Search results

Examines the impact of restructuring on the career progression of women transport and logistics managers. Research to date has indicated that restructuring can have detrimental effects on women managers, as middle management levels are reduced through delayering and as the organisation takes on a more competitive and “masculine” culture. Results from this survey on women transport and logistics managers indicate that restructuring can have positive effects. While women experience longer working hours and increased workloads, they encounter fewer career barriers and a more positive attitude to women managers in the organisation. This may point to greater opportunities for training in a changing organisation and a higher probability of new posts and positions being created, as proverbial “dead‐wood” is shaken out. Perhaps more importantly, the climate of change may help to “unfreeze” and challenge entrenched attitudes and to create a new meritocracy, in which women can compete on a more equal footing with men.

In this introduction restructuring of work is presented as an ongoing, locally situated process in which actors within work organizations play an important role. Central themes of this process are the increasing importance of the cultural within the economical sphere, the different organizational options of organizations, new tensions in labor relations and the local consequences of continuous spatial relocation of labor. Before introducing the different contributions to the volume, attention is paid to methodological implications for research on the increasing interrelations of the global and local within processes of work restructuring.

This paper posits that legal avoidance – employers’ search for forms of employment to which labor and employment laws do not apply – is an important driver of the restructuring of work. It examines three examples of restructuring that enable employers to avoid legal liability and compliance costs: the classification of workers as independent contractors; the use of part-time and variable-schedule work; and employers’ deskilling of jobs and reliance on vulnerable workers. None of these strategies is itself unlawful, but their impact is to limit workers’ legal protections and weaken the law itself. Employers may also experience unintended consequences of restructuring.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the restructuring process of the University of Arizona libraries. The paper focuses more specifically on the research support services (RSS) team, one of the librarian teams, that moved from a subject liaison model to a domain model focused on different work areas.

The paper details the three phases of restructuring: building the general frame of change by the restructuring team, staffing outline by the implementation team, and how the resulting team, the research support team, managed its assigned work.

The restructuring resulted in a few changes to the library as whole but the largest change was the creation of the RSS team and the move from a subject specialist model to a domain model. The RSS model has allowed the team to accomplish their work with fewer staff.

The paper provides a new approach of how a research university is responding to economic and technological challenges.

In this concluding chapter the empirical research on work restructuring that is presented in the different chapters is related to the central question of this volume: in which way is the global produced and reproduced in the local and what does this mean for the (re)structuring of the local? The central themes of the introductory chapter of this volume are taken into account: the increasing impact of the cultural on the economical sphere, the strategic effect of various organizational options, the coming into being of new sectors, labor relations in a globalizing world and the tension between clusterization and relocation of labor. In the last part of this contribution some remarks are made on a possible direction of further research in the field of work restructuring in its glocal context.

This study aims, first, to chronicle the perceived dilemmas of a group of Australian principals whose worklives were preoccupied with school restructuring. Second, relying on empirical data, it develops a typology of dilemmas. This typology then forms the structure for a more detailed discussion of the nature and source of dilemmas encountered by the participating principals. Data were collected and analysed using qualitative methods, based on semi‐structured interviews with 20 Western Australian primary and secondary principals. The findings suggest two main types of dilemmas – general, values‐based personal‐professional dilemmas, called “states of mind”, and specific, practical, organisational dilemmas. It is argued that improving the knowledge base by using empirical studies and developing typologies and conceptual frameworks, is a necessary step in providing closer insights as to how school leaders perceive and manage the most intractable aspects of their worklives. This, is turn, could lead to improvements in leader preparation and training.

This article is concerned with exploring changes in the organisation of work in the graphical industry. The aim is to examine the link between employer attempts to restructure work and resilience of the prevailing machinery of collective regulation within the sector. It is structured around three main areas of work organisation change, notably the search for organisational flexibility, attempts to recast the nature of work and finally the intensification of work. It concludes by arguing that threats to union organisation emanating from the restructuring of work currently appear to be at the “edges”. The argument is that a “community of interest and identity” predicated upon strong levels of union organisation has created the necessary apparatus to redress or resist attempts to dilute unionism. However the article closes by highlighting the continuing gender segregation within the sector and argues that this community of interest must extend to cover all workers within the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the impact of globalisation and productive restructuring in contemporary migration flows in Latin America. It analyses two different movements to/from Latin America: Bolivians in São Paulo and Brazilians in London, seeking to highlight the precarious work conditions of migrants from the region.

The paper uses two interrelated research projects. One focuses on Bolivian workers in São Paulo. It used reference documents, and files from the local press and academic articles to map work dynamics of Bolivian migrants working in sweatshops. The other was conducted in London, where in‐depth interviews and participant observations were conducted with Brazilians working in low‐skilled jobs, to explore motives behind migration and settlement.

There is increasing mobility between different countries that receive immigrants with flexible proposals about constructing “new life projects”. These migrants seek to escape unfavourable living and working conditions, yet an overall perspective of flexible capitalism in its forms of production, distribution and consumption is observable. Both contexts feature precarious employment relationships, with informality, illegality and ethnic social networks being the main elements of attraction and support in host countries. Differences are located in the perspectives of return and settlement, given the different economic situations in England, Brazil and Bolivia.

Sample size does not allow making representative statements or generalisations about Brazilians in London. In addition, it was not possible to get primary data from Bolivians in São Paulo because the clandestine nature of the sweatshops makes it difficult to gain access, and to obtain reliable data.

The paper offers an important departure point to advance discussions about productive restructuring, informality, and Latin American mobilities by addressing the intersections between employment relations, migration and geographical mobility within/from Latin America.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.