Work and Employment
Researchers in the Work and Employment group study a range of human resource management, industrial relations and labour market harnessing a local and global perspective.
Workplace studies encompass the growth of the Service Sector, including call centres and health services, and the implications this has for contemporary experiences of work, as well as work-life balance, employee misbehaviour, gender and diversity. Regional economic development is studied through the lens of entrepreneurship, SME engagement, innovation, and knowledge exchange. Research themes incorporate trade unionism and labour movements in China, trade union politics and European policies and ideologies, alternative wage negotiations and labour dispute resolutions and employee representation. Operations and supply chain design are also represented, including sustainable supply chains for SMEs in the luxury and food industries, and precarious work in the hospitality sector. The substitutability between Young and Old Workers in Low Paid Occupations, and the consequences of a national minimum wage, is also a feature of this group.
Research projects include:
- The role of friends in women’s transition from caring labour to market work
- Control and resistance in front-line service work, career progression and gender dynamics in call centres
- China’s Road and Belt Initiative, overseas investment and the challenges of African countries’ sustainable development
- The scope and significance of employee branding
- Changes in collective pay determination in China’s foreign invested manufacturing industry
- The search for meaningfulness in work
- Precarious work in European countries during the crisis.
- Effects of Perceived Negative Workplace Gossip on Job Performance
- Examination of the industrial and employment practices in front-line employment and their implications for job regulation
- The work and life-experience of women entrepreneurs
- Health & safety at work and employee wellbeing
- The influence of minimum wages on labour market outcomes of individuals and firms.
- The influence of social networks on job matching