The world changes like the patterns in a kaleidoscope: trends expand, contract, break up, melt, disintegrate and disappear, while others are formed. Change - as opposed to stasis - is our normal condition, the only certainty in our lives, hence the need to create tools that provide organizations with the means to tackle change and navigate complexity. We must accept the reality of constant change and be prepared for a heavy shift in perspective: interconnection versus separation, acceleration versus linearity and discontinuity versus continuity. Anticipating the future requires more than the traditional predictive models (forecasting) based on the forward projection of past experiences. Advanced methods use anticipation logic (foresight) and build probable scenarios taking into account weak signals, emerging trends, coexisting presents and potential paths of evolution. Corporate foresight is fundamental to interpret and lead change. The two cornerstones of foresight are organization and management. As concerns organization, the authors advocate the separation of research (oriented to the market of tomorrow) from development (oriented to the market of today), the establishment of a foresight unit and the concentration of research activities mainly on the acquisition and recombination of external know-how. As regards management, after an overview of state-of-the-art literature on forecasting methods, the authors propose the implementation of a "future coverage" methodology, which enables companies to measure and verify the consistency between trends, strategic vision and offered products. These organizational and managing tools are then tested in a case study: the Italian company Eurotech SpA, a leader in the ICT sector.

In the early 1980s world recession and widespread unemployment had accentuated an existing trend - more people retiring from work early and living longer after doing so. Some were adequately prepared for a life of well-earned 'leisure' in retirement, but too many were not. The policies of employers, unions and governments on retirement needed to be challenged in societies where work opportunities were collapsing but where leisure activities and values were not yet strong enough to take their place. Originally published in 1982, Dr Parker, a sociologist, provides a careful and critical examination of what we knew about retirement and discusses possible alternative answers to the various problems involved at the time. The history of retirement is first considered, followed by a conceptual analysis of types of retirement. There are chapters on preparation for retirement, the capacity of older people to work, and on the varying experiences of retirement. Separate consideration is given to the question of work after retirement age and whether retirement is actually experienced as leisure. The concluding chapter examines various policy alternatives for dealing with the problems raised earlier in the book. Work and Retirement was intended for students of industrial sociology and industrial psychology, for personnel and human resource professionals, for trade unionists and for all those who had an interest in understanding the developments in the field of retirement and the older working population. Now it can be read in its historical context.

This volume challenges the concept of the 'new African middle class' with new theoretical and empirical insights into the changing lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Diverse middle classes are on the rise, but models of class based on experiences from other regions of the world cannot be easily transferred to the African continent. Empirical contributions, drawn from a diverse range of contexts, address both African histories of class formation and the political roles of the continent's middle classes, and also examine the important interdependencies that cut across inter-generational, urban-rural and class divides. This thought-provoking book argues emphatically for a revision of common notions of the 'middle class', and for the inclusion of insights 'from the South' into the global debate on class. Middle Classes in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, as well as NGOs and policy makers with an interest in African societies.

The fourth edition of Career Choice and Development brings together the most current ideas of the recognized authorities in the field of career development. This classic best-seller has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include the most influential theories of career choice and development, and it contains up-to-date information regarding the application of these theories to counseling practice. This edition contains a wide range of career development theories that explore how people develop certain traits, personalities, self-precepts, and how these developments influence career decision making. This information will challenge teachers, researchers, and those involved in fostering career development to reexamine their assumptions and practices.

Made to Work analyses the conditions of mobile knowledge work (MKW) in contemporary worklives, contrasting and drawing parallels among three highly significant sectors of the Knowledge Economy: academia, information communication technology (ICT) management, and digital creative work. It introduces the concept of 'corollary work' to characterise the elusive work underpinning the configuration of workers, informational, technological, relational and infrastructural resources in (re)producing liveable worklives. It ultimately illuminates the myriad strands of corollary work that enable MKW to take place and contributes to emergent debates on how exploitation, at least in the domain of MKW, can be named, resisted and creatively subverted. In so doing, it opens up a conversation about the complex ways in which contemporary worklives are 'made to work', and about potential interventions to bring about more just worklife conditions in the future.

Italy is not a country for young people. Why? This book provides a unique and in-depth collection of empirical and theoretical material providing multiple answers to this question whilst investigating the living conditions of young people in Italy today. By bringing together a variety of approaches and methods, the authors of this collection analyze Italian youth through the lenses of three dimensions: 'Activism, participation and citizenship', 'Work, Employment and Careers' and 'Moves, Transitions and Representations'. These dimensions are the analytical building blocks for challenging stereotypes and unveiling misinterpretations and taken-for-granted assumptions that portray young people in Italy as selfish, 'choosy', and unwilling to make sacrifices, commit and manage an independent life. These prejudices often underplay the role of constraints they are facing in the transition to adulthood. Studying Italian youth, therefore, not only allows us to capture their peculiar characteristics but also to reflect more broadly on the conceptual toolbox we need in order to understand contemporary youth more generally. By doing so, the volume aims to contribute to international discussion on the youth condition in Europe.

This international book analyses the impact of digitisation in labour markets, on labour relationships and also on labour processes. The rapid progress of modern disruptive technologies and AIs and their multiple applications to each phase of the labour production system, are changing the production rules on a global scale with significant impacts in every aspect of work. As new technologies transform work patterns and change the type of jobs available - destroying some while creating others - and even the nature of the tasks performed, numerous legal problems arise which are challenging to legislators and legal scholars who need to find appropriate solutions to them. Considering the labour law issues which have been created by technological developments and currently affect the work of millions worldwide, this book highlights the full scope of these issues, suggesting solutions to emerging problems and ways to mitigate the risks brought about through technological advancement. Approaching the present debate with perspectives on legal problems with expertise from a wide range of different countries, this book presents informed and scholarly studies which answer the challenges that new technologies present in labour markets, private lives and labour processes.

Paradox in Public Relations: A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice is a thought-provoking exploration of public relations, aiming to promote changes in meaning and perception by creating new meta-realities for public relations. The term "Public Relations" was embraced by early practitioners primarily because it sounded more professional than the often-pejorative alternatives. This book argues for a reframing of some of the popular realities associated with modern-day public relations and uses psychological and organizational change theory to critique paradoxes in public relations theory and practice. By examining public relations through the lens of paradox, we can begin to identify the logical fallacies that have inhibited progress and innovation in public relations practice and theory. The book explores the paradoxical nature of key concepts, including public interest, relationship management, accountability, stewardship, loyalty, community, and ethics. It also recommends new conceptualizations for understanding the field. This book will be of interest to media, communication, public relations, and advertising faculty and graduate students, particularly those interested in public relations theory and ethics. Scholars from other disciplines can also use this exploration of paradox in PR as a learning tool for identifying logical fallacies and inconsistencies.

This book examines the commercialisation of domestic and care work through private agencies that organise transnational care arrangements by brokering migrant workers. The book focuses on the emergence of private for-profit home care agencies following the 2011 extension of the Free Movement of Workers to Eastern European Countries agreement in Switzerland. The agencies recruit migrant women from these countries and place them in private households for elderly care. This book explores how circular labour migration for these care workers is facilitated. In the form of a mobile ethnography, it traces their journey from Eastern European countries to Switzerland - from when care workers find employment and are recruited by agencies to when they arrive at their designated households. From the agencies' analytical standpoint, the book examines the recruitment and placement practices of the home care agencies and their role in facilitating migration. Brokering Labour Migration offers an understanding of new migration patterns and highlights fundamental changes in migration control with the extension of free movement of workers in Switzerland to lower-wage countries in Eastern Europe. It will be an invaluable resource for academics and scholars of geography, anthropology, sociology, and gender and migration.

The book examines corporate takeovers

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination. The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice. Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

In a time of flexible and mutable work arrangements, there is hardly a domain of organizing that has not been affected by liminality. Temporary workers who switch companies based on projects, consultants who operate at the boundaries between the consultant and the client companies, or 'hybrid entrepreneurs' who start new ventures, while still keeping their previous job, are examples of liminality in organizations. Liminality is also felt by managers who handle interorganizational relationships within customer-supplier networks or scientists who, albeit affiliated with R&D units, have strong ties with their scientific communities, acknowledging that they belong to neither setting thoroughly. Precious hints for enriching our comprehension of liminality in organizational settings can be conveyed by the reflection that has flourished in different fields. This book advances knowledge of liminality management by elaborating on a model that puts together aspects of the liminal process that have been mostly described in a separate way so far, benefiting from the input provided by experience in sociology, medicine, and education. Through the articulation of a model that accounts for the antecedents, content, and consequences of liminality in organizations, the book intends to prompt quantitative research on this topic. It will be of value to those interested in organizational behavior, organization and management, marketing, sociology of work, and sociology of organizations.

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the writers considered in this first book of the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series make an important contribution to how we think about rationality in managing, leading and working. It provides a space in which to think differently about rationality, challenging dominant masculine logics while positioning relations between people centre stage. A critical and intellectually provocative text, the book provides a nuanced and practical account of rationality in organizational contexts, making it clear that women have and continue to write groundbreaking work on the subject: women like Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who was at the forefront of developments in scientific management, and Frances Perkins, who was the first female US cabinet secretary. Both are important not only for what they achieved but also as illustrations of the ways in which women have been written out of the accounts of managing and management thought. This matters not only because credit is denied to those who deserve it, but also because it impoverishes our understanding of complex organisational phenomenon. Where so much extant writing on managing and organizing is preoccupied with abstract notions of structure, strategy, metaphor and machines, the writers considered here explain why effective working and managing is primarily about seeing and working with people. Writers such as Arlie Hochschild, Mary Parker Follett and Heather Hoepfl remind us that rationality cannot be decoupled from emotion or, where a system is to be rationalised, then it should start with and enhance the lives of people - be designed with people at the centre. In this sense, the book is not arguing for a wholesale rejection of rationality. Rather, authors call on readers to move beyond a preoccupation with rationality for its own sake, seeing it instead as a useful and highly contestable aspect of organizational life. Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by an expert in their field. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

There is a long tradition of research on politics, power and exclusion in areas such as sociology, social policy, politics, women's studies and philosophy. While power has received considerable attention in mainstream management research and teaching, it is rarely considered in terms of politics and exclusion, particularly where the work of women writers is concerned. This second book in the Routledge Series on Women Writers in Organization Studies analyses the ways in which women have theorised and embodied relations of power. Women like Edith Garrud who, trained in the Japanese art of jujutsu, confronted the power of the state to champion feminist politics. Others, such as Beatrice Webb and Alva Myrdal, are shown to have been at the heart of welfare reforms and social justice movements that responded to the worst excesses of industrialisation based on considerations of class and gender. The writing of bell hooks provides a necessarily uncomfortable account of the ways in which imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy inflict unspoken harm, while Hannah Arendt's work considers the ways in which different modes of organizing restrict the ability of people to live freely. Taken together, such writings dispel the myth that work or business can be separated from the rest of life, a point driven home by Rosabeth Moss Kanter's observations on the ways in which power and inequality differentially structure life chances. These writers challenge us to think again about power, politics and exclusion in organizational contexts. They provide provocative thinking, which opens up new avenues for organization theory, practice and social activism. Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing (thinking!) more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

Politics is an aspect of everyday life within organizations, and is a force that inhibits individual and collective behaviour. If not fully understood, it can impede organizational change and development. In order to minimise the political aspects of organizational dynamics there is a need to understand the extent to which organizational culture brings about politicised conformance and how individuals shape their behaviour through self-interest to conform-sense-giving and sense-making nexus-thus moderating the degree of change initiatives. The Politics of Organizational Change explores the relationship between self-interest, power, politics and managing organizational change from a theoretical perspective. It encourages the fundamental questioning of the relationship between self-interest, power and control inherent within organizational change, and discusses the attendant implications for managing change. It will be of value to those who require a text that goes beyond set patterns of coverage found in textbooks dealing with managing change.

This book explores the 'backstage' of transnational legal practice by illuminating the routines and habits that are crucial to the field, yet rarely studied. Through innovative discussion of practices often considered trivial, the book encourages readers to conceptualise the 'backstage' as emblematic of transnational legal practice. Expanding the focus of transnational legal scholarship, the book explores the seemingly mundane procedures which are often taken for granted, despite being widely recognized as part of what it means to 'do transnational law'. Adopting various methodologies and approaches, each chapter focuses on one specific practice: for example, mooting exercises for law students, international travel, transnational time, the social media activities of lawyers and legal scholars, and the networking at the ICC's annual Assembly of States Parties. In and of themselves, these chapters each provide unique insights into what happens before the curtain rises and after it falls on the familiar 'outputs' of transnational law. It does more, however, than provide a range of different practices: it takes the next step in theorizing on the importance of the marginal and the everyday for what we 'know' to be 'the law' and what the international legal field looks like. Furthermore, by interrogating undiscussed academic practices, it provides students with a candid view on the perils and promises of transnational legal scholarship, inviting them to join the discussion and to practice their discipline in a more reflexive way. Written in an accessible format, containing a readable collection of personal and recognizable accounts of transnational legal practice, the book provides an everyday insight into transnational law. It will therefore appeal to international legal scholars, alongside any reader with an interest in transnational law.

Highly topical and presents core challenges facing advanced market economies in reconciling competitive global market dynamics with socially and ecologically sustainable societies. Presents original analyses and perspectives Proposes bold and novel models of governance to deal with them. Avoids too much disciplinary jargon and is kept in a language accessible to an educated reader

Worker Participation: Current Research and Future Trends, Volume 16 of Research in the Sociology of Work, offers cutting edge research on the character and implications of workplace participation. Written by some of the leading scholars in the sociology of workplace transformation and alternative organizations, the chapters here examine various outcomes, causes, and consequences related to participation programs and worker democracy today. Topics include ways in which participation schemes are socially constructed and negotiated; the meanings that workers attach to opportunities for involvement in the workplace; practice, participation, and consent in alternative organizations such as cooperatives and collectives; and theoretical treatments that call for new ways of thinking about workplace participation. Methodologically pluralist and concerned less with specific productivity effects of worker participation, this volume highlights the social structural, social constructionist, and meta theoretical dimensions of worker participation and democratic organizations in the twenty-first century.
The global, 24/7 economy and the organizational changes it has generated have enormous implications for the organization, experience and use of time in (and out of) the workplace. In addition to eroding the boundary between home and work, creating time pressures both within and outside of the workplace, the need for businesses to compete in a 24/7 global economy has re-problematized time in the workplace. Drawing on sociology, labor economics, organizational behavior and social history, the papers in this volume examine either empirically or theoretically, a variety of aspects of time in theworkplace. Contributors to this volume examine issues surrounding the distribution of and struggle over work hours and how these vary across a number of factors including race, class, occupation and other structural components of work. They examine temporal structures within organizations including inequities in flexible scheduling, entrainment and work teams, polychronicity, and how changing temporal structures affect professionalism and expertise. They also consider the way in which changing uses and organization of work time, in the context of economic instability and globalization, affect the difficulties of reconciling work and family. At the more micro-level, the papers consider individuals' perceptions and constructions and intersubjective constructions of time. To varying degrees, the authors speak to the policy implications or strategies for managing new times. Taken as a whole, these papers shed light on the way in which globalization and the emergence of a 24/7 economy have altered the ways, times, and meanings of time at work.
Research in the Sociology of Work is now available online at ScienceDirect ??? full-text online of volumes 10 onwards.
*Examines various worker participation models and evaluates the success of their outcomes
*Adopts a variety of methods and highlights the different dimensions of worker participation

Contributing to the debate on work performance evaluation in a time of technological transformation, this book explores the impact of digitisation on production and organisation models, as well as on the rights and interests of the stakeholders involved. As organisations down-size, merge with other companies and become decentralised, the boundaries in employer-employee-customer relationships are blurred and new models for the organisation and assessment of work performance have emerged. With these new models, innovative regulatory approaches are sorely needed. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on theoretical concepts from organisation studies, human resource management, sociology and labour economics, this all-encompassing collection is not only essential reading for academics and students, but also for policy-makers and employers who are looking for innovative and practical solutions to the challenges of modern employment relations.

This book presents the comprehensive investigation of critical thinking in higher education from the perspectives of the study and labor market. It looks for an answer to the vibrant question of what and to whom critical thinking is. The study brings together findings from systematic literature review, analysis of descriptions of higher education study programs and study subjects, phenomenographical research and survey and supplements the existing perceptions of critical thinking with novel data-driven insights. The book reveals how critical thinking manifests itself in the contexts of higher education and the labor market and advocates for the significance of the critical thinking at personal, interpersonal, and social levels.

Middle class executives are the people who've done everything right - gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills and build up impressive resumes - yet they have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. In Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich enters a shadowy world of Internet job searches, lonely networking events and costly career-coaching sessions, a world in which 'professional' mentors and trainers offer pop-psychology and self-help mantras to desperate would-be employees. Poignant and blackly funny, Bait and Switch delivers a stark warning about the future that faces corporate employees everywhere and calls for collective action to guard against it.

Uniquely accessible and concise guide to complexity and management Includes perspectives from the complexity sciences, philosophy and history Includes chapter bringing theories to management practice

Introduces readers to aspects of work psychology at a greater depth Includes relevant critical cultural discussions Intriguing discussion of modern critiques of work and how the concepts of work psychology as well as those of some thinkers outside of psychology might confirm, moderate, repudiate and address these critiques

Introduces readers to aspects of work psychology at a greater depth Includes relevant critical cultural discussions Intriguing discussion of modern critiques of work and how the concepts of work psychology as well as those of some thinkers outside of psychology might confirm, moderate, repudiate and address these critiques

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