The essence of this book can be found in a line written by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid". This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call "collapse," which is typically sudden and often unexpected, like the proverbial "house of cards." But why are such collapses so common, and what generates them? Several books have been published on the subject, including the well known "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (2005), "The collapse of complex societies" by Joseph Tainter (1998) and "The Tipping Point," by Malcom Gladwell (2000). Why The Seneca Effect? This book is an ambitious attempt to pull these various strands together by describing collapse from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint. The reader will discover how collapse is a collective phenomenon that occurs in what we call today "complex systems," with a special emphasis on system dynamics and the concept of "feedback." From this foundation, Bardi applies the theory to real-world systems, from the mechanics of fracture and the collapse of large structures to financial collapses, famines and population collapses, the fall of entire civilzations, and the most dreadful collapse we can imagine: that of the planetary ecosystem generated by overexploitation and climate change. The final objective of the book is to describe a conclusion that the ancient stoic philosophers had already discovered long ago, but that modern system science has rediscovered today. If you want to avoid collapse you need to embrace change, not fight it. Neither a book about doom and gloom nor a cornucopianist's dream, The Seneca Effect goes to the heart of the challenges that we are facing today, helping us to manage our future rather than be managed by it.

This collection covers how success and well-being relate to each other in early career development in the domains of employment and education. It gives a conceptual overview of success and well-being as established in the psychological research tradition, complemented by educational and sociological approaches. The volume presents articles on success and well-being in applied contexts, such as well-being as an individual resource during school-to-work transition, or well-being and success at the workplace. Work psychologists, social psychologists, educational researchers, and sociologists will find this book valuable, as it provides unique insights into social and psychological processes afforded by the combination of disciplines, concepts, and a diversity of approaches.

This text documents the changing position of women in Malaysia. It is divided in three sections, each of which correspond to a different theme. The first section focuses on the role of the state in agricultural modernization and its impact on rural women and the gender division of labour; the second explores the relationship of technological innovation and changing employment patterns in the industrial and digital economy. The final section attempts to link feminist theory and practice as articulated in the nascent Malaysian women's movement, and discusses the relevance of feminist theories in explaining the experiences of women in the developing world. The book is aimed at departments of women's studies, Asian studies, development studies; politics (courses on class relations, labour studies); sociology (courses on gender and labour); and some general interest.

'Revolutionises our understanding of the carceral state' - Fidelis Chebe, Director of Migrant Action During 2019-20 in England and Wales, over 17 million hours of labour were carried out by more than 12,500 people incarcerated in prisons, while many people in immigration removal centres also worked. In many cases, such workers constitute a sub-waged, captive workforce who are discarded by the state when done with. Work and the Carceral State examines these forms of work as part of a broader exploration of the relationship between criminalisation, criminal justice, immigration policy and labour, tracing their lineage through the histories of transportation and banishment, of houses of correction and prisons, to the contemporary production of work. Criminalisation has been used to enforce work and to discipline labour throughout the history of England and Wales. This book demands that we recognise the carceral state as operating at the frontier of labour control in the 21st century.

This book analyses the management of human resources in Chinese industry, covering the period from 1949 to present, particularly focusing on the period of economic reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s. For four decades Chinese workers have enjoyed job security under the 'iron rice-bowl' employment system. This arrangement is now under threat from the recent labour reforms and the emergence of a nascent labour market. The study looks in detail at these developments in the North-Eastern cities, China's industrial heartland.

This book explores stakeholders' perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu's concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders' perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.

The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism is a state-of-the-art reference work which maps out the current developments and debates around the sociology of the professions, and how they relate to management and organizations. Supported by an international contributor team specializing in the disciplines of organizational studies and sociology, the collection provides extensive coverage of this field of research. It brings together the core concepts and issues, and has chapters on all the key aspects of professions in both the public and private sectors, including issues of governance and regulation. The volume closes with a set of international case studies which provide valuable practical insights into the subject. This Companion will be an indispensable reference source for students, scholars and educators within the social sciences, especially within management, organizational studies and sociology. It will also be highly relevant for those working and studying in the area of professional education.

In this timely book, Barbara Czarniawska and Bernward Joerges examine the hopes and fears around work and job security inspired by automation, from the original coining of the term 'robot' to the present day media fascination. Have these hopes and fears changed or do they remain the same? This discerning book investigates whether these changes in perception correlate to actual changes taking place in the field of robotics. Exploring several streams of popular culture, including ground-breaking science fiction novels and films, the impact of these globally renowned works on public opinion regarding robotics is assessed. Detailed media analysis identifies the frequency and complexity of common views that stem from the ideas found in both fiction and scientific research results disseminated by the news. Recent social science works dedicated to the study of robotziation are then reviewed, illustrating current and future debates surrounding the phenomenon of the 'robot revolution'. Robotization of Work? will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the organization of work, IT and digitalization, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to anyone engaged with the concepts of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotization.

The main thrust of this book is to address a number of manpower issues vital to the development of the Persian Gulf region. By taking a long-run perspective, the study creates a framework for the development of future manpower policies in the key countries: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iran, and Iraq. The past policies in the region of growth-related investment, industrialization, and economic development should not be given priority over development-related human resource issues. Furthermore, the pressing need to accommodate demands for more highly skilled national manpower should not occur at the neglect of the region's culture and values.

Chapter 9 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Since their first appearance in 2011, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been at the centre of a great deal of media attention, owing to their disruptive potential in education. As university-level courses delivered free-of charge on digital platforms, they have also been the occasion of conflicting views regarding the quality of education and the future configuration of higher education systems. Based on new empirical research, including qualitative interviews as well as quantitative data from learners across several MOOCs, this book contributes to the debate by providing a comparative study of the diffusion and social implications of MOOCs in the USA, where everything started, and in Europe, where MOOCs were belatedly adopted by higher education institutions but now exhibit remarkable growth. Investigating the impact of MOOCs at macro level, on national higher education systems, as well as the social implications of MOOCs at micro level, with particular attention to the opportunities offered to learners to acquire knowledge and skills The Diffusion and Social Implications of MOOCs provides an encompassing comparative investigation of the specificity and social implications of the diffusion of MOOCs in two geographically and institutionally diverse contexts. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in new technologies and higher education.

This book, based on detailed research at national, regional and workplace level, analyzes the development of trade unions and industrial relations in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet system.

This handbook explores feeling like an 'imposter' in higher education and what this can tell us about contemporary educational inequalities. Asking why imposter syndrome matters now, we investigate experiences of imposter syndrome across social locations, institutional positions, and intersecting inequalities. Our collection queries advice to fit-in with the university, and authors reflect on (not)belonging in, with and against educational institutions. The collection advances understandings of imposter syndrome as socially situated, in relation to entrenched inequalities and their recirculation in higher education. Chapters combine creative methods and linger on the figure of the 'imposter' - wary of both individualising and celebrating imposters as lucky, misfits, fraudsters, or failures, and critically interrogating the supposed universality of imposter syndrome.

Underemployment - when people are employed in some way that is insufficient, such as being overqualified or working part-time when one desires full-time employment - is a challenge faced by all industrialized nations and their organizations and individuals. Just like unemployment, some level of underemployment exists even in the best of times, but it becomes more pervasive when the job market is weak. Given the current economic climate in North America and abroad, researchers and scholars in various disciplines (psychology, business, sociology, economics) are becoming more interested in investigating the effects of underemployment and identifying possible practical solutions. Underemployment synthesizes the current understanding of the phenomenon by bringing together scholars with diverse perspectives and expertise with the aim of informing and guiding the next generation of underemployment research.

These proceedings from the 2013 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.

This leading, comprehensive text for courses on the sociology of work covers many vital new topics since the last edition (2015), just as it continues to offer foundational writings and discusses different types of jobs, inequality and intersectionality, work and family, and more. New to this edition: * The gig economy and new digital platforms and their effects on how work is organized. * Precarious work and precarious workers, changes that reflect fundamental changes in employment relationships, increased job insecurity, and how people think about their jobs. * The new retail, from customer interactions to a world where consumption is driven by data science. * The latest research on call centers as the archetypal 21st-century workplace, illustrating many important issues about interactive work, transnational workplaces, gender, etc. * The post-pandemic workplace, including essential workers and frontline workers, healthcare work and care workers; job flexibility, and implications for gender, work, and family.

This volume offers new, convincing empirical evidence on topical risk- and risk management-related issues in diverse settings, using an interdisciplinary approach. The authors advance compelling arguments, firmly anchored to well-accepted theoretical frameworks, while adopting either qualitative or quantitative research methodologies. The book presents interviews and surveys with risk managers to gather insights on risk management and risk disclosure in practice. Additionally, the book collects and analyzes information contained in public reports to capture risk disclosure and perceptions on risk management impacts on companies' internal organization. It sheds light on financial and market values to understand the effect of risk management on actual and perceived firm's performance, respectively. Further, it examines the impacts of risk and risk management on society and the economy. The book improves awareness and advances knowledge on the complex and changeable risk and risk management fields of study. It interweaves among topical, up-to-date issues, peculiar, under-investigated contexts, and differentiated, complementary viewpoints on the same themes. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars and researchers, as well as practitioners and policy makers, interested in a better understanding of risk and risk management studies in different fields.

This book takes a people-centred approach to the ever-fluid and rapidly-transforming professional world of public relations (PR) in the age of digital platforms. As everyday PR work becomes increasingly shaped by the platform economy, this is transforming how the PR profession talks about itself, its issues and concerns. Drawing on different textual genres and discursive strategies, the author examines the shifting boundaries between PR and adjacent fields such as advertising, marketing and journalism - and illuminates varied lifeworlds of PR professionals from different backgrounds, races and genders. Written for academics, practitioners and those interested in the world of public relations, the book will also be enjoyed by young professionals working in this interesting and fast-changing occupation.

Given the growing importance of Eastern European countries in the development of the EU, there is an urgent need to reconstruct the recent dynamic developments in women's work and care in these societies, and the socio-political determinants thereof. Considering their specific cultural, economic and historical development, it can be assumed that the trends and determinants of women's labour market trajectories in CEE countries differ significantly from those in the other European countries that have frequently made up the basis for established theories in social and labour market research. This being the case, can 'standard' theoretical approaches, mostly modelled on evidence from Western Europe, be transferred to the analysis of Eastern European countries? This edited collection scrutinises pivotal aspects of women's careers in Eastern Europe, providing a detailed overview of trends and determinants of women's employment in Eastern Europe, and reflecting critically on theoretical approaches in social and labour market research.

This book discusses the crucial place that assumptions hold in conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating development programs. It suggests simple ways for stakeholders and evaluators to 1) examine their assumptions about program theory and environmental conditions and 2) develop and carry out effective program monitoring and evaluation in light of those assumptions. A survey of evaluators from an international development agency reviewed the state of practice on assumptions-aware evaluation. This 2nd edition has been updated with further illustrations, case studies, and frameworks that have been researched and tested in the years since the first edition. Regardless of geography or goal, development programs and policies are fueled by a complex network of implicit ideas. Stakeholders may hold assumptions about purposes, outcomes, methodology, and the value of project evaluation and evaluators-which may or may not be shared by the evaluators. A major barrier to viable program evaluations is that development programs are based on assumptions that often are not well articulated. In designing programs, stakeholders often lack clear outlines for how implemented interventions will bring desired changes. This lack of clarity masks critical risks to program success and makes it challenging to evaluate such programs. Methods that have attempted to address this dilemma have been popularized as theory of change or other theory-based approaches. Often, however, theory-based methods do not sufficiently clarify how program managers or evaluators should work with the assumptions inherent in the connections between the steps. The critical examination of assumptions in evaluation is essential for effective evaluations and evaluative thinking. "How does one think evaluatively? It all begins with assumptions. Systematically articulating, examining, and testing assumptions is the foundation of evaluative thinking... This book, more than any other, explains how to build a strong foundation for effective interventions and useful evaluation by rigorously working with assumptions." -Michael Quinn Patton, PhD. Author of Utilization-Focused Evaluation and co-editor of THOUGHTWORK: Thinking, Action, and the Fate of the World, USA. "This updated edition presents us with a new opportunity to delve into both the theoretical and practical aspects of paradigmatic, prescriptive, and causal assumptions. We need to learn, and apply these insights with the deep attention they deserve." -Zenda Ofir, PhD. Independent Evaluator, Richard von Weizsacker Fellow, Robert Bosch Academy, Berlin, Germany. Honorary Professor, School of Public Leadership, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. "This thought-provoking book explains why assumptions are an essential condition within the theories and methodologies of evaluation; and how assumptions influence the ways that evaluators approach their work...It will enrich the ways that evaluators develop their models, devise their methodologies, interpret their data, and interact with their stakeholders." -Jonny Morell, Ph.D., President, 4.669... Evaluation and Planning, Editor Emeritus, Evaluation and Program Planning

European countries have faced profound changes in family structures and family forms over the last few decades. This volume provides insights from eleven European countries with varying welfare state arrangements, exploring the extent to which the intergenerational transmission of attitudes, resources and values matter with regard to the economic self-sufficiency of young people. Drawing on in-depth interviews with three generations of family members, the contributors show how intergenerational transmission happens and what the effects of these transmission processes are. The book reveals that family members serve as role models to younger family members and influence their career and educational aspirations, and that there are specific family value orientations and parental approaches which support economic self-sufficiency in younger generations. Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Self-Sufficiency will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including social work, sociology, psychology and political sociology.

The Laborer's Two Bodies explores the intellectual, cultural, and political consequences of one of the most fundamental shifts in late medieval English society: the first national labour regulation in the wake of the 1348 plague. Bridging the medieval and early modern periods, this book analyzes a wide range of texts and images produced in this initial period of labour regulation (1349 to 1500), including trial records, ecclesiastical bulls, penitential literature, and chronicle accounts, considering these documents alongside better known texts by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Paston Family, Barclay and More (among others). This book demonstrates that the category of labour (as both lived and imagined) became increasingly problematic for writers who struggled to understand the meaning of work in a world where labour was simultaneously understood as punishment, virtue and reward.

Improvements in education and economic expansion in the 1950s ensured a range of school-leaving employment opportunities. Yet girls' full acceptance as adult women was still confirmed by marriage and motherhood rather than employment. This book examines the gendered nature of "career." Using both written sources and oral history, it enters the theoretical debate over the significance of gender by considering the relationship between individual women and the dominant representation of "Woman."

In today's highly globalized and regulated economy, private and public organizations face myriad complex laws and regulations. A process designed to detect and prevent regulatory compliance failures is vital. However, such an effective process cannot succeed without development and maintenance of a strong compliance and legal risk management culture. This wide-ranging handbook pulls together work from experts across universities and industries around the world in a variety of key disciplines such as law, management, and business ethics. It provides an all-inclusive resource, specifying what needs to be known and what needs to be further pursued in these developing areas. With no such single text currently available, the book fills a gap in our current understanding of legal risk management, regulatory compliance, and ethics, offering the potential to advance research efforts and enhance our approaches to effective legal risk management practices. Edited by an expert on legal risk management, this book is an essential reference for students, researchers, and professionals with an interest in business law, risk management, strategic management, and business ethics.

This comprehensive book examines the state of research on policing in Hong Kong. It surveys the history and development of the field of police studies in Hong Kong, and examines the various methods, problems and prospects in the field.