Author : Knut Laaser
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 22,5 MB
Release : 2023-11-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1009098578
A new theory exploring what makes modern waged work either meaningful or meaningless.
Author : Knut Laaser
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,13 MB
Release : 2024
Category : Industrial sociology
ISBN : 9781009096355
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.
Author : Judy Wajcman
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 17,37 MB
Release : 2005-09-08
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0191556696
How does the politics of working life shape modern organizations? Is our desire for meaningful, secure work increasingly at odds with corporate behaviour in a globalized economy? Does the rise of performance management culture represent an intensification of work, or create opportunities for the freewheeling individual career? This timely and engaging book, by leading authorities in the field, adopts the standpoint of the 'questioning observer'. It is for those who need an informed account of work that is accessible without being superficial. The book is unique in its multi-dimensional approach, weaving together analysis of individual work experience, political processes in organizations, and the wider context of the social structuring of markets. The book identifies central questions about working experience and answers them in a direct and lively manner. It has a strong analytical foundation based on a political economy framework, giving particular weight to the contradictory character of organizations. These contradictions turn on the competing demands placed on organizations and the different political projects of groups within them. This perspective integrates the chapters, and permits numerous scholarly debates to be addressed - including those on identity projects, gender and work, power and participation, escalation in decision-making, and the meaning of corporate social responsibility. This book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate classes in Organizational Behaviour, Business Strategy and the Sociology of Work and Employment. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in grappling with the complexity of the changing environment of work.
Author : R. Yeoman
Publisher : Springer
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 38,7 MB
Release : 2014-09-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1137370580
This book is a timely revival of the social and political importance of meaningful work, which explores a philosophy of work based upon the value of meaningfulness and argues for the institution of a new politics of meaningfulness.
Author : Kathi Weeks
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 35,25 MB
Release : 2011-09-09
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0822351129
The Problem with Work develops a Marxist feminist critique of the structures and ethics of work, as well as a perspective for imagining a life no longer subordinated to them.
Author : Dale Belman
Publisher : W.E. Upjohn Institute
Page : 489 pages
File Size : 46,21 MB
Release : 2014-07-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0880994568
Belman and Wolfson perform a meta-analysis on scores of published studies on the effects of the minimum wage to determine its impacts on employment, wages, poverty, and more.
Author : Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 12,25 MB
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1429926643
The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.
Author : Paula McDonald
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 36,73 MB
Release : 2012-08-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1136293957
In the last two decades there has been a plethora of research on a range of subjects collectively and rhetorically known as ‘work-life balance’. The bulk of this research, which spans disciplines including feminist sociology, industrial relations and management, has focused on the significant concerns of employed women and/or dual career couples. Less attention has been devoted to scholarship which explicitly examines men and masculinities in this context. Meanwhile, public and organizational discourse is largely espoused in gender neutral terms, often neglecting salient gendered issues which differentially impact the ability of women and men to successfully integrate their work and non-work lives. This edited book brings together empirical studies of the work-life nexus with a specific focus on men’s working time arrangements, how men navigate and traverse paid work and family commitments, and the impact of public and organizational policies on men’s participation in work, leisure, and other life domains. The book is innovative in that it presents both macro (institutional, how policy affects practice) and micro (individual, from men’s own perspectives) level studies, allowing for a rich and contrasting exploration of how men’s participation in paid work and other domains is divided, conflicted, or integrated. The essays in this volume address issues of fundamental social, labor market, and economic change which have occurred over the last 20 years and which have profoundly affected the way work, care, leisure and community have evolved in different contexts. Taking an international focus, Men, Wage Work and Family contrasts various public and organizational policies and how these policies impact men’s opportunities and participation in paid work and non-work domains in industrialised countries in Europe, North America, and Australia.
Author : Martin Sicker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,81 MB
Release : 2002-03-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0313011788
When Congress enacted Social Secuirty in 1935, with the age of retirement set at age 65, average life expectancy was 62 years. By the time Medicare was enacted 30 years later, life expectancy had risen to age 70. Since the enactment of Medicare, life expectancy has risen to age 76 today and may be expected to increase further in the decades to come. Clearly, the increase in post-retirement life expectancy has significant implications for the level of national expenditures attributable to an aging population. One of the approaches suggested as a solution to the so-called income transfer problem is to redefine old age, that is, to push retirement and its associated benefits off to a later age. This would effectively increase the size of the workforce, with older workers continuing to contribute their payroll taxes for an extended period of time. The critical question Sicker poses is, will there be enough appropriate employment opportunities for a growing number of older workers in the workforce of the future? The evidence for a positive response is far from clear or compelling. Sicker examines the prospective place of the aging worker in the employment environment of the 21st century in light of the restructuring of American business and the world of work in the final decades of the last century. In doing so, he raises serious concerns about the validity and utility of some of the neoclassical economic ideas and assumptions that have become part of the conventional wisdom of our time. Sicker contends that these dubious propositions have unwittingly contributed signficantly to the problem through their manifestation in public policy. However, the principal focus of his analysis is not on economic theory as such, but on the realities and uncertainties that an aging American workforce will face in the decades to come. This book is significant reading for scholars, researchers, and the general public interested in labor force and aging policy issues.
Author : Annamaria Di Fabio
Publisher : Frontiers Media SA
Page : 167 pages
File Size : 24,91 MB
Release : 2016-09-21
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 2889199703
This Research Topic explores issues that are central to the continued relevance of organizational and vocational psychology, and equally central to the well-being of individuals and communities. The cohering theme of this publication revolves around the question of how people can establish meaningful lives and meaningful work experiences in light of the many challenges that are reducing access to decent work. Another essential contextual factor that is explored in this volume is the Decent Work Agenda (International Labour Organization, 2008), which represents an initiative by the International Labour Organization. In this book, we hope to enrich the Decent Work Agenda by infusing the knowledge and perspectives of psychology into contemporary discourses about work, and well-being. Another inspiration for this project emerged from the UNESCO Chair in Lifelong guidance and counseling, recently established in Poland in 2013 under the leadership of Jean Guichard, which has focused on advancing research and policy advocacy about decent work. This new era calls for an innovative perspective in constructing decent work and decent lives: the passage from the paradigm of motivation to the paradigm of meaning, where the sustainability of the decent life project is anchored to a meaningful construction. During this period when work is changing so rapidly, leaving people yearning for a sense of connection and meaning, it’s fundamental to create a framework for an explicitly psychological analysis of decent work.
