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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.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

This paper reports on a year‐long research project undertaken by the authors and a group of sponsoring corporations to explore the future of work and thereby the workplace. Experiences, ideas and data were shared to address questions about the changing nature of the workforce itself, new workplace designs, new technology capabilities and the economics of supporting and leveraging knowledge workers. But this paper does more than report on specific findings, it interprets, predicts and offers the authors’ personal perspectives in order to share with readers their own views of the issues and challenges facing facility managers today as they prepare their organisations for a changing and very different world of work in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the lack of a clear theoretical framework in management education programs to allow students to understand the world in which gig workers operate. The article asserts the need for practical guidance for pedagogy to prepare students to manage in the gig economy.

This paper provides a rationale for the assertion that, beyond training students to create their own work configurations in the new world of work, management education should acquaint students with the specific challenges faced by managers responsible for a spectrum of workers in various work configurations. This paper explicates gig work configurations and offers theoretical and practical issues related to worker and manager identity to be considered in the development of an educational framework.

Management curricula over time have successfully augmented several competencies to the manager identity. Bolstering the competency of simultaneously managing employees working in multiple employment arrangements is the next natural progression of management education.

Particular challenges for prospective “gig managers” may relate to the management of somewhat elusive processes that enhance their own and their workers' organizational identity and related outcomes.

The authors invoke the literature of holding environments for identity development, along with the distinctness and inclusion facets of Kegan's theory of the evolution of consciousness and tenets of institutional theory, in a call for the examination of methods that may help aspirant managers recognize distinction and inclusion needs in others and cultivate tools to assist in their workers' need fulfillment.

In my article on the New World of Work I alluded to three stages of business development and to their implications for work and employment. Via the ‘creative re‐integration of business’, I also conjured up a new world of business, where ‘intrapreneurs’ and ‘enablers’ came together with managers and entrepreneurs, and with consultants and craftsmen. In this follow up piece I want to focus on ‘Creative Re‐integration’, as our next step in business development. As a result, I shall be: • making the case for ‘Business Development’ as a new and vital, though hitherto neglected framework, for thinking about organisations • drawing together the economic, social and technological threads that are converging upon us, resulting in a genuinely new world of business • citing examples of innovative moves, within major corporations, towards creative re‐integration.

Posits that every enterprise must institutionalize its workplace learning systems and opportunities in such a way that it radiates what it has already achieved and from this moves on to realize its full potential – in short, the enterprise itself is the key. Examines in successive chapters: the individual manager and questioning insights (Q); the major systems which the enterprise uses to capture and structure its learning; a SWOT analysis of the enterprise′s total learning; action learning, its contribution to the achievement of enterprise growth, and the role of programmed knowledge (P); the Enterprise School of Management (ESM) as a phoenix of enlightenment and effectiveness rising from the ashes of traditional, less effective management training initiatives; and, finally, the practical realization of the action learning dream, as evidenced by emerging examples of successful and profitable implementation worldwide. Concludes with a selection of pertinent abstracts.

The world of work is shifting from traditional career paths, to relentless change, leaner structures, evolving roles and a need to find meaning through the work the author do. A new skill-set is required to survive and thrive in the new economy. The purpose of this paper is to explore how learning programs focused on personal and career empowerment can build these skills, increase engagement, enhance performance and impact culture positively.

The paper summarises these new skill-sets required and raises critical questions: how do we create an environment for self and career empowerment? How do we act as catalysts for cultural and social transformation? It then outlines an approach to discovering the answers based on experiences facilitating I am Talent workshops for personal and career empowerment. Key insights and suggestions for personal and career empowerment topics and tools are highlighted.

The paper goes on to share the post-intervention impact results of a case study organisation, on culture, engagement, learning and performance.

The paper covers some practical skill areas that can significantly improve work and life results, in a world that is dynamic, uncertain and continuously changing.

Millennials come with whole new set of expectations and preferences in the way they interact with work. In a South African context, this is compounded by our educational and skills crisis resulting in many work entrants not being sufficiently prepared for the new world of work.

The learning programme is based on a book, I am Talent, by the author of this paper and is a unique approach to building personal and career empowerment.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how the UK’s Trade Union Congress, in the 150th year of its formation, has been responding to the significant changes in the labour market, working practices and union decline. The paper considers Trades Union Congress (TUC) initiatives to recruit and organise new groups of workers as it struggles to adapt to the new world of work many workers are experiencing. Although the paper reviews progress in this regard it also considers current and future challenges all of which are becoming increasingly urgent as the current cohort of union membership is aging and presents a demographic time bomb unless new strategies and tactics are adopted to bring in new groups of workers – particularly younger workers.

This is a review paper so it mainly draws on writings (both academic and practitioner) on trade union strategy and tactics in relations to organising approaches and in particularly the TUC’s initiatives from the period of “New Unionism” onwards.

The authors note that while unions have managed to retain a presence in workplaces and industries where they membership and recognition, there has, despite a “turn to organising” been less success than was perhaps hoped for when new organising initiatives were introduced in 1998. In order to expand the bases of organisation into new workplaces and in new constituencies there needs to be a move away from the “institutional sclerosis” that has prevented unions adapting to the changing nature of employment and the labour market restructuring. The paper concludes that in order to effect transformative change requires leaders to develop strategic capacity and innovation among staff and the wider union membership. This may require unions to rethink the way that they operate and be open to doing thing radically different.

The paper’s value is that it provides a comprehensive overview of the TUC’s role in attempting to inject an organising culture with the UK union movement by drawing out some of the key debates on this topic from both scholarly and practitioner writings over the last few decades.

This article has three themes. First it considers the reflections of those scholars who document current changes in the world‐of‐work and the academic and managerial challenges that these provide. Second, various speculations about the future of work are reviewed including those made 20 years ago attempting to predict the current state of work and those futurological forecasts made at the moment for the world in 20 years time. Finally, two topics are considered in depth – the psychology of unemployment and the experience of teleworking – to illustrate some of the costs and benefits in the new world of work.