It's a living! That fact, no one can deny. Yet the significance of work--productive activity which alters the physical environment to meet human needs--goes far beyond the paycheck. Work involves, among other things, embracing a set of roles and beliefs, mastering skills and knowledge, and behaving in ways considered appropriate for the achievement of a desired level of productivity and quality. This book is an informative and highly readable global survey of the various aspects of work in market and industrial societies. Its extensive general introduction and the seven section introductions discuss the role of work in society and the problems and satisfactions associated with working. The book's eighteen chapters, written by well-known specialists, spotlight characteristics which give each occupation its distinctive cultural identification. Featured in this compendium of work and working are factory workers, white collar employees, construction personnel, farmers and migrant workers, miners, railroaders, longshoremen, sanitation workers, firefighters, and fishermen.

Economic, technological, and sociopolitical changes have been transforming the cultures of advanced industrial societies in profoundly important ways during the past few decades. This ambitious work examines changes in religious beliefs, in motives for work, in the issues that give rise to political conflict, in the importance people attach to having children and families, and in attitudes toward divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. Ronald Inglehart's earlier book, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, 1977), broke new ground by discovering a major intergenerational shift in the values of the populations of advanced industrial societies. This new volume demonstrates that this value shift is part of a much broader process of cultural change that is gradually transforming political, economic, and social life in these societies. Inglehart uses a massive body of time-series survey data from twenty-six nations, gathered from 1970 through 1988, to analyze the cultural changes that are occurring as younger generations gradually replace older ones in the adult population. These changes have far-reaching political implications, and they seem to be transforming the economic growth rates of societies and the kind of economic development that is pursued.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Mastering the Job Market: Career Issues for Master's Level Industrial-Organizational Psychologists begins with an introduction to the field of I-O psychology and presents the empirical basis for the book, a large scale survey of I-O master's graduates and a second survey of their employers. Survey methodology and demographic data for I-O master's graduates and employers are presented. The remaining six chapters of this volume address a myriad of issues related to the careers of master's level I-O psychologists based on the survey data and insights from I-O master's faculty from top ranked I-O master's programs.In Chapter 2, L'Heureux and Van Hein provide information about job opportunities available to I-O master's graduates. The authors draw heavily on the Graduate Survey data to identify common occupational titles, organizational roles, and salary ranges for both recent I-O graduates and those later in their careers. Job positions reflect a broad range of roles that include talent management, data analytics, human resources, organizational development, and consulting. I-O psychology master's graduates overwhelming perceive their I-O degree to be valuable and report a high level of career satisfaction"--

Work and Politics develops a historical and comparative sociology of workplace relations in industrial capitalist societies. Professor Sabel argues that the system of mass production using specialized machines and mostly unskilled workers was the result of the distribution of power and wealth in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain and the United States, not of an inexorable logic of technological advance. Once in place, this system created the need for workers with systematically different ideas about the acquisition of skill and the desirability of long-term employment. Professor Sabel shows how capitalists have played on naturally existing division in the workforce in order to match workers with diverse ambitions to jobs in different parts of the labor market. But he also demonstrates the limits, different from work group to work group, of these forms of collaboration.

The Sociology of Work and Occupations, Second Edition connects work and occupations to the key subjects of sociological inquiry: social and technological change, race, ethnicity, gender, social class, education, social networks, and modes of organization. In 15 chapters, Rudi Volti succinctly but comprehensively covers the changes in the world of work, encompassing everything from gathering and hunting to working in today′s Information Age. This book introduces students to a highly relevant analysis of society today. In this new and updated edition, globalization and technology are each given their own chapter and discussed in great depth.

World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

Changing Life Patterns in Western Industrial Societies

In industrialized cultures, what we do to earn a living is usually divorced from what we do the rest of the time. This contrasts with non-market cultures, where work is an intimate part of life. People of such cultures perceive a unity between hunting and raising a family, between making pots and training children, between the building of houses and the practice of religion. Often there is no separate word for work because work is such an all-encompassing activity. Work in Non-Market and Transitional Societies is an overview of the organization of work in diverse societies, the division of labor, the notions of time that affect work and working, and the kinds of adaptations people make when transplanted from one society to another. The groundbreaking study encompasses pre-industrial and non-market societies as well as cultures in the process of change and modernization. This double focus provides an unusual and stimulating perspective for both anthropology and the social sciences. This book features a broad theoretical introduction, delineating the major issues and aspects of investigation in this field. It then presents twenty essays that show how work is carried on by women and men in varied societies and cultures. The authors provide guidelines for understanding the different value systems and discuss why each approach to work is appropriate in its specific societal structure.

This book is a welcome reassertion of an old tradition of interdisdplinary research. That tradition has tended to atrophy in the last decade, largely because of an enormous expansion of the domain of neoc1assical economics. The expansion has fed on two sdentific developments: first, human capital theory; second, contract theory. Both developments have taken phenomena critical to the operation of the economy but previously understood in terms of categories separate and distinct from those with which economists generally work and sought to apply the same analytical techniques that we use to understand other economic problems. Human capital theory has applied conventional techniques to questions of labor supply. It began this endeavor with the supply of trained labor and then expanded to a general theory of labor supply by broadening the analysis to the allocation of time over the individual's life, the interdependendes of supply decisions within the family, and finally to the formation of the family itself. Similarly, contract theory has moved from a theory that explains the existence of c10sed economic institutions to a theory of their formation and internaioperation. The hallmark of both of these developments is the extension and applica tion of analytical techniques based on purposive maximization under con traints and the interaction of individual decision makers through a com petitive market or its analogue.