Reminder: MREV – Call for Papers: What Makes a Job Good or Bad? Standards of Good Work Revisited

Guest Editors:
Dorothea Alewell, University of Hamburg (Germany)
Simon Fietze, University of Southern Denmark
Wenzel Matiaske, Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (Germany)

Seminar at the IUC Dubrovnik (April 3-7, 2018) & Special Issue

Standards of good work – in economics, law, sociology and industrial psychology – are rooted in ideas of protecting labour against exploitation and alienation. Certainly, these basic ideas have not lost their importance. However, organisations as socio-technological systems have radically changed during the last decades, which entails the need for revision of the implications formulated in the 1960s. The front against Taylorism and the bureaucratic phenomenon will prove fruitless in times of the flexible organisation and subsequently flexible women and men. E. g.:

  • Technical progress may result not only in a reduction of workload but also in a devaluation of human capital which is bounded to persons, relatives and communities. New sourcing strategies of enterprises for example via crowd and clickwork platforms will change the structure of relevant labour markets.
  • Labour law may foster the unintended effect of building up a non-core workforce which is excluded from regulations which protect regular employees. The questions of how protection can be organised elsewhere, and whether monetary instruments as an unconditional minimum wage are a good remedy are still debated intensely.
  • The additional margin for manoeuvre intended as a resource enabling coping in models of work-related stress has converted to a stressor itself in flexible organisations.
  • Changes of value orientations, which are out of the perspective of social research since decades, may result in altered individual demands and hence on answers to the question what makes a good job.
  • The same is true for the change in the structure of the workforce, for example concerning age, gender, generation and religious orientation, on the collective level.

This is not an exhaustive list.

The seminar welcomes empirical studies as well as theoretical papers and provides sufficient time for discussion and reflection.

Deadline
Potential contributors to the seminar at the IUC Dubrovnik are encouraged to submit an abstract of 5 pages before February 28th, 2018 electronically via the online submission system of management revue – Socio-Economic Studies using ‘IUC Dubrovnik’ as article section: http://www.mrev.nomos.de/guidelines/submit-manuscript/

All contributors to the seminar are invited to submit their paper for the special issue of management revue – Socio-Economic Studies. Full papers must be submitted by July 31st, 2018. All contributions will be subject to a double-blind review. Papers invited to a ‘revise and resubmit’ are due October 31st, 2018.

Hoping to hear from you!
Dorothea Alewell
Simon Fietze
Wenzel Matiaske