Pub Date : 2023-03-07DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155780
B. Mohapatra
processes at work in the British sex industry, most notably colourism (Chapter 4). Bowen identifies the ideal sex worker as being thin, white, blonde, cisgender – against whom all other sex workers are evaluated. This valuation determines the financial resources available to different placements within the hierarchy, putting white (-passing) sex workers at the top. Moreover, Bowen highlights the hierarchization of whiteness the Brexit referendum revealed, showing how ‘dark’ Europeans from Eastern Europe are the least desirable among buyers. Bowen’s engagement with the recognition of sex work as work shines through the two concluding chapters of the book. By following her interlocutors’ frustrations and disillusionment with work itself, the author returns on Marx’s thesis of alienation. Through this gesture, the book shows how sex workers’ exploitation is not inherent in the selling of sex itself; rather, it stems from the working conditions established by policies as socioeconomic interactions. These specific and precarious working conditions are shared between sex work and non-sex work, inducing workers to engage in duality to fill in the gaps left open by processes of precarization. Bowen engages directly with this phenomenon through an extensive commentary of current policies around sex work. She concludes by demystifying the rhetoric of victimhood surrounding sex workers by showing how they are neither treated as victims nor as real workers. Throughout this book, Bowen puts forward a thorough demystification of the stigma surrounding sex work from both policy-makers as well as (some) feminist scholarship. The book combines this demystification with a detailed analysis of duality as both a cultural and a socio-economic process, shedding light on the intricate strategies put forward by dual workers. Finally, duality emerges not as a rigid process, but as a fluid work arrangement with multiple and varied end-goals, from short-term project to stable duality towards class mobility. The book has the merit to be accessible to a wide audience, from policy-makers to academics, interested in informal market relations and sex work. Work, Money and Duality does a great job in highlighting the lived experiences of sex workers as they negotiate dual lives within a precarized political economy.
{"title":"Book Review: Lars Meier, Working Class Experiences of Social Inequalities in (Post-) Industrial Landscapes: Feelings of Class","authors":"B. Mohapatra","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155780","url":null,"abstract":"processes at work in the British sex industry, most notably colourism (Chapter 4). Bowen identifies the ideal sex worker as being thin, white, blonde, cisgender – against whom all other sex workers are evaluated. This valuation determines the financial resources available to different placements within the hierarchy, putting white (-passing) sex workers at the top. Moreover, Bowen highlights the hierarchization of whiteness the Brexit referendum revealed, showing how ‘dark’ Europeans from Eastern Europe are the least desirable among buyers. Bowen’s engagement with the recognition of sex work as work shines through the two concluding chapters of the book. By following her interlocutors’ frustrations and disillusionment with work itself, the author returns on Marx’s thesis of alienation. Through this gesture, the book shows how sex workers’ exploitation is not inherent in the selling of sex itself; rather, it stems from the working conditions established by policies as socioeconomic interactions. These specific and precarious working conditions are shared between sex work and non-sex work, inducing workers to engage in duality to fill in the gaps left open by processes of precarization. Bowen engages directly with this phenomenon through an extensive commentary of current policies around sex work. She concludes by demystifying the rhetoric of victimhood surrounding sex workers by showing how they are neither treated as victims nor as real workers. Throughout this book, Bowen puts forward a thorough demystification of the stigma surrounding sex work from both policy-makers as well as (some) feminist scholarship. The book combines this demystification with a detailed analysis of duality as both a cultural and a socio-economic process, shedding light on the intricate strategies put forward by dual workers. Finally, duality emerges not as a rigid process, but as a fluid work arrangement with multiple and varied end-goals, from short-term project to stable duality towards class mobility. The book has the merit to be accessible to a wide audience, from policy-makers to academics, interested in informal market relations and sex work. Work, Money and Duality does a great job in highlighting the lived experiences of sex workers as they negotiate dual lives within a precarized political economy.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":"1115 - 1117"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45138725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-07DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155783
Carlos J. Gil-Hernández, Guillem Vidal, Sergio Torrejón Perez
Neo-Weberian occupational class schemas, rooted in industrial-age employment relations, are a standard socio-economic position measure in social stratification. Previous research highlighted Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP)-based schemas’ difficulties in keeping up with changing labour markets, but few tested alternative explanations. This article explores how job tasks linked to technological change and rising economic inequality might confound the links between employment relations, classes, and life chances. Using the European Working Conditions Survey covering the European Union (EU)-27 countries, this article analyses over time and by gender: 1) the task distribution between social classes; and 2) whether tasks predict class membership and life chances. Decomposition analyses suggest that tasks explain class membership and wage inequality better than theorised employment relations. However, intellectual/routine tasks and digital tools driving income inequality are well-stratified by occupational classes. Therefore, this article does not argue for a class (schema) revolution but for fine-tuning the old instrument to portray market inequalities in the digital age.
{"title":"Technological Change, Tasks and Class Inequality in Europe","authors":"Carlos J. Gil-Hernández, Guillem Vidal, Sergio Torrejón Perez","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155783","url":null,"abstract":"Neo-Weberian occupational class schemas, rooted in industrial-age employment relations, are a standard socio-economic position measure in social stratification. Previous research highlighted Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP)-based schemas’ difficulties in keeping up with changing labour markets, but few tested alternative explanations. This article explores how job tasks linked to technological change and rising economic inequality might confound the links between employment relations, classes, and life chances. Using the European Working Conditions Survey covering the European Union (EU)-27 countries, this article analyses over time and by gender: 1) the task distribution between social classes; and 2) whether tasks predict class membership and life chances. Decomposition analyses suggest that tasks explain class membership and wage inequality better than theorised employment relations. However, intellectual/routine tasks and digital tools driving income inequality are well-stratified by occupational classes. Therefore, this article does not argue for a class (schema) revolution but for fine-tuning the old instrument to portray market inequalities in the digital age.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47309552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-07DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155280
O. Loza, P. Roscoe
Scholarship on the graduate labour market, preoccupied by structure, agency, and power, has largely focused on the market’s discursive composition. It has not yet paid significant attention to the concrete, material apparatus of the market and how this shapes market outcomes. In contrast, we approach the construction of the graduate labour market from a new materialist perspective and with reference to the growing literature of ‘market studies’. We consider the empirical case of a graduate recruitment hackathon to show how the hackathon’s material features were implicated in enacting a specific occurrence of the graduate labour market. The agendas of the hackathon’s designers and their visions of the graduate labour market were enacted in the hackathon’s material arrangements, but this enactment was not always reliable: in some instances materiality resisted and erased corporate agendas. Our article contributes to the sociology of work by highlighting the dynamic relationship between materiality and power (re)production in the graduate labour market.
{"title":"Making Markets Material: Enactments, Resistances, and Erasures of Materiality in the Graduate Labour Market","authors":"O. Loza, P. Roscoe","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155280","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship on the graduate labour market, preoccupied by structure, agency, and power, has largely focused on the market’s discursive composition. It has not yet paid significant attention to the concrete, material apparatus of the market and how this shapes market outcomes. In contrast, we approach the construction of the graduate labour market from a new materialist perspective and with reference to the growing literature of ‘market studies’. We consider the empirical case of a graduate recruitment hackathon to show how the hackathon’s material features were implicated in enacting a specific occurrence of the graduate labour market. The agendas of the hackathon’s designers and their visions of the graduate labour market were enacted in the hackathon’s material arrangements, but this enactment was not always reliable: in some instances materiality resisted and erased corporate agendas. Our article contributes to the sociology of work by highlighting the dynamic relationship between materiality and power (re)production in the graduate labour market.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47233745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-05DOI: 10.1177/09500170221144396
A. Gasparre, L. Tirabeni
This article seeks to advance the understanding of how human and material agency enmesh in human-robotic workplaces. By means of a qualitative study, the practical use of robots is investigated within two organisations for medical rehabilitation. The theoretical framework combines Andrew Pickering’s ‘dance of agency’ with a process-oriented view of technology as technical rationality. It shows how resistances and accommodations are enacted by both humans and nonhumans as analytical loci of the dance of agency, and it explains how the experimental activities that are concerned with technology adoption and use are emergently fixed in formal or informal rules of coordination of action – the ‘choreographies of care’. By extending the processual orientation of Pickering’s ‘dance of agency’, and by further elaborating on the organisational implications of technological change within it, the article increases understanding of how the transformation of material agency may enact processes of change in the organisational culture.
{"title":"Choreographies of Care: A Dance of Human and Material Agency in Rehabilitation Work with Robots","authors":"A. Gasparre, L. Tirabeni","doi":"10.1177/09500170221144396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170221144396","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to advance the understanding of how human and material agency enmesh in human-robotic workplaces. By means of a qualitative study, the practical use of robots is investigated within two organisations for medical rehabilitation. The theoretical framework combines Andrew Pickering’s ‘dance of agency’ with a process-oriented view of technology as technical rationality. It shows how resistances and accommodations are enacted by both humans and nonhumans as analytical loci of the dance of agency, and it explains how the experimental activities that are concerned with technology adoption and use are emergently fixed in formal or informal rules of coordination of action – the ‘choreographies of care’. By extending the processual orientation of Pickering’s ‘dance of agency’, and by further elaborating on the organisational implications of technological change within it, the article increases understanding of how the transformation of material agency may enact processes of change in the organisational culture.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48447247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155752
K. Wilkinson, C. Mumford, M. Carroll
A relatively recent development in the field of work and employment is organisational provisions around employee fertility – notably policies and benefits related to assisted reproductive technologies, also known as fertility treatment. Work, employment and organisation scholars have only scratched the surface of this issue. This Debates and Controversies article takes an intersectional political economy approach to explore the opportunities, challenges and dilemmas at the interface between assisted reproductive technologies, society, employment and work. We consider how ‘stratified reproduction’ may be affected by employer interest in assisted reproductive technologies; what employers may gain, risk or lose by developing provisions; how assisted reproductive technologies-related ‘reproductive work’ intersects with paid employment; and the possible consequences, including occupational stratification due to assisted reproductive technologies-related career penalty. We call for further research, especially focusing on the most disadvantaged in society and employment, and approaches to workplace support led by compassion over cost-benefit calculation.
{"title":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Work, Employment and Society: Extending the Debate on Organisational Involvement in/Responsibilities around Fertility and Reproduction","authors":"K. Wilkinson, C. Mumford, M. Carroll","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155752","url":null,"abstract":"A relatively recent development in the field of work and employment is organisational provisions around employee fertility – notably policies and benefits related to assisted reproductive technologies, also known as fertility treatment. Work, employment and organisation scholars have only scratched the surface of this issue. This Debates and Controversies article takes an intersectional political economy approach to explore the opportunities, challenges and dilemmas at the interface between assisted reproductive technologies, society, employment and work. We consider how ‘stratified reproduction’ may be affected by employer interest in assisted reproductive technologies; what employers may gain, risk or lose by developing provisions; how assisted reproductive technologies-related ‘reproductive work’ intersects with paid employment; and the possible consequences, including occupational stratification due to assisted reproductive technologies-related career penalty. We call for further research, especially focusing on the most disadvantaged in society and employment, and approaches to workplace support led by compassion over cost-benefit calculation.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":"1419 - 1433"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43638400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-27DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155294
Gerbrand Tholen
Organisational fit represents a crucial criterion in the hiring process. This article aims to understand how employers and external recruitment consultants define and apply organisational fit in professional labour markets, such as engineering, marketing and finance. It also investigates how the use of organisational fit in hiring can lead to social bias within these labour markets. It relies on semi-structured interviews with 47 external recruitment consultants who assist employers in these sectors. The article draws on Relational Inequality Theory to demonstrate how hiring managers and consultants use organisational fit to create and justify boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable candidates. Claim-making supports the rationalisation and legitimisation in the exclusion of groups of candidates. The article critically informs human resource management, business and psychology literature that perceive organisational fit as a largely benign criterion for recruitment. It also extends sociological and critical management literature by delineating three main exclusionary mechanisms in matching candidates for organisational fit.
{"title":"Matching Candidates to Culture: How Assessments of Organisational Fit Shape the Hiring Process","authors":"Gerbrand Tholen","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155294","url":null,"abstract":"Organisational fit represents a crucial criterion in the hiring process. This article aims to understand how employers and external recruitment consultants define and apply organisational fit in professional labour markets, such as engineering, marketing and finance. It also investigates how the use of organisational fit in hiring can lead to social bias within these labour markets. It relies on semi-structured interviews with 47 external recruitment consultants who assist employers in these sectors. The article draws on Relational Inequality Theory to demonstrate how hiring managers and consultants use organisational fit to create and justify boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable candidates. Claim-making supports the rationalisation and legitimisation in the exclusion of groups of candidates. The article critically informs human resource management, business and psychology literature that perceive organisational fit as a largely benign criterion for recruitment. It also extends sociological and critical management literature by delineating three main exclusionary mechanisms in matching candidates for organisational fit.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45762190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-22DOI: 10.1177/09500170221150087
Ashley Baber
Gig work – accessing job opportunities through an app – has brought renewed attention to precarious non-standard labour arrangements. Scholars have begun to consider the intermediary role that platforms such as Uber, Lyft and Doordash play in exploiting and controlling workers. Yet, literature on labour market intermediaries has muddied conceptions of their role, impact and outcomes for workers by lumping a variety of institutions under the same umbrella term. Drawing from previous theoretical and empirical works throughout the temporary help and gig industries, this article proposes a reconceptualisation of labour market intermediaries as labour market engineers highlighting four mutually reinforcing features. This sociological reconceptualisation updates the understanding of for-profit labour market intermediaries by demonstrating the market making behaviours of firms of on-demand labour in the US context. Likewise, this reconceptualisation notes how gig firms have adapted and expanded these features in ways that increase precarity for workers.
{"title":"Labour Market Engineers: Reconceptualising Labour Market Intermediaries with the Rise of the Gig Economy in the United States","authors":"Ashley Baber","doi":"10.1177/09500170221150087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170221150087","url":null,"abstract":"Gig work – accessing job opportunities through an app – has brought renewed attention to precarious non-standard labour arrangements. Scholars have begun to consider the intermediary role that platforms such as Uber, Lyft and Doordash play in exploiting and controlling workers. Yet, literature on labour market intermediaries has muddied conceptions of their role, impact and outcomes for workers by lumping a variety of institutions under the same umbrella term. Drawing from previous theoretical and empirical works throughout the temporary help and gig industries, this article proposes a reconceptualisation of labour market intermediaries as labour market engineers highlighting four mutually reinforcing features. This sociological reconceptualisation updates the understanding of for-profit labour market intermediaries by demonstrating the market making behaviours of firms of on-demand labour in the US context. Likewise, this reconceptualisation notes how gig firms have adapted and expanded these features in ways that increase precarity for workers.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47422022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-16DOI: 10.1177/09500170221148301
Syed Imran Saqib, Matthew M. C. Allen, M. Martínez Lucio, Maria Allen
Forging solidarity among seemingly privileged white-collar professionals has been seen as a challenging process. However, many banking employees in Pakistan feel marginalized and lack formal collective mechanisms to voice their concerns, leading some to participate in social-media groups. Drawing on various discussions linked to labour process perspectives, we examine how these banking employees use social media as a means to create broader and diverse collective bonds within their profession and build bridges to their counterparts in other organizations within the sector. By doing so, we reveal that employees post on social media to express and affirm their concerns, offer broader support with one another, ‘cope’ with existing circumstances, highlight their unrewarded professionalism, and share relevant information around collective issues and experiences and not solely to critique their work environment. The article draws on and contributes to new debates on collectivism and solidarity, revealing the opportunities for actions on social media.
{"title":"Sustaining Solidarity through Social Media? Employee Social-Media Groups as an Emerging Platform for Collectivism in Pakistan","authors":"Syed Imran Saqib, Matthew M. C. Allen, M. Martínez Lucio, Maria Allen","doi":"10.1177/09500170221148301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170221148301","url":null,"abstract":"Forging solidarity among seemingly privileged white-collar professionals has been seen as a challenging process. However, many banking employees in Pakistan feel marginalized and lack formal collective mechanisms to voice their concerns, leading some to participate in social-media groups. Drawing on various discussions linked to labour process perspectives, we examine how these banking employees use social media as a means to create broader and diverse collective bonds within their profession and build bridges to their counterparts in other organizations within the sector. By doing so, we reveal that employees post on social media to express and affirm their concerns, offer broader support with one another, ‘cope’ with existing circumstances, highlight their unrewarded professionalism, and share relevant information around collective issues and experiences and not solely to critique their work environment. The article draws on and contributes to new debates on collectivism and solidarity, revealing the opportunities for actions on social media.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42752847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-16DOI: 10.1177/09500170231155791
Fabio Cescon
{"title":"Book Review: Raven Bowen, Work, Money and Duality: Trading Sex as a Side Hustle","authors":"Fabio Cescon","doi":"10.1177/09500170231155791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170231155791","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":"1114 - 1115"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47698310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-07DOI: 10.1177/09500170221150097
S. Frenkel
In this succinct, stimulating monograph, Johan Alvehus explains how professional work perpetuates professionalism. The Logic of Professionalism (hereafter LOP) comprises eight chapters beginning with an outline of the author’s intentions and his approach. Chapter 2 explores the meaning of professionalism and how in professional service organisations (PSOs), a professional institutional logic co-exists with market and bureaucratic logics. In Chapter 3, Alvehus discusses the organisation of case and client-related problem-solving that creates ambiguities enabling professionals to retain control over their work. In addition, Alvehus shows how professionals often succeed in appropriating control over quality and HRM systems. Chapter 5 focuses on relational control. Leadership in PSOs is shared among senior professionals who acquire influence by political manoeuvring. Analysis then shifts in Chapter 6 to the organisational level where LOP co-exists with other logics. Chapter 7 explains the persistent dominance of the professional logic in PSOs leaving the final chapter to investigate whether LOP in the future will remain powerful or be undermined. Despite a deliberately selective engagement with relevant literatures, Alvehus succeeds in fulfilling his aim of exploring management and work practices that maintain LOP in PSOs (p. 6). Key concepts are explained, and where appropriate, relevant empirical studies are drawn on to support the author’s argument. For example, we learn that LOP refers to ‘professional workers’ discretion and judgement’ (p. 21), which helps to justify continuing control over the work process, high earnings and elevated social status. Professional work in PSOs is characterised by several attributes, including application of abstract knowledge, worker autonomy, adaptation to client needs and continuous learning (pp. 7–8). PSOs are governed by professionals and address complex public or private sector problems. Arising from the co-existence of professional, market and bureaucratic logics, PSOs are hybrid in form, generating recurrent patterns of behaviour that are frequently contested (p. 29). 1150097WES0010.1177/09500170221150097Work, Employment and Society X(X)Book Reviews book-review2023
{"title":"Book Review: Johan Alvehus, The Logic of Professionalism: Work and Management in Professional Service Organizations","authors":"S. Frenkel","doi":"10.1177/09500170221150097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170221150097","url":null,"abstract":"In this succinct, stimulating monograph, Johan Alvehus explains how professional work perpetuates professionalism. The Logic of Professionalism (hereafter LOP) comprises eight chapters beginning with an outline of the author’s intentions and his approach. Chapter 2 explores the meaning of professionalism and how in professional service organisations (PSOs), a professional institutional logic co-exists with market and bureaucratic logics. In Chapter 3, Alvehus discusses the organisation of case and client-related problem-solving that creates ambiguities enabling professionals to retain control over their work. In addition, Alvehus shows how professionals often succeed in appropriating control over quality and HRM systems. Chapter 5 focuses on relational control. Leadership in PSOs is shared among senior professionals who acquire influence by political manoeuvring. Analysis then shifts in Chapter 6 to the organisational level where LOP co-exists with other logics. Chapter 7 explains the persistent dominance of the professional logic in PSOs leaving the final chapter to investigate whether LOP in the future will remain powerful or be undermined. Despite a deliberately selective engagement with relevant literatures, Alvehus succeeds in fulfilling his aim of exploring management and work practices that maintain LOP in PSOs (p. 6). Key concepts are explained, and where appropriate, relevant empirical studies are drawn on to support the author’s argument. For example, we learn that LOP refers to ‘professional workers’ discretion and judgement’ (p. 21), which helps to justify continuing control over the work process, high earnings and elevated social status. Professional work in PSOs is characterised by several attributes, including application of abstract knowledge, worker autonomy, adaptation to client needs and continuous learning (pp. 7–8). PSOs are governed by professionals and address complex public or private sector problems. Arising from the co-existence of professional, market and bureaucratic logics, PSOs are hybrid in form, generating recurrent patterns of behaviour that are frequently contested (p. 29). 1150097WES0010.1177/09500170221150097Work, Employment and Society X(X)Book Reviews book-review2023","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":"1112 - 1113"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44510866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：