ABSTRACT
Sociology, Work and Organisation tries to make sense of what is happening to the organisation and management of work and the various ways in which people experience working in a changing world. The book reviews and uniquely brings together the several overlapping sociological literatures which bear on this, moving from classical sociological thinking through to the most recent developments in theory and research. It is written in the passionately held belief that sociological insights are vital to understanding ‘how things work’ in the work-related aspects of people’s lives and in the organising and managing of our work activities. Sociological analysis, with its commitment to challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about the social and organisational world, is an inherently critical activity. It provides a much deeper understanding of how the social world works than is possible if we confine our studies to the quasi-disciplines of ‘organisational behaviour’ or ‘academic HRM’. Such academic areas have considerable value but their impact is significantly enhanced if their insights and contributions are sociologically and critically contextualised.
