Research in the Sociology of Work – serie

This book addresses key issues regarding the nexus of work and family in society at the beginning of the 21st century. For many families, the "balancing act" brings rewards as well as concerns. Employers and governments struggle with whether and how to assist in achieving balance. The work presents original research that addresses the challenges in meeting work and family obligations. Each chapter provides policy recommendations that many help achieve better work-family balance, changes in work-family attitudes, conditions leading to firms' adopting policies to support work-family balance, and studies of child outcomes in dual earner families.

This volume is about deviance in the workplace. It defines deviance as departures from laws or organizational rules by workers, managers, or an organization as an entity. It brings together contributions by scholars in the sociology of work and of crime and deviance, and identifies workplace deviance as a subject shared by the two. The contributions center around two main topics: deviance-making processes, and the social control of deviance through workplace regulation to detect and correct deviant behavior.

This volume will provide students and researchers alike with a solid grounding both in traditional aspects of marginality and in the increasing important topics of part-time and contingent work. The reader will have the opportunity to learn more about the growing range and diversity of marginal employment in the contemporary economy, the hardships and unique challenges of marginal employment, and the new and creative matches between people and jobs that are currently being explored outside traditional full-time employment relationships.

Analysts are generally agreed - dramatic changes are unfolding in the character of work, managerial authority, and the employment relationship. However, there is little agreement as to precisely how such changes are reshaping people's working lives, the nature of their careers, and the distribution of opportunity among members of different classes, genders, and ethnic groups. Confronting these issues head on, this text focuses on a series of critical questions concerned with the restructuring of work under capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century. The papers collected here address a wide array of workplace settings, from traditional manufacturing settings to "knowledge work" in high tech and university contexts. The volume devotes attention to the impact of production concepts in various national settings, ranging from Germany to Mexico and Australia. Among other themes, the volume also examines the linkage between gender inequality and efforts to establish innovative, "flexible" forms of work organization.

This work examines variations among nations in the wide array of initiatives labour unions and labour movements are taking to strengthen themselves and recruit new members. Moving beyond previous research on the factors leading to union decline, the international group of scholars who have contributed to this volume present a research agenda on the many initiatives unions are taking - and the different social, economic, and political challenges they face in several world regions, as labour movements endeavor to revitalize themselves. These revitalizing initiatives include changing labor leadership and membership organizing strategies; "social movement unionism"; broadening the range of services provided to union members; and pursuing political and legal reform that achieves freedom of association. The contemporary cases of labour revitalization in this volume have occurred in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela. The research agenda presented here rests on the conceptualization of labour revitalization as "socially embedded action," or strategic action taken by labor unions to strengthen themselves by redefining their relationships with workers, employers and states. Each of the three parts of "Labor Revitalization" addresses labour's changing relationships with workers, employers, and states, respectively.

How workers learn how to do their jobs is central to an understanding of the changing nature of work in post-industrial society. The role of job or worker training has, however, been underdeveloped in sociological theories of work and the labor market. By most accounts, the ongoing penetration of information technology into the workplace, a transformed socioeconomic lifecourse, managerial preferences for high performance organizations, and the globalization of labour markets have collectively rendered traditional models of skill acquisition badly outmoded. This volume offers sophisticated sociological analyses of job training that go well beyond standard accounts of general versus specific skills and overly simple assumptions about employer and worker behaviour. The chapters examine such topics as the incentives available to employers to provide training, socially structured inequalities in access to training, and cross-societal differences in training institutions. They break new ground in investigating the content of job training as well as its incidence and duration. The contributors to the volume bring to bear both qualitative case study and quantitative research to explore the emerging role of training in post-industrial labor markets.

In this volume the focus is on the interrelations of the global and the local in their consequences for work. The process of restructuring of work is analyzed as an ongoing, locally situated process in which actors within work organizations play an important role. Nevertheless, when taking the context of work organizations into account, the increasing importance of the global on the local processes is obvious. Local practices keep their central importance, but the global doesn't function only as a context for the local anymore but forms more and more a practice of itself in which an increasing number of actors play their part.As we can see on the World Wide Web, people and firms are both emitters and receptors and act on the local and global level at the same time. Local diversity in a world with increasing interdependencies is shown in a number of contributions from different parts of the world. These contributions are clustered around two main themes: Labor markets in global and local scenarios - From industry to services; Global industries - Restructuring and local jobs. The many case studies presented shed light to the diversity that occurs in different local situations.

Entrepreneurship, the creation of new economic entities, is central to the structure and functioning of organizations and economies. New business formation also shapes the nature of social and economic stratification in an economy and may be an important vehicle for social mobility. The papers in this volume explore many of the issues that are central to the study of entrepreneurship today and also break new ground in the field. The papers explore the importance of entrepreneurship, the process by which entrepreneurship occurs, and the way both meaning and process vary with context and opportunity structures.These papers address long-standing controversies in the study of entrepreneurship, and they also identify new, innovative questions and approaches. As a result, both seasoned entrepreneurship researchers and those who are new to the field will find the papers interesting and useful. Research in the Sociology of Work is now available online at ScienceDirect full-text online of volumes 10 onwards.

"Worker Participation: Current Research and Future Trends, Volume 16 of Research in the Sociology of Work", offers cutting edge research on the character and implications of workplace participation. Written by some of the leading scholars in the sociology of workplace transformation and alternative organizations, the chapters here examine various outcomes, causes, and consequences related to participation programs and worker democracy today. Topics include ways in which participation schemes are socially constructed and negotiated; the meanings that workers attach to opportunities for involvement in the workplace; practice, participation, and consent in alternative organizations such as cooperatives and collectives; and theoretical treatments that call for new ways of thinking about workplace participation. Methodologically pluralist and concerned less with specific productivity effects of worker participation, this volume highlights the social structural, social constructionist, and meta theoretical dimensions of worker participation and democratic organizations in the twenty-first century. The global, 24/7 economy and the organizational changes it has generated have enormous implications for the organization, experience and use of time in (and out of) the workplace. In addition to eroding the boundary between home and work, creating time pressures both within and outside of the workplace, the need for businesses to compete in a 24/7 global economy has re-problematized time in the workplace. Drawing on sociology, labor economics, organizational behavior and social history, the papers in this volume examine either empirically or theoretically, a variety of aspects of time in the workplace. Contributors to this volume examine issues surrounding the distribution of and struggle over work hours and how these vary across a number of factors including race, class, occupation and other structural components of work. They examine temporal structures within organizations including inequities in flexible scheduling, entrainment and work teams, polychronicity, and how changing temporal structures affect professionalism and expertise. They also consider the way in which changing uses and organization of work time, in the context of economic instability and globalization, affect the difficulties of reconciling work and family. At the more micro-level, the papers consider individuals' perceptions and constructions and intersubjective constructions of time. To varying degrees, the authors speak to the policy implications or strategies for managing new times. Taken as a whole, these papers shed light on the way in which globalization and the emergence of a 24/7 economy have altered the ways, times, and meanings of time at work. "Research in the Sociology of Work" is now available online at ScienceDirect full-text online of volumes 10 onwards. This book examines various worker participation models and evaluates the success of their outcomes. It adopts a variety of methods and highlights the different dimensions of worker participation.

The global, 24/7 economy and the organizational changes it has generated have enormous implications for the organization, experience and use of time in (and out of) the workplace. In addition to eroding the boundary between home and work, creating time pressures both within and outside of the workplace, the need for businesses to compete in a 24/7 global economy has re-problematized time in the workplace. Drawing on sociology, labor economics, organizational behavior and social history, the papers in this volume examine either empirically or theoretically, a variety of aspects of time in the workplace. Contributors to this volume examine issues surrounding the distribution of and struggle over work hours and how these vary across a number of factors including race, class, occupation and other structural components of work. They examine temporal structures within organizations including inequities in flexible scheduling, entrainment and work teams, polychronicity, and how changing temporal structures affect professionalism and expertise. They also consider the way in which changing uses and organization of work time, in the context of economic instability and globalization, affect the difficulties of reconciling work and family. At the more micro-level, the papers consider individuals' perceptions and constructions and intersubjective constructions of time. To varying degrees, the authors speak to the policy implications or strategies for managing new times. Taken as a whole, these papers shed light on the way in which globalization and the emergence of a 24/7 economy have altered the ways, times, and meanings of time at work. This book series is available electronically online.

In this volume, we examine how the institutional environment affects entrepreneurial organizations, and vice-versa. This includes not only how the institutional environment constrains both founding processes and the type of organizations founded, but also how institutional dynamics construct new entrepreneurial opportunities, empower and facilitate action, and how entrepreneurs manipulate the institutional environment to serve their own ends. This institutional approach to entrepreneurship shifts attention away from the personal traits and backgrounds of individual entrepreneurs, and towards how institutions shape entrepreneurial opportunities and actions; how entrepreneurs navigate their cognitive, normative, and regulatory environments; and, how actors modify and build institutions to support new types of organizations.

This Book Set consists of: *9781849509466 - Comparing European Workers Part A: Experiences and Inequalities *9780857249319 - Comparing European Workers Part B: Policies and Institutions This set of volumes places the labor markets, workplaces, jobs and workers of Europe in comparative perspective. It focuses on the politics, economics, sociology, and history of work and workers in Europe. Authors contribute a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, with papers that push the boundaries of evidence and argument. In order to place European workers in comparative perspectives, the volume features articles that analyze specific European countries, industries and firms, analyze Europe as one of a few cases, and analyze many European countries within a cross-national sample. Specific topics covered include: a multilevel study of perceived job insecurity in 27 European countries; work values and job rewards among European workers; managerial intensity and earnings inequality in affluent democracies; cross-national patterns in individual and household employment and work hours by gender and parenthood; the political economy of active social policy in postindustrial democracies; social protection dualism, deindustrialization and cost containment; organized labor in Europe; and, unionization in East European ex-communist countries.

Work behaviours and inequality in work-based rewards are essential to financial security and general well-being. Although the benefits of receiving work-based rewards, such as income, benefits and retirement packages, are significant, they are not enjoyed uniformly. Scholars have invested considerable resources in studying the processes that lead to differential work outcomes, and we know a considerable amount about what places people in the distributions of income and wealth. However, religion is a critical determinant of these outcomes that has attracted little attention. It seems logical that a person's general approach to the world - their religious beliefs or cultural orientation - would be an important determinant of their wealth. After all, the things we consider important and our operating assumptions about how the world does work and how it should work are certain to affect the goals we pursue, our decisions about critical life events, and, ultimately, how well-off we are. This volume brings together major thinkers in the field of religion, work and inequality to explore current research and to articulate an agenda for better understanding these essential social processes.

The importance of social relationships at work has long been recognized in the social sciences. Interest in this topic has been renewed through scholarly and popular discussions of social capital as well as recent innovations in network data collection and analysis. These developments have allowed researchers to ask a variety of new questions about the role of networks in the world of work and a multitude of approaches to answering those questions. While several monographs have been written on issues related to networks and work, none has simultaneously brought together the range of approaches used to explore this topic. Furthermore, this volume is the first to merge this focus on networks and work with a sociological perspective on inequality. Specifically, the chapters illuminate the processes by which social networks in work organizations can effectively generate, sustain and ameliorate social inequalities across individuals, firms, and occupational fields. In doing so, this volume offers valuable insights that inform researchers and policy makers alike regarding issues of workplace discrimination, diversity and innovation.

This volume of Research in the Sociology of Work starts with a deceptively simple question of, "Do events and experiences during adolescence influence the work outcomes of individuals when they reach adulthood?" While at first glance simple, the question has a wide range of theoretical and practical implications, which are covered in a compelling set of contributions. The volume contains new and exploratory research related to this fundamental question and highlights the opportunities for further research on the topic.

This volume will focus on innovative research that examines how the nature of paid work intersects with family and personal life today. Although some workers have more stability than others, rising income inequality, the continued rise of nonstandard work, further erosion of unions, technological advancements that encourage permeable boundaries between work and home, and the pressures of a global 24/7 economy generate an aura of insecurity for all. Some workers are working long hours but have some control over when, where and how they work; many others are poorly compensated and struggle with underemployment, have little say over their schedules, lack adequate benefits, and must cobble together several jobs and/or rely heavily on kinship networks to make ends meet. These changes suggest the need for nuanced analyses that are sensitive to class variation in work conditions and to diverse family formations. Research that addresses how current work conditions are experienced in different life course stages and in different policy contexts is also needed to fully understand the work-family interface.

Immigrants and their descendants are growing populations that are rapidly changing the racial/ethnic diversity of the United States and many societies across the globe. People migrate for a multitude of reasons but work whether in the high-skilled, low-wage, or informal sectors of the economy or the drive to establish a businesses, is the primary impetus. The goal of this volume is to bring together new empirical research and theoretical innovations from cutting-edge scholarship concentrating on the intersection of immigration and work. Research in this volume investigates how larger structural inequalities in sending and receiving nations, immigrant entry policies, group characteristics, and micro level processes, such as discrimination and access to ethnic networks, shapes labor market outcomes, workplace experiences, and patterns of integration among immigrants and their descendants.

Randy Hodson was one of contemporary sociology's central figures in the study of work, occupations, and inequality. This volume pays tribute to his important scholarly contributions. Chapters by other important scholars in these fields reflect and build on his research in work conditions, worker resistance, and social stratification.

Research in the Sociology of Work (RSW) is a twice yearly publication that examines current issues related to the sociology of work. The series provides a comprehensive collection of research focused on the social, economic, political and cultural aspects of work and labour. This volume includes contributions which discuss: work and identity, including the experiences of actors and teachers; authority and control at work, including insights from the hospitality and publishing industries; and issues of gender and sexuality in the workplace, including insights on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Economic institutions are undergoing radical transformations, and with these has come a reconfiguration of labor market institutions, managerial conceptions of work, and the nature of authority and control over employees as well. Yet many of these changes remain poorly understood. This volume provides a sampling of state-of-the art theory and research in the field, and addresses a wide array of questions that are vital for managers, policy makers, labor unions, and employees themselves. How has new technology changed the job search process? How has the Great Recession affected racial boundaries within the labor market? What forms of managerial thinking underlie the proliferation of downsizing as a strategic practice? How have employees responded to labor market uncertainty? What shifts are unfolding within particular sectors, such as finance or health care? And how have norms been mobilized as a source of control over the performance of service work? By addressing these and other questions, this volume points the way forward for social scientific views of work and labor markets as pivotal institutions within contemporary societies.

This volume presents original theory and research on precarious work in various parts of the world, identifying its social, political and economic origins, its manifestations in the USA, Europe, Asia, and the Global South, and its consequences for personal and family life. In the past quarter century, the nature of paid employment has undergone a dramatic change due to globalization, rapid technological change, the decline of the power of workers in favor of employers, and the spread of neoliberalism. Jobs have become far more insecure and uncertain, with workers bearing the risks of employment as opposed to employers or the government. This trend towards precarious work has engulfed virtually all advanced capitalist nations, but unevenly so, while countries in the Global South continue to experience precarious conditions of work. This title examines theories of precarious work; cross-national variations in its features; racial and gender differences in exposure to precarious work; and the policy alternatives that might protect workers from undue risk. The chapters utilize a variety of methods, both quantitative statistical analyses and careful qualitative case studies.  This volume will be a valuable resource that constitutes required reading for scholars, activists, labor leaders, and policy makers concerned with the future of work under contemporary capitalism.

This volume examines the connections between race and work, focusing on three key themes. First, contributors consider how racial minorities deal with questions of identity in the workplace. This is especially important as ideas about professionalism often hinge on implicitly racialized criteria, to an extent that racial identity may pose a challenge to meeting occupational requirements. Secondly, contributors address ways racial exclusion occurs in jobs in the new economy: while organizations can no longer legally segregate or discriminate on the basis of race, exclusion processes still occur in the contemporary workplace. Finally, this volume considers the strategies that minority workers use to combat and change patterns of workplace inequality. In the new economy, where workers arguably have limited power relative to organizations, the techniques of the past may not be as effective. Providing valuable insight on a growing segment of the labor force, this book considers the US's rapidly changing racial demographics and how this phenomenon fundamentally alters many aspects of work, providing an in-depth understanding of how race affects work for people of color across occupations, workplaces, and industries.

This volume presents the most recent studies of work and labor in the digital age as it unfolds in both Europe and the United States. One of the critical questions facing modernity concerns the reconfiguration of paid employment, which has been subject to wholesale changes that have widespread consequences for workers, their families, and the institutional structure that characterizes capitalist societies. A key driver of these changes has been the digital revolution and the rapid proliferation of the gig economy. Together with social network sites for hiring, the spread of robotics, and the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, they leave virtually no occupation untouched.

The professions have undergone massive changes in recent decades, as globalization, information technology, bureaucratization and market competition have begun to envelop even the most prestigious occupations in contemporary societies. Ironically, at a time when expert knowledge has grown increasingly important, the 'golden age' of the professions has receded into the past. Professional autonomy, authority, and ethics are all under siege, and even their claims to exclusive control of knowledge face challenges on multiple fronts.Volume 34 of Research in the Sociology of Work explores how the professions are faring in this changed world, shedding new light on a field that has long been at the center of social science thinking about the economy, the state, and social order. Chapters in this volume explore a series of questions that are vital to modern life, such as:How has increased control by employers and clients altered the experience of work for professionals?What are the new bases of professional status?How are underrepresented groups faring within the professions?How do professionals respond to precarity and unemployment?

Worker organizing has long been a cornerstone of efforts to secure fair pay, decent working conditions, and protection against the insecurities of market economies. By acting collectively, workers have historically been able to counterbalance employer power and win improvements to work and life. Yet such gains have always been partial and contested, and the settlements between labour and capital remain under constant pressure. In the wake of rapid social, political, technological, and environmental change which is reshaping work and challenging the institutions and practices that have underpinned worker collective action, this edited volume explores the evolving landscape and practices of worker organizing in the twenty-first century.In the context of developments that have exposed the limits of existing models of worker representation and protection – from the erosion of union density in many countries, to the rise of precarious and platform-based work, to climate crisis and pandemic fallout – the chapters in this volume examine the innovative strategies, organizational forms, and solidarities that workers are forging in response to intensified inequalities and new modes of exploitation. The contributions draw on diverse theoretical perspectives and examine a range of empirical settings to shed light on the forms, dynamics, and outcomes of worker collective action in contemporary contexts.Recentring worker organizing as a vital force in shaping a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic world of work, Worker Organizing is a timely and compelling volume for scholars of the sociology of work and labour, organizational studies, social movements, and beyond.

The Covid-19 pandemic both popularized and politicized the designation of essential work. Interrogating the dialectics of essential work, this volume of Research in the Sociology of Work presents original research that explores the essentiality of work and highlights the experiences of essential workers during the pandemic, drawing on empirical studies in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Demonstrating an enduring struggle for recognition and dignity, as well as for revaluing and materially rewarding essential work, contributors examine the emotional labour involved in gendered care work, the impact of COVID-19 on residential care work, the politics of essentiality and the diversity and intersectional inequality of essential workforces. The final chapters are the first of a new recurring section spotlighting ethnography by presenting both new empirical research and in-depth reviews of extant contributions. Raising pressing questions about the essence of work and its place in contemporary society, Essentiality of Work inspires new debates about the centrality of the work experience and how labour is understood in modern life both for those undertaking work as well as those who benefit.

Employability has become an increasingly widespread concept both in management and policy, but its meaning remains somewhat enigmatic and ambiguous. This volume offers a much-needed critical analysis of the ideology, practices, and policies of employability, reflecting significant transformations in the world of work and the individualizing experience of contemporary labour markets. This volume draws on a wide range of empirical studies to examine how discourses of employability have impacted both individuals and institutions.Employability is often framed as an attribute of a person whereby individuals are lauded as “employable” or dismissed as “unemployable.” This language and logic of employability has spawned all kinds of myopic supply-side labour market policies coinciding with and giving fuel to neoliberal emphases on individual responsibility and commodification. The chapters in this volume employ diverse theoretical perspectives on the impact of employability across different empirical settings, including higher education, vocational training, and state policymaking, in the UK, US, Australia, Germany, and Brazil.Arguing that employability has an elusive character that renders it in dire need of sustained, critical analysis, Employability provides a much-needed framework for thinking about the enigma of employability and for critically reappraising its consequences.

Presenting cutting-edge ethnographic research on contemporary worlds of work and the experiences of workers from a range of contexts, Volume 35 of Research in the Sociology of Work offers fine-grained, exploratory ethnographic data to provide insights unmatched by other research methods.Conscious of the social and economic upheaval that continues to transform the contemporary workplace and the wider landscape for workers across the globe, Ethnographies of Work, the first of two parts, features analyses of working from home, the gig economy, the food delivery sector, digital nomadism, workplace inequalities, the hospitality industry, and an alternative community. Rooted in ethnographic research, chapters also include ethnographers’ reflections on their experiences in careers outside of academia, as well as their personal feelings of precarity both within and beyond the field to create an enriched volume that makes the most of ethnographic through its representation in a variety of written forms.

This volume presents original theory and research on precarious work in various parts of the world, identifying its social, political and economic origins, its manifestations in the USA, Europe, Asia, and the Global South, and its consequences for personal and family life. In the past quarter century, the nature of paid employment has undergone a dramatic change due to globalization, rapid technological change, the decline of the power of workers in favor of employers, and the spread of neoliberalism. Jobs have become far more insecure and uncertain, with workers bearing the risks of employment as opposed to employers or the government. This trend towards precarious work has engulfed virtually all advanced capitalist nations, but unevenly so, while countries in the Global South continue to experience precarious conditions of work. This title examines theories of precarious work; cross-national variations in its features; racial and gender differences in exposure to precarious work; and the policy alternatives that might protect workers from undue risk. The chapters utilize a variety of methods, both quantitative statistical analyses and careful qualitative case studies.  This volume will be a valuable resource that constitutes required reading for scholars, activists, labor leaders, and policy makers concerned with the future of work under contemporary capitalism.