Abstract
“I am large, I contain multitudes,” boasted the great American poet Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (New York: [Walt Whitman], 1855). Much the same could be said of this book, a diverse volume of essays by scholars affiliated with one of the world’s premier, labor-focused research centers: The Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies (WOS) at the University of Sydney, Australia. It is not so much the physical heft of this book, but the sheer variety of topics and perspectives it encompasses, that recalls Whitman’s multitudinous quality.
Contemporary Issues in Work and Organisations: Actors and Institutions is formally divided into four parts, with its first three parts introduced by one of the editors, Russell D. Lansbury, Anya Johnson, and Diane van den Broek. But its clearest delineation is between just two broad sections: one with an essentially macro or systems-level focus (Chapters 1–9), and the other with a micro and organizational orientation (Chapters 10–14). These two sections reflect and correspond to the differing but complementary “Work” and “Organisational Studies” halves of the WOS group. To round out the book, Chris Howell offers an excellent reflective essay (Chapter 15) that stands somewhat apart from the other chapters and attempts to locate all of them in the context of recent twists and turns in the course of capitalism.
The book’s first section places us firmly within the realm of the actors and institutions mentioned in its subtitle. Here, the changing patterns of work and its regulation are tackled from a traditional labor and employment relations perspective. Chris F. Wright and Russell D. Lansbury set the tone in Chapter 1, which offers what they describe as a dynamic framework for analyzing high-level changes in work and labor markets. They develop a neat model, in which industrial relations policies and systems are shaped at multiple levels by the combined effects of politics, ideas, and events, leading to distinctive patterns of continuity and change. While Wright and Lansbury’s dynamic framework will undoubtedly be put to good use by future labor scholars, a surprise (and minor disappointment) is that more use was not made of it in the pages of this book. It could have perhaps been a unifying anchor for the diverse chapters that follow.
The remaining chapters in this first section (Chapters 2–9) open out into a wealth of other important contemporary developments and challenges: options for regulating new forms of contract-based work in the platform “gig” economy; long-term trends in unionization, and women’s work and care patterns; the costs to workers (and some potential opportunities) arising from businesses’ fixation on financial performance; and the spread of co-operatives as a past and possible future alternative form of work organization. Among this generally strong set of essays, Christopher Wright’s (Chapter 5) stands out for its clear-eyed summation of our looming climate crisis and the urgency of a just transition away from fossil fuel dependence.
The chapters making up the book’s second main section move the analysis onto the classic terrain of organizational behavior and organizational studies. As Anya Johnson frames it in her brief introduction, these chapters “move inwards, with a focus within the organisation” (p. 159). The five essays (Chapters 10–14) are laudable for their shared vision of work that is good—inclusive, meaningful, socially beneficial, and self-actualizing—as opposed to merely not bad. Excellent discussions range across new and old topics, from the composition of company boards to the scourge of workplace bullying. In each case, the authors make commendable efforts not only to diagnose problems and deficiencies but also to offer suggestions for improvement, based on perceptive readings of both their own and other scholars’ evidence.
Despite their brevity, these chapters are remarkably thorough and widely referenced. Leaving aside the oddly jarring allusions to “leveraging compassion” (in Chapter 13 by Karyn L. Wang, Annalena Welp, Ju Li Ng, and Helena Nguyen), there is much here that will be useful as practical guidance for HR managers and other workplace leaders. The recommendations about making “mindfulness” training worthwhile, by James Donald, Anya Johnson, and Helena Nguyen (Chapter 14), are especially strong in this regard.
Overall, this book certainly succeeds in showcasing the influence, breadth, and currency of research being undertaken by the WOS group in Sydney. The individual chapters deal authoritatively and succinctly with their respective topics, clearly showing us the “state of the art” and the extant gaps in each area. Most of the chapters go a further step, charting paths forward for future conceptual development, empirical work, and, in the best cases, practical action.
The diversity of the contributions, perhaps necessarily, corresponds with some loss of internal coherence. Although the editors have attempted to impose a degree of thematic and structural order on the whole collection, their editorial touch is fairly light. No strict attempts are made to gird any of the chapters to a central motif or argument. For most readers, the resulting book will work best when consulted for information and ideas about a discrete topic, rather than when read from cover to cover in search of a common narrative thread.
For all its commendable breadth, there are still some notable omissions from the coverage of this book. For instance, apart from its particular role in seeding the growth of the platform gig economy (in Chapter 2 by Alex Veen, David Oliver, Caleb Goods, and Tom Barratt), there is little discussion of technology’s broader impacts on contemporary working patterns and organizational approaches to labor utilization. Developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, and workplace surveillance—which are prominent in many international debates about work—are given almost no attention here. Similarly, issues of mounting importance, such as intergenerational tensions and inequalities, and possible routes to the expansion of decent formalized working arrangements in developing countries, are left out of consideration. Of course, one book can only do so much, and these issues have admittedly received attention elsewhere. And yet, some small disappointment arises from not hearing the Sydney School’s insights on these issues, in a book otherwise full of strong, critical content. At worst, omitting these other issues might be (mis)construed as an indication that the editors and authors do not see them as significant.
From the vantage point of mid-2020, facing the enormity of the upheavals caused by an ongoing global coronavirus pandemic, the meaning and primacy of work are again in flux, and capable of redefinition. Our collective voice as the global community of labor and organizational scholars is needed at this pivotal moment. What will become of the millions left jobless by the crisis? What public and private investments, and new organizational forms, are needed to kick-start and sustain the recovery? Through our conceptual tools and methods, historical understanding, and imagination of possible futures, we are well placed to answer these questions and to influence what work becomes after the pandemic ends.
With its up-to-the-minute critical insights and its prevailing, generous spirit of disciplinary inclusiveness, Contemporary Issues in Work and Organisations reveals not only what work has been but also what it could—and should—become. It will be a valuable touchstone for all who study, teach, and have a say in determining the rules and realities of work.