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.
Teachers Make Great TrainersSchoolteachers are leaving their profession at a higher rate than ever before-and for myriad reasons. Passion for teaching is generally not one of them. If you are a ...schoolteacher thinking about making a career change, knowing that your passion and purpose for education will transfer with you to your new career may be the assurance you need to make the shift. Knowing that you can be effective and create a spark for learning as well as still have the flexibility, compensation, and development you crave in a career could be the motivation to step into a new role. Teachers to Trainers: Apply Your Passion and Skills to a New Career introduces you to career opportunities in the growing industry of talent development, where all those aspirations are possible.This first-ever volume offers you a view of a different education system: the world of talent development. In each chapter, former teachers recount the stories of how they made the career switch, describe their current roles, and share resources and tips for success. You will discover why these former teachers decided to seek a change and gain valuable insights into how they transitioned into talent development roles, including what they wished they had known when making the switch and the obstacles they overcame. You will also learn about the rewards they achieved in their transitions and, most importantly, see that their passion for teaching remains. The book includes a full range of resources to guide you-skills assessments, worksheets, descriptions of certifications and certificate programs, and print and online reading recommendations. You'll also find tips about: transferable skills job market research resume creation what you need to go forward.
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.
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.
Digital Workplace – the Workplace of the Future? Digitalization is nowadays present in the labor relations and labor activities and brought into the attention of labor regulation new, atypical forms ...of labor relations and activities. Although these processes are widely acknowledged and studied by scholars, labor law in general and Romanian labor law, in particular, is dealing with many issues of great significance that currently are not properly solved. Will the workplace of the future be a digital workplace? And if so, is the Romanian labor regulation prepared for that?
Extant literature has generated limited understanding of whether and how sustainable human resource management (HRM) will lead to better and more sustainable outcomes, such as enhanced employee ...well‐being and improved employee performance. Moving toward common good values and drawing on the job demands‐resources model, this study theorizes and tests the relationships among sustainable HRM practices, employee resilience, work engagement, and employee performance. The empirical results of a multilevel and multisource study in the Chinese context provide supporting evidence for our theoretical model. The findings demonstrate that sustainable HRM practices positively affect employee resilience, and lead to a high level of work engagement among employees. Employee resilience also has an indirect effect on employee performance through work engagement. This study, with its theoretical and practical implications, reveals a serial mediation mechanism through which sustainable HRM practices contribute to both employee well‐being and employee performance.
The authors highlight the need for and develop a framework for engagement by reviewing the relevant literature and analyzing popularpress articles. They discuss the definitions of the focal ...constructs—customer engagement (CE) and employee engagement (EE)—in the engagement framework, capture these constructs' multidimensionality, and develop and refine items for measuring CE and EE. They validate the proposed framework with data from 120 companies over two time periods, and they develop strategies to help firms raise their levels of CE and EE to improve performance. They also observe that the influence of EE on CE is moderated by employee empowerment, type of firm (business-to-business B2B vs. business-to-consumer B2C), and nature of industry (manufacturing vs. service); in particular, this effect is stronger for B2B (vs. B2C) firms and service (vs. manufacturing) firms. The authors find that although both CE and EE positively influence firm performance, the effect of CE on firm performance is stronger. Furthermore, the effect of CE and EE on performance is enhanced for B2B (vs. B2C) and for service (vs. manufacturing) firms.
This study aims to examine how service employees' perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect their creativity at work and its mediated link through compassion at work and their ...intrinsic motivation. Working with a sample of 250 hotel employees in South Korea, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses. The results of this research suggest that employees' perceptions of CSR are positively related to employee creativity. Second, compassion at work mediated the positive relationship between employees' perceptions of CSR and creativity. Third, employees' intrinsic motivation also mediated the positive relationship between employees' perceptions of CSR and employee creativity. Finally, the relationship between employees' perceptions of CSR and employee creativity is sequentially and fully mediated by compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results and limitations of the study are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.
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.
PDF
