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As more and more corporations operate around the globe, the development of an international perspective on industrial relations becomes increasingly urgent. Toward that end, the contributors to Workplace Industrial Relations and the Global Challenge examine the workplace itself. On the basis of ethnographic case studies and comparative data, they conclude that global economic forces and transnational corporations are, indeed, driving industrial relations initiatives. However, national and workplace cultures, as well as state policies, still strongly affect the ways in which cooperation and conflict are negotiated on the shop floor.
Essays that challenge the benefits of globalization and new technologies.
In light of recent trends of corporate downsizing and debates over corporate responsibility, Sanford Jacoby offers a timely, comprehensive history of twentieth-century welfare capitalism, that is, the history of nonunion corporations that looked after the economic security of employees. Building on three fascinating case studies of "modern manors" (Eastman Kodak, Sears, and TRW), Jacoby argues that welfare capitalism did not expire during the Depression, as traditionally thought. Rather it adapted to the challenges of the 1930s and became a powerful, though overlooked, factor in the history of the welfare state, the labor movement, and the corporation. "Fringe" benefits, new forms of employe...
"What can student activism at flagship public universities of the toss-up states of Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and Virginia tell us about polarization and the next generation of political activists? Sociologists Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder found that while most college campuses are considered progressive, and liberal students can be involved on campus in many ways, a lack of left-leaning infrastructure after graduation makes it hard for activist students to effectively channel their energies into political involvement post-college. And though usually in the minority, conservative students tend to be better organized as campus groups, helped by the funds and expertise of right...
Consuming with a conscience is one of the fastest growing forms of political participation worldwide. Every day we make decisions about how to spend our money and, for the socially conscious, these decisions matter. Political consumers "buy green" for the environment or they "buy pink" to combat breast cancer. They boycott Taco Bell to support migrant workers or Burger King to save the rainforest. But can we overcome the limitations of consumer identity, the conservative pull of consumer choice, co-optation by corporate marketers, and other pitfalls of consumer activism in order to marshal the possibilities of consumer power? Can we, quite literally, shop for change? Shopping for Change brin...
Warping Time shows how narratives of the past influence what people believe about the present and future state of the world. In Benjamin Ginsberg and Jennifer Bachner’s simple experiments, in which the authors measured the impact of different stories their subjects heard about the past, these “history lessons” moved contemporary policy preferences by an average of 16 percentage points; forecasts of the future moved contemporary policy preferences by an average of 12 percentage points; the two together moved preferences an average of 21 percentage points. And, in an Orwellian twist, the authors estimate that the “history lessons” had an average “erasure effect” of 8.5 percentage...
"This original and wide-ranging book examines how conflicts may have been more or less constructively conducted and affected the changing class, status, and power inequality in America since 1945. Initially, it assesses how some conflicts destructively contributed to increasing class inequality, with its many unfortunate consequences. It also assesses other conflicts that contributed or might have contributed constructively to fostering less class inequality. Then the book examines conflicts that contributed to some increases in status equality, notably of African Americans and women. Finally it goes on to analyze many specific conflicts that yielded varied and uneven changes in power inequa...
During the 1830s the United States experienced a wave of movements for social change over temperance, the abolition of slavery, anti-vice activism, and a host of other moral reforms. Michael Young argues for the first time in Bearing Witness against Sin that together they represented a distinctive new style of mobilization—one that prefigured contemporary forms of social protest by underscoring the role of national religious structures and cultural schemas. In this book, Young identifies a new strain of protest that challenged antebellum Americans to take personal responsibility for reforming social problems.In this period activists demanded that social problems like drinking and slavehold...
This volume chronicles how veteran politics influenced U.S. federal policy during the 1930s and 1940s, illuminating how veterans and veteran organizations pushed the federal government to place their interests front and center on the national agenda. The author presents a history of World War I veterans and their efforts to organize into a political interest group. He examines the benefits that the veterans secured, including state pensions and bonuses and the affect they had on the New Deal era. He demonstrates that veterans participated in an active political life, following the publicized Bonus March as they staged smaller marches, lobbied politicians, and threatened to undermine President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) prospects for reelection in 1936. The author demonstrates how federal policy -- and, by extension, American political culture -- underwent a fundamental shift to embrace the needs of veterans by furnishing them with health care benefits, pensions, job training programs, education, and housing.
In Democracy in the Making, Kathleen M. Blee provides an in-depth look at modern grassroots activism, and reveals its simultaneous power and fragility. In the process, she examines the struggle between democratic vision and strategic reality that shapes each organization's trajectory and determines its ultimate success or failure.