ASA Networking Dinners

On By Sarah MosseriIn AnnouncementsLeave a comment

Please see an announcement below from OOW Chair, Lisa Keister:

OOW members,

We have a relatively recent tradition of organizing dinners at ASA that we have called networking dinners. The purpose has been to provide opportunities for members of various ranks to meet outside the normal meeting.

I am having trouble gauging interest in continuing these.

Would we like to continue this tradition? If so, are you willing to do the organizing?

Organizing them is a great way to contribute to the section, and I understand that it is not overly-onerous. Of course, there is no requirement that we continue doing this. If I do not have a volunteer, we can take a year off and reconsider the idea for the Montreal meeting.

Please send your thoughts to me at lkeister@soc.duke.edu.

Cheers,

Lisa A. Keister

 

New Book: Barman on the meaning of social value in an era of caring capitalism

On By Sarah MosseriIn Publications1 Comment

Book ImageEmily Barman, OOW member, announces the publication of her new book, Caring Capitalism: The Meaning and Measure of Social Value (Cambridge University Press).

Book Summary
Companies are increasingly championed for their capacity to solve social problems. Yet what happens when such goods as water, education, and health are sold by companies – rather than donated by nonprofits – to the disadvantaged and when the pursuit of mission becomes entangled with the pursuit of profit? In Caring Capitalism, Emily Barman answers these important questions, showing how the meaning of social value in an era of caring capitalism gets mediated by the work of ‘value entrepreneurs’ and the tools they create to gauge companies’ social impact. By shedding light on these pivotal actors and the cultural and material contexts in which they operate, Caring Capitalism accounts for the unexpected consequences of this new vision of the market for the pursuit of social value.

Publisher link: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/sociology/political-sociology/caring-capitalism-meaning-and-measure-social-value

ILR Review: May Issue on International & Comparative Labor

On By Sarah MosseriIn PublicationsLeave a comment

The May issue of the ILR Review is devoted to research on international and comparative labor and employment relations.  Please see the overview editorial essay by Paul Marginson. Papers cover the neoliberal turn in French industrial relations, European outsourcing and contingent labor strategies, labor relations in post-Communist regimes, union mergers in Germany, flexicurity, work uncertainty and HR practices, local strategies against multinationals, global framework agreements, gender discrimination in hiring – and more.

Continue reading “ILR Review: May Issue on International & Comparative Labor” →

New Member Publications: Pekarek on Unions

On By Sarah MosseriIn PublicationsLeave a comment

OOW member, Andreas Pekarek, recently published two articles, one (with Martin Behrens) within ILR Review and one (with Peter Gahan) within the Journal of Industrial Relations.  Please see additional details below:

Martin Behrens and Andreas Pekarek (2016)  ‘Between Strategy and Unpredictability: Negotiated Decision Making in German Union Mergers’ , ILR Review,  69(3) 579-604.  (http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/69/3/579.abstract)

Andreas Pekarek and Peter Gahan (2016)  ‘Unions and collective bargaining in Australia in 2015’, Journal of Industrial, Relations,http://jir.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/09/0022185616636104.abstract

Meet Your Council: Ofer Sharone

On By Sarah MosseriIn Council ProfilesLeave a comment

ofer-sharone-jacketOfer Sharone is currently serving on the OOW Section Council.  Sharone is an Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Before joining the faculty at UMass Amherst, he completed his Ph.D. in sociology at UC Berkeley and taught at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  He also holds a JD from Harvard Law School and previously practiced international law in San Francisco and Japan.

Sharone’s research focuses on career transitions, work and unemployment. His studies are primarily cross-national comparisons and utilize in-depth interviews and participant observations. His 2013 book, Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences, compared the job searching and unemployment experiences of white-collar workers in Israel and the United States.  The book won the Zelizer Award in Economic Sociology and the Weber Award in Organizations, Occupations and Work.

Sharone is a co-founder of the Institute for Career Transitions, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “generate effective strategies, offer practical support, and increase public understanding of the challenges facing professionals in career transitions.”  His current research with the Institute focuses on strategies for supporting long-term unemployed job seekers. This research has received wide attention from national media and led to an invitation from the White House and the Department of Labor to participate in policy discussions on addressing long-term unemployment.

We are grateful to Dr. Sharone for taking the time to answer our questions below.

Continue reading “Meet Your Council: Ofer Sharone” →

SPQ Call for Papers

On By Sarah MosseriIn Calls for PapersLeave a comment

A message from the editors of Social Psychology Quarterly: 

Dear Section Members,

We are writing because we have learned that a significant number of members in this section also are members of the social psychology section. In an effort to expand the breadth of the journal, we are reaching out to you to encourage you to consider submitting your work to SPQ. We would like to attract more contributions to the journal from a broad base of researchers who use social psychological approaches. SPQ is publishing full length (10,000 words) theoretical and empirical Articles and Research Notes (5,000 words).  We think that for many in this section, this would include your work.

Continue reading “SPQ Call for Papers” →

WFRN: Work Family Congressional Education and Policy Day

On By Sarah MosseriIn AnnouncementsLeave a comment

Wednesday, June 22, 2016
8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Register here

Join Researchers from Across the Country and Around the World in Educating Congress About Work and Family Issues!

You are invited to a special Work Family Congressional Education and Policy Day to be held June 22, the day before the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN) 2016 Conference opens in Washington, D.C. This special day will be co-hosted by the National Partnership for Women & Families and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Work and family researchers from across the country and around the globe will have the opportunity to meet with members of Congress to educate them about issues such as paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, and fair scheduling. Join WFRN for an interactive training session, including pointers on how to make your research most relevant to legislators and their staff, and then meet individually or in small groups with members of Congress to share your perspective and research. The National Partnership and Equitable Growth will provide training, schedule your meetings, and pair you up with policy practitioners. There is no charge to participate. All you have to do is sign up here and bring your expertise!

Continue reading “WFRN: Work Family Congressional Education and Policy Day” →

Program announced for mini-conference on precarious labor

On By Sarah MosseriIn Conferences, Seattle 20161 Comment

 

The program for the 2016 mini-conference on precarious labor is now available online.  The one-day conference, which is co-sponsored by the OOW Section, will be held Friday, August 19, 2016 in Seattle, Washington (Seattle Central College).

The conference focuses on analyzing the growth of precarious employment and informal labor, its consequences for workers and their families, the challenges it poses to worker organizing and collective mobilization, and how workers and other social actors are responding to precariousness.  The program focuses on the United States and China, but includes a range of global cases and perspectives.

The conference was initiated by the American Sociological Association (ASA)’s Labor and Labor Movements Section, the International Sociological Association (ISA)’s Research Committee on Labor Movements (RC44), and the Chinese Sociological Association’s China Association of Work and Labor (CAWL).

 

 

 

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ILR Review: CALL FOR PAPERS

On By Richard BentonIn Calls for Papers, Conferences, UncategorizedLeave a comment

ILR Review: CALL FOR PAPERS

A Conference and Special Issue Honoring David B. Lipsky

Conflict and Its Resolution in the Changing World of Work

The ILR Review (http://ilr.sagepub.com) invites submissions for a conference and subsequent special issue devoted to the role that conflict and conflict resolution play in the changing world of work. Ariel Avgar (University of Illinois; avgar@illinois.edu), Alexander Colvin (Cornell University; ajc22@cornell.edu), and Harry Katz (Cornell University; hck2@cornell.edu) will serve as coordinators of this special issue. Scholars interested in participating should submit a complete draft of their paper by April 15, 2017. Authors will be notified by July 1, 2017, if their paper has been accepted for presentation at the conference. Prospective contributors are urged to consult any of the coordinators regarding preliminary proposals or ideas for papers.

Authors whose papers are accepted will be invited to a conference sponsored by the ILR School at Cornell University honoring David B. Lipsky and recognizing his many contributions to the field of conflict resolution. The conference will be held in Ithaca, New York, in November 2017. Conference expenses will be subsidized by Cornell University. Papers presented at the conference should be suitable for immediate submission to external reviewers. A subset of authors will be asked to submit their papers to the ILR Review with the expectation that their papers will be published in a special issue if they pass the external review process. Papers that are deemed of good quality but not selected for the special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue of the journal.

Conflict and its resolution play a pivotal role in the workplace and organizations and help to explain a range of important outcomes at different levels of analysis. While conflict is an inherent part of the workplace and organizational life, the past 40 years have seen a dramatic and consequential transformation in the way it is resolved and managed. In the workplace arena, individual employment rights disputes have supplanted collective bargaining as the most widespread mode of conflict resolution, with declining unionization and strike rates and rising litigation numbers. At the same time, a growing proportion of organizations have turned to alternative methods for dealing with conflict, such as mediation and arbitration that, among other things, are designed to bypass approaches that rely primarily on traditional litigation or managerial authority. New organizational structures and work practices have changed the very nature of conflict and require new and innovative conflict management approaches.

This changing landscape has given rise to important questions about the antecedents and consequences associated with new forms of conflict and the wide array of methods used to manage and resolve it. While scholars in a variety of disciplines have begun to address these questions, there is much more we need to know. Research on alternative conflict resolution methods, for example, has focused more on explaining how and why such methods have emerged and much less on how they affect employees, organizations, and society more generally. In addition, existing studies have primarily focused on conflict resolution in the context of traditional employment arrangements, with far less attention paid to new forms of work and employment models. Existing research has also focused heavily on conflict resolution in the United States, with less attention given to international and comparative perspectives.

The study of conflict and its resolution has been fragmented, with little integration of theoretical and empirical insights across disciplines. Research examining conflict and its resolution at the individual or group levels, for example, does not incorporate relevant findings from organizational and societal level studies, and vice versa. Our theories need to integrate an understanding of how factors at multiple levels of analysis affect conflict, alternative approaches to conflict resolution, and related outcomes.

For this conference and special issue, we are particularly interested in papers that address underexplored areas of research and that incorporate diverse disciplinary perspectives. We welcome papers that are empirical or conceptual; that include international perspectives; and that make use of a range of methodologies, including surveys, experiments, case studies, archival studies, or legal research.

Potential topic areas include, but are not limited to:

  • New and emerging conflict resolution techniques in union and nonunion settings
  • Conflict and conflict resolution practices in different national settings and their implications for theory in this area
  • The relationship between alternative work arrangements and workplace conflict and conflict management
  • The influence of new employment models on conflict and conflict resolution
  • The adoption of conflict resolution practices in small and entrepreneurial firms
  • The link between conflict resolution methods and the level and nature of conflict in organizations
  • The impact of conflict resolution practices on employee, group, organizational, and societal outcomes
  • The implications of internal conflict resolution practices for employee access to justice
  • The relationship between legal, economic, and competitive pressures and workplace conflict and its resolution
  • Explaining individual usage patterns of various conflict resolution practices
  • Advances in the field of negotiation

To submit a paper for consideration, please go to http://ilr.sagepub.com and click on “Submit a Manuscript.” After you have logged into the manuscript submission website, be sure to fill in the “Special Issue” option.