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Workplaces are more diverse and globalized than ever, and academics and practitioners have exerted more effort to create physical and digital workplaces where every employee feels included and respected. Yet, language-based stigma is still prevalent in the workplace, and nearly 1.2 billion nonnative English-speaking employees (i.e., employees speaking English as their second language) commonly encounter explicit and implicit mistreatment and struggle to move up the career ladder.
Read MoreIndia presents a rich context for research on work and employment, epitomising the paradox of being the world’s fifth biggest economy but one where 92.4% of the workforce is informal – insecure, unprotected, poor – and women and disadvantaged groups most vulnerable.
The work and employment scenario is characterised by ‘jobless growth’, development rooted in rising informalisation of the workforce, low productivity juxtaposed with some niche high-growth sectors, high levels of poverty in agriculture, and low female participation in the workforce. Social relations of gender, caste, ethnicity and religion intersect with material relations, further reinforcing existing inequalities in the labour market and at the workplace. It is in this context of informalisation and fragmentation of labour that working lives in India need to be examined.
Read MoreAs the world negotiates a return to physical workplaces, it is clear that the changing nature of the work environment will need careful management and planning. The pandemic has revealed the potential for a different way of working, and many are not prepared to return to full-time office work. However, most employees do value time spent with their colleagues and would prefer a more flexible way of working.
Read MoreWhat happens at work, and in workplaces, clearly has a lot to do with different jobs, occupations and class more generally, but workplaces are much more than that. Workplaces are also places of age, where age is “done”, is constructed and reconstructed, is experienced, celebrated and denied. At work, people are routinely assessed by age, sometimes in terms of being a certain number of years, more often through some form of cultural assessment of occupational or professional age – is this a young worker?
Read MoreThe linkage between gender and leadership has enormous workplace consequences. It currently favors men and disadvantages women, which is problematic from an equal opportunity and social justice perspective. I believe that the proper goal to be achieved is a workplace in which all employees are treated according to what they bring to the job and everyone is given the chance to reach their leadership potential, regardless of their gender. We’re not there yet.
Read MoreCOVID-19 has shifted the paradigms of reality for everyone. For many employees and organizations alike, working from home has become the new “normal” whereby work and home boundaries have become blurred. In addition to handling all the anxiety provoked by the pandemic, employees have to constantly juggle work and home demands in the hope of achieving an optimum work-family balance.
Read MoreThe papers in this special symposium collection examine conflict resolution with a specific focus on workplace conflict. Although managers sometimes claim that workplace conflict is a thing of the past having been eliminated by attitude surveys, open door policies, or other complaint procedures, there is much evidence that conflict persists.
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