Richard A. Peterson

Book ReviewsConsumption and Identity at Work. By Paul du Gay. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996. Pp. vi + 213.

many of the most interesting issues related to the changes or transformations occurring in employment relationships today are difficult to see with these data. Policy analysts will undoubtedly add that the data provide only a general, five-year-old snapshot of the employment practices and are not directly useful for assessing options open to either program administrators or for assessing the performance of any particular policy or regulation. These limitations are recognized by the authors and therefore should not diminish the contributions of this impressive complication of current practices and the potential value that can be realized by replicating and enhancing the design of this type of study. Of the enhancements suggested by the authors, the most valuable would be to add multiple employee respondents to the organizational samples in order to assess the effects of organizational structures and policies against the processes and relationships among workers, managers, and external institutions and networks. I would also urge an expansion of the theoretical lens guiding the choice of questions to better capture the essence of the transformations underway and to test alternative explanations for their consequences. Finally, to gain government support, future studies must be attentive to and flexible enough to speak to policy issues that will endure over the time span required to conduct and to report the results of the project. These are tall orders, however, they need to be tackled if the full potential of this important project is to be realized. I hope the authors and the NSF stay committed to the project.