This article tests the assumption that youth's work attitudes are changing to reflect the restructured labour markets that often are taken as a characteristic of late-modernity. Comparing 1985 and 1996 cohorts of high school leavers in a Canadian city, we find that occupational aspirations increased significantly since 1985, especially among females, in ways consistent with employment trends in a service-based economy. However, the 1985 and 1996 youth cohorts wanted very similar conditions in a job, and in each cohort we observed significant gender differences. General attitudes towards work and education also remained fairly constant. We discuss the implications of these findings for school-work transition research and for larger debates about youth responses to conditions of late-modernity.

This ethnographic study of engineers in action introduces an interpretive approach to the recent debate about the factors shaping the organisation of engineering labour within the firm. The study compares the consciousness of kind and of difference developed by R&D and sales engineers (also known as customer engineers) working for an engineering boutique. Two case stories and other field data exemplify that the R&D and the customer engineers not only developed distinct interpretive frameworks, they also enacted them in the course of daily interaction either to protect or to alter an existing jurisdictional map between the two engineering specialities. Discussion suggests that the organisation of engineering labour is partly shaped by the interrelation of interpretive frameworks developed by engineering sub-groups. The possible technisation of sales work in micro-electronics is also discussed.

The sudden death of Harvie Ramsay from a brain haemorrhage on 24 April this year at the age of fifty-one greatly shocked and saddened his many friends and colleagues in the academic world and elsewhere. It has also deprived us of someone who had contributed so much to the areas of research and writing covered by this journal, for which he had been a member of the Editorial Board, and who still had so much to contribute.

There has been a recent rise in employers derecognising unions. The oil and chemical industries have been identified as critical for the analysis and practice of derecognition. This paper presents data showing that major oil and chemical firms have, on the one hand, derecognised unions for key internal staff, but on the other hand, have enforced a centralised bargaining framework for their on-site contractors engaged in the out-sourced repair, maintenance and construction work. This centralised bargaining framework has strengthened the institutional position of trade unions. The paper analyses the key factors which have pushed the same employers to act in very different ways for the two sets of workers. It finds little evidence to support arguments that a strong anti-union culture in the industries underlay employers' actions. Rather the evidence suggests that management have acted pragmatically in response to pressing short-term economic pressures. The different approaches to unions for the two sets of workers have been guided by the different economic objectives facing employers and by the different historical position of unions in helping or hindering to secure those objectives. The conclusion considers the implications of these findings for the future of derecognition in the UK.

This paper seeks to reassess the contributions made by Braverman and subsequent labour process writers to the critique of capitalist production. Braverman's main motivation lay with the subversion of pro-capitalist ideologies. He identified deskilling tendencies with the capitalist imperative of accumulation in order to promote the case for revolutionary change. The labour process debate that Braverman helped to initiate, while successful in broadening understanding of concrete work relations, has difficulties in excavating the necessary interconnections of capitalist alienation and exploitation. In particular, there is a problem in separating out the different levels of analysis that link essence and appearance in the work context. Narrow focus on the labour process creates unnecessary conceptual confusion about the specificity of capitalist production, and also condones an unduly pessimistic political agenda on the prospects for transcending capitalist domination. In eschewing the important interconnections between workplace organisation and capitalist social relations, labour process analysis risks inverting the critical intent of Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital by promoting the continuation of the extant social order.

This paper examines the relationship between processes of demographic class formation, gender inequality and age stratification in England and Wales between 1971 and 1991. Existing research shows that the complex process of class restructuring which took place in these years is linked to considerable changes in the position of women, especially related to their growing numbers in professional and managerial occupations. We seek to show that changing processes of age stratification were also related to the remaking of class and gender relations in these years. Data from the Longitudinal Study (approximately 193,000 men and 203,000 women aged 23–57 in two age cohorts; 1971 and 1981), Samples of Anonymised Records (approximately 121,500 men and 126,000 women aged 23–57 in 1991), General Household Survey 1983–1992 (32,609 men and 16,191 women aged 23–57 in fulltime employment) and from the National Child Development Study, 1981 and 1991 (2205 men and 887 women aged 23 and 33, in fulltime employment) were used to examine the movement of individuals through changing opportunity structures over the twenty-year period. We found a distinct hardening of the relationship between age and class in these two decades for men, with a marked increase in social polarisation between young men and older men, but for women this relationship was very different, with young women seeing considerable evidence of an improvement in their fortunes.

The development of new private business has both economic and social significance for the post-communist transition. New business firms offer industrial dynamism and flexibility to former command economies typically dominated by gigantic monopolies, while, unlike privatised enterprises, not reproducing formerly institutionalised practices. They further presage the rise of new social groups and values with direct implications for civic, social and political renewal. The author argues that conventional economic theories of business foundation, which presume the stable institutional conditions of Western-style capitalism, are by themselves poor explanations of the development of private business in transitional conditions. The paper proposes instead a social-institutional approach, in which small firms are examined as a socially constructed process undertaken by business founders within ambiguous institutional circumstances characterised by historical legacies and simultaneous discontinuities. The empirical findings allow the exploration of the process of business founding by former nomenklatura. Their stock of inherited social capital gave them a privileged position in the contest to construct new firms and thereby access to the legitimate accumulation of economic capital, which completed their personal assimilation to the emergent form of market-economic capitalism. The paper concludes by assessing the social implications of these observations.

The recent diffusion of ‘lean production’ work practices and various forms of team-working in manufacturing industry has revived old arguments about the likely decline of production supervisors. These issues are here submitted to empirical scrutiny through a detailed comparison of the skills and utilisation of supervisors in the British, German and American engineering industries. The threatened demise of supervisors is found to be exaggerated yet again for three main reasons. Firstly, supervisors' jobs have generally become more demanding and complex due to greater diversity in the product mix and more stringent quality and delivery targets. Secondly, in Britain and the US (although not in Germany) the average span of responsibility of supervisors has remained stable in recent years. Thirdly, there is evidence in all three countries that, far from making supervisors ‘redundant’ in any way, the development of new work practices such as team-working can actually help to restore the influence of supervisors in strategic decision-making – by ‘freeing’ them from their traditional immersion in the day-to-day details of shopfloor management.

Redundancy, delayering and other forms of organisational change have become increasingly prevalent over the last ten years. Some of the worst-hit industries during the recent years have been the former public utilities, the financial services sector and manufacturing. This paper is based on the results from the first three years' data from a five year UMIST-Institute of Management research programme which has been designed to explore the changing nature of managerial work in the UK and the impact of organisational change on managers' sense of loyalty, morale and motivation. It has been shown in the past (Sahdev and Vinnicombe 1998; Worrall, Cooper and Campbell 1999) that redundancy is seen a particularly damaging form of change on survivors and that redundancy often fails to achieve the objectives on which it was justified, leaving many unintended consequences. This article discusses the effects of organisational change on surviving managers where redundancy has been used, compared with organisations where redundancy has not been used. The results suggest that if redundancy is to be continually pursued as a method of change, managers should be aware of the damaging implications not only to individuals but to the culture of the downsized organisation.

The role of unemployment benefits in explaining the rise and apparent persistence of OECD unemployment has attracted a great deal of scholarly as well as political interest. The disincentive effect of unemployment benefits has mostly been studied with micro-level data, whereas the importance of different unemployment regimes for explaining cross-national differences in unemployment rates has been a rather unexplored area of research. For the purpose of this article, data was collected on the duration and replacement levels of unemployment benefits for an average production worker in 17 OECD countries for the period 1960–1990. This data was then related to the level and trends in unemployment in these countries. The results indicate that there is no systematic evidence that countries with more generous unemployment have experienced higher levels of unemployment, nor that reforms to increase the generosity of unemployment benefits have caused unemployment rates to increase. However, there are some indications that a few countries with relatively long benefit duration experienced a relatively large increase in their unemployment rates in the mid-1970s.

The relationship between unemployment and mental well-being has been thoroughly researched. Longitudinal studies have shown unemployment to have negative impact on mental well-being, whereas re-employment has positive impact. This research has however taken little interest in a more complex concept of labour market status than just ‘employment versus unemployment’, or indeed other alternative exit routes from unemployment. In this article, an investigation is made into the impact of different exit routes from unemployment on mental well-being. This is done using a longitudinal and nationally representative survey of 3,500 unemployed Swedes. The results indicate that the mental well-being outcome of exiting unemployment is related to how the new status resolves economic difficulties and the uncertainty faced in the unemployment situation. The increase in mental well-being when re-entering paid labour is differentiated depending on the contractual situation. Exit to permanent employment means a larger increase in mental well-being than exit to temporary employment or self-employment. Exit to university education increases mental well-being, whereas exit to high-school equivalent studies does not. Exit from unemployment to maternity/paternity leave increases mental well-being, exit to sick leave reduces mental well-being, while exit to early retirement pension does not significantly change the mental well-being.

The on-going skilling debate has already yielded an abundance of contradictory theories, interpretations and empirical contradictions. Based on previous qualitative research in the Netherlands (Steijn and De Witte 1992), we have contributed to this debate by introducing the internal differentiation hypothesis. This paper addresses the empirical validity of this hypothesis by analysing data from a representative Dutch panel of 1,022 respondents in paid employment. The data show a small overall net upgrading trend. However, automation seems to have different effects for various occupational groups. For blue-collar workers, our findings suggest that a trend of internal differentiation does exist. Next, we examine the consequences (for underemployment and job satisfaction) of automation and changes in work content. Although our outcomes do not support our internal differentiation hypothesis, they do show the important effect of autonomy and complexity on feelings of underemployment. The outcomes justify Mottaz's statement that one of the consequences of this underemployment is job dissatisfaction.

This paper explores, the ‘myth of the urban peasant’, the widespread belief that urban Russian households are surviving the collapse of employment and money incomes by turning to subsistence agriculture. On the basis of the analysis of official and survey data the paper shows that although many urban households grow food in their garden plots, those with low money incomes are the least likely to do so, while subsistence production is a complement rather than an alternative to paid employment. Moreover, those who do grow their own food work long hours for very little return, spending no less of their money income on buying food than do those who grow nothing. The implication is that dacha use is a leisure activity of the better-off rather than a survival strategy of the poor. Regional data suggests that urban agricultural production persists in those regions in which commercial agriculture and monetised relations are least developed which, it is surmised, retain memories of past shortages.

There is an important literature suggesting that the consumer has become a key focus of identity and figure of authority in contemporary society. Within this literature, however, there is little consideration of the role that the identification with the customer could play in management control within production, nor of the ensuing potential contradictions. This paper examines these issues in front line call centre work. Control in this setting is theorised as being informed by dual logics of customer-orientation and bureaucratisation. The paper shows the important use of norms of customer identification in control. It also highlights two levels of contradictions in the use of these norms. First there is the contradiction between continuing bureaucratic control and the attempts to develop normative control. Second, there are contradictions within the development of customer-related normative control. Specifically, the definition of the customer as the focus for normative commitment is a contested terrain, with systematic and significant differences existing here between call centre workers and management.

This paper examines service work within the contemporary airline industry which has recently been shaped by managerial initiatives aiming to deliver ‘quality service’. We focus upon the gendered consequences of this. On the basis of original empirical research, three specific arguments are advanced: firstly, recent competitive pressures and accompanying managerial initiatives are intensifying demands upon female employees for the production of emotional labour, subjective commitment to organisational aims and sexual difference within parts of the airline industry; secondly, despite the enormous power of such managerial demands, the ‘spaces’ for female employees to comply, consent and resist remain ‘open’ within the aspects of the industry studied; thirdly, the power of the gendered managerial prescription investigated here is related to the way it is embedded within the structural and inequitable capital-labour relation. The paper is informed by an approach which places the process of gendering inside class relations, and stresses the need to empirically interrogate the historically-specific ‘lived experience’ of gendered power relations in order to adequately analyse and explain such phenomena.

This paper draws upon on-going research into the changes taking place in the Brazilian vehicle assembly industry with particular reference to the state of Rio de Janeiro. It focuses upon a case study of Volkswagen's bus and truck assembly plant at Resende. The plant opened in 1996 on a green-field site and was presented as a major development in vehicle assembly. The unique feature of the plant's production system rests on the relationship between the assembler (VW) and its component suppliers. At Resende these were involved in a joint enterprise to establish a ‘modular system’ of production. In this system, the component suppliers finance a part of the factory and organise the assembly of their components on site. As such few of the production workers are employed by the assembler whose main role in the process is to co-ordinate production and market the vehicle. The article outlines the nature of the Resende system and the negotiations and comment that accompanied its introduction. It considers the development in relation to literatures on the boundary and capacity of the firm and those relating to the role of labour in mature labour processes. In drawing upon wider changes in the Brazilian vehicle manufacturing sector it argues that the Resende experiment can be understood as an extreme case of a more general development in Brazil, involving changed relationships between assemblers and component suppliers and also with the manual workers. Some consideration is given to the idea of an emerging ‘Brazilian system’ of production and its implication for more general developments within the sector.

Whilst hotel management's rhetoric encourages staff to provide the best possible service by satisfying customers' needs, front line staff find themselves bearing the brunt of any abusive and sexual behaviour from customers. This article analyses the experience of harassment of hotel workers by customers. The specificities of the hotel space, the elusive sexuality that exists within the hotel, and the issue of ethnicity in relation to imbalances of power between the staff and the guest are all discussed using examples of harassment of hotel workers in a variety of workplaces and work roles. The article also explores how hotel workers deal with incidents of harassment, the complex ways in which they resist, and management reaction to harassment of their workers.

Changes in the competitive and regulative conditions of British television over the 1980s and 1990s make for an environment of increased uncertainty for those who work in television. Broadcasting legislation, increased competition and technological advances have changed the working practices of the UK's 28,000 production workforce. The introduction of a 25 per cent quota of independent productions on all terrestrial channels, the implementation of Producer Choice in the BBC and the creation of a Network Centre in ITV, leading to a new commissioning process along with merger rationalisation and increasing competition have all contributed to constructing a workforce in which over 50 per cent are freelance and face much uncertainty. This paper focuses on some of the ways workers have experienced and responded to these changes by analysing the postal questionnaire and diary-data collected in an eight-wave panel study of 436 creative production workers in British television 1994–97, collected by the British Film Institute.

This paper considers whether uncertainty is a problem and finds that it is for the majority of these workers. The question of what makes uncertainty a problem is also considered. Individuals were found to cope with uncertainty by diversifying the income sources, by collecting information, building informal networks and by thinking of leaving work in television.

This paper addresses the divergence between the widespread rhetoric of empowerment and limited reality of empowerment programmes. Having demonstrated the ambiguities and contradictions in the concept of empowerment to be found in the management literature and, hence, the amenability of the concept to a variety of interpretations, the paper considers evidence from studies of hotel companies, a theme park and chemicals and telecommunications manufacturing plants which shows that the interpretation of empowerment which senior managers enthusiastically promote is rather different from the one which junior managers reluctantly accept and that empowerment programmes are as much about the putative reorganisation of junior managers' work as any substantive increase in worker autonomy. An interpretation of these findings is then offered in terms of how the ideological space opened up by ambiguities in the empowerment concept presents senior managers with a convenient ideological justification for the reorganisation of managerial work but also presents junior managers with a set of ideas with which to justify their continued existence, at a time when the managerial labour process is being rationalised and the raison d'être of junior line managers, in terms of responsibility for a labour process, is becoming problematic. The rhetoric of empowerment is an ideological terrain on which the conflict between senior and junior managers over attempts to reconstitute managerial work is conducted.

This article explores the use of ‘company culture’ as a means of management control. It reports on research conducted in a consultancy that aimed to secure loyalty from its employees through a conscious policy of organised ‘play’ at company socials. Employees were given a certain amount of freedom over their working lives in exchange for accepting company regulation of their social time. Here it is argued that this normative control differs from historical attempts to ensure that employees were of good moral character. In earlier interventions social and community obligations were emphasised, now every ‘virtue’ encouraged is designed to be exercised in the workplace, often at the expense of the individual or the community. Further, that while control through organisational culture does have some of the advantages claimed for it in the prescriptive literature, it also extends the employment contract to areas previously outside the managerial prerogative.