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Robert Franklin Hoxie was of the first generation of University of Chicago economists, a figure of significance in his own time. He is often heralded as the first of the Institutional economists and the impetus behind the field of labor economics. Yet today, his contributions appear as mere footnotes in the history of economic thought, when mentioned at all, despite the fact that in his professional and popular writings he tackled some of the most pressing problems of the day. The topics upon which he focused included bimetallism, price theory, methodology, the economics profession, socialism, syndicalism, scientific management, and trade unionism, the last being the field with which he is most closely associated. His work attracted the notice of some of the most famous economists of his time, including Frank Fetter, J. Laurence Laughlin, Thorstein Veblen, and John R. Commons. For all the promise, his suicide at the age of 48 ended what could have been a storied career. This paper is an attempt to resurrect Hoxie through a review of his life and work, placing him within the social and intellectual milieux of his time.

Purpose – This paper extends research on social movement media by focusing on the use of a literary genre – realist fiction – namely, the labor problem novel in the context of the labor movement and countermovement in late 19th-century America.

Methodology – I do a close reading of a significant early dialogical cluster of such novels to address three key questions: (1) Field position of authors – What was the position of these labor problem authors in relation to the movement field and literary field and how did that positioning matter? (2) Genre selection – What was it about the realist novel that attracted labor problem partisans to it? (3) Internal content – How did authors shape the internal structure and content of their stories?

Findings – As literary activists, authors pivoted between the movement field and literary field selecting the novel for the special powers that it possessed relative to other historically available media. Authors produced stories with a good/evil binary attached to characters that stood for emerging social categories in young industrial America. During the Gilded Age (and beyond) the novel played an important role as medium for the labor movement and its opposition – characterizing collective actors, dramatizing forms of action, providing materials for claims of injustice or threats, solutions to social problems, and new categories and collective identities – all with powerful emotional appeal and entertainment value.

Implications – This study suggests that social movement scholars might expand their purview of cultural media used by movements and also take genre and its selection by activists seriously.

Originality – This study demonstrates how literature – realist fiction – has been shaped by movement agents and played an important, but under-appreciated, role in the struggle over cultural supremacy in the context of movement–countermovement dynamics.

This chapter analyses the recovery of the Danish economy from the crisis of the 1980s, its elevation to a bit of an ‘economic miracle’ or at least an ‘employment miracle’ from 1995 to 2005 and its subsequent decline during the financial crisis, which revealed more long-standing problems that precluded a quick recovery. The solution of Denmark's structural balance of payment problems in the early 1990s paved the way for long-term prosperity, and Denmark managed the challenges of globalisation and deindustrialisation almost without social costs. However, an accumulation of short-term policy failures and credit liberalisation facilitated a credit and housing bubble, a consumption-driven boom and declining competitiveness. In broad terms, the explanation is political; this includes not only vote- and office-seeking strategies of the incumbent government but also ideational factors such as agenda setting of economic policy. Somewhat unnoticed – partly because of preoccupation with long-term challenges of ageing and shortage of labour – productivity and economic growth rates had slowed down over several years. The Danish decline in GDP 2008–2009 was larger than in the 1930s, and after the bubble burst, there were few drivers of economic growth. Households consolidated and were reluctant to consume; public consumption had to be cut as well; exports increased rather slowly; and in this climate, there was little room for private investments. Financially, the Danish economy remained healthy, though. Current accounts revealed record-high surpluses after the financial crisis; state debt remained moderate, and if one were to include the enormous retained taxes in private pension funds, net state debt would de facto be positive. Still, around 2010–2011 there were few short-term drivers of economic growth, and rather unexpectedly, it turned out that unemployment problems were likely to prevail for several years.

This chapter focuses on the case of migrant Filipina live-in domestic workers in Greece and how the frame of their work and employment in precarious, low-status/low-wage jobs and race discrimination at work, that is, the employers’ residences, affect their participation in secondary groups of solidarity and workers and their representation in them, that is, community, migrant labour associations and trade unions, during the economic crisis in Greece. According to the results of in-depth interviews Filipina migrants are entrapped in a frame of isolative and exploitative working conditions and racial discrimination at work, that is, personal services, care and domestic work. In this working context, most of the interviewed migrant Filipina live-in domestic workers appear to have developed individualistic perceptions, they act in an atomistic manner, form materialistic beliefs, are indifferent to collectivity and solidarity and are isolated from their compatriots and other workers. They have low self-perceptions and expectations for social advancement and deal with their social and labour-related problems individually, or completely resign from claiming them.

This study takes the position that the vitality of academic libraries is grounded in the working experiences of its librarians. It suggests that a full understanding of problems facing contemporary information professionals in the post-industrial workplace requires an analysis of the labouring aspects as well as the professional nature of their work. The study of changes in the academic library work experience thus depicts the state of the library, and has implications for other intellectual workers in a social environment characterized by expanding information technologies, constricted economic resources, and the globalization of information production. Academic librarians have long recognized that their vocation lies not only in the classical role in information collection, organization, and dissemination, but also in collaboration with faculty in the teaching and research process, and in the contribution to university governance. They are becoming increasingly active in the protection of information access and assurance of information quality in view of information degradation on the Internet and various compromises necessitated by interaction with third party commercial information producers.

The employment practices of major American companies underwent a marked transformation in the fifteen-year period dating roughly from the beginning of World War I to the oncoming of the Great Depression in late 1929 (Jacoby, 1985; Lescohier, 1935). At the start of World War I, the practice of personnel management was unknown in American industry. Instead, employment practices were largely informal, unscientific and administered in a decentralized, often heavy-handed and capricious manner by foremen and gang bosses. Labor was typically viewed as a commodity to be bought for as little possible and used for only as long as needed, leading to an employment relationship that was short-term and insecure. The prevailing methods of management were also highly autocratic and arbitrary, with workers expected to obey whatever orders were given and at risk of being fired for any offense real or imagined.

This chapter aims to evaluate the problem of child labour exploitation in the world. In this framework, the definition of the concept, the causes, the chronology of global regulations on the topic, the risks that child labourers face are given. The basic result of the chapter is the recognition of the importance of the relationship between child labour and economic conditions. Accordingly, when the wealth levels of countries increase, the number of child labourer decreases.

This paper examines the labor policies of the United Typothetae of America (UTA) from its birth in 1887 through the late 1920s and argues that labor policy differences among its members (personified by two prominent New York City-based printing employers, Theodore DeVinne and Charles Francis) created a “house divided” that not only prevented it from creating and maintaining a unified labor policy but also ultimately led to its demise as an employers' association and reconstitution primarily as a trade association. It will do so by analyzing key episodes in the UTA's labor history to show how the two competing labor philosophies – DeVinne's absolute authority & independence and Francis's stability & order – interacted with industry conditions – intense price competition, a decentralized industry structure, proprietor autonomy, the relative power of unions, and economic conditions – to impact the UTA's labor policies and its institutional survival. The UTA's experience reveals the diversity of American employers' experiences as well as the challenges that they have faced when attempting to act collectively in the industrial relations arena. Moreover, recent IR research on employers' associations around the world also reveals that, as unions have declined in power, many also are shifting their focus away from labor relations to other member services.