Search results for ""author vicki smith""

The 1990s were years of turmoil and transformation in American work experiences and employment relationships. Trends including the growth of contingent labor, the erosion of the stable employment contract, the restructuring of jobs and companies, and the emergence of opportunity-enhancing employee participation programs reconfigured occupations, career paths, and labor market opportunities. Vicki Smith analyzes this shift, asking how workers navigated their way across the divide between bad jobs and good jobs, between jobs organized hierarchically and jobs requiring greater worker involvement, and between temporary and stable work. Crossing the Great Divide uses original case study data from four diverse organizational settings around the country. Smith compares the situations of nonunionized, white-collar workers at a photocopy service firm; unionized blue-collar workers in a wood-products processing factory; temporary assemblers and clerical workers in a high-tech firm; and unemployed managers, technical workers, and professionals participating in a job search club. The very different experiences revealed in Crossing the Great Divide highlight the way diverse new relationships between companies and their employees play out in workplaces, where new forms of work organization simultaneously create opportunity, instability, and risk for workers. Smith's goal is to construct a new framework of employment that accommodates the unpredictability and turbulence of the 21st century, but that is also "characterized at its core by attachment, reward, protection, commitment, and dignity."

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In the 1980s, corporate America experienced massive cutbacks and organizational decline after decades of economic growth and dominance. The institutional and ideological changes that were part of the transformation created a new landscape of work and social relations for corporate middle managers. Managing in the Corporate Interest assesses this landscape by examining a large diversified bank that restructured its organizational and personnel policies to meet a new era of corporate competition. Drawing on interviews with managers and personnel management employees, observation of management training seminars, and documentary sources, this book examines the unique mission handed to middle managers to scale back paternalistic employment policies. It also analyzes the intra-management conflict incurred when corporate top managers attempted to disguise their downsizing strategies and refused to acknowledge their own role in creating the bank’s economic crisis. Vicki Smith's work suggests that quick-fix strategies such as downsizing and cutbacks, which dominated corporate profitability strategies in the 1980s, can corrode trust and legitimacy in the workplace. In the long run, such strategies also undermine consent to the current and very necessary transformation of the way American firms do business. Managing in the Corporate Interest contains important lessons about the rise and decline of economic enterprises and provides a wide-ranging look at changes in the management, structure, and production processes of American corporations. Richly documented and accessibly written, this incisive work will appeal to business people and scholars alike. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

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Temporary agencies place approximately two and a half million people in jobs each day in the United States. Every year, about twelve million people use these placement agencies to find temporary work. Many Americans, even those who desire permanent jobs, decide to enter the labor market through the portal of temporary agencies. Compared with the post-World War II era, when it was a marginal labor practice, temporary employment is today an entrenched feature of jobs and labor markets. How have temporary employment relationships become so widespread and normalized? In The Good Temp, Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth provide some novel answers to this question. Their provocative analysis is based on an insider's view of the interior dynamics of a temporary help agency in Silicon Valley. It incorporates a historical perspective on the rise of the temporary help service industry. Smith and Neuwirth document how this powerful industry not only created a new market for temporary labor but also played a fundamental role in the erosion of the permanent employment model. They analyze how agencies themselves came to manufacture and market this reinvented product-the good temp, an employee who is effective and efficient, committed, and sometimes preferable to a permanent staff member. Joining extensive participant observation data with historical analysis, The Good Temp contains some surprising findings about temporary employment today and fills a significant gap in our understanding of this important labor relationship.

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“This book provides a very good introduction to the key concepts and theories that inform and frame the current psychotherapeutic and counselling landscape. Each author has written on a selection of basic concepts as they are approached in their preferred therapeutic modality, resulting in an exciting and inclusive overview of both old and contemporary psychotherapeutic thought. In addition, each author is mindful of the importance of a critical appraisal of the various concepts and theories. Thus, this book will be extremely useful both for trainees and practitioners.” Dr Anastasios Gaitanidis, Senior Lecturer, University of Roehampton, London, UK“As well as being an invaluable source of knowledge about all aspects of counselling and psychotherapy, this book is a real pleasure to read. The authors have been able to capture the essence of ideas, traditions and key figures in a way that is accessible and a consistent source of delight and illumination. Highly recommended for anyone wishing to expand their psychotherapeutic horizons.”John McLeod, Emeritus Professor of Counselling, University of Abertay Dundee, UK“This book does what it says on the tin, it highlights the key concepts and theories in the field of counselling and psychotherapy. It is a systematic and encyclopaedic voyage of all the central constructs in the field. It is very well written, snappy and thorough, but more important, it serves a vital need of putting in one place all the theories and concepts needed by anyone interested in counselling and psychotherapy.”Cary L. Cooper, CBE, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health, Lancaster University, UK and President of BACP“This is an invaluable guide for anyone wanting easily accessible information about counselling theory and practice. It will be as useful to trainees sitting as counsellors, as to experienced practitioners wanting to update their knowledge on the latest thinking.”Tim Bond, University of Bristol, UKThis helpful book offers a concise overview of core concepts within the four dominant approaches to counselling and psychotherapy: psychodynamic, humanistic-existential, cognitive behavioural and integrative. The book aims to assist you in developing your critical thinking and essay writing skills and includes: Over 140 entries, each between 500 and 1200 words Critical and engaging discussions of core concepts Biographical sketches of leading theorists, including: Freud, Jung and Rogers Using the popular alphabetical format, Key Concepts in Counselling and Psychotherapy is an ideal first source for students with an essay on counselling theory to write, a case study to analyse, a belief or assumption to challenge, or a question to explore. It will also appeal to practitioners or academics wanting to refresh their knowledge of theory and research.

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