Jean Gardiner

‘All that is Solid?’: Class, Identity and the Maintenance of a Collective Orientation amongst Redundant Steelworkers

This article explores the importance of class and collectivism to personal identity, and the role this played during a period of personal and collective crisis created by mass redundancy in the Welsh steel industry. The research findings demonstrate the importance of occupational identity to individual and collective identity formation. The apparent desire to maintain this collective identity acted as a form of resistance to the increased individualization of the post-redundancy experience, but rather than leading to excessive particularism, it served as a mechanism through which class-based thinking and class identity were articulated. It is argued that the continued concern for class identity reflected efforts to avoid submergence in an existence akin to Beck’s (1992) vision of a class-free ‘individualized society of employees’.These findings therefore challenge the notion of the pervasiveness of individualism and the dismissal of class and collective orientations as important influences on identity formation.

Work–life balance and older workers: employees' perspectives on retirement transitions following redundancy

Work-life balance and older workers : Employees’ perspectives on retirement transitions following redundancy

Redundancy as a critical life event moving on from the Welsh steel industry through career change

This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those ‘at a career crossroads’, for whom there were tensions between future projects, present contingencies and past identities. It suggests that the process of moving on from redundancy can be better understood if we are able to identify, not just structural and cultural enablers and constraints but also the temporal dimensions of agency that facilitate or limit transformative action in the context of critical life events. Where individuals are located on the spectrum of career change experience will depend on the balance of enabling and constraining factors across the four aspects considered, namely temporal dimensions of agency, individuals’ biographical experience, structural and cultural contexts.

Employee availability for work and family: three Swedish case studies

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of availability, both empirically and theoretically, in the context of three Swedish organisations, and identifies the structural influences on availability patterns for work and family.Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on quantitative case studies using employer records and an employee questionnaire in three organisations. Multivariate descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression are used to illustrate and analyse patterns of availability for work and family.Findings – The descriptive data demonstrate the influence of the organisational context and type of production process, as well as gender, on availability patterns. Patterns of work availability appeared to differ across the organisations to a greater extent than patterns of family availability, which were highly gendered. The logistic regression results indicated that: occupation was a significant influence on both temporal and spatial availability patter...

Organisational approaches to flexible working

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to, first, explore flexible working as an important but under‐researched dimension of equality and diversity (ED a means of impr...

Exploring the work–life challenges and dilemmas faced by managers and professionals who live alone:

This article aims to question the dominant understanding of work–life balance or conflict as primarily a ‘work–family’ issue. It does this by exploring the experiences of managers and professionals who live alone and do not have children – a group of employees traditionally overlooked in work–life policy and research but, significantly, a group on the rise within the working age population. Semi-structured interviews with 36 solo-living managers and professionals were carried out in the UK, spanning a range of occupations. In addition to previously identified work–life issues, four themes emerged that were pressing for and specific to solo-living managers and professionals. These are articulated here as challenges and dilemmas relating to: assumptions about work and non-work time; the legitimacy of their work–life balance; lack of support connected to financial and emotional well-being; and work-based vulnerabilities.

Putting the Agent into Research in Black and Minority Ethnic Entrepreneurship: A New Methodological Proposal

Abstract This paper considers what realist social theory (RST) can add to existing knowledge about black and minority ethnic (BME) entrepreneurs and outlines a methodology for exploring the role of the BME entrepreneur. For this group, embodied signifiers such as skills and abilities, cultural characteristics, social norms, and value systems combine with structural antecedents, such as financial, contractual, professional, and other national and regional institutional arrangements to create impediments on the progression of BME enterprises. Understanding such complex social arrangements presents significant ontological and methodological challenges. We argue that previous research has failed to capture the richness of the forms of agency BME entrepreneurs display and that, as a consequence, RST has much to offer this debate. The paper ends with a discussion of the methodological implications of analysing BME entrepreneurs in terms of their social agency.

Gender and Family in the Formation of Human Capital

Human capital has been widely adopted by social scientists and policymakers as a tool for analysing labour market and education issues. This chapter suggests that critically engaging with the concept of human capital is a fruitful area for feminist research because it offers a way of making gender and household relations visible within economic discourse and can help in the construction of a new political economy. The aim is to develop a way of theorizing the social development of human resources that is more adequate than neoclassical human capital theory and that takes account of gender and family. Conceptual frameworks drawn from outside the economics discipline may help in this process and two of these that are discussed in the chapter are ‘human capability for work’ and ‘human learning potential’.

The perceived fairness of work-life balance policies: A UK case study of solo-living managers and professionals without children

The ability to reconcile work and private life is a matter relevant to all employees, though not all may seek “balance.” Research indicates that organisational work–life balance policies and flexible working arrangements often focus on the needs of working parents, with one potential outcome being “family-friendly backlash,” or counterproductive work behaviour from those without caring responsibilities. This paper analyses data from 36 interviews with childless solo-living managers and professionals, exploring perceptions of fairness in relation to these policies. In contrast to previous studies, despite recognising a strong family-care orientation in employer provisions, perceptions of unfair treatment or injustice were not pronounced in most cases, and thus there was little evidence of backlash/counterproductive work behaviour. The paper uses and develops organisational justice theory to explain the findings, emphasising the importance of situating individual justice orientations within perceived organisational policy and wider regulatory contexts. It also emphasises the importance of evaluating fairness of work–life balance policies and flexible working arrangements in relation to other aspects of the employment relationship, notably opportunities for career development and progression.

Exploring the private pension gender gap and occupation in later working life

This article investigates the gender gap in private pension (PP) membership and wealth across different occupations among a cohort of employees using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Using a Heckman selection model to correct for selection bias the results show that gender has a stronger effect than occupation on PP membership and that it is female employees’ lower rate of PP membership that has the greatest impact on their ability to accumulate PP wealth, rather than their ability to save once a member. The size of the gender gap in PP wealth is also conditioned by occupation. Analysis of the interaction of these two variables provides new insights into the heterogeneity of women’s private pension experience and the emergence of a ‘privileged pole’ among professional women.