The Skills That Matter is an edited collection written by leading academics from the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia in the area of skills acquisition, formation and development. It combines academic evidence and policy debates with a critical analysis, making it an asset to students of HRM, industrial relations, sociology of work and business and management at both undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as being a useful resource to researchers and policy makers working in the fie...

This accessible and exciting new text looks at the implications of aesthetic labour for work and employment by contextualizing debates and offering a critical approach. The origins of aesthetic labour are explored, as well as the relevant theories from business and management, and sociology. Coverage includes key topics such as: corporate strategy; recruitment and selection practices; and discrimination.Key features include:- a range of case studies from across different ty...

The boundary between work and life is today seen as a major point of tension. New forms of employment and changing locations of work have blurred the distinction between paid labour and private life.Work Less, Live More? refocuses the debate from how we balance life and work to the increasingly ambiguous point where they meet. Leading scholars present international research to demonstrate the effects of this shift. Case studies include, amongst others, call centre workers, hairstyl...

The aim of this Handbook is to produce an interdisciplinary and international benchmark text for anyone wanting to understand job quality. Job quality matters and has long and continually done so, even if the terminology used to describe it has, and continues, to vary. Debate about the future of work and job quality in the twenty-first century centres on the impact of the new digital technologies of the putative fourth industrial revolution. This debate compounds existing concerns about th...

Skills and workforce development are at the heart of much research on work, employment, and management. But are they so important? To what extent can they make a difference for individuals, organizations, and nations? How are the supply and, more importantly, the utilization of skill, currently evolving? What are the key factors shaping skills trajectories of the future? This Handbook provides an authoritative consideration of issues such as these. It does so by drawing on experts...