The Meaning of Work in the New Economy

The Meaning of Work in the New Economy PDF Author: C. Baldry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230210643
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
This book analyzes the multiple levels of meaning which people attach to work today, and the role of work in people's lives. By looking at call centres and software development, the book evaluates some of the claims made for the knowledge economy and argues that defining the work-life boundary is a constant problem for many workers

Down and Out in the New Economy

Down and Out in the New Economy PDF Author: Ilana Gershon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226833224
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Finding a job used to be simple. You’d show up at an office and ask for an application. A friend would mention a job in their department. Or you’d see an ad in a newspaper and send in your cover letter. Maybe you’d call the company a week later to check in, but the basic approach was easy. And once you got a job, you would stay—often for decades. Now . . . well, it’s complicated. If you want to have a shot at a good job, you need to have a robust profile on LinkdIn. And an enticing personal brand. Or something like that—contemporary how-to books tend to offer contradictory advice. But they agree on one thing: in today’s economy, you can’t just be an employee looking to get hired—you have to market yourself as a business, one that can help another business achieve its goals. That’s a radical transformation in how we think about work and employment, says Ilana Gershon. And with Down and Out in the New Economy, she digs deep into that change and what it means, not just for job seekers, but for businesses and our very culture. In telling her story, Gershon covers all parts of the employment spectrum: she interviews hiring managers about how they assess candidates; attends personal branding seminars; talks with managers at companies around the United States to suss out regional differences—like how Silicon Valley firms look askance at the lengthier employment tenures of applicants from the Midwest. And she finds that not everything has changed: though the technological trappings may be glitzier, in a lot of cases, who you know remains more important than what you know. Throughout, Gershon keeps her eye on bigger questions, interested not in what lessons job-seekers can take—though there are plenty of those here—but on what it means to consider yourself a business. What does that blurring of personal and vocational lives do to our sense of our selves, the economy, our communities? Though it’s often dressed up in the language of liberation, is this approach actually disempowering workers at the expense of corporations? Rich in the voices of people deeply involved with all parts of the employment process, Down and Out in the New Economy offers a snapshot of the quest for work today—and a pointed analysis of its larger meaning.

Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy

Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy PDF Author: José-Luis Álvarez-Galván
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443838179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
This book examines the impact of outsourcing on workers and their employment conditions in the new economy. To do so, the call centre industry in Mexico City is analysed through a large number of in-depth interviews with workers and managers, available statistics and visits to leading firms in the sector. The case of call centres is paradigmatic as it is often seen as a flag-ship industry of the new economy, rapidly growing and subject to high pressures for costs reduction. The Mexican experience is crucially relevant to understand employment conditions in a weak institutional setting where labour protection is low and business competition intense. Overall, outsourcing has gained popularity as a mechanism to deal with the uncertainty of increasingly challenging business environments. Nonetheless, the practice of outsourcing also raises important concerns. This book identifies those managerial practices which have a substantial impact on workers and their employment conditions such as: job designs; customer segmentation; non-standard contracts; intensified supervision; union avoidance; limited career opportunities; and strict social divisions in the workplace. These findings also suggest that a number of practices that were common in the ‘old’ economy are still dominant in the organisation of work in the twenty-first century. The book is a useful reference for scholars and students concerned with employment and labour studies, economic development, and globalisation.

The New Geography of Jobs

The New Geography of Jobs PDF Author: Enrico Moretti
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547750110
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
Makes correlations between success and geography, explaining how such rising centers of innovation as San Francisco and Austin are likely to offer influential opportunities and shape the national and global economies in positive or detrimental ways.

Gender and Innovation in the New Economy

Gender and Innovation in the New Economy PDF Author: Seppo Poutanen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137527021
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description
This book provides a thorough and novel examination of the gendered nature of innovations in the new economy. It tracks the contemporary shift from heavy industry to game industry and how this has altered relationships between gender, identity, corporate culture, creative work, and the future of business. Through empirical research and theoretical analysis, the authors present their own carefully contextualized cases and conceptual frameworks relating themes of innovation and gender to recent theories concerning globalization and transnationalism. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary text provides readers with insightful entries on what innovations are and the ways innovation processes become gendered. It explores the business landscape based on creative work and offers a wealth of information for scholars of entrepreneurship, management, sociology, cultural studies, and communication.

Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy

Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy PDF Author: Stephen Sweet
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412990866
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
In the highly-anticipated second edition of Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, authors Sweet and Meiskins once again provide a rich analysis of the American workplace in the larger context of an integrated global economy. Through engaging vignettes and rich data, this text frames the development of jobs and employment opportunities in an international comparative perspective, revealing the historical transformations of work and identifying the profound effects that these changes have had on lives, jobs, and life chances. This text brings into focus the many complexities of class, race, and gender inequalities in the modern-day workplace, as well as details the consequences of job insecurity and work schedules mismatched to family needs. Throughout, strategic recommendations are offered that could help make the new economy work for us all.

Changing Contours of Work

Changing Contours of Work PDF Author: Stephen Sweet
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483358267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
In the Third Edition of Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins once again provide a rich analysis of the American workplace in the larger context of an integrated global economy. Through engaging vignettes and rich data, this text frames the development of jobs and employment opportunities in an international comparative perspective, revealing the historical transformations of work (the “old economy” and the “new economy”) and identifying the profound effects that these changes have had on lives, jobs, and life chances. The text examines the many complexities of race, class, and gender inequalities in the modern-day workplace, and details the consequences of job insecurity and work schedules mismatched to family needs. Throughout the text, strategic recommendations are offered to improve the new economy.

The Purpose Economy

The Purpose Economy PDF Author: Aaron Hurst
Publisher: Elevate Publishing
ISBN: 193749845X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A series of shifts are happening in our economy: Millennials are trading in conventional career paths to launch tech start-ups, start small businesses that are rooted in local communities, or freelance their expertise. We are sharing everything, from bikes and cars, to extra rooms in our homes. We now create, buy and sell handcrafted products in our local communities with ease. Globally recognized entrepreneur, founder of Taproot Foundation and CEO of Imperative, Aaron Hurst, argues in his latest book that while these developments seem unrelated at first, taken together they reveal a powerful pattern that points to purpose as the new driver of the American economy. Like the Information Economy, which has driven innovation and economic growth until now, Hurst argues that our new economic era is driven by connecting people to their purpose. It's an economy where value lies in establishing purpose for employees and customers through serving needs greater than their own, enabling personal growth and building community. Based on interviews with thousands of entrepreneurs, Hurst shows this new era is already fueling demand for a whole host of products and services and transforming how millennials view their careers. A new breed of startups like Etsy, Zaarly, Tough Mudder, Kickstarter, and Airbnb are finding new ways to create value by connecting us with our local communities. At the same time, companies like Tesla and Whole Foods are making the march from just appealing to affluent buyers to becoming mainstream brands. Hurst calls these companies, along with the pioneering entrepreneurs who founded them, the Purpose Economy's taste-makers. This book is at once a personal memoir of Aaron Hurst’s own awakening as a purpose driven entrepreneur, when he left a well-paying tech job in 2001 to launch Taproot, creating a pathway for millions of professionals and Fortune 500 companies to volunteer for nonprofits. It's also a blueprint for a new economic era that is transforming companies, markets and our careers to better serve people and the world.

New Rules for a New Economy

New Rules for a New Economy PDF Author: Stephen A. Herzenberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501725599
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
Three quarters of the American workforce is now employed in services, a substantial portion in low-paying, dead-end jobs. Can the service economy do as well by the American worker as the old manufacturing economy? Can the widely shared prosperity that accompanied steady increases in productivity and performance in manufacturing be replicated in the services? They can and they will, the authors of this timely book contend, but only if outmoded policies and practices are brought into line with the new economy. New Rules for a New Economy explains why this must be accomplished and how we can start.The authors call for new, decentralized institutions suited to a dynamic economy in which change is constant and rapid. In particular, they see a need for job ladders and worker associations that cut across firm boundaries. These institutions would foster individual and collective learning, mark out career paths, and facilitate coordination among both individuals and organizations in a networked economy. The authors propose new rules to reshape labor market institutions and policy, improving economic performance and opportunities for workers. Unusual in providing a comprehensive theoretical perspective that is grounded in detailed case research, this book points the way to a better future, not just for elite knowledge workers but for everyone.

Precarious Work, Women, and the New Economy

Precarious Work, Women, and the New Economy PDF Author: Judy Fudge
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847312152
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Globalisation, the shift from manufacturing to services as a source of employment, and the spread of information-based systems and technologies have given birth to a new economy, which emphasises flexibility in the labour market and in employment relations. These changes have led to the erosion of the standard (industrial) employment relationship and an increase in precarious work - work which is poorly paid and insecure. Women perform a disproportionate amount of precarious work. This collection of original essays by leading scholars on labour law and women's work explores the relationship between precarious work and gender, and evaluates the extent to which the growth and spread of precarious work challenges traditional norms of labour law and conventional forms of legal regulation.The book provides a comparative perspective by furnishing case studies from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Quebec, Sweden, the UK, and the US, as well as the international and supranational context through essays that focus on the IMF, the ILO, and the EU. Common themes and concepts thread throughout the essays, which grapple with the legal and public policy challenges posed by women's precarious work.