What is the link between working life and the nature of production on the one hand, and the changing organization of the firms and institutions in which work and production take place? In this book leading socio-economic theorists analyse how these have changed over the last two decades. They look at changing employment practices and systems of work, and link these to political, social, and institutional reforms; the degree of continuity and change in working life, the attitudianal and behavioural consequences of recent changes in the world of work, and the implications of these changes for worker health and well-being.
The contributions incorporate macro- and micro-level analyses and draw on a range of different and disciplinary approaches, including regulation, institutional, and labour process theory. Contributors include:
* Robert Boyer,
* J. Rogers Hollingsworth,
* Mick Marchington,
* Jill Rubery,
* Ray Hudson,
* Andrew Sayer,
* Russell Lansbury,
* Erik Olin Wright,
* Jamie Peck.
Institutions, Production, and Working Life brings together a diverse range of studies, which will be key reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of industrial sociology, the sociology of work, political economy, social theory, industrial relations, and critical HRM.
1. Introduction: Institutions, Regulation, and Practice: Traditions and Modes of Understanding ; PART I: RETHINKING INSTITUTIONS, SOCIETY, AND FIRM-LEVEL PRACTICES ; 2. How Do Institutions Cohere and Change? The Institutional Complementarity, Hypothesis and Its Extension ; 3. Advancing Our Understanding of Capitalism with Niels Bohr's Thinking About Complementarity ; 4. Globalization and Working Life: A Comparative Analysis of the Automobile and Banking Sectors in Australia and Korea ; 5. The Production of Institutional Complementarity? The Case of North East England ; 6. Financial Change and European Employment Relations ; PART 2: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN WORKING LIFE ; 7. The Blurring of Organizational Boundaries and the Fragmentation of Work ; 8. The Limits of Numerical Flexibility: Continuity and Change ; 9. The Remaking of Work: Empowerment or Degradation? ; 10. Organizational Life: The Good, the Bad, and the Instrumental ; 11. Varieties of Capitalism and Varieties of Firm ; 12. 'Bear With Me...': The Problems of Health and Well-being in Call Center Work ; 13. The Reshaping of Workplace Risks ; PART 3: CHANGING LABOR MARKETS AND THE NEW OUTSIDERS ; 14. The Patterns of Job Expansions in the United States: A Comparison of the 1960s and the 1990s ; 15. Neoliberalization at Work: The Long Transition from Welfare to Workfare ; 16. Change and Continuity in Working Life
