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Definitions of volunteering are widespread and complex, yet relatively little attention is given to volunteering as unpaid work, even though it intersects with the worlds of paid employment and the domestic sphere, cutting across individual/collective and public/private spaces. This article advances a typology of volunteering work (altruistic, instrumental, militant and forced volunteering/‘voluntolding’) that illuminates the complexity and dynamism of volunteering. Using qualitative data from a study of 30 volunteers to explore practices of volunteering as they unfold in daily life, the typology provides much-needed conceptual building blocks for a theory of ‘volunteering as unpaid work’. This perspective helps transcend the binaries prevalent in the sociology of work and provides a lens to rethink what counts as work in contemporary society. It also invites further research about the effects of ‘voluntolding’ on individuals and society, and on the complex relationship between volunteering work and outcomes at a personal and collective level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division of labour, an enduring concept of the sociology of work, has yet to receive fundamental critical re-evaluation. The need for this is exposed especially by developments in global work and employment, and the ensuing complexity and variety of contemporary connections and divisions of labour. The aim of this article is to initiate a process of conceptual renewal. Having reviewed classical and 20th-century formulations of the concept, I propose a broader and multidimensional framework. Here, overall socio-economic formations of labour are viewed as constituted through the interplay between three forms of integration and differentiation: the technical division and allocation of labour, interdependencies between work across socio-economic modes, and across overall instituted processes of labour in production, distribution, exchange and consumption. The framework may be used to explore connections and divisions of labour at different scales and levels of generality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour process analysis (LPA) is a well-established approach to the sociological study of work which attends to the instabilities of capitalism and, more specifically, to the volatile and contested nature of social relations at work. However, an unreflexive 'neo-orthodoxy' has emerged in recent years that is constrained by a series of dualistic and (critical) realist assumptions which inhibit the development of this distinctive sociology of work. This article contends that the potential of LPA can best be fulfilled through a renewal of critical reflection upon the foundational assumptions of LPA that can open up an acknowledgement and appreciation of the embroilment of subjectivity in the reproduction and transformation of production relations. This development is consistent with the central analytical importance ascribed to the 'indeterminacy of labour' in LPA but invites the adoption of a negative ontology in order to advance a less narrow conception of its meaning and significance. Studies of the new media and creative industries are engaged to indicate how a revitalized labour process analysis might embrace this ontology as a way of exploring and explaining the radical contingency of organization in contemporary social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the Special Issue call for sociologists' individual perspectives on developments in the sociology of work. In this article I reflect on my own approach to studying work, the intellectual resources I draw on, and how I see the sociology of work developing at the present time. I have located my own very modest contribution within the traditions of gender studies, highlighting thereby the longstanding links between the sociology of work and other substantive fields of inquiry. I take a relatively personal approach. This is because, while there is nothing notable about my personal life, like many feminists I see my ideas as having evolved in the interstices of the professional and personal and the values and divisions of labour that underpin them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive service occupations, requiring face-to-face contact, are rapidly growing in the US as they are typically not susceptible to larger trends of off-shoring and computerization. Yet conventional paradigms of understanding the nature of that work, and in particular the skill demands, are often ill equipped to deal with the 'interactive' aspects of these gendered and racialized occupations. As a result, discussions of lower-end service occupations have typically grouped together a variety of jobs that require little or no higher education, without examining the actual skill content and job requirements of these occupations. In this article we delve more deeply into the rapidly growing non-professional service occupations in the US and the level of skills these jobs require, with the intention of creating a framework that will reorient future sociological research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts the historical and contemporary absences in the sociology of service work. Although studies of service work have now become the empirical mainstream in the sociology of work, there have been few attempts to conceptualize broad patterns of worker--customer relations in service work. This neglect is to be regretted because whether the customer is an alienating figure for service workers constitutes a key unasked question in contemporary sociology of work. The article highlights three factors that are likely to have a key influence on workers' sense of alienation vis-a-vis the customer. It highlights divergent literature in each of these areas and hence ends with a call for research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual separation of 'work' and 'life', as distinct elements of social activity, has become established as shorthand for the social and psychological dislocation felt by being at work and not being at work. There is a literature on the work/life balance driven by governmental rhetoric, based on the idea of flexible working. This article suggests that distinctions between 'work' and 'life', implying a dichotomy in adult life, are overstated. Using material from a study of bicycle messengers this article presents a rich account of a group of workers for whom the binary distinction between work and life is meaningless. The account of this world of work is more closely aligned with those of the jazz musicians described by Becker or the boxers of Weinberg and Arond, where the occupation, identity and culture are not confined to hours of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses work-life history data from the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2001) to examine married/cohabiting women's work histories and their gender-role attitudes. Findings suggest that women's employment careers are affected by both preferences and constraints. The presence of dependent children poses less of a barrier to full-time work for women with work-centered attitudes than other women. Nevertheless, women having a continuous employment career tend to be childless. Finally, there is a reciprocal relationship between gender-role attitudes and women's labor market participation, suggesting that preferences are changeable according to labor market experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify the crucial issues that arise for psychiatrists and other physicians when dealing with occupational disability in their patients with depression and to suggest practical strategies for responding more effectively to the challenges of this aspect of patient functioning.Method: We identify fundamental concepts in the occupational disability domain and draw crucial distinctions. The wider context for occupational disability is articulated, involving the workplace environment and the disability insurance industry. Research with direct relevance to clinical decision making in this area is highlighted. We make pragmatic suggestions for effective management of occupational disability in patients with depression.Results: To successfully manage issues of occupational disability, psychiatrists and other physicians must understand the distinction between impairment and disability. To make this decision fairly and accurately, the adjudicator requires particular types of information from the physician, with requirements varying across short-term or long-term disability claims; failing to provide relevant information may cause substantial stress or financial harm to the patient. Balanced and collaborative decision making regarding whether and for how long to take work absence will greatly help to maintain occupational function in the long-term. Realistic expectations and support of the patient's sense of personal competence foster recovery of occupational function.Conclusion: Management of depression-related disability is challenging. Thoughtful evaluation of the patient's functional status, careful response to the requirements of disability determination, and a focus on functional recovery yield substantial benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To review the recent descriptive and social epidemiology of common mental disorders in the workplace, including prevalence, participation, work disability, and impact of quality of work, as well as to discuss the implications for identifying targets for clinical and preventive interventions. Method: We conducted a structured review of epidemiologic studies in community settings (that is, in the general population or in workplaces). Evidence was restricted to the peer-reviewed, published, English-language literature up to the end of June 2005. We further restricted evidence to studies that used recent classification systems; then, if evidence was insufficient, we reviewed studies that used standardized psychiatric screening scales. To distinguish this article from recent reviews of health and work quality, we focused on new areas of investigation and new evidence for established areas of investigation: underemployment, organizational justice, job control and demand, effort-reward imbalance, and atypical (nonpermanent) employment. Results: Depression and simple phobia were found to be the most prevalent disorders in the working population. The limited data on rates of participation suggested higher participation among people with depression, simple phobia, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. Depression and anxiety were more consistently associated with "presenteeism" (that is, lost productivity while at work) than with absenteeism, whether this was measured by cutback days or by direct questionnaires. Seven longitudinal studies, with an average sample size of 6264, showed a strong association between aspects of low job quality and incident depression and anxiety. There was some evidence that atypical work was associated with poorer mental health, although the findings for fixed-term work were mixed. Conclusions: Mental health risk reduction in the workplace is an important complement to clinical interventions for reducing the current and future burden of depression and anxiety in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1989, the Japanese carmaker Toyota established in Burnaston (UK) their first European transplant. Expected to become one of the most efficient auto factories in Europe and to be as successful as the American transplants set up by the company during the 1980s, Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK (TMUK) has failed to fulfil these expectations, cumulating in 10 years of production losses of more than £600 million and since 1999 falling into a serious crisis, which has put into question the internal compromise between the actors of the firm. The article traces back the trajectory of TMUK from its foundation up to the present crisis. It shows how the crisis emerged progressively from the initial short- comings of the hybridized employment relationship of the transplant, and how it deepened under the difficult economic conditions faced by the company on the European market. The article also introduces an alternative theoretical approach based on the notion of the `productive model' developed by the GERPISA international research network, which aims to deconstruct the functionalist idea of a unique and superior Japanese model transferable everywhere and by everybody, and to re-establish the Japanese transplants as full historical objects and as social and political organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]