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Post-fordist production systems emphasize the need to tap workers’ knowledge to enhance productivity and quality. Often overlooked, however, is the potential conflict in expecting workers to contribute to processes that may make their jobs harder. This article compares employee participation schemes at two General Motors assembly plants to illustrate the potency of this dilemma and the range of ways managers focus or limit employee participation to achieve the company's goals. In Silao, Mexico, General Motors carefully constructed a labor relations environment that cultivated broad employee participation. In Janesville, Wisconsin, local managers placed constraints on employee participation to ensure continuous production.

Payal Banerjee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Syracuse University and is completing a dissertation on Indian immigrant IT workers in the U.S., which foregrounds the intersecting contexts of gender and race/ethnicity, U.S. immigration and visa policies, global economic restructuring, and transnational mobility of labor.

The post‐World War ? period has been one of intense development activity throughout the world. Lesser developed countries have showed significant economic growth throughout this time‐span. Among the many consequences which are attributed to development, changes in gender relations are often mentioned. However, prior research has been unable to establish conclusively how economic development is related to gender inequality, particularly as this is referenced by women's participation in important economic activities. For example, some researchers have found that as development increases, women's participation in and return from the economy declines, others that it increases, and several have suggested it first declines then increases. Similar uncertainties exist about how an increasing emphasis on producing goods for export, and the often‐accompanying reliance on foreign investment, affects women's work. Recent research also suggests that the consequences of development are more diverse than previously thought. Recognition of the diversity requires greater specification of the links between developmental diversity and women's labor force participation.

Throughout the ages, caring for an individual with a significant physical disability and/or health impairment has been extremely difficult or perhaps even impossible. Conditions for survival were often hard, requiring all able-bodied family members working from dawn until dark to scratch out even a minimal standard of living. Consequently, little time and resources were available for the care of a loved one with a disability. Safford and Safford's sobering volume (1996) emphasizes that children have always been vulnerable to neglect and children with disabilities were particularly subject to abuse. To illustrate this, children with disabilities were particularly subject to infanticide, abandonment, slavery, sterilization or placed in orphanages, where maiming sometimes occurred to increase the individuals' potential for street corner begging.

As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

Pygmalion and charisma are mutually compatible leadership constructs that beg integration. They share some basic assumptions about human nature, about how leaders lead, and about how they could lead more effectively. Nevertheless, for the most part these constructs are discussed in disparate academic literatures. The present treatise integrates these somewhat divergent yet partially overlapping approaches to leadership and management. The differences between Pygmalion and charismatic leadership, and the commonalities that they share, are explicated. The aim is to understand better how leaders affect followers and how they can exert their influence with greater effectiveness. Some ideas for further research and for more effective management practice based on integration of Pygmalion and charisma constructs are presented. The result is a description of “charismatic Pygmalion,” an integrated management style that embodies both leadership constructs.

Rural Oaxaca is plagued with economic problems. There are few jobs available and ideas concerning gender often limit the work that women are able to pursue. In this chapter, we explore how rural Oaxacan women create economic opportunities. We focus on work at home that is both voluntary and remunerative, craft production, and entrepreneurial activities. We show that rural Oaxacan women are able to create unique economic niches that build upon their domestic roles and enhance the economic status of their households.