Catherine Casey

‘Just a Temp?’ Women, Temporary Employment and Lifestyle

Women’s continued high rate of participation in non-standard employment, especially temporary and part-time jobs, attracts much critical concern. Many social analysts of work regard non-standard employment as heightening risks of economic insecurity, workplace exploitation and social marginalization. Labour economists regard temporary and part-time work as comprising ‘secondary’labour markets and workers in this sector as ‘secondary earners’.Many analysts consider women’s over-representation in this sector to be a consequence of women’s exclusion from primary sector employment and its expected better conditions. This article develops an interpretive analysis of a qualitative study of 45 women temporary workers in New Zealand in 2001–2002.The experiences and aspirations with respect to work of this particular sample of women currently engaged in temporary employment relations indicate some divergent trajectories from those more commonly observed. In contrast to most current depictions of women and temporary employment, the findings indicate that some women are striving to practise their own preferential employment arrangements in ways that actively challenge conventional economic assumptions of employment behaviour and traditional trajectories of women’s lives.The article proposes that these efforts may indicate alternative oppositional strategies to normative acceptance of qualitatively degraded jobs and employment relations.

The Learning Worker, Organizations and Democracy

The modern cultural aspiration toward participatory democratic citizenship continues to be highly valued and striven for in the contemporary West. Although there is much recognition of democracy’s many imperfections and everyday political practices that fall well short of democratic ideals, many social and political theorists argue for the continued applicability of models of democratic civil society to our present times (Archibugi et al., 1998; Held, 1993; Touraine, 1997). They argue that a revision and revitalization of democratic ideas and practices enables a crucial response to contemporary counter-modern and counterdemocratic forces, such as fundamentalisms and authoritarian regimes, and their powerful effects.

Knowledge-Based Economies, Organizations and the Sociocultural Regulation of Work

A predominant economic and managerial discourse drives imperatives for a ‘knowledge-based’ economy, now widely espoused by economic leaders in much of the developed world. Demands for ever-modernizing ef.ciencies, production growth and competitive advantage encourage heightened emphasis on knowledge-rich production and innovation. They stimulate strategic managerial and organizational contingencies, labour market .exibility and deregulated markets, and weaken existing norms and processes in the social regulation of work. At the same time, political calls for a ‘learning society’ or a ‘knowledge society’ to accompany a knowledge-based economy gain much attention. They include demands for lifelong learning, for learning organizations and greater worker learning and skills development at work. This article critically examines the knowledge-based economy discourse and its formulation of worker and organizational learning. It argues that alternative conceptualizations of organizational learning that recognize workers’ cultural and non-material demands may stimulate resources for culturally innovative practices. In particular, the article considers ways in which learning economy discourses may be strategically utilized by trade unions, worker educators and other workplace actors in a revitalization of the sociocultural regulation of work.

Contested rationalities, contested organizations

Postmodernist contestations of modernist economic and organizational rationalities have made immense contributions to organizational analysis. A current direction in critical theory now, working through the postmodernist critique, seeks new conceptions of organizations and sources for the revitalization of organizational life. In particular, feminist criticism drawing on, and contributing to, postmodern forms of inquiry and interpretation, offers new visions of critical organizational analysis. This article addresses feminist postmodern critiques, and particularly discusses two feminist contributions developed out of serious critical engagement with postmodernist thought: eco‐feminism and conceptions of “relational autonomy”, of agentic, social subjectivity.

Liberalising the German Model: Institutional Change, Organisational Restructuring and Workplace Effects

Institutional change at supranational, European Union level affects national and firm level institutions in various ways. This article traces effects of liberalisation measures in the airport industry enacted in two airport firms in Germany. The study, based on qualitative empirical research, found that EU liberalisation facilitated company creation of subsidiaries (subsidiarisation) and elevated shareholder interest in corporate governance. These factors affected institutional practices and cultural norms within the German industrial context that in turn influenced significant alterations in employment and workplace relations. Considerable disruption of the German social partnership model of corporate governance and industrial relations was observed. However, in addition to patterns of convergence towards neoliberal practices and outcomes frequently observed in Anglo-Saxon systems, the study found some elements of effective retention of cultural institutional resources of the German model. Both ‘path departure’ and social embeddedness appear to coexist.

Economy, Work, and Education : Critical Connections

1. Critical Reflections on Economy and Society 2. A Liberal Economy of Knowledge 3. Work Now: The Forces of Production 4. A New Economy for Education 5. Labour Markets, Organizations and the Utility of Education 6. Critical Dilemmas for Work, Education and Workers 7. Citizens and Society, Work and Education

Education and sustainability: reinvigorating adult education’s role in transformation, justice and development

Abstract Distinctively economic objectives for lifelong education, especially adult learning and education, feature prominently in policy-making agendas and educators’ practice in much of the world. Critics contend that humanistic and holistic visions of lifelong learning for all have been marginalised and neglected. The current turn of political attention to issues of planetary environmental sustainability and to global societal transformation and interconnectedness raises further questions and prospects. Two United Nations’ publications in 2015: UNESCO’s Rethinking Education: toward a global common good? and of the United Nations’ Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pose intersecting concerns for lifelong learning and environmental sustainability. This article engages with those questions in particular regard to the role of adult learning and education. It discusses a field study of non-formal adult education in Ghana. The field study contributes evidence that resiliently humanistic conceptions and practices of non-formal adult education practically succeed to foster transformation, development and human flourishing. That effective humanism gives credence to the ambitiousness of UNESCO and UN agenda for transformation and sustainability and informs international debates.

The European Company (SE): Power and participation in the multinational corporation

The European Company (Societas Europaea or SE) is a European multinational corporation, established under European Union regulations, intended to institutionalize transnational participation of employees and management in company decision-making. This article analyses a qualitative empirical investigation of the application of participation in European Companies. The experiences of firms adopting this corporate form show that contestability of participatory power is heightened, but its institutional legitimacy retained and diversely utilized. The data display a continuum of actor orientations, formal agreement regarding participation and effectiveness and transnational diffusion of participation. The utilization of this corporate form by labour and management actors is in general underdeveloped.

Lifelong Learning: Innovation, Policy and Institutions

Extensive debates in academic and practitioner circles over the last two or three decades, on the expansion of a liberalized knowledge-based economy and the learning society conceived as its corollary, continue to raise many critical questions. Theorists and practitioners in fields of education and lifelong learning are brought prominently into these debates as lifelong learning is elevated, at least rhetorically, in policy discourse to a key role. The European Union has famously articulated its aspiration towards achieving competitive knowledge-based economic advantage in the global economy. Its Lisbon Agenda of 2000 was relaunched in 2005 and its current policy strategy, Europe 2020 (European Commission 2010), continues to reinforce the key economic objectives and strategies of the Lisbon framework. Lifelong learning is promoted as a vital route to aligning the learning society with the knowledge economy. Yet the conceptualization of the ‘learning society’ and of lifelong learning promoted in the knowledge-economy policy models leaves, to educationists, very much to be desired. Many educationists argue that a dominant policy model of the knowledge-based economy and learning society binds education and lifelong learning into the service of a commanding yet narrow economic agenda – an agenda that now extends in reach to encompass notions of citizenship and social cohesion. That economic policy pursuit, moreover, risks a further weakening of the social rudiments of cohesion and inclusion which are similarly much extolled in policy discourse.

Labour's interest in corporate governance in the UK: are workers on the board back on the agenda?

This article investigates labours interests in corporate governance in the UK. Contemporary political economy conditions generate a confluence of factors that stimulates new demands and engagement strategies. Labour actors endeavour to forge corporate governance innovation through utilising cultural institutions in the regulation of firms in capitalist markets.