Preface and acknowledgments Introduction 1. Explanation and dialectics Part I. Philosophy and Economics: 2. Philosophical anthropology 3. Economics 4. Exploitation, freedom and justice Part II. Theory of History: 5. Modes of production 6. Classes 7. Politics and the state 8. Ideologies 9. Capitalism, communism and revolution Conclusion references Index of names index of subjects.

Making Sense of Marx

Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research.

In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.

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The Modern Call Center: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on Operations Management Research

Over the last 40 years, major changes have taken place in the workplace. The growth in the use of information technology at work, the globalization of many industries, organizational restructuring, changes in work contracts and worktime scheduling have radically transformed the nature of work in many organizations. The workforce itself is also diversifying, with an increase in female participation, a growing number of dual-earner couples and older workers. The present paper discusses the impact of these workplace transitions on employee well-being. We focus on four issues that are current concerns for organizations and the workforce; job insecurity, work hours, control at work, and managerial style. For each topic, recent research is presented, with suggestions for future research and recommendations for practitioners working in the organizations of today. The paper concludes with some final considerations for researchers and practitioners that may benefit both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness.

Well‐being and occupational health in the 21st century workplace

Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, including helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although women and men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different in their emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women is prosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men is behaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive. These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor, which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes and the social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonal processes, social expectations, and individual dispositions.

The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender.

Those who ply their trade by purveying ideas - academics, policy entrepreneurs, consultants and the like - have a vested interest in proclaiming the new. It is much harder to make a reputation or a splash in the ideas pool by arguing that nothing much has changed. Let's call this the continuity option. Since the early 1980s the big picture franchise has passed to and through a variety of paradigm break theories. We have moved from and through flexible specialization, new production concepts, lean production, post-Fordism, postmodernization, and lately the knowledge economy. While there have, of course, been variations in these perspectives, we can also observe a number of common themes. The argument of this article is that while model building necessarily tends to overstate system cohesiveness, there are powerful structural tendencies, driven by developments in capital markets, which are exacerbating disunity between these different domains. Within modern capitalism economic actors are finding it increasingly difficult to 'make connections' between objectives in the spheres of work and employment, and simultaneously employers are finding it harder to keep their side of any bargain with employees.

Disconnected capitalism : or why employers can't keep their side of the bargain

The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic Environment.

The election of an outsider rightwing candidate, Steve Turner, to the leadership of the NUJ in June 1990, and his subsequent sacking in 1991 by the National Executive Council has seemed to bring the union into crisis. In fact this issue is only one symptom of an already existing crisis unparalleled in any other British union in the late 1980s/early 1990s, apart from maybe the building union, UCATT, whose membership and full-time officers are being raided by the EEPTU. What are these other symptoms? One is a declining membership, estimated to have fallen by at least 5,000 to between 20-25,000 in the last 5 years. Another is the continuing debt now running at 1.5 million, primarily the result of financing four lengthy strikes, but also due to financial scandal and poor administration. Both these problems would not overly worry a large or medium sized union but to the small NUJ they rightly do. While what is happening to the NUJ is in some of its aspects specific to the NUJ, its implications are of relevance to other trade unionists. The root cause of the crisis is the failure of the union to defend 7

The NUJ: A Union in Crisis:

This article considers the experience of press workers in the newspaper industry in Britain to examine how workers can rebuild their collective organisations to resist and supplant the increasing prevalence of non-unionism. Taking the press workers at Wapping firstly and then press workers in general, the re-composition of the labour process is considered to show that new spaces and opportunities for worker resistance are continually provided even within inhospitable environments. As such workers' power is socially constructed and mobilised rather than technologically determined.

Resisting the Rise of Non-unionism: the Case of the Press Workers in the Newspaper Industry

On the Game — Women and Sex Work – Edited by Sophie Day

In this volume, the author asserts that a fusion of traditional trade union militancy and national identity creates a more radical outlook within Scotland. He investigates the more militant regions of England and compares Scotland to the Welsh experience, and concludes that these other areas share very similar experiences. He concludes that whilst Scottish workers are no different to their counterparts in the rest of Britain the added importance of the 'national question' provides the answer to the question as to why Scotland appears to have a more radical industrial climate.

Gregor Gall

Papers

The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic Environment.

The NUJ: A Union in Crisis:

Resisting the Rise of Non-unionism: the Case of the Press Workers in the Newspaper Industry

On the Game — Women and Sex Work – Edited by Sophie Day

The Political Economy of Scotland: Red Scotland? Radical Scotland?