Creating Sustainable Work Systems: Developing Social Sustainability

Promoting competitive and sustainable growth is an issue throughout the industrialized countries. While the need is well-recognised and urgent, solutions have emerged and disseminated only slowly. Furthermore, many of the experimented remedies for lagging competitiveness have increased work intens [...]
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Promoting competitive and sustainable growth is an issue throughout the industrialized countries. While the need is well-recognised and urgent, solutions have emerged and disseminated only slowly. Furthermore, many of the experimented remedies for lagging competitiveness have increased work intensity, but have not met the competitiveness requirements of even the immediate future. The increased intensity of work is not only claiming a human toll but is also having an adverse effect on the quality of operations and business. New work organizational approaches are obviously needed to save companies and jobs, and to enhance employees' well-being and employability. The book is organized in four sections: Framing, Perspectives, Illustrations and Attainment. The framing provides a grounding in the key research issues and the historical evolutionary dimensions of work and work intensity. The perspectives sections presents a range of paradigms, concepts, conceptual frameworks, ideas and lenses from different academic disciplines to examine the emerging practice.The illustrations are intended to provide a few examples of work systems in a variety of contexts, national and industrial, that show how different aspects of sustainability may be realised. The attainment section attempts to indicate potential solutions coupled to the stages in development and learning processes, for sustainability is a process, not a state. Until now there have been no clear guiding models or theories on how changes can be made. Creating Sustainable Work Systems presents a highly topical and unique qpproach to this global problem. The book explores the development of new viable working practices, by analysing contemporary intensity problems, and provides the basis for designing and implementing 'sustainable work systems'. The existing possibilities and emerging solutions are highlighted and some valuable alternatives to intensive work systems are explored. It will be vital reading for academics in management as well as practitioners and policy makers.