With economies and organizations undergoing change, understanding the nature of work and its significance to people presents a critical intellectual challenge with strong implications for policy and practice. Debates surrounding meanings and relevance of work in its contemporary setting have been hampered by a shortage of solid research findings. By drawing on a substantial body of evidence, this book challenges recent assumptions about work and raises the issues of work and employment onto broader policy and management agendas.

This book analyzes the multiple levels of meaning which people attach to work today, and the role of work in people's lives. By looking at call centres and software development, the book evaluates some of the claims made for the knowledge economy and argues that defining the work-life boundary is a constant problem for many workers

This book focuses on the importance of assessing risk in domestic violence cases to prevent and reduce its escalation into homicide (so called uxoricide). Spousal killers in a substantial number of cases exhibit a history of prior spousal violence: in addition to this, witnessing violence has debilitating effects on children. For this reason domestic violence is also becoming a hot political issue on the European agenda. Integrating the US and Canadian experiences with the European ones increases the book's value and broadens perspectives. Assessing the risk and adopting appropriate measures can help reduce the risk of escalation of violence. It aims at gathering contributions from experts in the field of domestic violence and victimisation to present state of the art research in the risk assessment of domestic violence cases.