review

Contextualization

The book Authority and autonomy: Paradoxes in modern knowledge work (hereafter referred to as A&A) is written by Susanne Ekman, assistant professor at the Department of Organization at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. With a background in anthropology and management, Ekman’s ethnographically informed study of media companies in Denmark is a useful contribution to our understanding of the role passion plays as a driving force in the performance and management of creative knowledge work.

Review of

Davide Nicolini (2012) Practice Theory, Work & Organization: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (PB, pp. 320, US$40.50, ISBN 978-0199231591)

Context

Women working in the financial sector on Wall Street earn 55 to 62 cent for each dollar a man earns, which points to an impressive gender wage gap (Bass, 2012). Although these women are not impoverished, it is a strong signal for gender segregation in various ways. It seems there is still a long way to go in order to reach equal opportunities; though, a long way has been covered already – a way that is delineated in Melissa S. Fisher’s book.

Introduction: ‘Touching the core’

Introduction: The broad strokes

In this accessibly written book, Devinney, Augur and Eckhardt pool their differing disciplinary expertise to deliver a slap of realism to research on ethical consumerism. As scholars of strategy, information systems and marketing, the authors take aim at the hysteria of research purporting to show evidence of ethical consumers and large-scale demand for socially responsible products and services.

Starring Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, The Internship was presumably intended as the Hollywood blockbuster of Summer 2013. The movie portrays a couple of interns who arrive at the corporation in the hope of securing a job in the creative industries. While their experiences are arguably somewhat less traumatic than those the hapless intern protagonist of The Devil Wears Prada has to endure in a similar scenario, the two are nevertheless forced to compete with an army of other prospective employees (i.e.

At a time when in the UK the government is undertaking a fundamental reform of social security, this book should be made compulsory reading by everyone involved in designing and delivering welfare payments systems, from Ministers to frontline staff. The book explores the dynamics of the lives of people who ‘churn’ between low-pay jobs and social welfare. Unlike most of this special issue, it is not specifically focused on the concept of ‘employability’, but the research emerged out of previous work by the authors which examines the early transitions of young people into the labour market.

Last summer, The New York Times ran a front-page story on the latest craze in corporate team building: juice cleansing. ‘It was a week when we were slammed, and we just needed to pull together as a community’, explains an employee who recently embarked on the three-day-long, liquid-only diet. The cleanse, which entails replacing your typical three meals a day with vital ‘living food’ juices, promises the salutary effects of prolonged energy, heightened alertness, and increased productivity.