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1 – 10 of over 2000
Article
Publication date: 25 September 2019

Nicholas John Clarke, Marieke Cornelie Kuipers and Job Roos

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualisation of the Smart Sustainable City (SSC) with new concepts of resilience thinking in relation to urgent societal…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualisation of the Smart Sustainable City (SSC) with new concepts of resilience thinking in relation to urgent societal challenges facing the built environment. The paper aims to identify novel methodologies for smart reuse of heritage sites with a pluralist past as integral to inclusive urban development.

Design/methodology/approach

SSC concepts in the global literature are studied to define a new reference framework for integrated urban planning strategies in which cultural resilience and co-creation matter. This framework, augmented by UNESCO’s holistic recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), was tested in two investigative projects: the historic centre of South Africa’s capital Tshwane and the proximate former Westfort leprosy colony.

Findings

The research confirms that SSC concepts need enlargement to become more inclusive in acknowledging “cultural diversity” of communities and engaging “chrono-diversity” of extant fabric. A paradigm shift in the discourse on integrated urban (re)development and adaptive reuse of built heritage is identified, influenced by resilience and sustainability thinking. Both projects show that different architectural intervention strategies are required to modulate built fabric and its emergent qualities and to unlock embedded cultural energy.

Originality/value

Together with a critical review of SSC concepts and the HUL in relation to urban (re)development, this paper provides innovative methodologies on creative adaptation of urban heritage, reconciling “hard” and “soft” issues, tested in the highly resilient systems of Tshwane.

Details

Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, vol. 9 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6099

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 May 2009

Heather A. Haveman, Joseph P. Broschak and Lisa E. Cohen

Purpose – This paper investigates the effects of founding, growth, decline, and merger on gender differences in managerial career mobility. These common events create and destroy…

Abstract

Purpose – This paper investigates the effects of founding, growth, decline, and merger on gender differences in managerial career mobility. These common events create and destroy many jobs, and so have big impacts on managers’ careers. We build on previous research to predict gender differences in job mobility after such events, and show that these gender differences are moderated by the positions managers occupy: level, firm size, and sex composition.

Methodology – We test our predictions using archival data on all 3,883 managerial employees in all 333 firms in the California savings and loan industry between 1975 and 1988. We conduct logistic-regression and event-history analyses.

Findings – Female managers are less likely than male managers to be hired when the set of jobs expands because of founding and growth, and more likely to exit when the set of jobs contracts because of decline and merger. These gender differences exist because relative to men, women occupy lower-level jobs, work in smaller firms, and work in firms with more women at all managerial ranks. The effects of all but one event (the growth of one's own employer) are moderated by managers’ positions.

Value of the paper – Our paper is the first to offer a large-scale test of gender differences in career trajectories in the wake of common organizational events. By showing that these market-shaping events affect male and female managers’ careers differently, and that these effects depend on the positions of male and female managers, we demonstrate economic sociology's potential for studying inequality.

Details

Economic Sociology of Work
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-368-2

Book part
Publication date: 7 September 2012

Monika J.U. Myers

Purpose – This chapter investigates fathers who have both biological and social children from different relationships in order to examine how they prioritize between their…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter investigates fathers who have both biological and social children from different relationships in order to examine how they prioritize between their children, both in theory and in practice.

Methodology – Interviews were conducted with 57 low-income fathers in Oakland experiencing multiple-partner fertility.

Findings – These fathers used nine criteria to prioritize children: timing of life course interruptions, distance, formal child support, desirability of the pregnancy, restraining orders, other resources available to the child, age of the child, gender of the child, and the child's reaching-out behavior.

Research implications – These fathers distribute finite resources of time and money using priority-ordered queuing. This method allowed them to maximize their impact by focusing on a small number of children, rather than having their scarce resources become so diffuse that they became virtually meaningless.

Practical implications – These fathers utilized priority-ordered queuing, in contrast to the equal-distribution queuing method preferred by child support enforcement agencies. The difference in queuing model preference may explain fathers’ noncompliance with child support orders.

Value – In contrast with previous research findings, this chapter finds that these fathers were more likely to be simultaneously “good fathers” and “bad fathers” to different children at the same time, rather than one or the other (Furstenberg, 1988). This chapter also demonstrates a novel use of queuing theory for family research.

Details

Economic Stress and the Family
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-978-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 2004

Terceira A. Berdahl and Helen A. Moore

Purpose: to explore the experiences of employees in a local bank merger in the United States and examine the concept of job exit queues. We introduce the concept of a job exit…

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Abstract

Purpose: to explore the experiences of employees in a local bank merger in the United States and examine the concept of job exit queues. We introduce the concept of a job exit queue, which describes how workers position themselves or are positioned by employers to leave jobs and enter new jobs following the announcement of a corporate merger. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative interviews with mid‐ level managers, technical specialists and low status workers during the sale and merger process were conducted and coded thematically. We explore: (1) how workers and managers describe the job search as an “opportunity” or as a recurring cycle of low‐wage, high‐turnover work and (2) how severance packages structure the job exit queue to meet corporate needs. Findings: The role of severance pay is pivotal in understanding women’s and men’s job relations to job exit queues. We conclude that employers create job exit queues, placing low status workers and mid‐level women managers with less formal education at a disadvantage in reemployment. Value: This paper contributes a new concept “job exit queue” to the research and theory on work place diversity, gender inequality, and queuing theories.

Details

Equal Opportunities International, vol. 23 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0261-0159

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 November 2018

Sarah B. Donley

Due to their pervasiveness in American society, cultural gender beliefs often organize workplaces and justify what jobs are suitable for men and for women (Ridgeway, 2009, 2011)…

Abstract

Due to their pervasiveness in American society, cultural gender beliefs often organize workplaces and justify what jobs are suitable for men and for women (Ridgeway, 2009, 2011). When an occupation experiences feminization, jobs and occupations once considered “men’s work” must be “retyped” to justify and accommodate the movement of women into the occupation (Lincoln, 2010; Reskin & Roos, 1990). Using the case of funeral directing, this chapter explores the “retyping” of funeral directing, a formerly male-dominated, currently feminizing occupation by examining shifting gender narratives about funeral work in trade journals published between 1995 and 2013. Findings indicate multiple gender narratives involved in explaining the movement of women into funeral directing and the implications for gender inequality in feminizing occupations. Some narratives (old boy and gender essential) explain women’s entry and justify sex segregation by drawing on stereotypical gender differences in physical strength and emotional labor between men and women. While other narratives (gender blind and gender progressive) reject and challenge essentialism by impugning the notion that gender stereotypes are a reliable indicator of skill.

Details

Gender and the Media: Women’s Places
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78754-329-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 18 November 2015

Katarzyna Haverkamp and Petrik Runst

This chapter examines the dynamics of occupational segregation by gender in the German vocational training system (VET) and explores the validity of two hypotheses regarding the…

Abstract

This chapter examines the dynamics of occupational segregation by gender in the German vocational training system (VET) and explores the validity of two hypotheses regarding the causes of changes in the sex composition of occupations. According to the first, the ‘job growth hypothesis’, feminisation of occupations occurs when women increasingly enter growing employment sectors that are experiencing a shortage of (preferred) male candidates. According to the second, the ‘exit hypothesis’, the movement of men out of selected occupations is the main mechanism driving the changes. Using official data from enrolment into the VET of skilled crafts for the period of 1997–2013, we find a very high level of occupational segregation, a very modest trend toward desegregation and a substantial increase of female representation in a group of selected training occupations. Our analysis implies that the rising share of female apprentices within these fields cannot be explained by an increased entry of young women into growing employment sectors, but that it mainly results from a disproportionate reduction of male participation in select occupations.

Details

Gender Segregation in Vocational Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-347-1

Book part
Publication date: 18 November 2015

Emer Smyth and Stephanie Steinmetz

This chapter seeks to provide insights into a hitherto neglected topic – that of gender segregation among those who have taken part in vocational education and training (VET). In…

Abstract

This chapter seeks to provide insights into a hitherto neglected topic – that of gender segregation among those who have taken part in vocational education and training (VET). In spite of a growing body of work on the link between educational and occupational segregation by gender, relatively little attention has been given to the specific role played by VET in facilitating gender-specific occupational segregation. Using the European Social Survey (ESS) for 20 European countries and comparable macro data from different European sources, the study examines the extent to which cross-national differences in the gender-typical or atypical occupational allocation of vocational graduates aged 20–34 can be attributed to VET-specific institutional differences.

The findings are consistent with earlier research showing the protective role played by VET in reducing non-employment levels. The findings in relation to the gender-typing of work are somewhat surprising, as they indicate that VET system characteristics make relatively little difference to occupational outcomes among women, whether or not they have a VET qualification. Slightly stronger, but still modest, relationships are found between VET system characteristics and occupational outcomes for men. Male VET graduates are more likely to be in a male-typed job in systems with a higher proportion enrolled on vocational courses. In tracked systems, however, they also tend to be more likely to enter female-typed jobs. In systems where VET prepares people for a wider range of occupations, a VET qualification can act as a protective factor against non-employment, at least for men.

Details

Gender Segregation in Vocational Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-347-1

Book part
Publication date: 7 November 2018

Enobong Hannah Branch

Black women have traditionally occupied a unique position in the American economic structure – at the very bottom. The year 1920 is a unique historical moment to examine how this…

Abstract

Black women have traditionally occupied a unique position in the American economic structure – at the very bottom. The year 1920 is a unique historical moment to examine how this came to be. Economic prosperity immediately following World War I, the first wave of Black migration, and accelerating industrialization created occupational opportunities that could have enabled Black women to escape working poverty, as the majority of Black men did, but they were actively constrained. Historical narratives have extensively described Black women’s occupational restriction across regions to dirty work, such as domestic service, but not often in conjunction with a comparison to the expanding opportunities of Black men and White women. While intersectionality studies have honed in on the unique place of Black women, little attention has been devoted to this from a historical vantage point. This chapter examines the role that race, gender, and place played in shaping the experience of working poverty and integrates a consideration of queuing theory and Black population size to examine how variations might shape racial outcomes in the labor market in 1920.

Details

Race, Identity and Work
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-501-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 April 2018

Jonathan K.M. Lian and Florence Y.Y. Ling

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the job satisfaction level of quantity surveyors (QSs); identify the personal characteristics that influence their job satisfaction;…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the job satisfaction level of quantity surveyors (QSs); identify the personal characteristics that influence their job satisfaction; and provide recommendations to employers on how to enhance job satisfaction of QSs with different personal characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire to QSs in Singapore.

Findings

QSs feel that they have significantly high passion for the job, are significantly satisfied with task variety and are treated fairly. However, they are significantly dissatisfied with their workload, hours worked, and lack of work-life balance. QSs in upper management have significantly higher job passion. Those in mid-management are more dissatisfied with their income. QSs who are married/attached, older, and more experienced are significantly more dissatisfied with their workload and hours worked than singles, younger, and less experienced QSs.

Research limitations/implications

Some dimensions of job satisfaction were not measured. Non-personal characteristics such as type of projects handled and type of clients were not investigated.

Practical implications

Employers should investigate what goes into QSs’ workload, and weed out those that are of low value and unproductive in order to reduce their workload and hours worked, and thereby increase their job satisfaction.

Social implications

The study contributes to human resource management by identifying the type of QSs who are more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs.

Originality/value

This study shows that personal differences of QSs affect different dimensions of their job satisfaction. To maximize job satisfaction, employers could choose QSs who have specific characteristics, make changes to the work environment or redesign their jobs.

Details

Built Environment Project and Asset Management, vol. 8 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2044-124X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2004

Lisa Torres and Matt L. Huffman

Previous research has shown that social networks can be an important source of employment information, such as job leads, for both men and women. However, few studies have…

Abstract

Previous research has shown that social networks can be an important source of employment information, such as job leads, for both men and women. However, few studies have considered whether women and men benefit equally from having a diverse set of personal contacts. We argue that because previous research has not considered both the sex of the person providing job-related information and the sex of the person receiving the information, one cannot determine whether returns to network diversity differ by gender. We describe a unique data set that permits such an analysis, and report findings suggesting sex differences in returns to network diversity.

Details

Diversity in the Work Force
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76230-788-3

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