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The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of life story for the teaching of sociology to Social Work students. It contains the results of a teaching experiment in higher education which aims to foster sociological imagination among students.

The study employs a mixed methodology. The quantitative data came from a survey handed out to the students with closed and open questions. The qualitative information came from the contents of class exercises in which the students had to connect the theoretical contents of the course of sociology with the biographical narratives of different research subjects.

The results reflect student satisfaction or appreciation regarding the use of the life story as a teaching resource, as well as a successful acquisition of sociological skills and knowledge, such as critical thinking, micro-macro connection and the interplay between structure and agency.

Life story and narrative methods should be employed in post-secondary education as teaching instruments.

The study contributes to expand the reflection on narrative techniques as a pedagogical tool. The paper provides several examples of class exercises with biographical narratives that have demonstrated to be successful for teaching sociology in higher education.

This paper aims to describe and explain women's labor participation in the public sector, particularly at the local level. The paper analyses the representation of women employees in the public sector through a case study of a city council in a mid-sized Spanish city. The authors delve into the extent of gender labor discrimination in public administration, exploring a diversity of situations, experiences, and perceptions of women workers in female, neutral, and male-dominated areas in the local administration.

The authors have applied a combined methodology of quantitative analysis based on an exhaustive analysis of the list of job posts, and qualitative analysis from the narratives of women workers in biographical interviews, in women-dominated, neutral and male-dominated areas.

The authors conclude by providing a clear description of women's representation in local administration. Despite the institutional efforts in applying gender equality norms and public policies in administration, employment and labor market, this article shows the persistent inequality in employment within the administration. The paper demonstrates that public administrations can be seen as gender regimes that tend to reproduce inequality by formal and informal dynamics. This inequality gender reproduction in a supposedly gender-neutral administration reflects discrimination in a labor market. The paper details phenomena relating to horizontal occupational segregation, glass ceilings, sticky floors, and the undervaluing of women's work, among other phenomena.

The administration should consider two essential factors that endanger gender equality: (1) the demonstrated regression of gender mainstreaming and the effects on women's employment as a consequence of the crisis, and (2) neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties (or neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties' support, as is the case with the current Andalusian regional government), whose agenda includes the fight against what neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties call “gender ideology”.

The gap between the effectiveness of gender legislation and actual working practices within the administration has been highlighted. This fact should be a wake-up call for the administrations to strictly comply with gender legislation, given that local administrations are the closest to the citizens. Future research should focus on changes to detect any regression and to prevent losing the improvements already achieved, which can still be very much strengthened.

This article helps to fill the gap in the literature on gender discrimination in the labor market, which often omits the public sector, especially in local administration, which is the closest administrative structure to citizenship respecting public policies. The article contributes to highlighting the need for an egalitarian labor market in order to achieve optimal performance, commitment and efficiency in egalitarian labor relations in local administration.

Over the last four years in Spain, a strong autonomist movement (15M), based on radical democracy and mistrust of any kind of instituted politics, seems to be turning toward statist and institutionalized politics. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions: Can we speak of a community fetishism, as opposed to State fetishism? Do autonomist social movements have a spatial project as opposed to a State spatial project? Why do horizontal and self-management-oriented social movements turn to the conquest of the State in the current framework?

The empirical evidence for this study stems from a qualitative methodological approach. The authors used two different types of sources. First, direct observations from the authors’ own engagement in social movements in Spain from 2011 to the present are used. Second, this work is part of a systematic research on spatial dynamics and the evolution of collective action in Spain. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with activists involved in social movements from 2012 to 2015, in which time informal interviews were conducted, and documents and observational notes were also collected.

Social movements have tended to develop alternatives to state spatial projects, partially as a result of an institutional setting that has been progressively closed to political alternatives to the neoliberal state. This last point leads to the posing of politics as completely independent of the political arena of the State (community fetish). From the first square occupations to the subsequent organization in local meetings, the 15M movement was the last expression of this tendency in Spain, while the turn on State political institutions responds to the obvious limitations of community fetishism in the context of the social and political tensions of the Spanish crisis.

This analysis contributes to the current debates on social movements in two ways. First, the authors investigate a usually neglected agent in the production of spatial political projects and strategies such as social movements. Second, the specific case of the 15M movement in Spain strongly shows the contradictions and limitations of the movements, which supposedly do not aspire to replace the State’s sovereign power through the idea of community fetishism.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the subject-specific literature on service and flexibility and derive a conceptualization of the linkages between provider flexibility and customers’ value creation.

The authors analyze existing perspectives on service and flexibility and propose linkages between provider flexibility and customer value creation.

Drawing on the service logic literature, and utilizing real-world examples, this paper advances propositions and a conceptual model of how flexibility can contribute to value creation.

This paper establishes the basis for a practical and applicable flexibility perspective on value creation. It is particularly important for service-oriented providers and other firms operating in dynamic contexts.

The propositions and conceptual model offer suggestions on the manner in which provider flexibility contributes to customer value creation. Contextual influences that moderate provider flexibility in value creation are also included.

This paper contributes a novel perspective on service, which may serve as the starting point for the development of a more formal flexibility perspective on value creation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the use of unit-level functional flexibility on one particular patient outcome, unit-acquired pressure ulcers, and the potential moderating influences of coworker support and workload.

This study uses an archival approach, examining data from 68 hospital units.

The results indicate that a unit's higher use of functionally flexible nurses in one-quarter was associated with a higher number of pressure ulcers among the unit's patients the following quarter. This detrimental effect was significantly diminished when coworker support within the unit was high. Unit-level nurse workload did not have any moderating influence.

One of the scholarly contributions of this study is that it links greater use of functionally flexible employees to a negative patient safety outcome at the unit level. As most of the variables used in the study were archival measures, future research could examine the replicability of these findings using other indicators and measures.

Beyond healthcare settings, the results prompt managers in industries where there has been growing use of functional flexibility (e.g., banking) to think about the associated unintended negative consequences. That said, the results also point to coworker instrumental support as a means by which to mitigate negative outcomes.

Although functional flexibility has been shown to positively correlate with a number of organizational performance indicators, this is one of the very few studies that has examined its negative consequences, particularly on patient safety.

Academic and practitioner attention to the constructs of authentic leadership and work engagement and their implications for organizations has grown dramatically over the past decade. Consideration of the implications of these constructs for high-performance human resource practices (HPHRP) is limited, however. In this monograph, we present a conceptual model that integrates authentic leadership/followership theory with theory and research on HPHRP. Then, we apply this model to systematically consider the implications of skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-enhancing HR practices in combination with authentic leadership for authentic followership, follower work engagement, and follower performance. We contend that authentic leadership, through various influences processes, promotes HPHRP, and vice versa, to help foster enhanced work engagement. By cultivating greater work engagement, individuals are motivated to bring their best, most authentic selves to the workplace and are more likely to achieve higher levels of both well-being and performance.

Following “AMO” framework and resource-based theory (RBT), the current study empirically examines the relationships between high-involvement human resource management (HI HRM) practices, employee functional flexibility (FF) and innovative work behavior (IWB). Furthermore, the mediating effect of FF has also been tested.

Descriptive statistics, correlation, hierarchical regression analysis, baron and Kenny, PROCESS Macro and Sobel Test approach were used on a sample of 894 employees of manufacturing concerns.

Findings revealed a direct effect of HI HRM practices on FF and IWB. In addition, the results confirm that FF positively mediates between HI HRM practices and IWB. Furthermore, three dimensions of HI HRM practices, i.e. ability-enhancing (AE), motivation-enhancing (ME) and opportunity-enhancing (OE) HRM practices also predicted FF and IWB.

This study not only offers the empirical evidence to validate the findings of past researchers, but also provide insight how HI HRM practices flourish the mechanism of FF in manufacturing concerns. Furthermore, this study highlighted some interesting facts that should be meaningful options for HR managers to enhance the level of employees' FF and IWB.

Although the empirical evidence is well established that HI HRM practices have a substantial contribution for organizational performance, however, there is lack of studies that empirically examine the associations among HI HRM practices, employee's competencies and behaviors, as well as the mechanism through which HI HRM practices affect work related innovative behavior. Finally, in distinguishing from the past studies, this study explores HI HRM practices as an important predictor of FF in addressing the IWB.

This study proposed a model based on knowledge management infrastructure capabilities (KMICs) to explore that how functional flexibility (FF) and knowledge sharing (KS) plays a mediating role between KMIC and innovative work behavior (IWB) among production-line workers.

Data were collected from 894 workers through self-administered questionnaires from manufacturing businesses. The outcomes of the study revealed that KMIC has a significant and positive relationship with IWB. Second, FF and KS fully mediate between KMIC and IWB. Finally, the moderating role of KS between KMIC and FF was also supported by this study.

This study offers the empirical evidence on how to flourish the mechanism of FF and KS in manufacturing concerns. Additionally, some facts are also highlighted by this study that should be eloquent options for HR managers to understand the nexus of KMIC, KS and FF for enhancing the IWB among production-line workers. Moreover, this study contributed to noteworthy inferences for management by focusing on KMIC as a fundamental organizational level factor for IWB via KS and FF.

This is the first study in the which emphasis on KMIC for explaining IWB through employee FF and KS in settings such as manufacturing concern where the implementation of new working methods is necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to further explore the relationship between several dimensions of human resource (HR) flexibility and firm performance by introducing two moderator effects: inter-organizational cooperation and environmental changes. There is need for such studies because the relationship between HR flexibility and firm performance remains ambiguous and inconclusive. Whereas some theoretical perspectives and empirical evidences suggest the need to develop and support full-time and permanent employees, others argue that flexible labour relations are beneficial to firm performance. One of the reasons that could explain the lack of conclusive evidences is the scarce use of moderator effects.

Research hypotheses are tested by structural equation analysis with data from a sample of 156 Spanish companies from different sectors.

The results confirm the positive influence of internal HR flexibility on firm performance whereas the influence of external flexibility depends of each dimension in relation to the level of knowledge involved. However, the main finding is that environmental changes and cooperation moderate positively the relationship between functional flexibility and financial performance, as well as between external high skilled expertise and performance (at total level and its subcategories) which focus the importance of flexibility in their contribution to accessing and deploying knowledge into the firm.

Main limitations are the small sample size, the use of cross-sectional data and a structured questionnaire. Longitudinal studies and larger samples should test the causal relationships suggested by the results of the paper. The assessment of flexibility at the enterprise level could also be extended in future studies at the network level since some firms may obtain functional and numerical flexibility through its relationships with other companies in networks. The study of the relationships between different combinations of flexible work and firm performance, considering different groups of employees, could follow from the recommendations of moderator effects found in this research.

Executives need to consider how the different units in the organizational structure interface with the contextual environmental, and they also need to understand the performance implications of different HR flexibility practices because their implications may change according to the exogenous business environment. The authors have found that the contribution of high skilled expertise from consulting/contracting firms is going to be more important than the contribution of short-term hires and temporary agency workers. Experts from outside not only bring knowledge of industry best practices into the firm that supports the innovative output, but they can also contribute to improve financial and relational performance. The results also suggest that external high skilled expertise may be more beneficial to the firm in highly changing environments than in more stable environments.

Two are the main contributions of the paper: first, it analyses the influence of a comprehensive group of HR flexible practices on three different dimensions of firm performance which helps to understand in greater detail the causal mechanisms that link HR flexibility and firm performance in comparison to other studies that are more focused on singular flexible practices and measures of firm performance; and second, the paper analyses the moderator effect of both environmental dynamism and inter-organizational cooperation, which advances the theoretical understanding of flexibility and firm performance by studying different scenarios of HR flexibilities with these two moderators. The results of the paper could help managers to take advantage of different combinations of flexibility dimensions according to contingent situations and in order to improve firm performance.