'Who's got the look?' Emotional, aesthetic and sexualized labour in interactive services

This article examines sexualized work and, more particularly, how and why, at the organizational level in interactive services, employees become sexualized labour. In doing so it assesses the thin line between selling a service and selling sexuality. The analysis revisits existing literature on emotional labour, organizational aesthetics and workplace sexuality, noting the common concern in this literature with employee's appearance or looks. The article argues that the current conceptualization of interactive services and sexualized work is partial and blunt; either because it does not adequately incorporate employee corporeality or because it fails to distinguish between the different forms of sexualized work. A better conceptualization is achieved by incorporating aesthetic labour into the analysis, demonstrating how it is extended to sexualized labour employees to have a particular corporate look. From this analysis it is argued that a conceptual double shift is to be needed to understand sexualised labour, firstly, from emotional to aesthetic and sexualized labour and secondly, from an employee sexuality that is sanctioned and subscribed to by management to that which management strategically prescribes

The good, the bad, and the ordinary : work identities in “good” and “bad” jobs in the United Kingdom

Much debate exists about postbureaucratic organizational forms that are sometimes felt to strengthen the polarization between good and bad jobs. Small firms provide one test in that they lack bureaucracy. Such firms from two contrasting sectors, food manufacture and the media, are used to assess, respectively, the models of good and bad jobs. Data from 66 firms and 203 employees show a mixed picture: Food jobs are bad for pay but relatively good for autonomy. Media jobs offer autonomy, but this is constrained by tight performance demands and low pay. These results help to explain why national surveys find no polarization in terms of autonomy and are explained by the economic contingencies of the two sectors. Ordinariness rather than stark polarization is the key picture

Where have all the workers gone? Exploring public sector workforce planning

Governments undertake extensive planning of many services and functions, but tend to neglect planning of public service workforces. Disruptions to public service delivery, such as shortages of nurses and doctors, have rejuvenated interest in workforce planning, but many organisations struggle to do it effectively. This historical study examines the capacity of central personnel agencies to predict workforce risks and support workforce planning, using a study of the Queensland public service. It identifies lack of workforce data as a barrier to effective workforce planning, as a result of factors such as changes in the direction of the central personnel agency, lack of appreciation for the value of comprehensive central workforce data, and limited agency human resource (HR) skills or capacity