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This paper provides an explanation for how coworkers manage to cultivate close relationships in an extremely competitive workplace. Our case study is the workplace of statespersons, considered an impersonal, rule-governed, and interest-motivated social environment, and as such, provides indications for how counterparts overcome alienation and suspicion in developing trustful relations. Interviews with twenty-one senior Israeli officials concerning mundane professional practices they employed during their service reveal a gamut of relational practices implemented in various formal and informal events in order to initiate, maintain, and strengthen close personal relationship with their foreign counterparts. A competent performance of these practices constitutes meaningful relationships, allowing statespersons to overcome the relational challenges posed by the impersonal diplomatic workplace. • How to cultivate relations in highly impersonal and interest-oriented workplaces? • Statecraft is a challenging arena for developing interpersonal relationships. • The study is based on twenty-one interviews with senior Israeli statespersons. • Cultivating relations in statecraft is accomplished via verbal and non-verbal practices. • Practices are enacted in a variety of settings and have different functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of these issue of 'International Review of Sociology' is to present some reflections, which, starting from the analysis of several mediterranean countries, highlight the overall employment context of graduates in Sociology, characterised by widespread underemployment (or over-education) and difficulties in accessing the labour market. In particular, the papers highlight the need for a greater connection between academic sociology and professionals and the university's responsibility to establish adequate training paths and provide both specific and transversal skills, which are fundamental in the work of the sociology professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 future of work and employment sociology has been a subject of concern for a number of authors in recent years. Halford and Strangleman, among others, have suggested that work and employment sociology is on the decline, in that it has been disconnected from wider sociology and co-opted by management and business schools. In this article we unpack the debate and look at how it relates to gender and work scholarship. In doing so, we propose that the decline thesis might be overstated. While gender and work sociology has been implicated in the demise of labour process theory, it has also embraced change and strengthened and diversified work and employment sociology. Nevertheless, in this article, we treat the perceived threat as an opportunity to rethink work and employment sociology. We propose a four-themed, interdisciplinary, gender-inspired research paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing specialty literature (see, for example, Jakob Schrenk, 2010) we notice that attitude towards work have changed in contemporary society. Since passed ages, work was considered a natural activity, specific especially for adults, developed for producing goods for a better living (for our own person, for our family and, indirectly, for society). Today we can notice that work have become the sense of life, the main aim for life. Some people work for working, forgetting that the purpose of life is first our becoming, evolution, perfection as human being, through relations with others. Or, today, work has become to signify alienation from others, physical and spiritual, dehumanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the concept of immaterial labor is dialectically related to the cycle of material labor in the production and reproduction of capital and bourgeois society. The article reflects on how this affects the dynamics of social classes and their struggles in contemporary capitalist society. Immaterial labor, like its manual counterpart, is also subject to capitalism’s essential contradictions as well as its processes and tendencies. Various authors, including Latin American Marxists, are drawn upon to explore further this historical process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since social work education was reintroduced in Chinese universities in the 1980s, there are 303 bachelor of social work programs and 62 master of social work programs. Yet, the development of social work positions has lagged behind. This study aimed to study the current development of social work employment opportunities in Mainland China through an empirical lens. Data on social work positions were collected from three employment websites over a 30-day period. Data on 248 social work job postings were analyzed using content analysis and ArcGIS spatial distribution analysis. We identified three problems in the current development of social work profession in China: inconsistency between government policy, social work education, and available jobs; geographic disparities of the distribution of social work jobs; and mismatch between social work education and social work employment opportunities. We provided implications to address each problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The first year after high school is a transitional year, with increased independence from parental supervision, contact with other independent youth, and exposure to new environments, all of which may influence substance use. This article reports longitudinal predictors of change in the prevalence of alcohol use and heavy episodic drinking among adolescents and environmental correlates (i.e., residence, college attendance, and work status) with drinking the year after high school.Method: A national sample of study participants (N = 2,659; 55% female) in the NEXT Generation Health Study were followed annually from 10th grade (Wave 1) to the year after high school (Wave 4). Longitudinal binary outcomes, including recent (30-day) drinking and two measures of heavy episodic drinking, were examined. Transition models with generalized estimating equations estimated the effect of previous drinking behaviors, social influences, and current residential status and activity (school and/or work) on drinking prevalence.Results: Drinking increased from 40.5% among high school seniors (Wave 3) to 53.5% in Wave 4 for 30-day use, and from 29.0% to 41.2% for heavy episodic drinking. Significant predictors of 30-day drinking included previous drinking status (odds ratio [OR] = 5.48), peer drinking often (OR = 3.25), parental expectations (OR = 0.91), and current year living on campus (OR = 2.10). The same significant predictors with similar magnitudes were found for both measures of heavy episodic drinking. Peer use did not interact with college attendance or residence.Conclusions: Predictors of drinking and heavy episodic drinking during the first year after high school included being White, living on campus, previous drinking, lower parental expectations, and having peers who drink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those students who were among the first sociology graduates in the UK barely feature in standard histories of the discipline, which all have an intellectual and institutional focus. This article remedies this neglect by researching the social backgrounds and later careers of sociology graduates from the London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE] and Bedford College for Women from the first such graduate in 1907 until those graduating in the 1930s. Data for this exercise were compiled from a variety of sources. The more important are: UK censuses, especially that of 1911; various civil registration records; archived student files; and, for the graduates who entered university teaching, issues of the Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire [later the Commonwealth Universities' Yearbook]. The dataset includes all identified graduates in the BSc(Econ), Special Subject Sociology, degree from 1907 to 1935 and all in the BA (Honours) in Sociology degree from 1925 to 1939. LSE sociology graduates tended to be older and to have more cosmopolitan backgrounds, with fathers more likely than for Bedford College graduates to come from commercial rather than professional backgrounds. Both institutions' graduates' careers tended to the Civil Service and local government. LSE graduates gravitated to education, especially to higher education if male, whilst those of Bedford College went into welfare work, countering a stereotype from some previous literature that especially women graduates were heavily constrained to follow careers in schoolteaching. The article also gives comparisons with the social-class profile and career destinations of several cohorts of postwar sociology graduates, noting a number of similarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a talk given at the conference to celebrate the Work of Hanna Segal and attempts to summarise her contribution to psychoanalysis. I suggest that in addition to being the important presenter of the work of Melanie Klein, she made major contributions to our understanding of many analytic ideas, for example, symbol formation, the usefulness of the concept of the death instinct and the relation between phantasy and reality. She was a pioneer in the analytic treatment of psychosis and sh wrote important papers on literature and aesthetics. She was a great teacher and emphasised the central role played by the analytic setting in representing the attitude of the analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Majority World working children's voices have attained some prominence in debates over their well-being. Many have defended their right to work, challenging Minority World understandings of children's ‘best’ interests. Yet employers' voices remain sidelined, raising questions over the extent to which the discursive and material spaces of children's work have been decolonised. A postcolonial perspective on children's work challenges suggestions that Majority World adults (and societies) need western guidance on how childrenoughtto be raised. It also creates opportunities to look beyond western discourses of economic exploitation, to the potential for more-than-economic relationships between working children and their employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role and value of independent work of students under the direction of teacher in the conditions of credit technology of training is considered in article. Questions of the organization of independent work of students under the direction of the teacher in the conditions of education informatization are also analyzed. Didactic features of use of information and communication technologies reveal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal to the Job Corps of the Great Society era, employment programs have been advanced to fight poverty and social disorder. In today's context of stubborn unemployment and neoliberal policy change, supported work programs are once more on the policy agenda. This article asks whether work reduces crime and drug use among heavy substance users. And, if so, whether it is the income from the job that makes a difference, or something else. Using the nation's largest randomized job experiment, we first estimate the treatment effects of a basic work opportunity and then partition these effects into their economic and extra-economic components, using a logit decomposition technique generalized to event history analysis. We then interview young adults leaving drug treatment to learn whether and how they combine work with active substance use, elaborating the experiment's implications. Although supported employment fails to reduce cocaine or heroin use, we find clear experimental evidence that a basic work opportunity reduces predatory economic crime, consistent with classic criminological theory and contemporary models of harm reduction. The rate of robbery and burglary arrests fell by approximately 46 percent for the work treatment group relative to the control group, with income accounting for a significant share of the effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes toward racialized and redistributive policies like welfare are often thought of as a function of both principled ideological positions and the underlying racial attitudes a person holds. Kinder and Sanders (1996) look at racial resentment as one explanation, while Sniderman and his colleagues look to principled conservatism and authoritarianism as viable alternatives, claiming that racial resentment is merely proxying a legitimate race-neutral commitment to equality of opportunity. This article engages this debate through an experimental design which tests whether 'hard work' is rewarded in a color-blind manner. The experimental design also affords scholars the opportunity to separate the effects of the two components of racial resentment: principled values and racial animus. The results show that American norms and implicit racism serve to uniquely privilege whites in a variety of ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To examine the influence of employment social support type (e.g. co-worker, supervisor, general support) on risk of occurrence of low back pain, and prognosis (e.g. recovery, return to work status) for those who have low back pain. Methods: Systematic search of seven databases (MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL, IBSS, AMED and BNI) for prospective or case-control studies reporting findings on employment social support in populations with nonspecific back pain. Data extraction and quality assessment were carried out on included studies. A systematic critical synthesis was carried out on extracted data. Results: Thirty-two articles were included that describe 46 findings on the effect of employment social support on risk of and prognosis of back pain. Findings show that there is no effect of co-worker, supervisor or general work support on risk of new onset back pain. Weak effects of employment support were found for recovery and return to work outcomes; greater levels of co-worker support and general work support were found to be associated with less time to recovery or return to work. Conclusions: The evidence suggests that the association between employment support and prognosis may be subject to influence from wider concepts related to the employment context. This review discusses these wider issues and offers directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at analysing the trajectories of immigrants in the Italian labour market, focusing on yearly transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa. Regression models show that, controlling for age, educational attainment and region, immigrant workers lose their jobs more often than natives but, once being unemployed they have more probabilities of finding a job than natives. As the probabilities of both transitions can be affected by characteristics of the initial status as well, the two transitions have been analysed separately. For the risk of losing a job, the segregation of immigrants in the secondary labour market seems to be the main reason of their penalization, but also the main reason of their advantage in job seeking, since their unemployment spells are shorter than those of natives, although at the cost of accepting worse working conditions. Analyses are based on the yearly transition matrices of Italian Labour Force Surveys, from 2005 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Caring for people with dementia remains gendered with women still expected to undertake much of the paid and unpaid caring work in the community. This study draws on survey and interview data collected from 48 women community workers in Alzheimers Societies throughout New Zealand. Through the lens of the women community workers the gendered expectations about paid and unpaid work are revealed. The paper argues that cultural ideas about gender differences in caring abilities have implications for women and men as the population ages and the dementia 'epidemic' impacts in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the nature and evolution of the work of the private security guard, as of 2011. The author discusses the results of her 2009-2010 study of managers and employees at private security companies in Germany. She says the private security industry has expanded sharply in Germany and globally, citing factors including outsourcing. She notes that while security guard has become officially recognized as a profession in Germany, most private security guards continue to face contingent working conditions, with temporary contracts and low wages typical. She analyzes their work in the context of Taylorism, or scientific human resource management, and of the general conditions of service-sector work.

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]

Drawing on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles, this article examines how Latina nannies create workplace solidarity in a public park. This article reveals how nannies use public spaces in the neighborhoods in which they work to establish ties similar to co-worker relations in other settings. This paper demonstrates how nannies create a community at the park by incorporating park staff into their activities, reinforcing group values such as sharing and reciprocity, and distinguishing themselves from their employers. Adding to previous research which highlights the atomization and stigmatization that comes with domestic employment, this article shows how nannies create co-worker relationships that are buffers against unfavorable job conditions such as solitary work settings and unappreciative employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the relationship between trade unions and learning in the workplace, particularly in relation to the enhancement of worker employability profiles. With the restructuring and modernising of the European steel industry as its context, this paper argues that the organisational and structural features of a sector have a profound influence on the way workplace learning is organised. Equally, trade union organisation and approaches also shape the learning agenda. In the steel industry, trade unions have failed to address the significance of workplace learning, partly because of the ways that they approach this topic. In the context of traditional sectors, with relatively vulnerable workforces, the weakened state of union bargaining positions means that they have limited capacity to address workforce employability or workplace participation. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal. [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]

The article offers information on promising progressive proposals related to decent work and public investment in the U.S. It cites that creating new vision of the economy will help reduce the inequality connected with the national wealth. The National Jobs for All Coalition (NJFAC) is suggesting major program called the "Drive for Decent Work" which focused on economic inequality. In addition, the offering aims to vision and inspire moral imperative in a more generous principle and help overcome the ideology of selfishness.

The article relates a study which examines how the labor market's transformation affected men and women differently, in terms of standard of living, and well-being, in Russia. The study reveals that large number of the working population, both men and women, exploits physical resources by engaging in multiple employment, working long hours, and engaging in heavy physical labor. The author notes that people employed in heavy physical jobs reinforce the negative effect of heavy physical labor by having negative feelings about their low status and that poverty is the strongest factor having an adverse impact on emotional health.

The article relates the results of a survey conducted in 2005 by the Levada Center in Russia, which is based on the International Program of Comparative Research, on Russian population's assessments and opinions concerning different aspects of their work activity. The focus of the study was on people's attitudes toward work, toward a specific job, and toward the organization they work for. The results of the survey show that for a significant portion of the respondents, self-employment and entrepreneurship have become increasingly attractive. Results also indicate the amount of pay has less influence on a person's affiliation with an enterprise than does the set of social benefits that the worker receives.

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]

Recent research has suggested that patterns of economic activity among UK Pakistani and Bangladeshi women may be changing. It is argued that a younger, UK-educated generation of women is both better equipped to compete in the labour market than older migrants and more likely to subscribe to gender roles that view employment outside the home as a legitimate option. Thus far, small sample sizes have restricted investigation into the relationships between life-stage variables and economic activity among qualified Bangladeshi and Pakistani women. Furthermore, these two groups have often been combined in quantitative analyses, thereby precluding any examination of differences. Analyses of data from the UK Family Resources Survey reveal that economic activity was persistently low between 1996/7 and 2001/2 for both Pakistani and Bangladeshi women as a whole, and particularly low among Bangladeshis. Though economic activity was far more common among well-qualified Bangladeshi and Pakistani women than among those without qualifications, marriage and presence of young children continue to be important predictors of economic inactivity. There is evidence that the 'domestic role' may be a preferred option for many of these women. Nevertheless, it should be recognised that such 'preferences' are constructed within particular socio-economic contexts. I suggest that, although gender roles are fluid and negotiable, they are unlikely to be challenged unless female labour force participation presents good prospects in terms of economic returns and social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juggling work and care presents particular challenges to carers and employers. Employers are increasingly under pressure, both from within organizations and from recent government legislation and policy, to develop family-friendly policies to support informal carers in the workplace. Yet existing 'family-friendly' schemes and services are still primarily designed for working parents of young children and rarely address the needs of employees who care for older or disabled adults. This paper reports on a study which investigated how working carers and managers in two public sector organizations - a Social Services Department (SSD) and a National Health Service (NHS) Trust - combined their work and caring responsibilities. A multi-method approach was adopted consisting of five phases. First, a profile of the two organizations was established, followed by a short screening questionnaire to all employees to identify who was caring for an older adult over the age of 60. Third, a lengthier postal survey was sent to the 365 carers who had indicated a willingness to participate further. In the fourth and fifth phases, carers and managers were interviewed in depth about their experiences. This paper reports briefly on the survey, but then concentrates in particular on what was said in the interviews about what helps and hinders working carers of older adults. Despite the existence of policies to support carers, our findings suggest that these were far less important than informal support from colleagues and a sympathetic manager in the workplace. Commuting distance between work, home and the older person also posed difficulties for carers, along with inflexible schedules and work overload. Employers are urged to explore these issues further if they are serious about recruiting and retaining employees, and developing the work - life balance agenda to meet the needs of those caring for older and disabled adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The career development needs of counselor education students beginning a professional job search have not been systematically explored. Although job clubs have been linked to positive outcomes, there is no empirical evidence that they meet the needs of this group. The purpose of this study was to examine how counselor education students viewed a proposed job club intervention using focus group data. The findings suggested that students had strong interest in a group that emphasized empowerment and collaboration, offered predictable social support, and provided training in specific job search skills. Implications for counselor education and career counseling practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with White persons, Black/African American persons in the United States continue to experience high rates of educational deficits and employment stagnation as well as lower college graduation rates. This study examined the influences on Black/African American and White college students' high school completion, college attendance, and career choice. Results indicate that future income and future status have a greater influence on the career choice of Black/African American college students than on the career choice of White college students. The authors discuss these findings and present implications for career development professionals. [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]

abstract: What we do when we get home is influenced by what we do at work. In this article I analyse the relationship between market work and domestic activities from the perspectives of economic theories of time use, i.e. the work-leisure model (compares income work versus other activities) and the household production model (compares income work and household work), and sociological theory treating the issue of how leisure activities compensate for work strains. The empirical analysis of time use is based on the Norwegian time-use survey from 2000-2001. Estimates on working conditions are based on the Norwegian level of living surveys from 1996 and 2000 for 100 occupations found in both surveys. The analyses indicate that both physical strains and low autonomy at the place of employment lead to an allocation of time away from paid work towards unpaid work and leisure, but with considerable differences for men and women. The findings indicate that working conditions are part of the trade-off between paid and unpaid work, and that leisure activities may compensate for human needs being neglected 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]

Occupational welfare has been a relatively neglected area in both theoretical and empirical studies of the welfare state despite its importance to overall levels of social provision. Surprisingly, there has not yet been a comprehensive examination of British occupational social provision, as opposed to non-wage benefits more generally or specific provision such as pensions, housing or childcare. This neglect can be explained both by the perception that occupational welfare plays a relatively insignificant role in contemporary welfare states and by a general lack of clarity regarding its definition and scope, factors which have added to the difficulties surrounding its conceptualization and measurement. Despite the lack of attention it has received, however, recent pressures have propelled the issue higher up the social policy agenda, increasing the need for a clearer conception of what constitutes occupational social provision and a more comprehensive assessment of its contemporary significance. This paper seeks to shed some light on to these areas by drawing on comparative and UK data in order to carry out an audit of occupational social provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a general review is made of the basic contributions of present-day sociology to the topic of the crisis of the labour society and the transformations experienced in labour biographical cycles. And so, it starts by reviewing the changes in the environment of industrial society and in the meanings attributed to work and employment within it. Next, it makes a statement about the most characteristic approaches to the sociological study of the labour process, placing special emphasis on the theoretical contributions that study the role of the strategies of the various social individuals and protagonists involved in the development of this process. Lastly, it tackles an appraisal of the polemic points of the new (and contradictory) discourses on the formalization of conventional mechanisms of social representation in working life. The article closes with a general consideration about the new trends for restructuring of the salary ratio and the labour biography, a restructuration that even affects the very concepts of labour, activity and competence, thereby advocating a necessary and fertile specific sociological view in the approach made to these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines employment in the Canadian automobile industry in terms of Beck's (1992) Risk Society. We demonstrate that risk transcends terms of employment, to encompass injury, lay-off, and displacement. Work becomes increasingly risky with the blurring of employment relations within and among three geographic scales: the globe, the locale and the plant. We argue for an embodied account of the experience of risk which emphasizes the inscription of different temporal and spatial configurations of work on the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper joins central concerns in the sociology of work and the sociology of aging. Age differences in work commitment and work values are examined, as well as their work and nonwork determinants, using data from 4,567 American and 3,735 Japanese employees. Our results show that older men are more committed to work than younger men in both Japan and the United States. This pattern also holds for American women, but there are no age differences in work commitment among Japanese women. Moreover, there are greater age differences among the Japanese in the importance placed on good pay. This is consistent with the view that there has been greater cultural change in recent years in Japan than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses work ethics in the U.S. According to the article, discretion is not new to the U.S. workplace. In 1800, close to 80 percent of all U.S. workers were self-employed. Many of these workers had high discretion jobs as farmers, or as independent tradesmen or skilled craftsmen. In the hundred years between the 1870s and 1970s, the U.S. underwent a remarkable transition from a rural society of craftsmen and farmers to the most powerful country in world history. In the early part of this period, the country integrated successive waves of immigrants from all over the world into the mainstream of U.S. life. Even more remarkable, this phenomenal growth in national prosperity and individual standards of living was accomplished by enhancing rather than restricting political liberties. The successful industrialization of the U.S. implicitly taught a powerful lesson--the key to success lay not with upgrading front-line workers but with downgrading and simplifying their jobs.

Presents information on a study which discussed measurements of time spent at work by parents in the United States. Results of the Current Population Survey; Social-psychological factors affecting working parents; Predictor variables on the changing workforce.