The shift from manufacturing- to service-based economies has often been accompanied by the expansion of low-wage and insecure employment. Many consider the effects of this shift inevitable. ...InDisintegrating Democracy at Work, Virginia Doellgast contends that high pay and good working conditions are possible even for marginal service jobs. This outcome, however, depends on strong unions and encompassing collective bargaining institutions, which are necessary to give workers a voice in the decisions that affect the design of their jobs and the distribution of productivity gains.
Doellgast's conclusions are based on a comparative study of the changes that occurred in the organization of call center jobs in the United States and Germany following the liberalization of telecommunications markets. Based on survey data and interviews with workers, managers, and union representatives, she found that German managers more often took the "high road" than those in the United States, investing in skills and giving employees more control over their work. Doellgast traces the difference to stronger institutional supports for workplace democracy in Germany. However, these democratic structures were increasingly precarious, as managers in both countries used outsourcing strategies to move jobs to workplaces with lower pay and weaker or no union representation. Doellgast's comparative findings show the importance of policy choices in closing off these escape routes, promoting broad access to good jobs in expanding service industries.
iThe field of employee engagement has experienced unprecedented growth over the last three decades. Despite remarkable progress in both practice and scholarship, there remains tremendous confusion ...about what employee engagement is, what it means, and how organizations can take proactive steps to harness the full power of an engaged workforce.
This short-form book provides readers a unique and research-based road map through the rapidly evolving research around employee engagement, including the identification of key literature and theory along with expert, timesaving connections to how theory has informed practice. The author covers the various disciplinary approaches and schools of thought, thematically bridging scholarly literature - including and identifying the historically significant and most current - to better understand how the research is evolving and what new opportunities for scholarship are emerging.
Essential reading for scholars of human resource management, leadership and management more broadly, the book is also a valuable read for reflective practitioners globally.
Shows that current elitist theories are based on an inadequate understanding of the early writings of democratic theory and that much sociological evidence has been ignored.
When people go to work, they cease to be citizens. At their desks they are transformed into employees, subordinate to the hierarchy of the workplace. The degree of their sense of voicelessness may ...vary from employer to employer, but it is real and growing, inflamed by populist propaganda that ridicules democracy as weak and ineffective amid global capitalism. At the same time, corporations continue untouched and even unremarked as a major source of the problem. Relying on 'economic bicameralism' to consider firms as political entities, this book sheds new light on the institutions of industrial relations that have marked the twentieth century, and argues that it is time to recognize that firms are a peculiar institution that must be properly organized in order to unshackle workers' motivation and creativity, and begin nurturing democracy again.
Complex Adaptive Leadership argues leadership should not be something only exercised by nominated leaders. It is a complex dynamic process involving all those engaged in a particular enterprise. The ...theoretical background to this lies in complexity science and chaos theory - spoken and written about in the context of leadership for the last 20 years, but still little understood. We all seem intuitively to know leadership 'isn't what it used to be' but we still cling to old assumptions which look anachronistic in changing and challenging times. Organisations and their contexts are increasingly paradoxical and uncertain. A broader approach to leadership is needed. Nick Obolensky has practised leadership in the public, private and voluntary sectors. He has also researched it, and taught it over many years in leading business schools. In this exciting book he brings together his knowledge of theory, his own experience, and the results of 15 years of research involving 1,500 executives in 40 countries around the world. The main conclusion from that research is that the more complex things become, the less traditional directive leadership is needed. Those operating in the real world, nonetheless, need ways of coping. The book is focused on helping practitioners struggling to interpret and react to increasingly complex events. Arranged in four parts, it provides a number of exercises, tools and models that will help the reader to understand: - why the context for leadership has changed, and why complexities in organisations have emerged - what complexity is and what lessons can be drawn from this emergent area of scientific study - how Complex Adaptive Leadership can be exercised in a very practical way at two levels: organisationally and individually, and how to get more for less - the actions that can be taken when Complex Adaptive Leadership is applied. The book will particularly appeal to practitioners wishing to add to their knowledge of leadership theory.
Contents: Preface: what's this all about?; Part I The Context: A journey of discovery; The world wide context - a flow towards polyarchy; The organisational context - evolve or die; Finita la comedia - stop playing charades; A quick breather between Parts I and II. Part II Chaos and Complexity: Order in chaos, simplicity in complexity - the deeper paradox; Getting to grips with chaos and complexity; Getting chaos and complexity to work; A quick breather between Parts II and III. Part III The Leadership Angle: What is leadership anyway?; What about the followers?; Complex adaptive leadership in action; A final breather between Parts III and IV. Part IV Looking Forward and Other Interests: Beyond this book - the choices you have...; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.
Nick Obolensky has enjoyed a successful career in a number of roles, in the military, third sector, academia and in business, including those of Associate Director of a FTSE 100 firm, MBA Professor of the Year more than once, and CEO and Chairman of entrepreneurial start-ups. He is a Chartered Management Consultant and was an Executive Strategy Consultant at Ernst and Young, where he also led the Research Associate Practice. He has been a Fellow at the London Business School and was a Founder Fellow at The Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, Professor of Leadership at Nyenrode University in the Netherlands and a Visiting Professor at INSEAD in France. His work has been published by in several languages around the world as well as under the auspices of the University of Exeter Centre for Leadership Studies and the RSA.
Workplace democracy Nightingale, Donald V
Workplace democracy,
1982, 19820601, 1982, 1982-01-01
eBook
This book begins with a historical review of how authority in the Canadian workplace has changed over the past century. It proceeds to outline a theory of organization which provides a broad ...conceptual framework for the empirical analysis which follows.
Most large firms are controlled by shareholders, who choose the board of directors and can replace the firm's management. In rare instances, however, control over the firm rests with the workforce. ...Many explanations for the rarity of workers' control have been offered, but there have been few attempts to assess these hypotheses in a systematic way. This book draws upon economic theory, statistical evidence, and case studies to frame an explanation. The fundamental idea is that labor is inalienable, while capital can be freely transferred from one person to another. This implies that worker-controlled firms typically face financing problems, encounter collective choice dilemmas, and have difficulty creating markets for control positions within the firm. Together these factors can account for much of what is known about the incidence, behavior, and design of worker-controlled firms. A policy proposal to encourage employee buyouts is developed in the concluding chapter.
In previous work, Gregory K. Dow created a broad and accessible overview of worker-controlled firms. In his new book, The Labor-Managed Firm: Theoretical Foundations, Dow provides the formal models ...that underpinned his earlier work, while developing promising new directions for economic research. Emphasizing that capital is alienable while labor is inalienable, Dow shows how this distinction, together with market imperfections, explains the rarity of labor-managed firms. This book uses modern microeconomics, exploits up-to-date empirical research, and constructs a unified theory that accounts for many facts about the behavior, performance, and design of labor-managed firms. With a large number of entirely new chapters, comprehensive updating of earlier material, a critique of the literature, and policy recommendations, here Dow presents the capstone work of his career, encompassing more than three decades of theoretical research.
This volume explores and presents challenges that "traditional" organisations experience once they take off towards self-managing organisations - what Laloux (2014) called Teal Organisations. It ...offers a new roadmap for leaders who are responsible for the implementation of self-managing teams in organisations.
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