This book addresses key issues regarding the nexus of work and family in society at the beginning of the 21st century. For many families, the balancing act brings rewards as well as concerns. Employers and governments struggle with whether and how to assist in achieving balance. The work presents original research that addresses the challenges in meeting work and family obligations. Each chapter provides policy recommendations that many help achieve better work-family balance, changes in work-family attitudes, conditions leading to firms' adopting policies to support work-family balance, and...

This work examines variations among nations in the wide array of initiatives labour unions and labour movements are taking to strengthen themselves and recruit new members. Moving beyond previous research on the factors leading to union decline, the international group of scholars who have contributed to this volume present a research agenda on the many initiatives unions are taking - and the different social, economic, and political challenges they face in several world regions, as labour movements endeavor to revitalize themselves. These revitalizing initiatives include changing labor...

Entrepreneurship, the creation of new economic entities, is central to the structure and functioning of organizations and economies. New business formation also shapes the nature of social and economic stratification in an economy and may be an important vehicle for social mobility. The papers in this volume explore many of the issues that are central to the study of entrepreneurship today and also break new ground in the field. The papers explore the importance of entrepreneurship, the process by which entrepreneurship occurs, and the way both meaning and process vary with context and...

"Worker Participation: Current Research and Future Trends, Volume 16 of Research in the Sociology of Work," offers cutting edge research on the character and implications of workplace participation. Written by some of the leading scholars in the sociology of workplace transformation and alternative organizations, the chapters here examine various outcomes, causes, and consequences related to participation programs and worker democracy today. Topics include ways in which participation schemes are socially constructed and negotiated; the meanings that workers attach to opportunities for...

Economic institutions are undergoing radical transformations, and with these has come a reconfiguration of labor market institutions, managerial conceptions of work, and the nature of authority and control over employees as well. This volume addresses a wide array of questions to better understand these dramatic changes.