Knowledge, as intellectual capital in organizations, is one of the most valuable resources in the global economy; yet knowledge management research has been largely contained both within organizational boundaries and from the perspective of the West (in particular the United States). Here, the views of a diverse range of well-known academic researchers, industry leaders, and public policy experts have been brought together to show how knowledge and knowledge management perspectives vary across different cultures, in different contexts, using different processes for different purposes.

Coercion and Wage Labour presents novel histories of people who experienced physical, social, political or cultural compulsion in the course of paid work. Broad in scope, the chapters examine diverse areas of work including textile production, war industries, civil service and domestic labour, in contexts from the Middle Ages to the present day. They demonstrate that wages have consistently shaped working people’s experiences, and failed to protect workers from coercion. Instead, wages emerge as versatile tools to bind, control, and exploit workers. Remuneration mirrors the distribution of power in labour relations, often separating employers physically and emotionally from their employees, and disguising coercion. The book makes historical narratives accessible for interdisciplinary audiences. Most chapters are preceded by illustrations by artists invited to visually conceptualise the book’s key messages and to emphasise the presence of the body and landscape in the realm of work. In turn, the chapter texts reflect back on the artworks, creating an intense intermedial dialogue that offers mutually relational ‘translations’ and narrations of labour coercion. Other contributions written by art scholars discuss how coercion in remunerated labour is constructed and reflected in artistic practice. The collection serves as an innovative and creative tool for teaching, and raises awareness that narrating history is always contingent on the medium chosen and its inherent constraints and possibilities. Praise for Coercion and Wage Labour Coercion and Wage Labour is a pioneering volume. It makes a well-founded break with the widespread misconception that wage labour is by definition free from coercion. The fourteen historical case studies ... lead to the conclusion that wage labourers too were subject to many forms of coercion and that usually their “freedom” was and is only relative. But something else makes this book special: throughout the text there are artistic illustrations that enter into a dialogue with the individual chapters, which in turn reflect on the images. This creates an inspiring interaction that complements the volume’s interdisciplinary nature. Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

In recent debates over poverty and development, notions of worth, dignity, and human rights have come to the forefront. This publication addresses the link between the theoretical notion of dignity as a social primary good and its material expressions in daily life from comparative social anthropological and historical perspectives. The empirical analysis is based on over one hundred in-depth interviews with lone mothers living in different cultural settings in Costa Rica. In addition, a unique and innovative national social policy measure aimed at promoting dignity and self-worth as a means to exit poverty and secure sustainable development is assessed.

This volume presents research on intercultural relations in South-Eastern Europe, including the way they are imagined and managed in different social and historical contexts. After an introductory critique of the concepts of interculturalism and citizenship, the situation in Romania is investigated. The second part deals with a series of in-depth comparative studies, namely on the Roma minorities in Romania and Bulgaria. But it also considers the case of the Pomaks in Bulgaria, of Russians living in parallel societies in the Baltic States and the recent evolution of interculturalism in the region.

Labor regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting, and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of World War II to 1989, and to think about how their experiences relate to debates about labor history, both European and global. The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by re-examining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recovering the voices of the workers who built them. The contributors look at work and workers in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They explore the often contentious relationship between politics and labor policy, dealing with diverse topics including workers’ safety and risks; labor rights and protests; working women’s politics and professions; migrant workers and social welfare; attempts to control workers’ behavior and stem unemployment; and cases of incomplete, compromised, or even abandoned processes of proletarianization. Workers are presented as active agents in resisting and supporting changes in labor policies, in choosing allegiances, and in defining the very nature of work.

Southeast Europe's history of the last two centuries is marked by deep transformations and upheavals: the emergence and disappearance of states; ethnic conflicts and wars; changes of political systems; economic crises; migration movements; and natural disasters. Most of these upheavals have been experienced as deep crises forcing people to adapt to often radically new situations. This can cause crisis management to become a permanent way of life. The book focuses on the cultures of crisis. It analyzes the reactions of societies or individuals to them, their impact on everyday life, on peoples' strategies of coping, on the processes of adaptation, and on peoples' attitudes. Focus is placed on crises relating to migration and post-socialist transformation, to politics and religion, and to labour relations. (Series: Ethnologia Balkanica, Vol. 18) [Subject: Sociology, Southeast European Studies, Politics]Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

This book is about state socialism, not as a political system, but as an "ecosystem" of interactions between the state and the citizens it sought to control. It includes case studies that demonstrate how the major ideological principles of socialism translated into motives guiding people's lives. This unique post-revisionist study focuses on people's lives and experiences rather than political systems. The studies are grouped around three common elements—socialist labor, the new socialist man, and the socialist way of life. Using first-hand accounts, the authors find minute deviations from the norms that eventually lead to renegotiation of the norms themselves. Focusing on routines, not extremes, they present socialism in its "normal" state. The volume demonstrates different national strategies for dealing with the past in the post-socialist world. Studies of the socialist past may strive to be objective, but their messages tend to be complex. Rather than arriving at one truth about the nature of socialism, this volume explores the many ways people have survived the system.

Belarus has emerged from communism in a unique manner as an authoritarian regime. The author, who has lived in Belarus for several years, highlights several mechanisms of tyranny, beyond the regime’s ability to control and repress, which should not be underestimated. The book immerses the reader in the depths of the Belarusian countryside, among the kolkhozes and rural communities at the heart of this authoritarian regime under Alexander Lukashenko, and offers vivid descriptions of the everyday life of Belarusians. It sheds light on the reasons why part of the population supports Lukashenko and takes a fresh look at the functioning of what has been called 'the last dictatorship in Europe'.