empirical research in Brazil and India and a thorough analysis of the secondary literature, Nowak reveals that numerous labour conflicts develop in the absence of trade unions, but with the support of kinship networks, local communities, social movements and other types of associations. This impressive work may well become a major building block for a new interpretation of global workers' struggles." -Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands "Nowak's book meticulously details the trajectory of strikes and its resultant new forms of organisations in India and Brazil. The central focus of this analytically rich and thought provoking book is to search for a new political alternative model of organising workers. A very good deed indeed!" -Nandita Mondal, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India "Joerg Nowak analyses with critical sense forms of popular organization that often remain invisible. It is an indispensable book for all those who are looking for more effective analytical resources to better understand the present situation and the future promises of the workers' movements." -Roberto Veras de Oliveira, Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil "In this timely and important study, Nowak convincingly challenges the dominant Eurocentric approach to labour conflict and calls for a new theory of strikes. He stresses the need to engage in a wider perspective that includes social reproduction, neighbourhood mobilisations, and the specific traditions of struggles in the Global South." -Edward Webster, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
This volume of Advanced Series in Management offers cutting-edge research into international migration in Europe. Living and working in a host country is challenging both for the host country (for its institutions, organizations and local people) as well as for the incoming migrants. Therefore, integration activities are essential for easing the transition. The purpose of this book is to examine various practices of integrating migrants in European countries from national, organizational and individual perspectives. This publication will be valuable to researchers in the field, as well as for entrepreneurs, international corporations employing from abroad, trainers preparing employees to work in multicultural teams, as well as for investors who plan to expand their business into foreign markets.
Employment: A Key Idea for Business and Society introduces a topic that many of us take for granted yet is central to how we understand business and management. Most people work for the majority of their lives and in recent years, employment has become a topic of popular debate, particularly asking what the future of work could be. Much of this has focused on the role of technology and automation, as well as the growth of the gig economy and new forms of work. This book provides new ways to think about our own experiences of work and debates on employment. The book covers the history of employment, key changes to work, and a global perspective. The major debates in employment are introduced, providing theories for readers to develop their own perspectives. In particular, the book reappraises management theory, the role of workers' agency in changing work, surveys the state of current research and methods, and sketches out the key changes on the horizon for employment. This book will provide students with a critical introduction to employment, equipping them with the resources to research, understand, and rethink the topic.
This book presents a synopsis, with an innovative approach, of abundance, types and conditions of work performed in the tropical plantation and natural forests. It covers work of formally and informally employed, and of own-account small-scale forest users, women and children. Activities in tree harvesting are analyzed, also on-site conversion by pitsawing, planting and pruning. The abilities of the workers and their efforts while fulfilling their tasks, resulting in performance and workload, are described with many examples of published studies. Influencing variables from organizational, technical and managerial sides are considered as much as included in the studies. The detailed descriptions demonstrate the methodical state of ergonomic research. For better understanding of the coverage the background of the development of forest work science is described. The lasting influence of Taylorism and the roles of ILO and FAO as well as NGOs, e.g. in certification, are pointed out.
Among many factors contributing to a corporation's success, none is more crucial than reputation. It affects the way management makes decisions and the positions it takes, and how it takes them, on critical issues. A good reputation is also a signal to the market--one way that stakeholders will know that a corporation is successful. Riahi-Belkaoui looks at the most crucial functions and influences that determine corporate reputation, among them, the way it affects a firM's market value; the quality of its disclosures; how well its earnings are managed, how its executives are compensated. He also addresses other processes, such as international production, the informativeness of earnings, accounting choices, and the characteristics of earnings forecasts. The result is a succinct, readable, probing study for corporate decision makers in various functions of the firm, their academic colleagues, and knowledgeable onlookers who need ways to evaluate and buttress their investment decisions. Riahi-Belkaoui examines the process of reputation-building first, then the role of corporate reputation and how market value and accounting value differ. He moves to the impact of contextual factors of multinationality and corporate reputation on accrual and cash flow valuation models. In Chapter Four he shows how corporate audiences construct the reputations of firms by interpreting information signals about the firms from various monitors. He then reports the result of an empirical study of the 100 most international firms, which supports the general hypothesis that corporate audiences construct reputations on the basis of information and firms' earnings management. In Chapter Six he turns to the relationship between the level of corporate reputation and managers' ccounting choices, and in Chapter Seven examines the value relevance of earnings, cash flows, multinationality, and corporate reputation. Chapter Eight advances the hypothesis that corporate boards control top management behavior by means of compensation, but also by judging them on organizational effectiveness and social performance. He restates a general model of international production, and in Chapter 10, hypothesizes that the level of corporate reputation affects both the informativeness of earnings and the magnitude of discretionary accounting accrual adjustments. He ends the book by providing empirical evidence of the relationship between economic performance and organizational effectiveness, a measure of overall social performance.
The places and spaces of managerial and professional work are changing rapidly. Long-established routines and disciplines of the personal office are being superseded in a multiplicity of new locations, such as 'hot desks', 'touchdown areas', 'home offices', motorway service stations, airport lounges, cars, trains and planes. Drawing on original research, this book analyses the impact of these developments on the experience of time and space, privacy and surveillance, freedom and constraint in everyday working life.
This book examines the intellectual and institutional transformations of four British think tanks in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. In the context of a crisis of expert authority, Gonzalez Hernando demonstrates how these organisations modified their mode of public engagement to be seen as authoritative as possible by an ever more mistrustful public. British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis connects sociological thinking on knowledge with research on policy change and the economic debate, through careful analysis of interviews, public accounts, and the 'products' of think tanks themselves. Gonzalez Hernando argues that demands for knowledge and advice that arose after the crisis energised the work of all four think tanks while also exposing internal tensions, affecting their sources of funding, transforming their institutional structure, and shaping how they engage with their audiences. It will appeal to students and scholars of sociology of knowledge, political sociology, policy studies, economic history, communication, political economy, organisational sociology, and British politics
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence In this enlightening study of modern working lives in Britain, leading experts on the sociology of work draw on detailed statistical analyses to assess job quality and job satisfaction. Drawing on decades of research data on hundreds of occupational groups, the authors challenge conventional notions of 'good work' and consider them afresh through the lens of workers themselves. With examples from many professions, the book examines why some occupations feel more rewarding than others, regardless of factors like pay and security. Exploring fresh policies to promote the agenda for fulfilling employment, it builds an important case for genuine and sustained satisfaction in working lives.
This book interrogates the existing theories of convergence culture and audience engagement within the media and communication disciplines by providing grounded examples of social media use as a social mobilization tool within the media industries. As digital influencers garner large audiences across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, they sway opinions and tastes towards often-commercial interests. However, this everyday social media practice also presents an opportunity for socially and morally motivated intermediaries to impact on public issues. Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation in Media Organisations is intended to provide an explicit overview of how one notable media organization, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), incorporates participation into its production methodology, while maintaining its role as a public service media organisation. The book provides several cases studies of successful audience participation across socially motivated projects. Finally, the book provides an updated framework to understand how cultural intermediation can facilitate authentic audience participation in media organisations.
There has been an increasing interest in financial markets across sociology, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and related disciplines over the past decades, with particular intensity since the 2007-2008 crisis which prompted new analyses of the workings of financial markets and how "scandals of Wall Street" might have huge societal ramifications. The sociologically inclined landscape of finance studies is characterized by different more or less well- established homogeneous camps, with more micro-empirical, social studies of finance approaches on the one end of the spectrum and more theoretical, often neo-Marxist approaches, on the other. Yet alternative approaches are also gaining traction, including work that emphasizes the cultural homologies and interconnections with finance as well as work that, more broadly, is both empirically rigorous and theoretically ambitious. Importantly, across these various approaches to finance, a growing body of literature is taking shape which engages finance in a critical manner. The term "critical finance studies" nonetheless remains largely unfocused and undefined. Against this backdrop, the key rationales of The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies are firstly to provide a coherent notion of this emergent field and secondly to demonstrate its analytical usefulness across a wide range of central aspects of contemporary finance. As such, the volume will offer a comprehensive guide to students and academics on the field of Finance and Critical Finance Studies, Heterodox Economics, Accounting, and related Management disciplines. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138079816_oachapter14.pdf
In the modern globalized world of work, society's capitalist and patriarchal norms perpetuate old and create new differences based on gender, class, ethnicity, age, and other social categorizations. This book proposes a novel conceptual framework offering theoretical and methodological insights for thinking through the present and future inequality challenges in the globalized world of work and working life issues in the context of spatio-temporal relations. Bringing together global feminist studies of intersectionality and transnationalism, work-life research, and studies of space, place, and identity, this edited collection responds to the growing interest in peripheries, rurality, and other spaces beyond the urban and business market centres. In crossing the theoretical boundaries between intersectionality and peripherality, this volume brings these concepts together to identify how racism, capitalism and heteropatriarchy operate on bodies in the name of work, particularly as expressed in precarious labour conditions. It also advocates for transnational solidarity as part of feminist ethics, while providing an opportunity to reflect on ways forward for feminist intersectional studies of work and working life, drawing on embodied relationality and a feminist ethics of care. Working Life and Gender Inequality explores the intersectional nature of gender, class, race and other inequalities from a global and spatial perspective. It will be of value to researchers, academics, students, managers, consultants, and policy makers in the fields of organizational studies, leadership, feminist and gender studies, working life, intersectionality and transnational feminism.
Where presidents or members of affluent families were previously seen, it is increasingly the case that car manufacturers are owned by banks and investment funds which have taken control of the entire economic life of these firms. This has significant impact on the terms of employment and layoffs, wages and precarious work, growing inequalities in income strata, compensation levels for executives, and the implementation of short-termist strategies across business operations. This book explores this increasing financialisation - the predominance of the financial sector over the productive sector - in the automotive industry. In particular it is shown that the financial operations of these companies through leasing, insurance, loans and other financial instruments is now much more profitable than the manufacturing aspects of the business, which was originally the raison d'etre for these fi rms. The chapters demonstrate how there are great demands to increase the return to shareholders as a main concern, despite other metrics and/ or other stakeholders. The work studies the impact of financialisation at the world's five largest automakers which together represent almost 50% of car production, providing an exploratory analysis of profitability, shareholder composition, compensation to executives, workers' salaries, dividend payments to shareholders and employment. Encouraging debate on contemporary economy, this book marks a significant addition to the literature on financialisation, contemporary forms of capitalism, labour and economic sociology more broadly.
Based on qualitative research among industrial workers in a region that has undergone deindustrialisation and transformation to a service-based economy, this book examines the loss of status among former manual labourers. Focus lies on their emotional experiences, nostalgic memories, hauntings from the past and attachments to their former places of work, to transformed neighbourhoods, as well as to public space. Against this background the book explores the continued importance of class as workers attempt to manage the declining recognition of their skills and a loss of power in an "established-outsider figuration". A study of the transformation of everyday life and social positions wrought by changes in the social structure, in urban landscapes and in the "structures of feeling", this examination of the dynamic of social identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and geography with interests in post-industrial societies, social inequality, class and social identity.
With the dramatic changes in the extent to which women and men contribute to unpaid domestic work and paid employment, work and family life reconciliation has become more prominent than ever on the European Union agenda. This comparative study examines the Europeanisation patterns of work and family life reconciliation policies in a longstanding candidate country, Turkey and a founding member state, Germany, over the last decade, with a particular emphasis on intervening domestic actors and factors. Combining Europeanisation literature and New Institutionalism theory, it draws on document analysis and interviews with EU representatives, German and Turkish political elites and representatives of civil society organisations to shed light on the diverging nature of the Europeanisation process in different countries. A study of the influence of local actors on the push for stronger convergence among member and candidate states on EU work and family life reconciliation policies The Politics of Europeanisation will appeal to social scientists with interests in social policy, gender studies, EU politics and the Europeanisation process.
This book showcases issues of work and employment in contemporary India through a critical lens, serving as a systematic, scholarly and rigorous resource which provides an alternate view to the glowing metanarrative of the subcontinent's ongoing economic growth in today's globalized world. Critical approaches ensure that divergent and marginalized voices are highlighted, promoting a more measured perspective of entrenched standpoints. In casting social reality differently, a quest for solutions that reshape current dynamics is triggered. The volume spans five thematic areas, subsuming a range of economic sectors. India is a pre-eminent destination for offshoring, underscoring the relevance of global production networks (Theme 1). Yet, the creation of jobs has not transformed employment patterns in the country but rather accentuated informalization and casualization (Theme 2). Indeed, even India's ICT-related sectors, perceived as mascots of modernity and vehicles for upward mobility, raise questions about the extent of social upgrading (Theme 3). Nonetheless, these various developments have not been accompanied by collective action - instead, there is growing evidence of diminished pluralistic employment relations strategies (Theme 4). Emergent concerns about work and employment such as gestational surrogacy and expatriate experiences attest to the evolving complexities associated with offshoring (Theme 5).
Examines the ongoing process of how labor and work are understood in the contemporary marketplace Offers important sociological, political, and economic analysis of labor, management, organization, and work as a social phenomena Contributions from key scholars across an array of disciplines
Over the past 50 years the global labour market is transforming from reliable employment to low-wage and unstable informal and precarious jobs. This ineluctable shift is a consequence of the concentrated application of neoliberalism since the 1980s, as capitalism is converting standardised labour markets in the developed Global North into contingent and informal labour. Platform Labour and Global Logistics: A Research Companion examines the most important developments and features of global logistics and the emergence of the platform economy through historical comparative chapters and case studies. Part I surveys the logistics revolution and its impact on labour in key sectors of the global economy and probes the viability of the platform as a generator of economic and financial growth and innovation. The chapters of Part 1 offer a fulsome analysis and critique of the economic and technical reconfiguration brought on by neoliberal capitalism and the diffusion of the platform and logistics as a feasible model into the future. Part II examines labour restructuring from standardized to informal work through the platform and information technology, and the political and environmental challenges to labour. Part III provides global case studies on the informal economy through case studies of crucial economies where the platform has become dominant, and Part IV examines how the platform has contributed to geographic mobility and labour migration, and the consequences on workers. Platform Labour and Global Logistics: A Research Companion presents a unique contribution to the political economy literature through highlighting the significance of the impact of the platform and logistics on the working class and potential challenges from labour across the world. This book is intended for academics, researchers and students studying technological innovation, global supply chains, labour restructuring, and worker resistance.
Silence always has something to say - it's never neutral and speaks volumes if people are willing to hear. Our response to silence is often to dismiss or end it, to block it out with noise. Instead, silence needs to be taken seriously. This book explores the importance of understanding silence and shows how we can move from merely listening to truly hearing those around us. The interplay of voice and silence in organisational life is not straightforward. We can feel pressured to speak and compelled to keep our silence. Knowing how to read silence, to make sense of its generative and degenerative capacity, is a rarely developed skill among managers and leaders at all levels - who have been brought up to see silence as evidence of compliance or a weakness to be addressed. But it is a critical skill for managers and employees alike. Written by two experts in organisational development, this book explores different types of silence and their implications for organisational practice, digging into the theoretical roots and engaging with real stories and voices. It provides everyone at work with an understanding of the different meanings of silence and how to engage well with it. When to stay with it, when to join in with it and when to be struck by what's not being said and do something about it. The Great Unheard at Work is essential reading for corporate leaders, HR professionals in all sectors, business students, professionals and anyone interested in leadership development.
Work Across the Lifespan coalesces theoretical and empirical perspectives on aging and work. This volume examines a collection of human development theories that explain trajectories of change, including patterns of growth, maintenance, and decline across the adult lifespan. At its core, the lifespan perspective assumes a focus on aging as a continuous process of intraindividual change and goal-based self-regulation. In this text, the lifespan perspective serves as a lens for examining the complex relationship between aging and work. Integrating research from the fields of developmental psychology as well as industrial, work, and organizational psychology, this authoritative reference brings together the collective thinking of researchers who study work, careers, organizations, and aging.
The book presents a critical framework for assessing whether organisational practice and function reinforces unseen potential differences amongst individuals in the workplace. It offers a comprehensive understanding and awareness of managerial and organisational practices that perpetuate social exclusion and discrimination towards individuals in the workplace. The book draws together themes of non-declared medical or physical conditions, voluntary and involuntary disclosure of difference, dietary requirements, lifestyle, organisational engagement and cognitive bias. As a result, the book provides a unique blend of scholarly and professional research, and brings those who have been affected by social stigmas and discrimination in the workplace to the fore. Hidden Inequalities in the Workplace also offers practical and strategic insights for practitioners, students and policy-makers, and delves the strategic nature of policy intervention and thought-provoking dialogue
Industry 4.0 explores the emergence of disruptive digital technologies such as robotics, blockchain, nanotechnology and 3D printing and their impact on human lives and jobs in globalized 21st century societies. Incorporating a cutting edge area studies perspective, it considers the challenges and long term implications of the rise of 'Tech Giants' such as Alibaba, Google and Baidu through the lens of past industrial revolutions, looking back at the transformative technologies and industrial developments - the steam engine, electrification, telegraph, mass production, and the rise of digital technology - upon which the modern world was built. It investigates the mirror profiles of the world's largest tech companies in the US and China (Baidu and Google, Alibaba and Amazon, Wechat and Facebook) and provides a unique comparison of Tech Giants with 19th century colonial empires and monopolistic trading companies in terms of political-economic dominance. A key tool for instructors and students focused on courses on Technological History, Digital Technology and Cultures, New Media, Digital Ethics and China studies, this book provides practical guidance on how readers can equip themselves to face key workplace and societal challenges in a virtually interconnected world shaped by Tech Giant monopoly.
In Surrealist sabotage and the war on work, art historian Abigail Susik uncovers the expansive parameters of the international surrealist movement's ongoing engagement with an aesthetics of sabotage between the 1920s and the 1970s, demonstrating how surrealists unceasingly sought to transform the work of art into a form of unmanageable anti-work. In four case studies devoted to surrealism's transatlantic war on work, Susik analyses how artworks and texts by Man Ray, Andre Breton, Simone Breton, Andre Thirion, Oscar Dominguez, Konrad Klapheck, and the Chicago surrealists, among others, were pivotally impacted by the intransigent surrealist concepts of principled work refusal, permanent strike, and autonomous pleasure. Underscoring surrealism's profound relevance for readers engaged in ongoing debates about gendered labour and the wage gap, endemic over-work and exploitation, and the vicissitudes of knowledge work and the gig economy, Surrealist sabotage and the war on work reveals that surrealism's creative work refusal retains immense relevance in our wired world. -- .
The idea of a moral economy has been explored and assessed in numerous disciplines. The anthropological studies in this volume provide a new perspective to this idea by showing how the relations of workers, employees and employers, and of firms, families and households are interwoven with local notions of moralities. From concepts of individual autonomy, kinship obligations, to ways of expressing mutuality or creativity, moral values exert an unrealized influence, and these often produce more consent than resistance or outrage. |
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