Jan Ch Karlsson – författare

De flesta människor ägnar en stor del av sina liv åt förvärvsarbete. Genom det genereras merparten av den levnadsstandard och den välfärd samhället kan erbjuda. Arbetet och arbetsvillkoren påverkar också direkt individens fysiska och psykisk hälsa, livskvalitet och arbetsglädje. Hur individen påverkas hänger samman med bland annat klassposition, kön, ålder och härkomst.Ambitionen med denna bok är att belysa och besvara många av de frågeställningar som dagens arbetsliv ger upphov till. Bokens 21 kapitel är skrivna av forskare som är ledande inom sina områden och ger en unik översikt över de förhållanden som råder i det svenska arbetslivet. Översikten kombineras med en rad internationella utblickar och initierade presentationer av olika teoretiska perspektiv på hur existerande förhållanden kan förstås och förklaras. Denna fjärde upplaga har uppdaterats både vad gäller data och aktuell forskning. För att ytterligare bredda den redan sammansatta bilden av arbetslivet har nya kapitel lagts till om bland annat arbetets upplevda värde, motstånd på arbetsplatser och hybridarbete.Arbetslivet vänder sig i första hand till studenter på introducerande kurser om arbetsliv och arbetsmarknad, men lämpar sig för alla som söker kunskaper om arbetslivet och vill vidga sina perspektiv i olika arbetslivsfrågor.

Här är en grundbok om arbetslivet, en bok om arbete, organisation, personal och ledning. Den ger en gedigen baskunskap och samtidigt självständiga perspektiv att diskutera i seminarier och bland samhällsintresserade. I grunden finns frågan: Hur ser dagens tendenser i arbetsliv och ekonomi ut, och vad betyder de för arbetets kvalitet och mening, för hälsa, inflytande, och maktrelationer på arbetsmarknaden?Tjugosju forskare från en rad universitet och högskolor och från olika ämnen har samarbetat för att skapa en helhetsbild, som är både perspektivrik och sammanhängande. Teman som produktiv välfärd och solidarisk individualism lyfts fram, liksom demokrati och utvecklande arbeten. Arbete & välfärd ger en empiriskt och teoretiskt grundad bild av det svenska arbetslivet, med historiska och internationella utblickar. Managementstrategier presenteras, och framför allt vad de betyder i människors arbete och liv. Boken är förankrad i såväl arbetsorganisation och arbetsplatser, som i ekonomi och arbetsmarknad i stort. Den svenska modell, som sökt förena värdighet i arbetslivet med välfärd och konkurrenskraft, har ifrågasatts och transformerats. Vi frågar oss nu: Hur robust är denna ”svenska modell” under tryck av globalisering och digitalisering?Bokens föregångare Ledning för alla? var under årtionden kurslitteratur i universitetsutbildningar om personal, organisation och ledarskap i ämnen som sociologi, företagsekonomi, arbetsvetenskap, psykologi och pedagogik, liksom i personalutbildning, facklig utbildning och studiecirklar. Vi räknar med bred användning och hög hållbarhet även för denna helt nyskrivna bok.

People need dignity and autonomy at work. If they are denied this, there will be a strong tendency to resist working conditions and misbehave at work. This book presents and analyses stories about people's resistance in working life that make us reflect upon how employees are treated at work and consequences thereof.

This book will be immensely valuable for students and researchers in social science, sociology and philosophy in that it connects methodology, theory and empirical research. It provides an innovative picture of what society and social science is, along with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena.

This book will be immensely valuable for students and researchers in social science, sociology and philosophy in that it connects methodology, theory and empirical research. It provides an innovative picture of what society and social science is, along with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena.

People’s work orientations and attitudes to paid work are highly important for the welfare of any country. Still, little is currently known about how such attitudes are distributed among different countries, men and women, classes, occupations, age groups and so on. Even less is known about how work orientations have changed during the dramatic social transformations of economies and labour markets during recent decades. What happened, for example, to work orientations in Iceland when the country went bankrupt? The answer is quite surprising. Or, is it true that work is losing its position in people’s lives in Western world? What is the relationship between people’s attitudes to work and the way they actually behave on the labour market?This timely book deals with these questions – and more – presenting fresh knowledge on changes in work orientations in many countries. It is based on genuine theoretical arguments and thorough empirical studies, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It is a great source of new knowledge on work orientations and changes in attitudes to work.

This insightful volume asks if, and to what extent, gender divisions in working life are changing. The contributors discuss the implications from a labour market perspective and a family-work level perspective, which are combined to examine if and where patterns of gender integration can be found. Research from several European countries is presented, as well as from the US, to provide comparative and international perspectives. A wide range of related issues are tackled including questions of methodology and measurement, as well as segregation patterns, welfare state provisions and the use of parental leave. The volume provides suggestions for integration at different levels of society and, by applying a multidisciplinary approach and illustrating developments on different analytical levels, the authors further the discussion on how integration can be pursued.

Can waged work under capitalism be meaningful? How does this meaningfulness express itself in the politics of working life? More fundamentally, how should work be socially and economically valued, rewarded, organised and regulated to become more meaningful? Knut Laaser and Jan Ch. Karlsson address these questions and provide a novel theory of meaningful work that is deeply ingrained in Critical Social Science approaches. The authors conceptualise meaningful work as a continuum between meaningful–meaningless work that rests on objective and subjective dimensions of autonomy, dignity and recognition, all pushed and pulled by the multi-layered control and power dynamics of waged work. They challenge the tendency to promote unpolitical concepts in the scholarship of meaningful work. The explanatory power of the meaningful work framework is illustrated by the analysis of empirical case studies on Norwegian industry operators, British bank employees, Indian security guards, German university academics and Swedish cabin crew members.

Can waged work under capitalism be meaningful? How does this meaningfulness express itself in the politics of working life? More fundamentally, how should work be socially and economically valued, rewarded, organised and regulated to become more meaningful? Knut Laaser and Jan Ch. Karlsson address these questions and provide a novel theory of meaningful work that is deeply ingrained in Critical Social Science approaches. The authors conceptualise meaningful work as a continuum between meaningful-meaningless work that rests on objective and subjective dimensions of autonomy, dignity and recognition, all pushed and pulled by the multi-layered control and power dynamics of waged work. They challenge the tendency to promote unpolitical concepts in the scholarship of meaningful work. The explanatory power of the meaningful work framework is illustrated by the analysis of empirical case studies on Norwegian industry operators, British bank employees, Indian security guards, German university academics and Swedish cabin crew members.

Offering a rigorous critique of the scientific assumptions and ideological commitments that underlie contemporary managerialist research, this book exposes the foundational premises that sustain this influential approach. Mats Persson and Jan Ch. Karlsson define managerialism as an ideology that elevates management's goals and values to a universal status, shaping both research and practice. They demonstrate how managerialism promotes the alignment of workers' identities and aspirations with managerial objectives while excluding them from meaningful democratic participation in shaping those objectives. Tracing managerialist research back to Scientific Management and Human Relations-not merely to neoliberalism or New Public Management-the authors examine its two core dimensions: that workers are inherently irrational and that workplace democracy constitutes a threat against management and employers. They unpack managerialism's confused interpretations of organisational misbehaviour and resistance, analyse the ideological foundations of managerialist leadership theories, and ultimately propose more robust, democratic approaches to researching working life.

Offering a rigorous critique of the scientific assumptions and ideological commitments that underlie contemporary managerialist research, this book exposes the foundational premises that sustain this influential approach. Mats Persson and Jan Ch. Karlsson define managerialism as an ideology that elevates management's goals and values to a universal status, shaping both research and practice. They demonstrate how managerialism promotes the alignment of workers' identities and aspirations with managerial objectives while excluding them from meaningful democratic participation in shaping those objectives. Tracing managerialist research back to Scientific Management and Human Relations-not merely to neoliberalism or New Public Management-the authors examine its two core dimensions: that workers are inherently irrational and that workplace democracy constitutes a threat against management and employers. They unpack managerialism's confused interpretations of organisational misbehaviour and resistance, analyse the ideological foundations of managerialist leadership theories, and ultimately propose more robust, democratic approaches to researching working life.

People’s work orientations and attitudes to paid work are highly important for the welfare of any country. Still, little is currently known about how such attitudes are distributed among different countries, men and women, classes, occupations, age groups and so on. Even less is known about how work orientations have changed during the dramatic social transformations of economies and labour markets during recent decades. What happened, for example, to work orientations in Iceland when the country went bankrupt? The answer is quite surprising. Or, is it true that work is losing its position in people’s lives in Western world? What is the relationship between people’s attitudes to work and the way they actually behave on the labour market?This timely book deals with these questions – and more – presenting fresh knowledge on changes in work orientations in many countries. It is based on genuine theoretical arguments and thorough empirical studies, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It is a great source of new knowledge on work orientations and changes in attitudes to work.

This insightful volume asks if, and to what extent, gender divisions in working life are changing. The contributors discuss the implications from a labour market perspective and a family-work level perspective, which are combined to examine if and where patterns of gender integration can be found. Research from several European countries is presented, as well as from the US, to provide comparative and international perspectives. A wide range of related issues are tackled including questions of methodology and measurement, as well as segregation patterns, welfare state provisions and the use of parental leave. The volume provides suggestions for integration at different levels of society and, by applying a multidisciplinary approach and illustrating developments on different analytical levels, the authors further the discussion on how integration can be pursued.

First published in 1997, this volume is the result of the third Karlstad symposium which aimed to bring together and reflect current empirical trends and theoretical discussions on the questions: what exactly is happening to work and, consequentially, what should happen to work? This book disseminates contributions from seventeen scientists from eleven countries to a wider audience. It should prove stimulating to postgraduates, researchers, policy-makers and others to encourage further work on conditions both at work and on the labour market.

First published in 1997, this volume is the result of the third Karlstad symposium which aimed to bring together and reflect current empirical trends and theoretical discussions on the questions: what exactly is happening to work and, consequentially, what should happen to work? This book disseminates contributions from seventeen scientists from eleven countries to a wider audience. It should prove stimulating to postgraduates, researchers, policy-makers and others to encourage further work on conditions both at work and on the labour market.

Fully revised, with an updated bibliography and new, relevant illustrative examples based on work inspired by critical realism, this new edition of Explaining Society constitutes an up-to-date resource connecting methodology, theory, and empirical research. Including discussions of more recent scholarship in the field which connects critical realism with interdisciplinary research, this second edition also clarifies concepts – such as retroduction and retrodiction – so as to render them consistent with developments within critical realism, which are covered in a new chapter. An accessible account of the nature of society and social science, together with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena, Explaining Society will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly.

Fully revised, with an updated bibliography and new, relevant illustrative examples based on work inspired by critical realism, this new edition of Explaining Society constitutes an up-to-date resource connecting methodology, theory, and empirical research. Including discussions of more recent scholarship in the field which connects critical realism with interdisciplinary research, this second edition also clarifies concepts – such as retroduction and retrodiction – so as to render them consistent with developments within critical realism, which are covered in a new chapter. An accessible account of the nature of society and social science, together with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena, Explaining Society will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly.

People need dignity and autonomy at work. If they are denied this, there will be a strong tendency to resist working conditions and misbehave at work. This book presents and analyses stories about people's resistance in working life that make us reflect upon how employees are treated at work and consequences thereof.

This book constitutes a practical guide to the important skills of both theorizing and writing in social scientific scholarship, focusing on the importance of identifying relations between concepts that are useful for explaining social entities and of producing a text that convincingly advances the theory that has been constructed. Taking as its point of departure the distinction between the research process and the reporting process – between clarifying one’s ideas to oneself and writing to express these ideas clearly to others – this volume concentrates on writing when theorizing as a way of thinking, emphasizing the series of relations that exist between ontology, epistemology and rhetoric upon which successful theoretical writing depends. Richly illustrated with practical examples, the book is divided into two parts, the first of which presents techniques for theorizing based upon visualized and logical connections of ideas, concepts and empirical patterns in both free and systematic ways, and the second part providing techniques for structuring and presenting arguments in essays, papers, articles or books.As such, Methods for Social Theory offers a toolbox for the development and presentation of social thought, which will prove essential for students and teachers across the social sciences.

This book constitutes a practical guide to the important skills of both theorizing and writing in social scientific scholarship, focusing on the importance of identifying relations between concepts that are useful for explaining social entities and of producing a text that convincingly advances the theory that has been constructed. Taking as its point of departure the distinction between the research process and the reporting process – between clarifying one’s ideas to oneself and writing to express these ideas clearly to others – this volume concentrates on writing when theorizing as a way of thinking, emphasizing the series of relations that exist between ontology, epistemology and rhetoric upon which successful theoretical writing depends. Richly illustrated with practical examples, the book is divided into two parts, the first of which presents techniques for theorizing based upon visualized and logical connections of ideas, concepts and empirical patterns in both free and systematic ways, and the second part providing techniques for structuring and presenting arguments in essays, papers, articles or books.As such, Methods for Social Theory offers a toolbox for the development and presentation of social thought, which will prove essential for students and teachers across the social sciences.

This book presents the first published account in English of Sverre Lysgaard's theory of the ‘worker collectivity’ – a theory of an informal protective organisation among subordinate employees, which so far has been unknown outside Scandinavia.Lysgaard’s theory espouses that workers collectively form a buffer against management to protect themselves from the technical/economic power, which controls their working lives. The authors have returned to the same Norwegian factory Lysgaard studied in the 1950s to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s and 2010s, and investigate the changing nature of the production, labour processes and management strategies. Through analysis that extends over 50 years of factory life, this research documents shifting power relations between workers and employers during times of changing institutional structures, globalisation, and worker solidarity. A revised version of the theory is also presented as an answer to some of the uncovered deficiencies in the original framework. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of work, labour studies, business management and organisation studies.

This book presents the first published account in English of Sverre Lysgaard's theory of the ‘worker collectivity’ – a theory of an informal protective organisation among subordinate employees, which so far has been unknown outside Scandinavia.Lysgaard’s theory espouses that workers collectively form a buffer against management to protect themselves from the technical/economic power, which controls their working lives. The authors have returned to the same Norwegian factory Lysgaard studied in the 1950s to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s and 2010s, and investigate the changing nature of the production, labour processes and management strategies. Through analysis that extends over 50 years of factory life, this research documents shifting power relations between workers and employers during times of changing institutional structures, globalisation, and worker solidarity. A revised version of the theory is also presented as an answer to some of the uncovered deficiencies in the original framework. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of work, labour studies, business management and organisation studies.

Att förklara samhället är en bok i metodologi. Med den kritiska realismen som grund presenterar författarna metodologiska riktlinjer för en samhällsvetenskap med höga anspråk på att kunna förklara samhälleliga förhållanden. Bokens kapitel behandlar samhällsvetenskapens ontologiska och epistemologiska grunder, begreppsbildning och strukturell analys, kausalitet och förklaring, samhällsvetenskapen som tolkande vetenskap, förhållandet mellan struktur och aktör, olika former av slutledningar och tankeoperationer, relationen mellan det generella och det individuella, teoriers betydelse i forskningspraktiken, olika sätt att koppla teori och empiri, kombinationer av metoder (det som i boken kallas kritisk metodpluralism) samt grunderna för en samhällsrelevant samhällsvetenskap.Kritiken mot de positivistiska vetenskapsidealen, empirismen och tron på den objektiva, bevisade kunskapen har delvis slagit över i sin motsats: en överdriven försiktighet, en långtgående relativism, en betoning på vad vetenskapen inte kan göra i stället för vad den kan göra. Denna bok visar att det finns ett fruktbart alternativ till dessa positioner, ett alternativ som ger mer realistiska och samtidigt konstruktiva grunder för samhällsvetenskaplig forskning.I denna tredje upplaga har flera väsentliga omarbetningar gjorts genom anknytning till aktuell forskning och litteratur samt språkbearbetning. Särskilt finns nya avsnitt om öppna och slutna sociala system samt olika typer av forskning i samarbete med praktiker. Boken vänder sig till alla som vill få en djupare kunskap om vetenskapens grunder och hur spänningen mellan olika vetenskapsteoretiska inriktningar kan lösas. Den är avsedd för akademiska utbildningar inom ett stort fält: samhällsvetenskap, humaniora, hälsovetenskaper och angränsande ämnen.

Framtiden är något som de flesta av oss förhåller oss till, mer eller mindre medvetet varje dag. Vi gör planer för den nära framtiden och har större drömmar om en framtid som ligger längre bort i tiden. Med den här boken vill vi få dig som är intresserad av arbetslivet och speciellt arbetsvillkor och arbetsmiljö att fundera på hur du kan vara med och påverka för ett bättre framtida arbetsliv. Med olika grepp såsom dystopier och framtidsscenarier tar författarna i boken sig an arbetslivsfrågor utifrån ett framtidsperspektiv. Exempelvis, hur kan arbetet kan bli mer jämställt? Eller hur arbetsmiljön kan förbättras med utgångspunkt i vår mänskliga natur. Boken spänner över en bredd av områden, alltifrån olika sätt att se på framtiden, nya och urgamla drivkrafter i arbetslivet, segregering i arbetslivet till digitaliseringens konsekvenser.Boken är i första hand tänkt som en lärobok på grundnivå för studenter i arbetsvetenskap och personalvetenskap, men den riktar sig också till yrkesverksamma personer som är intresserade av arbetsvillkor och arbetsmiljö och särskilt till den som vill skapa förändring i arbetslivet.

Det nya arbetslivet -- finns det i verkligheten eller är det bara retorik? I debatten sägs ofta att allt är nytt -- och att det nya arbetslivet i allt är det gamlas motsats. Det sägs att vi har gått från en rigid arbetsorganisation till en flexibel, från dåliga arbetsvillkor till goda. Hittills har sådana uttalanden inte stått på empirisk grund. Birgitta Eriksson och Jan Ch Karlsson gör här en empirisk prövning av två centrala teser i retoriken: att alla arbetsorganisationer nu är flexibla, och att arbetsvillkoren är bättre för de anställda i flexibla än i icke-flexibla företag. Författarnas resultat drar retoriken i tvivelsmål. Allt är inte nytt -- och det nya är inte bra för alla.

Arbetslivsforskningen har länge saknat en definition av sitt mest centrala begrepp. Vad är "arbete"? Som abstrakt begrepp formulerades det med den begynnande kapitalismen, men fick snart så många innebörder att få verkligen visste vad det stod för. Så småningom blev arbete detsamma som lönearbete, för att sedan bli allomfattande nog att närmast vara meningslöst. Jan Ch Karlsson är professor i sociologi, med en lång karriär som forskare i arbetsvetenskap. Hans avhandling, som nu ges ut i en andra upplaga, har blivit det självklara referensarbetet på området. Ett nyskrivet förord sätter boken i ett samtida perspektiv. Författaren analyserar hur arbetsbegreppet används i samhällsvetenskapen och klargör flera motsättningar. Lösningen blir en övergripande ontologisk bestämning: människans görande i nödvändighetens sfär. På den grunden bygger han en repertoar av begrepp utifrån arbetets sociala relationer. Boken prövar framgångsrikt sitt nya arbetsbegrepp i en historisk genomgång av olika arbetsformer, från slaveri och livegenskap till dagens lönearbete, och ideologierna som åtföljt dem.