Policy Press

Sociology of Work and Organisations

Showing 1-12 of 55 items.

Where's the ‘Human’ in Human Resource Management?

Managing Work in the 21st Century

Drawing on case studies from the UK, Ireland, US and Australia, this book addresses the major workplace challenges of HRM today to create a textbook for the 21st century.

Bristol Uni Press

Crises at Work

Economy, Climate and Pandemic

It is impossible to view the news at present without hearing talk of crisis: the economy, the climate, the pandemic. This book asks how these larger societal issues lead to a crisis with work, making it ever more precarious, unequal and intense. Experts diagnose the nature of the problem and offer a programme for transcending above the crises.

Bristol Uni Press

The Harms of Work

An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy

This book discusses workplace harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. It investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift to flexibility and highlights working conditions and organisational practices within which multiple harms occur.

Bristol Uni Press

Welfare to Work in Contemporary European Welfare States

Legal, Sociological and Philosophical Perspectives on Justice and Domination

With welfare to work programmes under intense scrutiny, this book ranges widely across Europe to review existing policies and explore future ones. It shows how many schemes do not adequately address social rights and lived experiences, and consider alternatives based on theories of non-domination.

Policy Press

Recasting Workers' Power

Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age

Drawing on ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses their implications for labour of how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change. It explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalization can be harnessed for counter mobilisation.

Bristol Uni Press

Dealing in Uncertainty

Insurance in the Age of Finance

This book conducts an in-depth investigation of one of the largest and longest-established insurance industries in Europe: British life insurance. The author draws on over 40 oral history interviews to trace how the sector is changed since the 1970s, a period characterised by rampant financialisation and neoliberalisation.

Bristol Uni Press

Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy

Amazon and the Power of Organization

Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and original empirical data, this book explores how different working conditions estrange and alienate workers, and how, despite these, workers find ways to organize and express their agency. This is an important analysis of work on the digital shop floor for the scholars of platform economy.

Bristol Uni Press

What Town Planners Do

Exploring Planning Practices and the Public Interest through Workplace Ethnographies

Presenting the complexities of doing planning work, with its moral and practical dilemmas, this rich ethnographic study analyses today’s planning scene through the stories of four diverse working environments.

Policy Press

The Politics of Migrant Labour

Exit, Voice, and Social Reproduction

At a time when worker shortages have emerged as a global challenge, this highly original book bridges migration and labour studies to examine worker mobility and its management. This will be a valuable resource for both scholars and practitioners.

Bristol Uni Press

Researching and Writing Differently

This book considers new and alternative ways of doing scholarship in management studies and the social sciences. Spotlighting new methods and voices, it will be an invaluable resource for current and future scholars.

Policy Press

Childcare Struggles, Maternal Workers and Social Reproduction

Spanning the UK, North America and Australia, this comparative study brings maternal workers’ politicized voices to the centre of contemporary debates on class, work and gender.

The book illustrates why social reproduction needs to be at the centre of a critical theory of work, care and mothering for post-pandemic times.

Bristol Uni Press

Older Workers in Transition

European Experiences in a Neoliberal Era

This collection explores a variety of job transitions for older people, including voluntary job moves, coming out of unemployment, temporary labour and passages into retirement. Each chapter hears the voices of older workers and employers, and is positioned within the context of various European countries, with important lessons for future policy.

Bristol Uni Press