{"title":"Young is Fun: Examining the Inter-Relations of Play and Age at Work","authors":"Cara Reed, Helen C Williams, Katrina Pritchard","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343276","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses current limitations in theorisations of fun, introducing Turner’s liminoid/liminal distinction of play and work. This suggests engaging in play – liminoid phenomena – releases individuals from everyday societal structures, like age-based identity memberships. Featuring participant data from a large UK-based insurance firm, the research highlights how play activities are underpinned by age-related assumptions. The study makes three contributions. First, conceptualising the ‘pseudo-liminoid’ – a space between work and play where the potential for play to be freeing is curtailed. Second, it problematises common positive attributes of organisational play, suggesting play can reproduce social norms, thus undermining why it was introduced to the organisation. Finally, it highlights how play and fun can be ‘aged’, with implications for how organisations conceive of play’s role in creating an inclusive workplace.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Support or Exploitation? Workfare Implementation and Migrants’ Resistance within the Swiss Reception System","authors":"Agnès Aubry","doi":"10.1177/09500170251344717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251344717","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores the daily implementation and lived experiences of workfare-inspired programmes designed for migrants seeking protection, who are living in Swiss reception centres. It examines how they are compelled to perform a wide range of unpaid work in exchange for their support and how they negotiate that work. Using a situated intersectional approach, the article shows how workfare-inspired programmes become a tool for channelling the behaviours of racialised migrant men and underlines the everyday resistance practices and survival strategies migrant claimants use to face exploitation. This case study takes a critical stance towards mainstream accounts of migrant workfare that frame it as a pathway to integration and empowerment. It brings new empirical insights to critical welfare studies and contributes to research on contemporary social security reform by showing how migrant claimants routinely resist the implementation of workfare.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is Workplace Flexibility Penalised? The Gendered Consequences of Working from Home for the Wages of Parents and Childless Employees in the UK","authors":"Johanna Elisabeth Pauliks","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336943","url":null,"abstract":"Working from home has been discussed in terms of reconciling work and family life and reducing gender gaps in the labour market. However, its implications for wages remain the subject of debate, with some researchers arguing that flexibility stigma disproportionately disadvantages certain groups, particularly mothers. This article uses data from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, to investigate whether working from home has different consequences for individual wages according to gender and parental status. Inverse probability weighted fixed-effects regression models are used with a sample of up to 8552 employees. The results suggest that working from home is associated with higher earnings for mothers, suggesting that the benefits of flexible working arrangements may outweigh potential disadvantages.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Precarious Masculinities: Migrant Working Men’s Masculinities as Self-Exploitation in a Mediterranean Restaurant in Glasgow","authors":"Panos Theodoropoulos, Sam Lawton-Westerland","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336990","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a covert ethnography of a Mediterranean restaurant in Glasgow, this article analyses how practices characteristic of hegemonic masculinity are incorporated by male migrant workers in the process of crafting labour identities. Building on Connell’s framework of hegemonic masculinity, the researchers found that performances of masculinity operated in a way that, while allowing subjects to feel some degree of power, also ultimately reinforced the individualising pressures promoted by the labour process. It is therefore argued that hegemonic masculinity is critical in providing an avenue through which experiences of exploitation are naturalised by precarious labour workforces.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yin Liang, Jiaming Li, Jeremy Aroles, Edward Granter
{"title":"Content Creation within the Algorithmic Environment: A Systematic Review","authors":"Yin Liang, Jiaming Li, Jeremy Aroles, Edward Granter","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325784","url":null,"abstract":"While research on platform work has grown exponentially in recent years, the power dynamics between creators and algorithms on digital platforms, as well as their role in shaping online visibility, are yet to be fully understood. Against this backdrop, we ask: <jats:italic>How does algorithmic power maintain its dominance and shape the nature of work for content creators?</jats:italic> Through a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between algorithms and content creators, this article identified four core themes, namely: (i) market rationality underpinning visibility, (ii) potential power dislocation caused by folk theories, (iii) neo-normative control of creators through algorithms and (iv) subversion of beatific fantasies. Drawing from Tirapani and Willmott’s framework to theorise the power relations framing interactions between algorithms and creators, we argue that the fantasies fabricated by neoliberalism justify, endorse and ultimately support the dominance and dynamic power of algorithms over creators in content creative platforms.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144210982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alex J Wood, Nicholas Martindale, Brendan J Burchell
{"title":"Beyond the ‘Gig Economy’: Towards Variable Experiences of Job Quality in Platform Work","authors":"Alex J Wood, Nicholas Martindale, Brendan J Burchell","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336947","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘gig economy’ encompasses a wide range of jobs, platforms and workers. In this article, we provide the first quantitative evidence in support of the model of job quality developed by Wood et al. that predicts divergence across local and remote platform work. Specifically, we find that remote platform work entails significantly better pay, more flexibility, greater influence over how to do the job, a greater sense of doing useful work, better health and safety, less pain, and less work-related insecurity. In contrast, local platform work entails greater organisational influence and less physical isolation. We explain these disparities by considering how divergent organisational forms emerge across the local/remote divide as a result of specific differences in platform technologies and worker skills.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144202176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anna Matysiak, Agnieszka Kasperska, Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska
{"title":"Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Work from Home on Careers in the Post-Covid Context","authors":"Anna Matysiak, Agnieszka Kasperska, Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325769","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the role of two mechanisms – perceived workers’ performance and commitment – in shaping the career opportunities of teleworkers and office-based workers in the post-pandemic context of the United Kingdom. We outline a theoretical framework that integrates economic and sociological literature on work from home (WFH) and careers, and accounts for workers’ gender and parenthood obligations. We test it utilizing data from a discrete choice experiment conducted between July and December 2022 with 937 managers. Our findings reveal that hybrid workers face poorer career prospects than office-based workers because managers perceive them as underperforming. Among full-time teleworkers, reduced career opportunities stem not only from managers’ perceptions of their job performance but also from assumptions that full-time teleworkers are less committed to work. Finally, we demonstrate disparate impacts on promotion and earning opportunities based on gender and parenthood, primarily due to differing employer perceptions regarding work performance and commitment.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender Ideologies and Workplace Diversity Policies: Are Voluntary Women’s Quotas and Mentoring Programmes Associated with Employees’ Gender Ideologies?","authors":"Eileen Peters, Anja-Kristin Abendroth","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336989","url":null,"abstract":"Following policy feedback theory, this article argues that normative policy feedback mechanisms also operate at the workplace level, where employees are expected to adapt their beliefs to the specific policy context in which they are embedded. Specifically, it considers employees’ gender ideologies and their association with two prominent workplace-level diversity policies: voluntary women’s quotas and mentoring programmes. Partial proportional odds models are estimated employing a unique German linked employer–employee dataset (2018/19) incorporating 2445 employees and 82 workplaces. Findings indicate that voluntary women’s quotas implemented in workplaces are associated with more egalitarian gender ideologies among employees. This clear pattern was not detected for mentoring programmes. No gender differences were discovered, suggesting that normative policy feedback effects in the workplace are present equally among women and men. In conclusion, the findings indicate that policy feedback mechanisms operate not only at the national but also at the workplace level.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bridging the Gaps in Work Quality Research: A Multi-Level Interdisciplinary Review","authors":"Lisa Chamberlain, Emma Hughes, Rory Donnelly","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325790","url":null,"abstract":"Experiences of work and employment continue to change but the concepts of job quality, job satisfaction and quality of working life remain compartmentalised and contextually disconnected due to entrenched disciplinary divisions, which hinder multi-level work quality theorisation. This article contributes to research on the sociology of work by integrating divergent streams of literature on these concepts with labour process theory to offer a more holistic and integrated perspective on work quality. Our multidisciplinary systematic review ( <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 345) reveals the conceptual challenges and dynamics work quality researchers face within and between analytical levels, which we synthesise in this article in Figure 1. Three interrelated research agendas are proposed to bridge the gaps between different disciplines, work quality models and contexts. We argue that research combining objective and subjective features of work quality with wider labour process considerations can lead to richer interdisciplinary understandings and support improvements to working lives.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144153931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Peter Ackers, Trade Unions and the British Industrial Relations Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Hugh Clegg AckersPeterTrade Unions and the British Industrial Relations Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Hugh CleggNew York: Routledge, 2024, £135 hbk (£35.99 ebook), (ISBN: 9781032422909), 254 pp.","authors":"Horen Voskeritsian","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336930","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144133687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}