Information technologies have become both a means and an end, transforming the workplace and how work is performed. This ongoing evolution in the work process has received extensive coverage but relatively little attention has been given to how changing technologies and work practices affect the workers themselves. This volume specifically examines the institutional and social environment of the workplaces that information technologies have created.
Compilations of scholarly essays are often written by members of a particular school of thought, whose purpose is to flesh out an area of theory or methodology. "Information Technology and the World of Work" takes a different approach: these essays are written by diverse voices, unified in their interest in the common theme of technology and the changing workplace. The authors' goals are to present perspectives that raise as many questions as they answer, and which are accessible to a broad audience of managers, union leaders, students, and academic readers.
The chapters are organized into three specific topical areas that represent aspects of workers' social and political experiences of work that are affected by technology. Part 1 addresses how information technologies affect workers' unions. Part 2 examines how information technology affects individual employees, specifically in terms of employees' sense of power and identity. Chapters in this section examine the social and psychological reactions of workers within the system. Part 3 focuses on one of the most contentious outcomes of this changed workplace, reviewing emerging policy and privacy issues that new technologies have created.
Written with the intent of beginning an important discussion of these issues, this volume should provide an impetus for others to make their own contribution to the emerging dialogue on technology in the modern workplace.
Daphne G. Taras is professor of industrial relations and associate dean (research) in the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. James T. Bennett is professor of economics at George Mason University, and founder and editor of the "Journal of Labor Research." Anthony M. Townsend is an associate professor of management information systems in the College of Business at Iowa State University, and on the faculty of Iowa State University Industrial Relations Center.

Information technologies have become both a means and an end, transforming the workplace and how work is performed. This ongoing evolution in the work process has received extensive coverage but relatively little attention has been given to how changing technologies and work practices affect the workers themselves. This volume specifi cally examines the institutional and social environment of the workplaces that information technologies have created.

This book breaks new ground on a controversial subject in industrial relations and human resource management -- nonunion forms of employee representation in the workplace. Practiced in many different ways, such as joint committees, employee forums, and plant councils, nonunion methods of employee representation are spreading rapidly as part of employee involvement and participation programs. But these employee groups remain highly controversial and heavily restricted by labor law in the United States because of their potential abuse in union avoidance. The American approach stands in sharp contrast to policies in other countries, such as Canada, Germany and Japan, where nonunion employee representation is largely unrestricted or even encouraged by law.

In this volume a distinguished, international set of authors provide an in-depth, balanced analysis and evaluation of this timely and much-debated topic. They give special emphasis to an historical assessment of nonunion employee representation, its practice and performance in modern workplaces, and cross-national differences in law and public policy. Recent proposals for reform of American legal treatment of nonunion employee representation are also carefully considered, and an evaluation and suggested plan of action are put forward.

Between 1989 and 1990, Aileen Wuornos, a hitchhiking prostitute, shot, killed, and robbed seven men in remote Florida locations. Arrested in 1991, Wuornos insisted she had acted in self-defense, but the jury had little sympathy. Condemned to death on six separate counts, she was executed by lethal injection in 2002.
An abused runaway who turned to prostitution to survive, Wuornos has become iconic of vengeful women who lash out at the nearest target. She has also become a touchstone for women's, prostitutes', and prisoners' rights advocates. Her story has inspired myriad books and articles, as well as the 2003 movie Monster, for which Charlize Theron won an Academy Award. But until now, Wuornos's uncensored voice has never been heard.
Dear Dawn is Wuornos's autobiography culled from her ten-year death row correspondence with beloved childhood friend Dawn Botkins. Authorized for publication by Wuornos and edited under the guidance of Botkins, the letters not only offer Wuornos's riveting reflections on the murders, legal battles, and media coverage, but go further, revealing her fears and obsessions, her rich humor and empathy, and her gradual disintegration as her execution approached. A candid life story told to a trusted friend, Dear Dawn is a compelling narrative, unwaveringly true to its source.

This brilliant dissection of American popular culture--in the form of a poetry collection--centers around the "Final Girl," the last girl left alive in the slasher movie "Final Girl traces the history of the femme fatale in a sequence of poems and stories that display the verve and wit readers have come to expect from Gottlieb. In "Final Girl, Gottlieb is the survivor, the one who remains to tell the story: what was done to others, what was done to her, what might yet be done to her. Sexy and tart, dark and comic, low-down and high-hearted poems such as "Slash," "Vamp," "Bride of Reanimator," and "The Babysitter," Gottlieb identifies and articulates the desires, fears, traumas--both personal and social--out of which pop culture is made. And then she feeds pop culture back to itself. Though the slasher flick is central, Gottlieb finds resonances in sources as disparate as the early American captivity narrative, queer and feminist film theory, and her own mother's death from cancer. Through such iconic figures as Marilyn Monroe and Patty Hearst, Gottlieb delineates the ways in which we're betrayed by our cultural fantasies about abduction, gender, literature, pleasure, and transgression--and, in so doing, synthesizes the death and life of the Western female.

WHY THINGS BURN is about as hard-hitting a book of poetry as you'll experience this year. In her own inimitable style, Daphne Gottlieb tackles sexuality, lesbianism, rape, modern urban living, and the author's Jewish heritage, with a sometimes kooky but always sophisticated view of life. Honed to perfection in her 'slam' spoken word performances, these 50 poems are by turns witty, shocking, warm and fierce. The book also includes photos of the author on stage.