First published in 1985, this book examines the major components of working time from an international perspective, considering the individual aspects of working time, with particular emphasis on the argument that work should be shared to alleviate unemployment and the case for further increasing the flexibility and choice in working arrangements. Paul Blyton reviews working time since the Industrial Revolution, when a strict time-frame was first imposed on workers, and the growth in work-sharing, flexitime, part-time working and changes to the retirement age.
First published in 1987, this Routledge Revival reissues the first systematic and integrated analysis of working time and employment, reaching to the core elements of a vital area of labour economics. It offers both a comprehensive analysis of the impact of workweek reductions on employment and hours as well as a thorough coverage of part-time employment, temporary lay-offs, short-time working, labour subsidies, social security funding, mandatory and early retirement and collective bargaining. This book provides the first comprehensive attempt to examine carefully the key economic issues involved in the general policy debate on working time and employment. This reissue will be of serious interest to advanced undergraduates, post-graduates and researchers in labour economics, and will also be relevant to those interested in labour microeconomics, macroeconomics, business economics and management studies.
This Handbook assembles original contributions from influential authors such as Herman Daly, Paul Ekins, Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Jeroen van den Bergh, William E. Rees and Tim Jackson who have helped to define our understanding of growth and sustainability. The Handbook also presents new contributions on topics such as degrowth, the debt-based financial system, cultural change, energy return on investment, shorter working hours and employment, and innovation and technology. Explorations of these issues can deepen our understanding of whether growth is sustainable and, in turn, whether a move away from growth can be sustained. With issues such as climate change looming large, our understanding of growth and sustainability is critical. This Handbook offers a broad range of perspectives that can help the reader to decide: Growth? Sustainability? Both? Or neither?
In medieval and early modern Britain, people would refer to their local district as their 'country', a term now largely forgotten but still used up until the First World War. Core groups of families that remained rooted in these 'countries', often bearing distinctive surnames still in use today, shaped local culture and passed on their traditions. In The Grass Roots of English History, David Hey examines the differing nature of the various local societies that were found throughout England in these periods. The book provides an update on the progress that has been made in recent years in our understanding of the history of ordinary people living in different types of local societies throughout England, and demonstrates the value of studying the varied landscapes of England, from towns to villages, farmsteads, fields and woods to highways and lanes, and historic buildings from cathedrals to cottages. With its broad coverage from the medieval period up to the Industrial Revolution, the book shows how England's socio-economic landscape had changed over time, employing evidence provided by archaeology, architecture, botany, cultural studies, linguistics and historical demography. The Grass Roots of English History provides an up-to-date account of the present state of knowledge about ordinary people in local societies throughout England written by an authority in the field, and as such will be of great value to all scholars of local and family history.
First published in 1988, this book analyses the changes that took place in the economic organisation of the British construction industry throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, in particular considering its social and economic structure and examining the causes of its poor industrial record. Michael Ball describes how the major firms survived the economic slump between 1973 and 1982 - when construction workloads collapsed - by substantially restructuring their operations, relationships with clients, workforces and subcontractors. Detailed attention is paid to construction firms, the workers they employ, the influence of trade unionism and the role of other agencies in the building process. Reissued at a particularly challenging time for the British construction industry, this relevant and practical title will be of value to students and academics of economics and social change, as well as those on courses for construction professionals.
International comparison of trends and prospects in arrangement of working time - traces historical development in hours of work incl. The working day and week and work sharing; discusses overtime, shift work, paid leave, short time working, part time employment, Job Sharing, flexible hours of work, compressed working week, staggered hours of work and retirement patterns; links the future of working time to employment creation and to the quality of working life. Bibliography, graph, statistical tables.
First published in 1992, this Routledge Revival sees the reissue of a truly original exploration of the nature of urbanization and capitalism. Linda Clarke’s vital work argues that: Urbanization is a product of the social human labour engaged in building as well as a concentration of the labour force. The quality of the labour process determines the development of production. Changes to the built environment reflect changes in the production process and, in particular, the development of wage labour. To support these arguments, the author identifies a qualitatively new historical stage of capitalist building production involving a significant expansion of wage labour, and hence capital, and the transition from artisan to industrial production. Linda Clarke draws from a wide range of original material relating to the development of London from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century to provide a complete description of the development process: materials extraction, roadbuilding, housebuilding, paving, cleansing, etc; profiles of builders and contractors involved, and a picture of the new working class communities, as in Somers Town – their living conditions, population, working environment, and politics.
Job loss is one of the most important issues in the capitalist world today: endless reports document the increasing scale of unemployment. This title, first published in 1982, adopted a new approach to the geography of job loss, to assess why redundancy happens and where. Massey and Meegan argue that an increase in dismissal does not necessarily mean that an industry is in decline; rather, it can be the result of a variety of issues, including production for profit and the relationship between industry and location. Throughout the book, discussions about theory and methodology are complemented by industry-based case studies. This title addresses issues of particular relevance to today’s economic climate, and will be particularly valuable to students with an interest in employment and job loss, and industrial labour and profitability.
The great inter-war depression has long been seen as an unprecedented economic disaster for the peoples of the non-European world. This book, with its detailed assessment of the impact of the depression on the economies of Africa and Asia, challenges the orthodox view, and is essential reading for those with a teaching or research interest in the modern economic history of those continents. Established specialists in the modern economic history of parts of Africa or Asia put forward a number of revisionist arguments. They show that some economies were left essentially unscathed by the depression, and that for many export-dependent peasant communities which did face a severe drop in cash income as world commodity prices collapsed from the late 1920s, there was a range of important responses and reactions by which they could defend their economic welfare. For many peasant communities the depression was not a disaster but an opportunity.
First published in 1998, readers of this volume will get a good overview of research into managerial work. They will learn about: what the researchers have studied; what methods have been used and the criticisms of the limitations of individual methods; the different concepts that have been developed; what has been learnt about managerial work and behaviour from these studies over the years; how this field of study has developed; the main criticisms made of the research; suggestions for future research and future developments. Studies of managerial work have a long history: the first major work was by Sune Carlson in Sweden in 1951 and studies have continued to the present day, mainly in the USA and the UK. The early studies sought to find out what managers actually did, as distinct from the generalized theories of the nature of managerial work. They were part of the new interest of social scientists in finding out what actually happened in organizations in opposition to the general theories that prevailed then. Articles cannot give a complete picture of the field studies that have been such a notable feature of this branch of research, because Carlson’s study, like many of the later ones, was published only as a book. However, they provide all the information that students and researchers need to understand the aim, methods and approaches used by researchers so far and a good guide to the varied possibilities for developing this area of study.
