Search results

Fueled by strong market forces as well as by increasingly ubiquitous and pervasive mobile technologies, shifts in working practices and the application of mobile technologies have been occurring around the turn of the millennium. One such change concerns the work of professionals. This paper discusses the emergence of the mobile professional, through a field study of more than 60 professional workers in Tokyo during 2002. The paper concludes that one must broaden one's conception of mobility and conceptualize mobile professional work in terms of locational, operational, and interactional mobility. Furthermore, some implications for a new design of mobile professional work and technology use are drawn from the analysis of the field study: ICT as mobility‐booster; maintaining multiple ongoing interactions; the importance of personal networks; and places as material foundations for interaction.

Freight and logistics are central to everyday life. These sectors depend on a variety of workers, and the types of work have changed rapidly with shifts towards e-commerce and changes to urban logistics. Yet a particular form of masculinity dominates imaginaries of the sector, especially freight transport. Such imaginaries rest on ideas of freight drivers requiring (physical) strength, toughness, flexibility, mobility and driving competencies, as well as being unencumbered by caring responsibilities. In the UK, and elsewhere, the freight sector, and particularly driving-related freight jobs, are heavily reliant on male workers. The freight driver shortage crisis in the UK has been referred to as a ‘ticking timebomb’, emerging from a reliance on white male workers, the majority of whom are over the age of 50. A ‘diversifying’ agenda has been the primary response to this crisis, which has largely focussed on increasing the number of female drivers. At the same time, however, little has been done to address issues associated with pay and conditions for freight workers. In this chapter, the authors examine gendered freight work across three themes: changing mobilities of work, ‘flexibilisation’ of freight working practice and automation of freight vehicles.

Women's travel pattern is different from those of men. Women who have both paid employment and unpaid care work have more complex travel patterns. However, land-use policies and urban mobility strategies in the Egyptian context do not consider these differences. This paper analyzes and discusses the travel patterns of the Egyptian working women with children. It examines the difference between men's and women's travel behavior in different income levels. The paper aims at determining the main factors that affect working women's travel patterns within the care economy framework and suggesting recommendations for enhancing women's travel patterns in Greater Cairo Region (GCR).

The methodology relies on conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis using questionnaires and interviews with working women and men from different social/economic levels in two different workplaces in GCR.

The results demonstrate that income level, workplace locations, schools locations, and schools typologies greatly affect working women's travel patterns in GCR.

The study findings will help urban planners and decision-makers to improve working women's mobility to make their daily trips shorter and more accessible to achieve equitable cities through understanding the conducted affecting factors and considering the suggested recommendations.

The contributions in this CDI special issue present research findings that have been generated in the course of the research project, Vocational Identity, Flexibility and Mobility in the European Labour Market, funded under the 5^th EU Framework Programme. Investigating identity formation processes at work, the guiding research question focused on what individuals identify with in their work context when they are challenged to respond to increasing demands for flexibility, mobility, changing work settings and shifting skill requirements. Project partners from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Spain and the UK) interviewed more than 500 employees at intermediate skills level and over 100 managers and representatives of human resources departments about how employees cope with changes at work and how this might affect their work identity, work attitude and career orientation. This paper gives an overview of the background, research questions, basic theoretical considerations, methodology and general findings of this project. It serves as a general introduction to the other five papers presented in this issue which are all based on a common approach and understanding of the research carried out.

During the last decade the telecommunications sector has undergone an accelerated structural change in work organisation, qualification profiles and the mode of socialisation at work. Telecommunications is taking the lead when it comes to the dynamics of vocational identity transformation. Classical models of vocational identities are declining in favour of a new “negotiator‐network/mobility” mode of socialisation at work. The latter is mainly taken in charge by a new generation of telecom employees who are mobile, flexible and proactive in constructing their own work identities and project‐based work activities. This paper examines the key findings of the FAME project investigation in the telecommunications sector in France, Germany and the UK. The first section focuses on the employers' perception of the contextual background for change. The second section examines employees' responses to these structural changes and new modes of socialisation at work. The concluding section highlights some overall trends and implications.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of digital infrastructure in supporting compliance with travel restrictions. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of digital infrastructure in supporting compliance with travel restrictions. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world have issued “stay-at-home” orders and curtailed a variety of economic activities. As countries have adopted aggressive policies to limit the spread of COVID-19, varying levels of national infrastructure to provide internet access have limited some nations’ ability to reduce travel requirements. As national policies struggle to address public health issues, location analytics enabled by big data provide unique insights regarding the efficacy of digital infrastructure. These insights can provide valuable tools to public health officials and regulators in understanding how health recommendations are implemented within an economy.

This study analyzes mobile phone movement data during the first half of 2020 and finds that countries that provided greater access to internet capabilities were better able to reduce work-related mobility.

This study’s findings indicate that greater levels of digital infrastructure may better prepare countries to adapt to societal disruptions such as COVID-19.

This study’s findings demonstrate that public health controls regarding movement and person-to-person interaction are less likely to be effective in nations with weaker digital infrastructure, even after accounting for variation attributable to gross domestic product (GDP) and pandemic severity. This could limit public health options in developing countries when faced with future socially disruptive events and encourage national investment in digital infrastructure.

This study’s findings highlight positive externalities associated with reducing the digital divide. Developing better digital business infrastructure globally may reduce human exposure to future pandemic risks.

This research demonstrates the practical development implications of analysis of aggregate data widely available through mobile technology. As institutions develop techniques to ethically and effectively analyze this data, greater opportunities to support economic development may be revealed.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel patterns, use of space and modal choice. Cities took actions in a way they did not before, trying to accommodate economic and travel needs with the goal of reducing the spreading of the virus. Active travel (AT) played an important role in accommodating travel needs and in increasing the resilience and environmental friendliness of the urban transport system. As cities gradually return to their normal life, transport planners must decide which role to assign to AT in future urban plans. In particular, whether to confirm the temporary policies incentivising AT enacted to counteract the reduction in the use of public transport or to return to the previous road space allocation that dedicated considerable urban space to motorised vehicular traffic. After reviewing the empirical evidence on the AT evolution during the various pandemic phases and illustrating the main policies planned and implemented at city level in many countries, this chapter summarises the lessons learnt, derives some policy suggestions, and identifies future research needs.

Prior studies of academics’ career migration patterns typically focused on middle- and upper-class faculty. The “push/pull” or “hard/soft” factors relevant to faculty from more privileged groups emerged from those analyses. This phenomenological study used qualitative interviews with 12 faculty members from lower social-class backgrounds to discover variables unique to this group. Due to lifelong differences in basic resources and limited access to educational opportunities, as well as adherence to class-based values, faculty from lower social-class backgrounds made career decisions based primarily on financial and family needs rather than the variables found in earlier studies. In order to paint a complete picture of factors that enter into the career-decision-making process, studies examining the mobility of academics must consider inclusion of faculty from lower social-class origins.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how occupational mobility varies over the business cycle and how selected factors contribute to occupational mobility in different stages of the business cycle.

Using annual micro data from the Estonian Labour Force Survey (2001-2010) and implementing probit models with interaction terms, the paper investigates occupational mobility as a change of occupation in two successive years during recovery, boom and recession periods.

The analysis indicates that occupational mobility is higher during the recovery and boom periods and lower during the recession stage. The demographic characteristics (gender, marital status, knowledge of local language) influence the probability for occupational change during the recovery stage of the business cycle. The position of employees in the occupational hierarchy is significant during the recovery and boom periods. Employees working in the public sector have a lower probability for occupational change compared with private sector employees during the recession. Training has a positive effect on occupational mobility during recession. Tenure reduces the probability of occupational mobility over the whole business cycle.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing new results about the role of different factors of occupational mobility over the business cycle. This is among the few studies addressing the variation in the occupational mobility of employees from the public and private sectors. Interactions between the position of the employees in the occupational hierarchy and the ownership form of their employers and the economic sectors add to the understanding about the mechanism of occupational mobility over the business cycle stages.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the health-related well-being of public sector expatriates paying particular attention to the family situation.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among the entire staff of the German Foreign Service (GFS), resulting in a response rate of 35.5 percent (analytical sample n=1,390). Partnership status, childlessness, and experiences of partnership break-ups were analyzed by gender and by age. Using OLS regression, the authors examine how gender and individual perceptions of conflict between international relocation and family stability and formation contribute to subjective well-being.

The results show that females are significantly over-represented among GFS employees who experience partnership instability as well as among single and childless employees. Yet barriers to partnership and family formation appear to be increasing for younger cohorts of male employees.

Unstable families can jeopardize the well-being of employees highlighting that expatriates’ relationship and family needs are insufficiently met in high mobility contexts.

The focus on family formation challenges in non-corporate expatriation makes a novel contribution to the literature and practice of expatriate management, as the system-wide rotational staff mobility of public service institutions has received minor attention.