Domiciliary Care: The Formal and Informal Labour Process

Domiciliary carers are paid care workers who travel to the homes of older people to assist with personal routines. Increasingly, over the past 20 years, the delivery of domiciliary care has been organised according to market principles and portrayed as the ideal type of formal care; offering cost savings to local authorities and independence for older people. Crucially, the work of the former ‘home help’ is transformed as domiciliary carers are now subject to the imperative of private, competitive accumulation which necessitates a constant search for increases in labour productivity. Drawing on qualitative data from domiciliary carers, managers and stakeholders, this article highlights the commodification of caring labour and reveals the constraints, contradictions and challenges of paid care work. Labour Process Theory offers a means of understanding the political economy of care work and important distinctions in terms of the formal and informal domiciliary care labour process

Dignity at work is about more than good people management practices

This article discusses a multi-dimensional analysis of the concept of dignity at work. The research proposes that, rather than talking in general terms about dignity at work, it helps to delineate different dimensions, dignity in work and dignity at work. The analysis aims to clarify some of the complexities involved in understanding dignity at work and give far greater transparency to the role that government policy, organizations and management practice might play

Why there are so many women managers, but so few women CEOs

First paragraph: The number of women in paid employment has risen significantly over the past 40 years. In developed countries especially, there are increasing numbers of women reaching top positions in different fields of work. And new research shows how girls are doing far better than boys educationally across the world. Access this article on The Conversation website at https://theconversation.com/why-there-are-so-many-women-managers-but-so-few-women-ceos-3844

The Medical Tourist and a Political Economy of Care

Medical tourism has gained prominence in academic, policy and business arenas in describing the growth in the number of people travelling outside of their home country to receive planned medical treatment, with the emphasis on the combination of addressing pressing health concerns with a leisure trip. This conceptual essay offers insights into how patients are being reconceptualised in a neo- liberal setting as medical tourists. In so doing it offers two key contributions. First it offers a deeper theorisation of trends in international healthcare through a political economy of care framework. This framework is not only focused on human interaction and experience but also on the political, economic and social space in which human life is played out. Second, it offers new insights into the exploration of human relationships within a market economy so that the medical tourist is seen with new eyes as a relational being

The Moral Economy of Solidarity: A Longitudinal Study of Special Needs Teachers

Based on a longitudinal study of a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) in England for children excluded from mainstream schools and utilising a moral economy lens, this article explores how solidarity is created and maintained in a very particular community of teachers and learning support assistants (LSAs). A moral economy approach highlights the centrality of people’s moral norms and values for understanding the multi-layered dimensions of solidarity in organisations and how it changes in the context of transformations in the labour process. The article illustrates how teachers and LSAs rely on mutuality, underpinned by moral norms of justice, and values of care, dignity and recognition, to cope with physically and emotionally demanding work that is under-resourced and undervalued. The analysis reveals that solidarity is not only against unjust workplace regimes, but also for connectivity and a humanised labour process

Quality Work and the Moral Economy of European Employment Policy

Following a decade of radical economic and workplace restructuring, it is important to understand how state employment policies support or deny human flourishing. This article utilizes a realist document analysis approach and reviews European employment policy through a moral economy lens. It fuses different moral economy approaches, drawing together the work of Karl Polanyi and Andrew Sayer a multi-layered conceptual lens is offered that explores the tensions between a commodification of labour and human needs. A dominant market ideology is revealed, highlighting how quality work has been subsumed by the flexicurity agenda in the E

A neglected pool of labour? Frontline service work and hotel recruitment in Glasgow

The article presented considers soft skills in the hospitality sector and explores how managers in four hotels in Glasgow, Scotland enact recruitment and selection processes. Empirically, the analysis is based on a rich cross case comparison including interviews, observations, attendance at training events and analysis of hotels' recruitment and selection policies. Conceptually, the analysis draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Andrew Sayer, portraying an understanding of social class as a social, economic, and cultural category and people's agency as shaped by their habitus and lay normativity. Crucially, the paper reveals the pivotal role individual managers play in enabling and constraining opportunities for employment in the enactment of hotel recruitment policy and engagement with job applicants and new recruits. Overall, the analysis suggests that, despite many deterministic analyses of class, an organisation's recruitment, learning and development strategies, plus management's commitment to make a difference, can positively impact on those who might otherwise be part of a neglected pool of labour

Selective Consent and Dissent: Professional Response to Reform in the Post-crisis Greek NHS

Utilising the sociology of the professions as an analytical framework, the article explores the response of the Greek medical profession to state-imposed managerialism during times of economic recession and socio-political turbulence. It is argued that the case of Southern welfare states, permeated by clientelism and corruption, underpins a distinct form of professional-state relations, currently missing from relevant theoretical discussions. Rich qualitative data collected from practising hospital doctors in Greece reveals a willingness to concede elements of clinical autonomy in exchange for the minimisation of the role of a corrupt state in the organisation of the Greek National Health Service

Intracompany Governance and Innovation

This paper examines the relation between ownership, corporate form, and innovation for a cross-section of private and publicly traded innovating firms in the US and 15 European countries. A striking novel observation emerges from our analysis: while most innovating firms in the US are publicly traded conglomerates, a substantial fraction of innovation is concentrated in private firms and in business groups in continental European countries. We find virtually no variation across US industries in the corporate form of innovating firms, but a substantial variation across industries in continental European countries, where business groups tend to be concentrated in industries with a slower and more fundamental innovation cycle and where intellectual protection of innovators seems to be of paramount importance. Our findings suggest that innovative companies choose the corporate form most conducive to R&D, as predicted by the Coasian view of how firms form. This is especially true in Europe, where there are fewer regulatory hurdles to the formation of business groups and hybrid corporate forms. It is less the case in the US, where conglomerates are generally favored.

Making metadata inclusive: content development in the European Language Social Science Thesaurus (ELSST)

Developing and updating thesaurus content in ELSST is crucial to ensure that it remains a current and relevant resource for data providers, distributors, archives and researchers. The process of content development is an ongoing, cross-national, collaborative enterprise undertaken by ELSST partners drawn from CESSDA’s Service Provider organisations. Together, we work to ensure that ELSST remains internationally recognisable and relevant. As a case study, this presentation will focus on a recent update to the ELSST concept hierarchy covering sexuality and gender, completed for the 2022 thesaurus release. It will cover the consultation and research process we undertook to ensure that the updated hierarchy was made as inclusive and comprehensive as possible. It will also describe how this experience has informed our practice for future updates to other potentially sensitive concept hierarchies. Making ELSST content inclusive not only reflects our duty to enable social justice by recognising diversity but also provides better and more precise keyword coverage for research resources. Consistent search results provided by ELSST’s comprehensive controlled vocabulary will allow researchers across the community to share and find useful data more easily, as social research evolves in a changing society