– The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the most important trends in work and employment over the past 50 years.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the most important trends in work and employment over the past 50 years.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopted the 50-year perspective in line with the celebration of Manchester Industrial Relations Society’s 50th anniversary. The approach adopted was to include both observable changes in work and employment and changes in the perspectives found in published research.
Findings
The key trends identified were feminisation, flexibilisation, fragmentation and financialisation. These were the outcome of, on the one hand, global trends towards services, transnationalisation and transformative technologies and, on the other hand, of political choices to deregulate, decollectivise and depoliticise the employment relationship.
Originality/value
The value lies in exploring the key trends in the world of work over a significant period of time, identifying the drivers behind the changes and reflecting on the implications for future prospects in work and employment.
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A major theme of much of the literature on Japanese transplants concerns the construction of employer hegemony on the basis of stringent selection, employee involvement and team�…
Abstract
A major theme of much of the literature on Japanese transplants concerns the construction of employer hegemony on the basis of stringent selection, employee involvement and team‐ working. Many of the more critical contributions to this literature emphasise the tightness of work schedules and the narrow confines of worker initiative, but they nevertheless emphasise the capacity of management to engineer worker compliance and co‐operation, through a sophisticated mix of communications, surveillance and performance monitoring (Morgan and Sayer, 1988; Garrahan and Stewart, 1992; Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992; Graham, 1995). This paper deploys data from current research on a cluster of Japanese manufacturing ‘transplants’ in the Midlands to assess these arguments and to develop a rather different analysis of the problematical management of labour within such workplaces.
Jill Manthorpe and Kritika Samsi
The purpose of this paper is to explore how any proposed Women’s Health Strategy could address the needs of women affected by dementia in England.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how any proposed Women’s Health Strategy could address the needs of women affected by dementia in England.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors take the following three perspectives: women living with dementia, female carers and female practitioners supporting people with dementia.
Findings
In this paper, the authors explore the current evidence about dementia and female gender under three main strands relating to policy and practise.
Originality/value
There is worldwide interest amongst policy communities in gender inequalities.
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This paper aims to examine the role and experiences of women working in the industrial relations (IR) academy and to explore the recent claim that the subject of industrial…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the role and experiences of women working in the industrial relations (IR) academy and to explore the recent claim that the subject of industrial relations has “been very receptive to the contributions of feminist analysis”.
Design/methodology/approach
An examination is made of the liminal position of women IR scholars in the IR academy and their concern for feminist and gender analysis. Parallels are drawn with IR and trade unions, focusing mainly on Britain, which also occupy, simultaneously, insider and outsider spaces. This approach draws on the relevant literature and is then tested through a questionnaire survey of women scholars working in the field, the author included, together with interviews and interactive discussions about the findings.
Findings
Gender politics remain highly contested in the IR academy, with women and their work experiencing considerable marginalisation and exclusion. Nevertheless women IR scholars display a high level of commitment to the field, especially its emphasis on policy and practice. The conclusion is that so far, a “gender turn” has yet to occur in the field in the way that women's studies is claimed as being part of a new knowledge movement.
Research limitations
A limitation of the study is a relatively low response rate to the questionnaire, with a bias towards older, more senior women academics.
Originality/value
For probably the first time the role and experiences in the IR academy of women researchers/ academics are examined and published. The study reveals that the exclusion and sexism experienced there closely reflect the gender and diversity analyses in the IR field.
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(a) Equal Opportunities Commission, Overseas House, Quay Street, Manchester M3 3HN. (i) Information Technology in the Office: The Impact on Women's Jobs In January 1979…
Abstract
(a) Equal Opportunities Commission, Overseas House, Quay Street, Manchester M3 3HN. (i) Information Technology in the Office: The Impact on Women's Jobs In January 1979 Communications Studies and Planning Ltd (CS & P) were granted one year's funding by the EOC to examine the impact which the new microprocessor‐based office technologies would have on staff. The main conclusions are:
Part‐time work in Japan, as in other countries, is increasing as a form of paid work. There are, however, significant differences developing out of Japan’s gender contract…
Abstract
Part‐time work in Japan, as in other countries, is increasing as a form of paid work. There are, however, significant differences developing out of Japan’s gender contract. Employers have created a gendered employment strategy which has been supported by governments, through social welfare policies and legislation, and the mainstream enterprise union movement which has supported categorisations of part‐time workers as “auxilliary” despite their importance at the workplace. An analysis of one national supermarket chain indicates that part‐time work as it is constructed in Japan does not challenge the gendered division of labour but seeks to lock women into the secondary labour market.
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EEO and the management of diversity Volume 8 Number 5 of the Journal of Organizational Change Management contains an article by Maria Humphries and Shayne Grice entitled “Equal…
Abstract
EEO and the management of diversity Volume 8 Number 5 of the Journal of Organizational Change Management contains an article by Maria Humphries and Shayne Grice entitled “Equal employment opportunity and the management of diversity: a global discourse of assimilation?”
Marta B. Calás and Linda Smircich
Since the late 1980s we’ve been inspired by feminist theorizing to interrogate our field of organization studies, looking critically at the questions it asks, at the underlying…
Abstract
Since the late 1980s we’ve been inspired by feminist theorizing to interrogate our field of organization studies, looking critically at the questions it asks, at the underlying premises of the theories allowing for such questions, and by articulating alternative premises as a way of suggesting other theories and thus other questions the field may need to ask. In so doing, our collaborative work has applied insights from feminist theorizing and cultural studies to topics such as leadership, entrepreneurship, globalization, business ethics, issues of work and family, and more recently to sustainability. This text is a retrospective on our attempts at intervening in our field, where we sought to make it more fundamentally responsive to problems in the world we live in and, from this reflective position, considering how and why our field’s conventional theories and practices – despite good intentions – may be unable to do so.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyse an example of non-decision making in the Nordic tripartite policy process, namely, the reform of the Finnish gender equality legislation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse an example of non-decision making in the Nordic tripartite policy process, namely, the reform of the Finnish gender equality legislation and the law for equal pay comparisons.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses non-decision making as a conceptual framework for qualitative analysis of the documentation of the working group that drafted the law for equal pay comparisons. The analysis focuses on the strategic responses used by the participants in order to defend the status quo and resist change in legislation.
Findings
The key findings are that the suggested law for conducting equal pay comparisons as part of gender equality planning in Finnish organisations changed dramatically in the tripartite policy process. Employer organisations successfully prevented the most relevant features from being implemented in the reformed law.
Research limitations/implications
The findings of this research indicate that there is a need for more research on the tripartite policy process and its implication on developing policy.
Social implications
This paper shows what kind of power employer and employee organisations use in Finnish policy making. As a result, the reformed gender equality legislation is a compromise reflecting the vested interests of different stakeholders. The findings highlight the challenges of developing policy in tripartite policy process.
Originality/value
The tripartite policy process and its implications have rarely been studied. The value of this paper lies in both originality of the topic and approach, and the societal importance of the findings.