Makeshift Work in a Changing Labour Market

Makeshift Work in a Changing Labour Market

Author: Christina Garsten

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2015-01-30

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1783479744

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In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, people who had never before had cause to worry about losing their jobs entered the ranks of the unemployed for the first time. In Sweden, the welfare state has been radically challenged and mass unemploy


Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe

Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe

Author: Martin Heidenreich

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2016-01-29

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1783474920

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A central goal of European activation policies is to provide coherent and actively inclusive employment and social services. This book offers new insights on the effective governance and implementation of such policies. Utilizing empirical studies from six European welfare states, expert contributors explore how different institutional contexts influence localized service delivery and how local authorities deal with the associated coordination challenges. Acknowledging that neither decentralization nor provider networks necessarily prevent fragmented service provision, Martin Heidenreich and Deborah Rice illustrate that an understanding of the European budgetary context, as well as individual network brokerage, is vital for a successful integration of employment and social policies at the local level. Timely and engaging, this innovative book will provide new theoretical perspectives and invaluable empirical materials for academics and students in the field of comparative social policy. Policy makers and officials will also appreciate the editors’ practical approach.


Meeting Ethnography

Meeting Ethnography

Author: Jen Sandler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1317195094

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This volume asks and addresses elusive ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions about meetings. What are meetings? What sort of knowledge, identities, and power relationships are produced, performed, communicated, and legitimized through meetings? How do—and how might—ethnographers study meetings as objects, and how might they best conduct research in meetings as particular elements of their field sites? Through contributions from an international group of ethnographers who have conducted “meeting ethnography” in diverse field sites, this volume offers both theoretical insight and methodological guidance into the study of this most ubiquitous ritual.


Fast Childcare in Public Preschools

Fast Childcare in Public Preschools

Author: Renita Thedvall

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-14

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1351012819

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Fast Childcare in Public Preschools presents an ethnographic examination of the implementation of fast-policy management models and the efforts of teachers to use these to improve their work organization, and the frictions this brings. Using examples from Swedish public preschools, the book focuses on essential areas of the Lean management model in particular, bringing to life concepts relating to the care and education of children. The book draws on international childcare policy and public reforms, exploring the assignments that preschools are set and argues that separating the pedagogical and the organizational as suggested by proponents of management models is not possible. This book considers Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore’s work on ‘fast policy’ and ‘model power’ and analyzes the tensions between the easy-to-use and difficult-to-use in management models. The model form of Lean’s management model rendered it difficult to align with existing childcare policy, pedagogical models, and the organization of a preschool. The book explores the utopian dimension of a modern project in pursuit of efficiency and speed in relation to the Lean model and the preschool teachers’ work, by asking, ‘what are the wider societal implications of the Lean project in preschools?’ Fast Childcare in Public Preschools will be of great interest to cultural anthropologists, qualitative sociologists and political scientists, and organizational researchers interested in the anthropology of policy.


Social and Caring Professions in European Welfare States

Social and Caring Professions in European Welfare States

Author: Blom, Björn

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2017-02-08

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1447327217

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This collection provides new insights about current welfare professions in a number of European countries. Focusing on research representing different types of European welfare states, including the Scandinavian and the Continental, the book offers in-depth understandings of professionals’ everyday work within different contextual conditions, explored from empirical and theoretical perspectives. Subjects covered include knowledge and identity, education and professional development, regulation, accountability, collaboration, assessment and decision making. This is a valuable contribution to the discussion of professionalism and welfare professions, offering lessons learned and ways forward.


Unpacking IKEA

Unpacking IKEA

Author: Pauline Garvey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-23

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1317642961

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This book represents the first anthropological ethnography of Ikea consumption and goes to the heart of understanding the unique and at times frantic popularity of this one iconic transnational store. Based on a year of participant observation in Stockholm’s Kungens Kurva store – the largest in the world - this book places the retailer squarely within the realm of the home-building efforts of individuals in Stockholm and to a lesser degree in Dublin. Ikea, the world’s largest retailer and one of its most interesting, is the focus of intense popular fascination internationally, yet is rarely subject to in-depth anthropological inquiry. In Unpacking Ikea, Garvey explores why Ikea is never ‘just a store’ for its customers, and questions why it is described in terms of a cultural package, as everyday and classless. Using in-depth interviews with householders over several years, this ethnographic study follows the furniture from the Ikea store outwards to probe what people actually take home with them.


Young People in the Labour Market

Young People in the Labour Market

Author: Andy Furlong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1317631110

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Levels of suffering among young people have always been much higher than governments suggest. Indeed, policies aimed at young workers have often been framed in ways that help secure conformity to a new employment landscape in which traditional securities have been progressively removed. Increasingly punitive welfare regimes have resulted in new hardships, especially among young women and those living in depressed labour markets. Framed by the ideas of Norbert Elias, Young People in the Labour Market challenges the idea that changing economic landscapes have given birth to a ‘Precariat’ and argues that labour insecurity is more deep-rooted and complex than others have suggested. Focusing on young people and the ways in which their working lives have changed between the 1980s recession and the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and its immediate aftermath, the book begins by drawing attention to trends already emerging in the preceding two decades. Drawing on data originally collected during the 1980s recession and comparing it to contemporary data drawn from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the book explores the ways in which young people have adjusted to the changes, arguing that life satisfaction and optimism are linked to labour market conditions. A timely volume, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers who are interested in fields such as Sociology, Social Policy, Management and Youth Studies.


Full Employment: A Pledge Betrayed

Full Employment: A Pledge Betrayed

Author: J. Smith

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1997-02-14

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0230372384

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John Grieve Smith traces the origins of postwar full employment policies in the experience of the interwar years and the work of Keynes and Beveridge. He reviews the successful achievement of full employment after the war and its subsequent abandonment as the Keynesian consensus gave way to the new, monetarist-inspired, orthodoxy. The book puts forward alternative proposals for expansionary policies, and for international financial reform. It is written throughout in terms accessible to both the layperson and the expert.


Education, Training and the Future of Work I

Education, Training and the Future of Work I

Author: John Ahier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 113628950X

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A central claim of this volume is that public policy in education and training can only be properly understood if it is seen in relation to prevailing economic and employment conditions. It has become increaslingly apparent that the neo-liberal economic policies pursued by Western governments during the 1980s and 1990s have led to a growing world-wide 'work crisis'. Unemployment levels, particularly in Europe, remain persistently high, and for those in employment, job insecurity and long working hours have become the norm. The response of UK governments has been to promote 'flexibility' in employment practices while proclaiming the importance of improving skill levels through education and training. This volume challenges the adequacy of such an approach, and asks whether reliance on education and training reforms without additional political intervention in economic processes is capable of reversing current trends. Issues covered in this reader include: * the impact of globalization on employment trends * neo-liberal and neo-Keynesian approaches to employment policy * political reforms in education and training institutions * the impact of flexibilization on private life and the family. The two volumes in this series are readers for the Open University course Education, Training and the Future of Work, E837, a module of the MA in Education. The companion volume is Education, Training and the Future of Work II: Developments in Vocational Education and Training. John Ahier is Lecturer in Education at the Open University. Geoff Esland is Director of the Centre for Sociology and Social Research at the Open University and Course team Chair of E837.


Work and Employment in a Changing Business Environment

Work and Employment in a Changing Business Environment

Author: Stephen Taylor

Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers

Published: 2021-06-03

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1398600210

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Work and Employment in a Changing Business Environment is the definitive textbook for the new CIPD Advanced Level 7 module. It provides students with an understanding of the major contemporary trends in the HR business environment and discussion of significant areas of HR and Learning and Development (L&D) activity that derive from or are given additional prominence as a result of environmental developments. It provides students with an understanding of ways in which major, long-term environmental developments affect employment, work and people management in organizations as well as a thorough grounding in current and short-term developments in the people management environment. These areas include globalisation, technology, the economy, labour markets, society, politics, public policy and employment regulation. This book also includes expert coverage of how change, innovation and creativity can promote improvements in organisational productivity. Most importantly, this brand new textbook covers the key elements that students on HR masters courses will need in their future careers including flexibility, agility and resilience. productivity, ethics and values, sustainability, equality, diversity and inclusion, wellbeing and working internationally. Case studies and examples demonstrate how the theory applies in practice and pause and review boxes will help students think critically about the content. Work and Employment in a Changing Business Environment is ideal reading for all postgraduate students on both CIPD and non-CIPD accredited courses. Online supporting resources include powerpoint slides for every chapter.