This volume contains a selection of papers which go back to a conference on new employment actors, held at the University of Sydney in November 2006. The book contends that employment relations must be broadened to examine the new actors and processes and the role these play in the regulation and experience of work. It demonstrates this in the context of recent developments in Australia. In addition, the contributions evaluate the extent to which new employment actors either reinforce or replace the activities of the more established trade union, management, and state-based actors. It is argued that an inclusion of these new actors and processes is a more comprehensive way of understanding and explaining industrial society in the 21st century.

This 2006 book is an innovative reconsideration of a changing and contested domain in society. New essays from scholars at the University of Sydney are structured around the themes of time, space and discourse to highlight the value-laden and constructed nature of these categories as they are applied to the organisation of our working lives. Contributors draw from their expertise in strategic management, organisational theory, labour and business history, law, economics, industrial relations, human resource management, geography, and discourse and narrative analysis. Their stimulating chapters in Rethinking Work reflect that the study of work must itself be capable of adaptation to the profound changes reshaping this most powerful expression of human relationships and experience.