Creativity is a skill that everyone has’: Analysing creative workers’ self-presentations

This paper discusses the research use of creative workers’ publicly available self-presentations such as documentaries or social media posts. In so doing it contributes to our understanding of how creative workers might fruitfully be researched. The paper, firstly, argues that self-presentations can provide valuable and rich insights into creative workers’ self-understanding, and thus can be of interest to creative industries researchers. Secondly, using the example of a film produced by Austrian product designers, the paper then demonstrates why researchers need to consider the processes through and contexts in which self-presentations are generated. The paper explains why self-presentations may not be treated in the same way as the first person accounts traditionally generated for social science research, and presents recommendations for how self-presentations might form parts of rigorous research designs

Recreational use or performance enhancing? : doping regulation and professional sport

Academic interest in the relationship between sport and work was sparked by Bero Rigauer's (1980) Sport and Work, in which he argued that the pressure exerted upon athletes for faster, higher and stronger performances had caused their dehumanisation, inevitably transforming them into the tool of a tightly ordered social system and corrupting the purpose and function of sport. The regulation of an athlete’s ‘work’ has increased with the professionalism and commercialisation of sport, which, according to Striegel et al. (2002) coincided with the increasing usage of performance-related substances

How does working time flexibility affect gender-specific work intentions?

In this chapter, I present findings from a conjoint experiment conducted in Switzerland and aimed at investigating the elasticity in the within-household division of paid and care work given varying policy contexts. Whereas in my previous research I have analysed similar questions mostly with respect to the role of family policies, in the present contribution I move a step closer to Klaus Armingeon’s research in what concerns the explanatory variable, namely the labour market. Thus, I ask how flexible work arrangements affect the genderspecific allocation of time on paid work and care work. The results indicate that women spend more time on the labour market and less on care work under flexible work conditions. However, this does not apply for women with traditional childcare preferences. Moreover, men only partly agree on women’s stronger labour market involvement. Finally, men with non-traditional childcare preferences indicate that they would invest half a day more in childcare duties if flexibility in working time and working place were available – without however reducing their labour market involvement. Overall, the findings illustrate that intended behaviour is very much embedded in dominant gender roles