Bill Martin
Flinders University
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Publication
Featured researches published by Bill Martin.
Sociology | 2002
Judy Wajcman; Bill Martin
This article examines two dominant theories about the contemporary relationship between identity and work — corrosion of character and reflexive modernization. Both of these models treat the experiences of men and women in the new capitalism as essentially the same. We examine this assumption in the light of our recent study of managers in large companies. Our survey data shows little difference between the career orientations and experiences of men and women. We then test this against the career narratives of 136 managers. Again, we find that men and women use the same ‘new capitalism’ narratives to describe their careers and work lives. However, whereas for men these narratives fit with their stories of domestic life, this is not the case for the women. Faced with a substantial disjunction between them, women generally reject one or other narrative identity. We argue that our findings highlight substantial theoretical flaws in both the corrosion of character and reflexive modernization models.
Human Relations | 2013
Leisa D. Sargent; Mary Dean Lee; Bill Martin; Jelena Zikic
Retirement involves a set of institutional arrangements combined with socio-cultural meanings to sustain a distinct retirement phase in life course and career pathways. In this Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘Reinventing Retirement: New Pathways, New Arrangements, New Meanings,’ we outline the historical development of retirement. We identify the dramatic broad-based changes that recently have shaken this established construct to its core. We describe the main organizational responses to these changes, and how they have been associated with shifting, multiple meanings of retirement. Finally, we present a model that frames two general forms of reinvention of retirement. The first involves continuation of the idea of a distinct and well-defined period of life occurring at the end of a career trajectory, but with changes in the timing, the kinds of post-retirement activities pursued, and meanings associated with this period of life. The second represents a more fundamental reinvention in which the overall concept of retirement as a distinct period in an individual’s life is challenged or rejected, whether because it is not appealing or no longer realistic. We provide examples of how both types of reinvention may manifest in individuals’ careers and lives, and suggest future research directions that follow from our model.
The Sociological Review | 1998
Bill Martin
This paper highlights a number of strong indications of important changes in the work and labour market experiences of professionals and managers, the core of the ‘new middle class‘ (nmc) in most contemporary class theories. Following an outline of some of these changes, it is argued that several central theoretical strategies shared by class theorists - notably a residual ‘functional essentialism’ and the choice of microfoundations - prevent them from adequately theorising these changes. The paper offers an alternative approach to theorising the contemporary nmc that avoids the reductionism of many existing approaches, and that is grounded in microfoundations focused on the relation of narratively constructed identities to social action. On this basis, an account of the contemporary emergence of a new segment of the nmc, the ‘nmc bricoleur’, is outlined, and its relation to empirical studies of the changing nmc is suggested. The paper concludes with some speculations about the likely future of Anglophone new middle classes.
Work, Employment & Society | 2005
Bill Martin
Managers’ careers and career orientations have changed significantly since the era of organizational change that began around 20-30 years ago. This article focuses on how managers have responded to these changes. It suggests a significant change in the kinds of ‘capital’ that managers mobilize, and the uses to which they put it. At least some managers now mobilize a form of ‘social capital’ in the form of reputations that are grounded in informal networks. However, this reputational capital can be difficult to stabilise and therefore risky to hold. Managers therefore attempt to convert it into wealth - economic capital. The article illustrates these arguments using interview data from a longitudinal study of Australian managers.
Pediatrics | 2016
Ning Xiang; Maria Zadoroznyj; Wojtek Tomaszewski; Bill Martin
OBJECTIVE: To examine the effects of timing of return to work, number of hours worked, and their interaction, on the likelihood of breastfeeding at 6 months and predominant breastfeeding at 16 weeks. METHODS: A nationally representative sample of Australian mothers in paid employment in the 13 months before giving birth (n = 2300) were surveyed by telephone. Four multivariate logistic regression models were used to analyze the effects of timing of return to work and work hours, independently and in interaction, on any breastfeeding at 6 months and on predominant breastfeeding at 16 weeks, controlling for maternal sociodemographics, employment patterns, and health measures. RESULTS: Mothers who returned to work within 6 months and who worked for ≥20 hours per week were significantly less likely than mothers who had not returned to work to be breastfeeding at 6 months. However, returning to work for ≤19 hours per week had no significant impact on the likelihood of breastfeeding regardless of when mothers returned to work. Older maternal age, higher educational attainment, better physical or mental health, managerial or professional maternal occupation, and being self-employed all significantly contributed to the increased likelihood of any breastfeeding at 6 months. Similar patterns exist for predominant breastfeeding at 16 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: The effects of timing of return to work are secondary to the hours of employment. Working ≤19 hours per week is associated with higher likelihood of maintaining breastfeeding, regardless of timing of return to work.
Work, Employment & Society | 1994
Bill Martin
This paper suggests that, at least amongst employees, social classes may be thought of as having effects on labour market outcomes because they create segmented labour markets. Thus each social class of employees defines the boundaries of a labour market which is at least partially separated from those defined by other employee social classes. This implies that standard labour market variables such as education and labour market experience may have impacts on earnings which vary across class-defined labour markets. Based on a three class picture of the employee class structure (experts, managers/bureaucrats, workers), predictions about the relative impact of education, labour market experience, gender, sector of employment and unionisation on earnings in each class are outlined. These are then tested on data from two Australian national representative samples. Results show that, as predicted, the impact of important variables (notably education and labour market experience) on earnings appear to be quite different for workers than for experts or managers. This supports the view that the labour market is segmented between workers and the middle class. There are other interesting variations in the impact of variables across class-defined labour markets, variation in gender effects being notable. However, evidence for a sharp differentiation of expert and managerial labour markets is more limited than predicted. Overall, the equations used explain far less of the variance in working-class earnings than of expert and managerial earnings, primarily because education and labour market experience appear to be less closely tied to earnings for workers than for experts and managers. Implications of these results for class theory and human capital theory are outlined.
Journal of Sociology | 2017
Mara Yerkes; Bill Martin; Janeen Baxter; Judy Rose
Mothers’ return to work following childbirth is widely recognized as a key stage in establishing employment arrangements that disadvantage them in the long run. This article investigates why mothers accept these unequal arrangements using data from a qualitative study of 109 Australian mothers. It focuses on mothers’ perceptions of the fairness and justice of the flexibility of arrangements they commonly enter into upon return to work. The article draws attention to the importance of different justice frameworks, distributive, procedural and interactional, in understanding women’s acceptance of gender inequality in paid work. The results indicate that most mothers view their workplace arrangements as fair, consistent with a distributive justice framework. Many women also place great importance on interactional justice, particularly in their experiences in negotiating flexibility. The article also identifies differences across employment type with women in jobs with career prospects more likely to invoke interactional justice frameworks than women in jobs with few career prospects.
Work, Employment & Society | 2016
Bill Martin; Mary Dean Lee
Private sector managers’ pathways through late career and retirement are important, but insufficiently studied. Based on a large qualitative study of retiring managers in big Canadian firms, this article explores the relationships between managers’ work during their careers, their retirement transitions and their retirement activities. Three distinctive patterns of managerial work and careers are found: those of expert managers, organization managers and strategic managers. They are strongly related to how managers end their ‘full commitment’ careers and then build retirement lives by combining leisure activities, family commitments, civic involvement and paid work. Variations in retirement pathways are not well predicted by either individualization theory or theories based on generational or class habitus. Managers appear to develop distinctive orientations to acting with agency that arise from the way managerial work is organized; and these frame managers’ retirement pathways. These findings may indicate why individualization does not necessarily lead to life course destandardization.
Acta geneticae medicae et gemellologiae | 1958
Michelle Brady; Emily Stevens; Laetitia Coles; Maria Zadoroznyj; Bill Martin
Governments are increasingly implementing policies that encourage early father-infant bonding. However, to date, research has not systematically examined fathers’ perspectives and experiences of early bonding. Using a social constructionist embodiment perspective we argue that paternal bonding is best conceived as a process of repeated, embodied performances that are shaped by gendered parenting discourses. Drawing on 100 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of Australian fathers of young infants, we argue that most men believe they are capable of developing early strong bonds. They assume that bonding is a product of spending sufficient time with a child, irrespective of the parents gender. In contrast, a sizable minority of fathers assert that physiology means fathers are ‘largely useless’ to very young infants, and tend to remain distant in the early months. We conclude that social policies promoting early paternal bonding must engage with and challenge gendered/physiological discourses.
Journal of Sociology | 2017
Laetitia Coles; Belinda Hewitt; Bill Martin
Time pressures around work and care within families have increased over recent decades, exacerbated by an enduring male breadwinner culture in Australia and manifested in increasingly long work hours for fathers. We identified fathers who spent relatively long hours actively caring for children despite long work hours and we compared them with other fathers who did less work, less childcare, or less of both. Using 13 waves of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we explored characteristics associated with the time fathers spent in work and care. The age and ethnicity of fathers differentiated those who spent long hours in both work and childcare from all other groups of fathers, yet other factors were also important for the time fathers spent at work or with children. By examining fathers at the margins of the distributions of work and childcare hours, we add valuable insights into associations between work and care for families.
