In an important sense contemporary economies are predominantly service economies. Critical social analysis, which has historically developed in relation to manufacturing settings, is beginning to address this central importance of service work. For instance, authors such as George Ritzer and Alan Bryman have developed a general approach to societies through root metaphors based in service settings (McDonaldization and Disneyization respectively). Other authors have applied particular traditions of critical social theory to the specificities of service work. This is an area of considerable and burgeoning intellectual energy and interest. At present, however, there is no one volume which brings together these different critical perspectives on services work. There is no volume which brings together these different critical perspectives and which reflects on their collective contribution, their compatibilities and their differences.

Everyday, we are bombarded with advertising images of the smiling service worker. The book is written with the aim of focusing beneath the surface of these fairy tale images, to seek out and understand the reality of service workersa (TM) experience. Within the sociology of work and related literatures, there are an increasing number of empirical studies of different types of service work, but there has been little progress in attempts to theorize the nature of service work, per se. This book fills this gap by bringing together major scholars from the US and UK who use a range of critical perspectives to explore key elements in the organization and experience of contemporary service work. It will make an invaluable secondary text for advanced undergraduates and graduates studying courses/modules such as sociology of work, industrial sociology, social theory and work, organization studies, and organizational theory.

In Songs of the Factory, Marek Korczynski examines the role that popular music plays in workers' culture on the factory floor. Reporting on his ethnographic fieldwork in a British factory that manufactures window blinds, Korczynski shows how workers make often-grueling assembly-line work tolerable by permeating their workday with pop music on the radio. The first ethnographic study of musical culture in an industrial workplace, Songs of the Factory draws on socio-musicology, cultural studies, and sociology of work, combining theoretical development, methodological innovation, and a vitality that brings the musical culture of the factory workers to life.

Music, Korczynski argues, allows workers both to fulfill their social roles in a regimented industrial environment and to express a sense of resistance to this social order. The author highlights the extensive forms of informal collective resistance within this factory, and argues that the musically informed culture played a key role in sustaining these collective acts of resistance. As well as providing a rich picture of the musical culture and associated forms of resistance in the factory, Korczynski also puts forward new theoretical concepts that have currency in other workplaces and in other rationalized spheres of society.

In Songs of the Factory, Marek Korczynski examines the role that popular music plays in workers' culture on the factory floor. Reporting on his ethnographic fieldwork in a British factory that manufactures window blinds, Korczynski shows how workers make often-grueling assembly-line work tolerable by permeating their workday with pop music on the radio. The first ethnographic study of musical culture in an industrial workplace, Songs of the Factory draws on socio-musicology, cultural studies, and sociology of work, combining theoretical development, methodological innovation, and a vitality that brings the musical culture of the factory workers to life.

Music, Korczynski argues, allows workers both to fulfill their social roles in a regimented industrial environment and to express a sense of resistance to this social order. The author highlights the extensive forms of informal collective resistance within this factory, and argues that the musically informed culture played a key role in sustaining these collective acts of resistance. As well as providing a rich picture of the musical culture and associated forms of resistance in the factory, Korczynski also puts forward new theoretical concepts that have currency in other workplaces and in other rationalized spheres of society.

The importance of customer service is widely emphasized in business today. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the organization and dynamics of front-line work. The volume is based on a four-year study of over a thousand employees and eight leading companies in the United States, Australia, and Japan. On the Front Line reveals similarities and differences found in work environments such as variance in authority relations and division of labor as well as significant contrasts between management approaches used in Japan and those used in the United States and Australia. By examining how work differs among service, sales, and knowledge-based settings, it also shows how bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, and network forms of organization coexist in the informational economy.This seminal analysis of work in the service sector offers both a benchmark for consultants working with customer-contact organizations and valuable information for anyone concerned with the changing nature of work."

Whether for weavers at the handloom, labourers at the plough, or factory workers on the assembly line, music has often been a key texture in people's working lives. This book is the first to explore the rich history of music at work in Britain and charts the journey from the singing cultures of pre-industrial occupations, to the impact and uses of the factory radio, via the silencing effect of industrialisation. The first part of the book discusses how widespread cultures of singing at work were in pre-industrial manual occupations. The second and third parts of the book show how musical silence reigned with industrialisation, until the carefully controlled introduction of Music While You Work in the 1940s. Continuing the analysis to the present day, Rhythms of Labour explains how workers have clung to and reclaimed popular music on the radio in desperate and creative ways.

This book fills a gap in the market for a long overdue book on HRM in the service sector. The focus on human resource management is essential to aid any understanding of the service economy and with increasing numbers of courses focusing on services rather than manufacturing, it is fast becoming a very important and neglected area in terms of textbooks.

Work is fundamental to human society and modern organizations, and consequently has been central to the thinking of major social theorists and social science disciplines. This book offers a 'one-stop-shop' guide to classical and contemporary perspectives of work written by leading international experts. Schools covered include: Weberian, Marxian, Durkeimian, feminist, neo-classical economics, institutional economics, ethics, Foucauldian, postmodernist, organizational sociology and economic sociology.
Each chapter traces the origins of the theoretical school, reviews seminal contributions and considers major criticisms of the approach. In addition, the book features a section on key aspects of work-professions, technology, identity and globalization-to which these theories have been applied.
The book makes a major contribution in a number of ways: -Provides systematic coverage of major social and economics theories and the way they aid our understanding of work
-Includes a section of chapters that consider, in an applied way, how social theories have helped the analysis of key substantive areas of work
-Includes contributions from leading academics from both Europe and the USA
-Each chapter can be read as free-standing summary of a particular school of theoretical approach
-In addition, the introductory and concluding chapters examine themes cross-cutting the other chapters in the book
It is an essential text for academics and advanced students concerned with the sociology of work, management and organization studies.

Work is fundamental to human society and modern organizations, and consequently has been central to the thinking of major social theorists and social science disciplines. This book offers a 'one-stop-shop' guide to classical and contemporary perspectives of work written by leading international experts. Schools covered include: Weberian, Marxian, Durkeimian, feminist, neo-classical economics, institutional economics, ethics, Foucauldian, postmodernist, organizational sociology and economic sociology.
Each chapter traces the origins of the theoretical school, reviews seminal contributions and considers major criticisms of the approach. In addition, the book features a section on key aspects of work-professions, technology, identity and globalization-to which these theories have been applied.
The book makes a major contribution in a number of ways: -Provides systematic coverage of major social and economics theories and the way they aid our understanding of work
-Includes a section of chapters that consider, in an applied way, how social theories have helped the analysis of key substantive areas of work
-Includes contributions from leading academics from both Europe and the USA
-Each chapter can be read as free-standing summary of a particular school of theoretical approach
-In addition, the introductory and concluding chapters examine themes cross-cutting the other chapters in the book
It is an essential text for academics and advanced students concerned with the sociology of work, management and organization studies.