Rethinking Work: A Review Essay
By CHARLES J. WHALEN

At the LERA Annual Meeting in January 2007, a distinguished panel of professors from the United States , Canada and England considered the present and future of industrial relations as an academic discipline. While panelists concurred that studying work and employment relations remains as important as ever, they also agreed that rapid change in the world of work is a major challenge confronting the field's researchers. The Australian editors of a new book called Rethinking Work: Time, Space and Discourse hold a similar view. As a result, they have collaborated with colleagues at the University of Sydney to offer a way forward in the face of such change. The volume is a success at many levels and is worthy of widespread attention from scholars, practitioners and students.

Time, Space and Discourse

Rethinking Work is, first and foremost, a fresh look at the terrain of employment relations. To get a handle on this “rapidly evolving and multi-dimensional realm,” editors Mark Hearn and Grant Michelson identify three concepts as building blocks: time, space and discourse (p. 1). Fourteen essays are distributed across three sections, each of which focuses on one of these notions.

“Time” is a vital industrial-relations concept not only because it allows contemporary work trends to be placed in a historical context, but also because employment relationships are influenced by how time is organized, allocated, conceived, and experienced. Examples of how time functions as a key part of work and work-oriented scholarship include the role the clock has played in the workplace, current research on work hours and work-life balance, notions such as “just-in-time” delivery, and employee stresses associated with “running out of time.” Time has “objective” and “socially constructed” elements, and although past, present and future are interconnected, each provides a distinctive point of reference that affects the understanding of employment issues.

“Space” also has important objective and socially generated dimensions of significance to the world of employment. Space as a geographic notion is obviously important in the era of job offshoring and economic “globalization,” but space matters in other ways, too. For example, today's information technology blurs traditional distinctions between “work space” and “non-work space,” and the allocation of office space has always had symbolic meaning. Moreover, space involves more than place ; a full consideration of space in employment relations also sheds light on the nature and significance of context , culture and social interrelationships.

“Discourse” involves the variety of narratives and discussions that give meaning to work-related objects and activities. It also involves how employees and managers create identities for themselves and others, and how labor, management and third parties—including government policymakers—justify action (or inaction). While considerations of time and space often rest on the work of historians and geographers, respectively, discourse analysis draws on a range of disciplines including anthropology, communications, linguistics, and philosophy.

By examining time, space and discourse, Rethinking Work stresses the need for casting a wide net when studying work. Regardless of whether the field is called “industrial relations,” “employment relations,” or something else (the Australian contributors hail from a university department of “work and organizational studies”), the book's central concepts open doors to promising directions for interdisciplinary scholarship. As the University of Oxford 's Tim Morris suggests in a wrap-up commentary at the end of the volume, attention to the themes in Rethinking Work can lead to better theory, more informed practice, and improvements in public policy.

Contemporary Issues

In addition to effectively highlighting the importance of time, space and discourse in industrial relations, Rethinking Work succeeds as a thought-provoking sample of scholarship on important contemporary issues relating to work. Each section of the book addresses key topics of international significance, and every chapter offers insightful observations and conclusions that promote a deeper understanding of employment.

Among the issues examined in Part 1 (Time) are the rise of women in the workforce and the erosion of Fordism, a notion similar to what Americans call the New Deal model of work and industrial relations. Marian Baird examines the changing workforce participation of women in Australia and the absence of legally guaranteed paid maternity leave. While Baird's chapter explores the interrelation of time and gender, it also demonstrates the importance of discourse by outlining alternative conceptions of maternity leave. Jim Kitay and Russell Lansbury, meanwhile, draw on a historical examination of the automobile and banking sectors to demonstrate—despite some popular notions to the contrary—the persistence of diverse Australian employment-relations practices.

Part 2 (Space) explores issues including labor migration and the challenges of international management. Dimitria Groutsis summarizes labor geographers' insights on the labor-market experience of Australian immigrants; the result is a model of market dynamics that shows “how spatial patterns emerge as a result of the interaction between social, institutional and material forces” (p. 160). Looking in a very different direction, Susan McGrath-Champ contrasts various approaches to studying the case of an expatriate manager dispatched to China . She shows how a spatial perspective “renders international studies of work, management and organization more subtle, sophisticated and powerful” (p. 182).

Among the topics addressed in Part 3 (Discourse) are corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the identity of “older workers.” Grant Michelson and Nick Wailes jointly examine the interplay of the concept of CSR and the contrasting notion that corporations should exist only to enhance shareholder value. They are not optimistic with respect to CSR and conclude that most firms are likely to consider social responsibility only when legislation requires it. In another application of discourse analysis, Susan Ainsworth reveals the cultural meanings of age and work, with special attention to “how negative stereotypes about older workers are able to persist” (p. 309).

Australia and the “ Sydney School ”

Beyond introducing the concepts of time, space and discourse and applying them constructively to contemporary issues, Rethinking Work provides a good introduction to Australian industrial relations and to work-related scholarship at the University of Sydney . Susan Jamieson's chapter, for example, serves as an effective overview of Australian labor legislation during the past two centuries. Mark Hearn and Harry Knowles trace Australia 's “national narrative of work” since 1901. And the essay by Rae Cooper and Bradon Ellem surveys the transformation of Australian union strategies after World War II. These chapters and others in Rethinking Work would work well as supplementary readings in university courses on comparative employment relations.

Rethinking Work signals that the University of Sydney 's Department of Work and Organizational Studies (WOS) has become one of the world's most vibrant centers for employment-relations research and teaching. In the year 2000, the university's Department of Industrial Relations was renamed the Department of WOS and experienced a major staff expansion. Its goal was a “broader and more innovative approach to studying the world of work” (p. 2). The essays in Rethinking Work are evidence that the department is making great strides and that other academic units in the field should take notice of this “ Sydney School.” Rapid change is a major industrial-relations challenge, but the Sydney School shows it is possible to revitalize this academic discipline by embracing the challenge.

Charles J. Whalen edits Perspectives on Work , published by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He has served on the Cornell University faculty and the BusinessWeek editorial staff. He can be reached via e-mail at perspectives@ad.uiuc.edu

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