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The purpose of this paper is to investigate China's employment stabilization policies in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and to discuss the accessibility of these policies in practice. In addition, by focussing on the problems and dilemmas encountered during the implementation of these policies, this paper proposes some future directions for reforming employment protection and social insurance to adapt to the changing employment structure and mode in China.

The design and methodology of this paper utilises open sources and documentary materials on China's employment stabilization policies, employment protection and social insurance measures.

The employment stabilization policies/measures launched during the COVID-19 pandemic were formulated under an initial policy framework designed only for employees in a definite employment relationship and do not match the current employment structure and model. As a result, the accessibility of employment stabilization policies/measures is limited because some worker groups that are the most affected are not covered by the policies.

This paper provides timely analysis on the China's employment stabilization policies and evaluates the accessibility of these policies.

This study aims to investigate whether social investment (SI) policies improve employment among single mothers.

This paper analyzes the potential effects of SI policies on vulnerable individuals and workers at the macro level by using the employment position of single mothers as a dependent variable. Time-series cross-national data from 18 OECD countries between 1998 and 2017 are analyzed. Multilevel model analysis is also used for robustness check.

I find that public spending on education and family support is positively associated with the employment rates of single mothers. In contrast, active labor market policy (ALMP) spending is negatively associated. ALMP’s negative effects stand out particularly with public spending on job training. Of all family support policies, family allowances are positively associated with single mothers’ employment, which runs counter to the conventional argument that family allowances are a disincentive for women’s or mothers’ employment. Paid leave (length and generosity) is also associated with higher employment for single mothers. There is also some tentative evidence that public spending on maternity leave benefits (spending level) may raise the odds of single mothers being employed, when individual-level factors are controlled for in multilevel analysis we implement for robustness check.

This paper does not analyze the effects of the qualitative properties of SI policies. Future research is necessary in this respect.

The effects of SI policies on employment among single mothers have not yet been examined in the literature. This paper seeks to be a first cut at measuring the effects.

The chapter elaborates a critical theoretical narrative about the political economy of European capitalism. It illustrates how precariousness has been exacerbated by the impact of the global financial crisis and the emergence of a new system of European governance. Theoretical accounts in the sociology of work and labor studies have demonstrated the complexity of the outcomes and widely discussed the role of national labor market institutions and employment policies and practices, political ideology, and cultural frameworks impinging upon precarious work as a multidimensional concept. The chapter’s core concern is to illustrate how shifts in power resources, and particularly the weakening and deinstitutionalization of organized labor relative to capital, has acted as a central social condition that has brought about precariousness during the years leading up to and following the 2007–2008 crisis. In so doing, the chapter aims to overcome the existing theoretical accounts of precariousness which have often been limited by one or another variant of “methodological nationalism,” thereby exploring the transnational apparatuses that are emerging across national economies to date, and which impinge upon the structures and experiences that workers exhibit in an age of growing marketization.

The undervaluing of care work, whether conducted informally or formally, has long been subject to debate. While much discussion, and indeed reform has centred on childcare, there is a growing need, particularly in countries with ageing populations, to examine how long-term care (LTC) work is valued. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the way in which employment policies (female labour market participation, retirement age, and precarious work) and social policies (care entitlements and benefits/leave for carers) affect both informal carers and formal care workers in a liberal welfare state with a rapidly ageing population.

Drawing the adult worker model the authors use the existing literature on ageing care and employment to examine the approach of a liberal welfare state to care work focusing on both supports for informal carers and job quality in the formal care sector.

The research suggests that employment policies advocating increased labour participation, delaying retirement and treating informal care as a form of welfare are at odds with LTC strategies which encourage informal care. Furthermore, the latter policy acts to devalue formal care roles in an economic sense and potentially discourages workers from entering the formal care sector.

To date research investigating the interplay between employment and LTC policies has focused on either informal or formal care workers. In combining both aspects, we view informal and formal care workers as complementary, interdependent agents in the care process. This underlines the need to develop social policy regarding care and employment which encompasses the needs of each group concurrently.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-induced response policies initiated by the Indian states disproportionately impact the employment of different groups in terms of gender, caste and religion. This study analyses the impact of the COVID-19-induced labor policies on employment inequality across different groups in India.

The authors identify different exogenous COVID-19-induced labor policies initiated by the Indian states, and synthesize them into direct and indirect labor policies. The authors employ a panel model to examine the impact of COVID-19-induced labor policies on employment inequality.

The authors find that the direct and indirect labor policies induce a decline in the employment rate, and create employment inequality among gendered and religious sub-groups. Females and Muslims have not significantly benefited from the COVID-19-induced labor policies. However, disadvantaged caste groups have benefited from direct and indirect labor policies.

The time period during which this research was conducted was quite brief, and the qualitative impact of labor policies on employment inequality has not been accounted for.

This study unravels the distributive impact of the COVID-19-induced direct and indirect labor policies on the well-being of vulnerable laborers.

The study provides novel empirical evidence of the beneficial role of a proactive government. This study’s findings suggest the need for specific distributive labor policies to address employment inequality among gender and religious groups in India.

The study employs new data sources and synthesizes the COVID-19-induced labor policies into direct and indirect labor policies. In addition, the study contributes to understanding the impact of COVID-19 induced direct and indirect labor policies on employment inequality across gender, caste and religious sub-groups in India.

This paper seeks to evaluate the EU's “active ageing” agenda as a governance strategy for the activation of older workers, and its impact on the regulation both of those who make, and those who are the objects of, policy. This case study is used to reflect more broadly on the implications of governance strategies for the regulation of social subjects in the European Union (EU).

The paper adopts a model of governance comprising two dimensions, namely formal policy (policy aims) and operational policy (policy means). This model is used to explain how and to what effect, discourses and institutions interact in EU governance to produce particular forms of social subject regulation; in this case, activation.

For the operational dimension, the paper explores how contradictions and tensions within and between employment, pensions and social inclusion policies are reflected in, and the products of, a re‐allocation of responsibilities between the EU, member states, social partners, and individuals. For the formal dimension, it explains how employment for older workers is constructed as having a different meaning to the employment of other workers, and how EU discourse on active ageing disguises crucial inequalities between groups of older workers, both pre‐ and post‐retirement.

The paper concludes that active ageing policy in the EU institutes a new category of social subject, apparently eliding the former distinction between employment and retirement, namely the “activated retiree”.

The paper demonstrates the efficacy of the two‐dimensional approach to the empirical analysis of governance strategies and identifies how key tensions in the production of EU social policies directly impact on the regulation of social subject categories in the EU.

The purpose of the article is to analyse the interconnections between formal policy reforms and operational policies, specifically between new governance and employment policy. The main question is what happens to public employment policies when they are contracted out to non‐public (for‐profit and not‐for‐profit) agencies?

The case is the contracting out of the public employment services in Australia, Holland, and Denmark. The data consists of in‐depth interviews with key respondents in the three countries, observations at service delivery agencies, and desk studies of existing research.

The new quasi‐market models seem to have difficulties in living up to the preconditions for a well‐functioning market, as well as political expectations. Contracted out employment systems do not seem to create higher efficiency, innovation, quality, and less bureaucracy than previous public bureaucracies. But a quasi‐market model, on the other hand, does seems to create a new type of employment policy, and new conditions for steering and governing the labour market and employment policy. This implies that choosing a quasi‐market model involves much more than a discussion about “technicalities” like (cost) efficiency and productivity. Some of the most important – but often neglected and depoliticised – policy changes seem to emerge from changes of the institutional set‐up rather than changes of specific laws and ministerial orders.

The article is innovative in trying to identify relationships between management structure and policy content. Often these changes are analysed in separate disciplines, and isolated from each other. In this article we provide an integrated and multidisciplinary approach.

The paper aims to explore the impact of economic transformation on employment relations and the effect on the role and behaviour of unions and employers' organizations in Zambia.

The paper presents a review of existing studies on economic and political developments, backed by published and unpublished primary sources, as well as structured interviews with leaders of the tripartite partners.

The transformation of policy from centrally planned to market economy has by design or default undermined the role of trade unions and the employers' associations. This has in turn resulted in weakening the employment relationship.

The research has implications for understanding how economic liberalization affects labour market institutions and processes. Many of the findings are of relevance to policy reforms elsewhere in Africa. Therefore, the findings have important implications for work on labour market governance in other African countries.

This paper has implications for the tripartite partners in the employment relationship. It presents the critical need for policy review, and particularly strategic reorientation of the organizing strategies of trade unions and employers' associations, and the need to institute meaningful and effective consultative mechanism on social and economic policy making.

A substantial part of the information provided in this paper is unpublished, and brings to the fore unanticipated consequences of policy reforms on employment relations. In turn the paper identifies action areas in seeking to reverse the effects of unfavourable economic reform measures on employment relations.