Myths at WorkISBN: 978-0-7456-2271-2
Paperback
248 pages
October 2000, Polity
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"There is no better or more accessible guide to the debates
about work and employment than this volume. The strong emphasis on
well-grounded empirical studies - some carried out by the authors -
will help to keep students' feet on the ground and provide them
with the evidence to demolish some of the more egregious of
fashionable theories. This will surely be the best text in the
field for many years to come. This book brilliantly explodes the
fallacy that work and employment need not be a central component of
any sociology programme."Ray Pahl , Institute of Social and
Economic Research, University of Essex
"The authors examine changes at work and in industrial relations
in the light of some of the principal myths that have been used to
explain the changes ... The book deals very effectively with the
myth that trade unions are in permanent decline, concluding that
the UK continues to be typified by adversarial industrial
relations, giving the unions hope for recovery." Labour
Research
"The overall selection covers the most prevalent and seductive
myths in an accessible and stimulating style. Consequently, I would
expect this book to appear on numerous undergraduate reading lists
... Myths at Work may signal the launch of a new genre in
the sociology of work in which academics willingly engage with the
claims advanced by contemporary management gurus and business
philosophers. If this makes it easier to capture student attention
and stimulate classroom discussion, then books like this will serve
an important ... function." British Journal of Industrial
Relations
"This is a useful text: it puts 'politics' and 'class' at the centre of the analysis of contemporary work and many of the individual chapters provide useful correctives to some of the more unthinking claims advanced on behalf of such phenomena as lean production, non-standard employment and the feminisation of work"Tom Keenoy, Labour and Industry