This document discusses gender inclusivity in regional studies and innovation. It documents the everyday struggles of balancing work and family responsibilities for high-tech professionals. While employer-provided family-friendly policies can help firms' learning and innovation, the regional studies field has largely ignored gender and social reproduction factors. The author conducted surveys of 150 firms and 300 IT workers in the UK and Ireland, finding that uneven work-life balance support among employers shapes workers' mobility and knowledge transfers between firms. Integrating work-life concerns can benefit both workers and firms.
Over the last three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care, and personal-life interests beyond the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This paper presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work-life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers, and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The paper disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’ regional development.
Regendering care in the aftermath of recession (UK)Al James
Against a backdrop of persistent gender inequalities around childcare, recent research suggests that some men – and especially fathers – are engaging to a greater extent in the everyday tasks of social reproduction. However, our understanding of the multiple factors, motivations and institutions that facilitate and constrain this nuanced ‘regendering of care’ phenomenon in different national contexts remains limited. Previous work has theorized the uneven rise of male primary caregiving in North America and Scandinavia. This
article extends these debates through an empirical focus on the United Kingdom in the wake of the 2008–09 recession and double dip of 2011–12, to explore male work-care in relation to economic restructuring, welfare spending cuts, rising costs of childcare, policy interventions which seek to culturally and numerically defeminize care work, and concerns over work–life balance in an ‘age of austerity’. The final part of the
article explains the significance of a larger research agenda that recentres the expansive work–life balance literature through an expanded focus of analysis on men, work-care intermediaries and socially sustainable modes of post-recessionary growth.
The growth in high- and low-skill jobs, coupled with little
growth in the middle-skill groups, has changed the composition
of the workforce. The leftmost bars in Chart 3 show the share of
U.S. workers in each skill category in 1980 and 2010. While both high-skill and low-skill job shares increased, the lower-middle skill group’s job share shrank. In 1980, nearly half of all workers were employed in lower-middle-skill occupations. Among the occupations in this group, machine operators accounted for 10 percent of the U.S. workforce and administrative support workers accounted for 18 percent.
This article analyzes work-life balance (WLB) in the Irish IT sector. It discusses the limitations of conventional business case analyses that focus only on benefits to firms. The article aims to develop an alternative analysis considering both business and social factors. It examines: [1] gendered experiences of work-life conflict for IT workers; [2] WLB arrangements preferred by workers to reduce conflict; and [3] how these arrangements support learning and innovation in knowledge-intensive firms. The analysis moves beyond narrow economic rationales to consider WLB's importance for equity, well-being, and gender roles.
Business Case for Family Friendly Working - New Evidence (2018)Al James
Work-Life Advantage analyses how employer-provision of ‘family-friendly’ working arrangements - designed to help workers better reconcile work, home and family - can also enhance firms’ capacities for learning and innovation, in pursuit of long-term competitive advantage and socially inclusive growth. This slideshare provides an overview introduction to the book.
The everyday challenges faced by workers ‘struggling to juggle’ competing commitments of paid work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Reinforcing these problems, many employers regard work-life balance (WLB) provision as too costly: ‘the luxuries of a booming economy that cannot be sustained as we seek to recover from recession’ (Leighton and Gregory 2011: 11). In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB provision in knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a WLB ‘mutual gains’ research agenda. These synergies are explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high tech regional economies - Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK - prior to (2006-8) and subsequent to (2010) the economic downturn. The results suggest that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements identified by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered work-life conflicts, employers can also enhance the learning and innovation processes within and between firms, which are widely recognised as fundamental for firms’ long-term sustainable competitive advantage.
Work–Life ‘Balance’ Business Case (learning and innovation)Al James
This document discusses how providing work-life balance (WLB) arrangements can benefit employers through enhancing learning and innovation within and between firms. It explores this issue through a case study of IT workers in Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK before and after the 2008 economic downturn. The study finds that making available the types of WLB arrangements identified by workers as reducing gendered work-life conflicts can also improve firms' learning and innovation processes, which are important for long-term competitive advantage. However, more evidence is still needed to fully establish the business case for WLB given recessionary pressures to cut costs.
This document provides a summary of course material for Managing in a Global Environment. It includes recaps of topics covered on days 1 through 3, including the financialized economy context, managing financialized firms, the halo effect, financial crises and central bank policies. It then presents two questions for students to answer: a) how financialized firm behavior has obstructed central bank policies after the financial crisis, and b) how firms can transition to stakeholder-driven values. Additional context and requirements are provided for thoroughly answering each question, including recommended readings and evaluation criteria.
Over the last three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care, and personal-life interests beyond the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This paper presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work-life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers, and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The paper disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’ regional development.
Regendering care in the aftermath of recession (UK)Al James
Against a backdrop of persistent gender inequalities around childcare, recent research suggests that some men – and especially fathers – are engaging to a greater extent in the everyday tasks of social reproduction. However, our understanding of the multiple factors, motivations and institutions that facilitate and constrain this nuanced ‘regendering of care’ phenomenon in different national contexts remains limited. Previous work has theorized the uneven rise of male primary caregiving in North America and Scandinavia. This
article extends these debates through an empirical focus on the United Kingdom in the wake of the 2008–09 recession and double dip of 2011–12, to explore male work-care in relation to economic restructuring, welfare spending cuts, rising costs of childcare, policy interventions which seek to culturally and numerically defeminize care work, and concerns over work–life balance in an ‘age of austerity’. The final part of the
article explains the significance of a larger research agenda that recentres the expansive work–life balance literature through an expanded focus of analysis on men, work-care intermediaries and socially sustainable modes of post-recessionary growth.
The growth in high- and low-skill jobs, coupled with little
growth in the middle-skill groups, has changed the composition
of the workforce. The leftmost bars in Chart 3 show the share of
U.S. workers in each skill category in 1980 and 2010. While both high-skill and low-skill job shares increased, the lower-middle skill group’s job share shrank. In 1980, nearly half of all workers were employed in lower-middle-skill occupations. Among the occupations in this group, machine operators accounted for 10 percent of the U.S. workforce and administrative support workers accounted for 18 percent.
This article analyzes work-life balance (WLB) in the Irish IT sector. It discusses the limitations of conventional business case analyses that focus only on benefits to firms. The article aims to develop an alternative analysis considering both business and social factors. It examines: [1] gendered experiences of work-life conflict for IT workers; [2] WLB arrangements preferred by workers to reduce conflict; and [3] how these arrangements support learning and innovation in knowledge-intensive firms. The analysis moves beyond narrow economic rationales to consider WLB's importance for equity, well-being, and gender roles.
Business Case for Family Friendly Working - New Evidence (2018)Al James
Work-Life Advantage analyses how employer-provision of ‘family-friendly’ working arrangements - designed to help workers better reconcile work, home and family - can also enhance firms’ capacities for learning and innovation, in pursuit of long-term competitive advantage and socially inclusive growth. This slideshare provides an overview introduction to the book.
The everyday challenges faced by workers ‘struggling to juggle’ competing commitments of paid work, home and family remain stubbornly persistent and highly gendered. Reinforcing these problems, many employers regard work-life balance (WLB) provision as too costly: ‘the luxuries of a booming economy that cannot be sustained as we seek to recover from recession’ (Leighton and Gregory 2011: 11). In response, this paper explores the learning and innovation advantages that can result from WLB provision in knowledge-intensive firms, as part of a WLB ‘mutual gains’ research agenda. These synergies are explored through a case study of IT workers and firms in two high tech regional economies - Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK - prior to (2006-8) and subsequent to (2010) the economic downturn. The results suggest that by making available the kinds of WLB arrangements identified by workers as offering meaningful reductions in gendered work-life conflicts, employers can also enhance the learning and innovation processes within and between firms, which are widely recognised as fundamental for firms’ long-term sustainable competitive advantage.
Work–Life ‘Balance’ Business Case (learning and innovation)Al James
This document discusses how providing work-life balance (WLB) arrangements can benefit employers through enhancing learning and innovation within and between firms. It explores this issue through a case study of IT workers in Dublin, Ireland and Cambridge, UK before and after the 2008 economic downturn. The study finds that making available the types of WLB arrangements identified by workers as reducing gendered work-life conflicts can also improve firms' learning and innovation processes, which are important for long-term competitive advantage. However, more evidence is still needed to fully establish the business case for WLB given recessionary pressures to cut costs.
This document provides a summary of course material for Managing in a Global Environment. It includes recaps of topics covered on days 1 through 3, including the financialized economy context, managing financialized firms, the halo effect, financial crises and central bank policies. It then presents two questions for students to answer: a) how financialized firm behavior has obstructed central bank policies after the financial crisis, and b) how firms can transition to stakeholder-driven values. Additional context and requirements are provided for thoroughly answering each question, including recommended readings and evaluation criteria.
Work–life ‘balance’ and gendered (im)mobilities of knowledge and learning in ...Al James
Over the past three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care and personal-life interests beyond
the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This article presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland, and
Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work–life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The article disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’
regional development.
This document outlines strategies for cultivating a positive multigenerational workforce. It begins by debunking common millennial stereotypes and noting generational similarities. It emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusion for organizational performance. Finally, it provides five strategies for promoting generational diversity: communicating alignment, designing flexible work environments, creating feedback loops, cultivating leadership opportunities for all generations, and leveraging social media.
Gig Economy, Female Freelancers, Gender Inclusive GrowthAl James
Documents the lived experiences of female returners with young families juggling online gig work with the messy and fleshy everyday activities of social reproduction, in ways that potentially disrupt (versus reinforce) stubborn gendered labour market inequalities.
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Guidance Note-Project 1
Harpal Dhillon Jun 4, 2020 4:11 PM
I am reproducing below, the description of the deliverable
items for Project 1, titled ‘Network Design for Office
Building’.
The CTO has asked you to develop a network design that
provides the following:
A Microsoft word document that spells out your
network design, the recommended network cabling,
device(s), and connections between workstations,
device(s), and servers (in other words, summarize in
writing your recommendations to the above), and
develop
A physical network diagram that displays the
components specified above.
The instructions for the content of the MS WORD
document/report are quite clear and do not require any
explanation by me.
The physical network diagram will require some focused
thinking prior to its creation.
We have been provided a layout of one floor of the building.
It can be assumed that all three floors have identical
layouts.
There are two options for the layout of the physical network
diagram:
1. We can overlay the network on the building floor-
plan. In this case, we should start with each floor
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 2/2
plan, and lay-out the network on the floor plan. In
this mode, we have to show the links (cables/wireless)
connecting the network segments on different floors.
2. The second option is to lay-out the network, keeping
the multiple floors in mind. After the network diagram
has been completed, you should mark the floor
associated with each part/segment of the network.
In both cases, it is going to be impossible to create a
perfect presentation of the network. Please make sure that
all components and cables are properly labeled.
It is also important to read the contents of the grading
rubric, carefully, before you finalize the report and the
network diagram.
Harpal Dhillon
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Parenthood, Gender Attitudes, and Child’s Gender
Men’s and Women’s Gender-Role Attitudes across
the Transition to Parenthood: Accounting for Child’s
Gender
Francisco Perales, Yara Jarallah, and Janeen Baxter, The University of Queensland
Gender-role attitudes ca.
692020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1httpslearn..docxpriestmanmable
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
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Reply
Guidance Note-Project 1
Harpal Dhillon Jun 4, 2020 4:11 PM
I am reproducing below, the description of the deliverable
items for Project 1, titled ‘Network Design for Office
Building’.
The CTO has asked you to develop a network design that
provides the following:
A Microsoft word document that spells out your
network design, the recommended network cabling,
device(s), and connections between workstations,
device(s), and servers (in other words, summarize in
writing your recommendations to the above), and
develop
A physical network diagram that displays the
components specified above.
The instructions for the content of the MS WORD
document/report are quite clear and do not require any
explanation by me.
The physical network diagram will require some focused
thinking prior to its creation.
We have been provided a layout of one floor of the building.
It can be assumed that all three floors have identical
layouts.
There are two options for the layout of the physical network
diagram:
1. We can overlay the network on the building floor-
plan. In this case, we should start with each floor
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 2/2
plan, and lay-out the network on the floor plan. In
this mode, we have to show the links (cables/wireless)
connecting the network segments on different floors.
2. The second option is to lay-out the network, keeping
the multiple floors in mind. After the network diagram
has been completed, you should mark the floor
associated with each part/segment of the network.
In both cases, it is going to be impossible to create a
perfect presentation of the network. Please make sure that
all components and cables are properly labeled.
It is also important to read the contents of the grading
rubric, carefully, before you finalize the report and the
network diagram.
Harpal Dhillon
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Parenthood, Gender Attitudes, and Child’s Gender
Men’s and Women’s Gender-Role Attitudes across
the Transition to Parenthood: Accounting for Child’s
Gender
Francisco Perales, Yara Jarallah, and Janeen Baxter, The University of Queensland
Gender-role attitudes ca.
This document summarizes the concurrent sessions from a PI meeting. It provides an overview of 16 session topics, including addressing socio-scientific issues like climate change and implications for science literacy. Each session section summarizes the main takeaways and resources shared. The document encourages reaching out with any follow-up questions.
Ewan Fisher from Generations Working Together discusses intergenerational practice in the workplace. Intergenerational practice aims to bring younger and older generations together to promote understanding and build cohesive communities. The modern workplace includes four generations - Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials - which can lead to both challenges and benefits. While there is a risk of conflict, an intergenerational workforce also enhances skills and brings different perspectives. Case studies showcase how intergenerational activities between older adults and youth help reduce stereotypes. Generations Working Together is developing training to help employers better support an intergenerational workforce.
Opening the black box: Space, Time and the Geography of the Labor ProcessChris Benner
This document outlines Chris Benner's presentation on analyzing labor processes spatially and temporally. It discusses how labor processes have changed from industrial to informational economies, with work becoming more networked, unpredictable, and mediated through multiple employers. It argues for analyzing the key dimensions of work, space, time and employment across different contexts. The document then discusses potential solutions like developing regional worker organizations that focus on issues beyond individual jobs like healthcare, housing and governance to promote community-based careers and economic stability.
This document provides an overview of a research seminar on age and work. It discusses several topics:
1) Generations are socially constructed cohorts that shape values and attitudes. Debates often conflate generations with age groups and present differences as natural rather than constructed.
2) Discussions of the "missing million" unemployed youth and the "missing million" unemployed older workers position different age groups in competition over limited jobs and resources.
3) Visual analyses of online news and stock photos reveal gendered discourses of ageing, with older men typically depicted in command roles and younger women as the focus of attention.
The seminar explores how notions of age and age identities are constructed online
Narrations of Work-Life Balance among Academic Staff in an Open Distance Lear...QUESTJOURNAL
ABSTRACT: This study explores Work-Life-Balance among academic staff in an Open Distance Learning institution. A qualitative case study is used. Data for the research was collected from 16 academic staff using purposeful sampling. Academics describe the work-life experiences in the context of five overarching themes: (a) time demands, (b) ideal academic (c) career advancement (d) technology, and (e) work environment. This analysis revealed that academics’ work-life experiences are driven by a dearth of time and an excess of roles. Their involvement in multiple, interdependent roles although enriching through career advancement, presents ongoing time-based conflicts due to intense pressures of work. The tension associated with juggling roles significantly impacts their personal well-being and career satisfaction. Recommendations for this study are twofold; those that aid the university management towards more poignant work-life balance policies in the university and the need to conduct more research in Work-Life-Balance in Open Distance Learning institutions.
This document summarizes an article that explores ethnic diversity among staff at public universities in Kenya. It finds that most public universities in Kenya do not embrace ethnic diversity and have more than one-third of employees from just one ethnic group, violating Kenyan laws on diversity. The document reviews several theories on how social categorization and similarity attraction can negatively impact performance when ethnic diversity is lacking. It concludes that embracing ethnic diversity is important to improve inclusiveness and performance at public universities in Kenya.
This document summarizes a presentation on exploring corporate social responsibility (CSR) as it relates to adult learning and education. It discusses definitions of CSR, perspectives on CSR, examples of mining company CSR programs involving adult education in communities, key findings on the role of adult education in CSR strategies and agendas, and critical issues in researching this topic. The presentation concludes that the field of CSR is ripe for educational researchers to study further.
The document discusses Phoebe Moore's research on the quantified self at work. It provides biographical details on Moore, including her primary research interests which involve analyzing how wearable self-tracking technologies are being implemented and experienced in workplace wellness and productivity programs. The document lists several of Moore's past and upcoming publications on topics such as how self-quantification relates to precarity, autonomy, and subjectivity in different work contexts.
The document summarizes a study that evaluates the impact of a community-driven development (CDD) program in Sierra Leone on local institutions. The study uses a randomized controlled trial across 236 villages. It develops objective institutional performance measures and follows a pre-analysis plan to assess impacts on participation, public goods, and collective action. The plan aims to test hypotheses about whether the program increased participation of marginalized groups and improved institutions in a way that persisted after the program ended.
The ESSEC Gender Equality Days 2018 event featured presentations on gender issues in management from the Centre of Excellence for Management & Society, ESSEC Gender Equality Group, and Women's programme "Gender, Governance & Empowerment". The event included 6 seven-minute pitches on March 6th, 8th and 9th from presenters such as Ioana Lupu, Junko Takagi, Karoline Strauss, Anne Jeny, Viviane de Beaufort, and Radu Vranceanu. Topics included gender quotas, stereotypes of women leaders, and experimental research on gender effects.
This document discusses the experiences of human service managers in contexts of change and uncertainty. It describes how human service organizations have had to adopt business practices like those promoted by new public management as funding models have changed. The document reports on a study that examined what business, management, and finance skills managers felt were relevant for leading human service organizations. It found that managers need advanced skills in these areas to deal with the contemporary competitive environment. However, integrating business skills while maintaining social work values can be challenging for managers with clinical backgrounds.
This document summarizes a study on the role of education in implementing a culture of diversity in organizations. The study explored how one hospitality organization successfully instituted diversity initiatives through various factors and processes. It found that leadership commitment, strategic planning, and education were instrumental to the organization's cultural transformation. The organization required all employees to complete a 3-day diversity training workshop focused on inclusion and managing diversity, which helped improve employee engagement and business results. The study confirms that integrating diversity as a business strategy and part of an organization's culture makes initiatives more sustainable.
Women in the Gig Economy (Platforms, Social Reproduction)Al James
1. Many women turn to platform work for its flexibility to better balance work and family responsibilities, such as caring for children, but find that lack of support and benefits make this difficult to achieve.
2. While platforms provide more flexible hours, women still struggle with the demands of constant availability, unpredictable income, and lack of benefits like paid leave.
3. Working from home also brings new health and safety issues, such as clients who overstep boundaries, and women feel pressure to hide pregnancies or cut maternity leave short due to lost income and clients.
1) The document discusses the experiences of women working in the online gig economy, focusing on their motivations, work-life flexibility, and precarity.
2) While platforms advertise flexibility, women face demands for evening/weekend work, lack of benefits, and income precarity.
3) Issues include lack of sick pay/maternity leave, hiding pregnancies, and inappropriate client behavior, compromising health and safety.
4) While seeking work-life balance, women still do most childcare and experience new constraints from algorithms and fees.
Work–life ‘balance’ and gendered (im)mobilities of knowledge and learning in ...Al James
Over the past three decades, economic geographers have explored how the spatial co-location of firms in regional industrial agglomerations helps foster learning, innovation and economic competitiveness. While recent work highlights the crucial role of labour mobility in promoting inter-firm ‘knowledge spillovers’, it pays little attention to how gendered responsibilities of care and personal-life interests beyond
the workplace shape workers’ (non)participation in the relational networks and communities of practice widely theorized as enabling learning and innovation. This article presents new data from two regional economies: Dublin, Ireland, and
Cambridge, UK. It documents the role of ‘work–life balance’ provision across IT employers in shaping the cross-firm mobility of workers and the tacit knowledge, skills and competencies which they embody. The article disrupts the powerful premise that ‘cross-firm labour mobility is always and everywhere good’ which informs much of the regional learning literature. It also contributes to emerging debates around ‘holistic’
regional development.
This document outlines strategies for cultivating a positive multigenerational workforce. It begins by debunking common millennial stereotypes and noting generational similarities. It emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusion for organizational performance. Finally, it provides five strategies for promoting generational diversity: communicating alignment, designing flexible work environments, creating feedback loops, cultivating leadership opportunities for all generations, and leveraging social media.
Gig Economy, Female Freelancers, Gender Inclusive GrowthAl James
Documents the lived experiences of female returners with young families juggling online gig work with the messy and fleshy everyday activities of social reproduction, in ways that potentially disrupt (versus reinforce) stubborn gendered labour market inequalities.
692020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1httpslearn..docxfredharris32
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 1/2
Subscribe Unsubscribe Next
Reply
Guidance Note-Project 1
Harpal Dhillon Jun 4, 2020 4:11 PM
I am reproducing below, the description of the deliverable
items for Project 1, titled ‘Network Design for Office
Building’.
The CTO has asked you to develop a network design that
provides the following:
A Microsoft word document that spells out your
network design, the recommended network cabling,
device(s), and connections between workstations,
device(s), and servers (in other words, summarize in
writing your recommendations to the above), and
develop
A physical network diagram that displays the
components specified above.
The instructions for the content of the MS WORD
document/report are quite clear and do not require any
explanation by me.
The physical network diagram will require some focused
thinking prior to its creation.
We have been provided a layout of one floor of the building.
It can be assumed that all three floors have identical
layouts.
There are two options for the layout of the physical network
diagram:
1. We can overlay the network on the building floor-
plan. In this case, we should start with each floor
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
javascript://
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 2/2
plan, and lay-out the network on the floor plan. In
this mode, we have to show the links (cables/wireless)
connecting the network segments on different floors.
2. The second option is to lay-out the network, keeping
the multiple floors in mind. After the network diagram
has been completed, you should mark the floor
associated with each part/segment of the network.
In both cases, it is going to be impossible to create a
perfect presentation of the network. Please make sure that
all components and cables are properly labeled.
It is also important to read the contents of the grading
rubric, carefully, before you finalize the report and the
network diagram.
Harpal Dhillon
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Parenthood, Gender Attitudes, and Child’s Gender
Men’s and Women’s Gender-Role Attitudes across
the Transition to Parenthood: Accounting for Child’s
Gender
Francisco Perales, Yara Jarallah, and Janeen Baxter, The University of Queensland
Gender-role attitudes ca.
692020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1httpslearn..docxpriestmanmable
6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 1/2
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Guidance Note-Project 1
Harpal Dhillon Jun 4, 2020 4:11 PM
I am reproducing below, the description of the deliverable
items for Project 1, titled ‘Network Design for Office
Building’.
The CTO has asked you to develop a network design that
provides the following:
A Microsoft word document that spells out your
network design, the recommended network cabling,
device(s), and connections between workstations,
device(s), and servers (in other words, summarize in
writing your recommendations to the above), and
develop
A physical network diagram that displays the
components specified above.
The instructions for the content of the MS WORD
document/report are quite clear and do not require any
explanation by me.
The physical network diagram will require some focused
thinking prior to its creation.
We have been provided a layout of one floor of the building.
It can be assumed that all three floors have identical
layouts.
There are two options for the layout of the physical network
diagram:
1. We can overlay the network on the building floor-
plan. In this case, we should start with each floor
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6/9/2020 View Post - Guidance Note-Project 1
https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/common/popup/popup.d2l?ou=535355&queryString=ou%3D535355%26postId%3D61542527%26topicId%3D2994580%26i… 2/2
plan, and lay-out the network on the floor plan. In
this mode, we have to show the links (cables/wireless)
connecting the network segments on different floors.
2. The second option is to lay-out the network, keeping
the multiple floors in mind. After the network diagram
has been completed, you should mark the floor
associated with each part/segment of the network.
In both cases, it is going to be impossible to create a
perfect presentation of the network. Please make sure that
all components and cables are properly labeled.
It is also important to read the contents of the grading
rubric, carefully, before you finalize the report and the
network diagram.
Harpal Dhillon
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Parenthood, Gender Attitudes, and Child’s Gender
Men’s and Women’s Gender-Role Attitudes across
the Transition to Parenthood: Accounting for Child’s
Gender
Francisco Perales, Yara Jarallah, and Janeen Baxter, The University of Queensland
Gender-role attitudes ca.
This document summarizes the concurrent sessions from a PI meeting. It provides an overview of 16 session topics, including addressing socio-scientific issues like climate change and implications for science literacy. Each session section summarizes the main takeaways and resources shared. The document encourages reaching out with any follow-up questions.
Ewan Fisher from Generations Working Together discusses intergenerational practice in the workplace. Intergenerational practice aims to bring younger and older generations together to promote understanding and build cohesive communities. The modern workplace includes four generations - Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials - which can lead to both challenges and benefits. While there is a risk of conflict, an intergenerational workforce also enhances skills and brings different perspectives. Case studies showcase how intergenerational activities between older adults and youth help reduce stereotypes. Generations Working Together is developing training to help employers better support an intergenerational workforce.
Opening the black box: Space, Time and the Geography of the Labor ProcessChris Benner
This document outlines Chris Benner's presentation on analyzing labor processes spatially and temporally. It discusses how labor processes have changed from industrial to informational economies, with work becoming more networked, unpredictable, and mediated through multiple employers. It argues for analyzing the key dimensions of work, space, time and employment across different contexts. The document then discusses potential solutions like developing regional worker organizations that focus on issues beyond individual jobs like healthcare, housing and governance to promote community-based careers and economic stability.
This document provides an overview of a research seminar on age and work. It discusses several topics:
1) Generations are socially constructed cohorts that shape values and attitudes. Debates often conflate generations with age groups and present differences as natural rather than constructed.
2) Discussions of the "missing million" unemployed youth and the "missing million" unemployed older workers position different age groups in competition over limited jobs and resources.
3) Visual analyses of online news and stock photos reveal gendered discourses of ageing, with older men typically depicted in command roles and younger women as the focus of attention.
The seminar explores how notions of age and age identities are constructed online
Narrations of Work-Life Balance among Academic Staff in an Open Distance Lear...QUESTJOURNAL
ABSTRACT: This study explores Work-Life-Balance among academic staff in an Open Distance Learning institution. A qualitative case study is used. Data for the research was collected from 16 academic staff using purposeful sampling. Academics describe the work-life experiences in the context of five overarching themes: (a) time demands, (b) ideal academic (c) career advancement (d) technology, and (e) work environment. This analysis revealed that academics’ work-life experiences are driven by a dearth of time and an excess of roles. Their involvement in multiple, interdependent roles although enriching through career advancement, presents ongoing time-based conflicts due to intense pressures of work. The tension associated with juggling roles significantly impacts their personal well-being and career satisfaction. Recommendations for this study are twofold; those that aid the university management towards more poignant work-life balance policies in the university and the need to conduct more research in Work-Life-Balance in Open Distance Learning institutions.
This document summarizes an article that explores ethnic diversity among staff at public universities in Kenya. It finds that most public universities in Kenya do not embrace ethnic diversity and have more than one-third of employees from just one ethnic group, violating Kenyan laws on diversity. The document reviews several theories on how social categorization and similarity attraction can negatively impact performance when ethnic diversity is lacking. It concludes that embracing ethnic diversity is important to improve inclusiveness and performance at public universities in Kenya.
This document summarizes a presentation on exploring corporate social responsibility (CSR) as it relates to adult learning and education. It discusses definitions of CSR, perspectives on CSR, examples of mining company CSR programs involving adult education in communities, key findings on the role of adult education in CSR strategies and agendas, and critical issues in researching this topic. The presentation concludes that the field of CSR is ripe for educational researchers to study further.
The document discusses Phoebe Moore's research on the quantified self at work. It provides biographical details on Moore, including her primary research interests which involve analyzing how wearable self-tracking technologies are being implemented and experienced in workplace wellness and productivity programs. The document lists several of Moore's past and upcoming publications on topics such as how self-quantification relates to precarity, autonomy, and subjectivity in different work contexts.
The document summarizes a study that evaluates the impact of a community-driven development (CDD) program in Sierra Leone on local institutions. The study uses a randomized controlled trial across 236 villages. It develops objective institutional performance measures and follows a pre-analysis plan to assess impacts on participation, public goods, and collective action. The plan aims to test hypotheses about whether the program increased participation of marginalized groups and improved institutions in a way that persisted after the program ended.
The ESSEC Gender Equality Days 2018 event featured presentations on gender issues in management from the Centre of Excellence for Management & Society, ESSEC Gender Equality Group, and Women's programme "Gender, Governance & Empowerment". The event included 6 seven-minute pitches on March 6th, 8th and 9th from presenters such as Ioana Lupu, Junko Takagi, Karoline Strauss, Anne Jeny, Viviane de Beaufort, and Radu Vranceanu. Topics included gender quotas, stereotypes of women leaders, and experimental research on gender effects.
This document discusses the experiences of human service managers in contexts of change and uncertainty. It describes how human service organizations have had to adopt business practices like those promoted by new public management as funding models have changed. The document reports on a study that examined what business, management, and finance skills managers felt were relevant for leading human service organizations. It found that managers need advanced skills in these areas to deal with the contemporary competitive environment. However, integrating business skills while maintaining social work values can be challenging for managers with clinical backgrounds.
This document summarizes a study on the role of education in implementing a culture of diversity in organizations. The study explored how one hospitality organization successfully instituted diversity initiatives through various factors and processes. It found that leadership commitment, strategic planning, and education were instrumental to the organization's cultural transformation. The organization required all employees to complete a 3-day diversity training workshop focused on inclusion and managing diversity, which helped improve employee engagement and business results. The study confirms that integrating diversity as a business strategy and part of an organization's culture makes initiatives more sustainable.
Women in the Gig Economy (Platforms, Social Reproduction)Al James
1. Many women turn to platform work for its flexibility to better balance work and family responsibilities, such as caring for children, but find that lack of support and benefits make this difficult to achieve.
2. While platforms provide more flexible hours, women still struggle with the demands of constant availability, unpredictable income, and lack of benefits like paid leave.
3. Working from home also brings new health and safety issues, such as clients who overstep boundaries, and women feel pressure to hide pregnancies or cut maternity leave short due to lost income and clients.
1) The document discusses the experiences of women working in the online gig economy, focusing on their motivations, work-life flexibility, and precarity.
2) While platforms advertise flexibility, women face demands for evening/weekend work, lack of benefits, and income precarity.
3) Issues include lack of sick pay/maternity leave, hiding pregnancies, and inappropriate client behavior, compromising health and safety.
4) While seeking work-life balance, women still do most childcare and experience new constraints from algorithms and fees.
AAG April 2018: Gendered Digital Work-Lives: Juggling Gig Work and Mothering
This paper emerges from feminist economic geography debates around social reproduction and the future of work in the so-called ‘sharing economy’ or ‘gig economy’. Within this framework, it documents the lived experiences of female returners with young families juggling gig work with the messy and fleshy everyday activities of social reproduction, in ways that potentially disrupt (versus reinforce) stubborn gendered labour market inequalities. The analysis is developed through fieldwork with women using popular online jobs platforms (TaskRabbit, Upwork, PeoplePerHour) in two UK cities (Leeds and Manchester) which are actively positioning themselves as ‘Sharing Cities’. Despite widespread claims surrounding female emancipatory work-life possibilities (‘mumpreneurship’) enabled by the gig economy, supporting evidence is limited. In short, we know relatively little about the everyday work-lives of women trying to make a living using online work platforms – not least, the much heralded ‘emancipatory’ experiences of female digital workers seeking to reconcile work, home and family, and to negotiate better labour market outcomes via digital work platforms relative to ‘mainstream’ employers. Reinforcing these problems, the expansive work-life balance research literature is limited in its engagement with the Gig Economy. Rather, most WLB studies focus on the challenges of juggling work, home and family amongst employees in ‘standard’ workplaces governed by HR managers; rather than the diversity of ‘alternative’ workspaces occupied by gig workers, whose abilities to reconcile competing activities of work, home and family as ‘dependent contractors’ are governed by digital algorithms and the work allocation models built into them by platform developers. In so doing, this paper brings debates around mothering into new productive conversation with labour geography and digital economies.
In an increasingly globalised world, the long-standing intellectual division of labour between ‘economic’ geographers and ‘development’ scholars is becoming less tenable. This paper explores some of the practical implications and synergistic outcomes of developing a hybrid economic / development geography ‘trading zone’ - in which economic geographers are forced to step outside their comfort zones through new empirical engagements with workers, firms, and urban economies in the global South. Here we reflect on these possibilities in relation to undergraduate teaching in human geography through fieldwork undertaken in India.
The ‘Sharing Economy’ continues to spark widespread debate – not least in the UK, which has been identified as the ‘European capital of the Sharing Economy’, worth an estimated £0.5 billion in 2014 and forecast to grow to £9 billion by 2025 (ONS 2016). This paper critically explores the origins and operation of the Sharing Economy and its emergent digital labour geographies in relation to: the role of online labour markets and algorithms in managing and motivating work; whether the Sharing Economy is creating new jobs or crowding out old ones; the extent to which outsourced ‘clickwork’ has an empowering, liberating effect at a time when more and more people find it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of more formal, traditional work environments; the role of digital labour in blurring commonly-accepted conceptual boundaries between ‘producer’ / ‘consumer’, ‘labour’ / ‘play’ through the creation of a new cohort of ‘prosumers’ engaged in ‘playbour’; and criticisms of the ‘dark side’ of the Sharing Economy for workers who have limited legal protection as ‘independent contractors’ (the cybertariat). The paper also considers the extent to which digital work disrupts or reinforces stubborn labour market inequalities rooted in gender and race.
This document discusses research on financial resilience practices among Somali migrants in East London. It finds that 100% of survey participants supported charitable causes in the previous year, with motivations strongly linked to Islamic faith. Common practices included zakat (obligatory alms-giving), sadaqa (voluntary charity), and community fundraising. Donations were made despite high levels of poverty and unemployment. The research challenges views of this community as lacking resilience, instead finding resourcefulness and mutual aid. It calls for new conversations with literatures on responses to hardship in the global South.
This article extends research exploring progressive models of reproducing economic life by reporting on research into some of the infrastructure, practices and motivations for Islamic charitable giving in London. In so doing the article: (i) makes visible sets of values, practices and institutions usually hidden in an otherwise widely researched international financial centre; (ii) identifies multiple, hard-to-research civic actors who
are mobilising diverse resources to address economic hardship and development needs; and (iii) considers how these charitable values, practices and agents contribute
to contemporary thinking about progressive economic possibilities.
India service careers - former call centre agentsAl James
This article presents findings from a labour mobility survey of 250 former call centre agents in India’s National Capital Region (September 2008) exploring individuals’ employment before, during and immediately after leaving India’s high-profile call centre ‘industry’. These data are combined with forty-two in-depth interviews conducted in India’s NCR (July 2006 to August
2008) with call centre agents, managers, ex-call centre agents, labour organizers and economic development officials, as well as representatives from different labour market intermediaries. The study gives a cautiously optimistic account about the call centre work and employment opportunities on offer in India’s ‘IT Enabled Services – Business Processing Outsourcing’
(or ITES-BPO) industry, and their implications for young urban middle class graduates based on: (i) the movement of around one fifth of the ex-call centre agent sample into further study, facilitated by relatively high call centre salaries; (ii) the movement of ex-call centre agents into higher paying job
roles in a wide range of sectors including banking, IT, insurance, marketing, real estate and telecommunications; and (iii) the development of transferable skills in Indian call centres that are recognized by ex-call centre agents and their subsequent employers as conferring a labour market advantage in other
sectors of India’s new service economy relative to colleagues without prior call centre work experience.
India services - job hopping, careers, skillsAl James
The last two decades have seen a profound shift in how labour is spatially conceptualized and understood within economic geography, based on a recognition of workers’ abilities to fashion the geography of capitalism to suit their own needs.
However, the bulk of work in labour geography fails to examine worker agency beyond a narrow focus on the trade union movement, largely divorces workers’ activities from the
sphere of social reproduction, and rarely looks beyond the ‘core’ capitalist economies of the Global North. In response, this article presents findings from a regional labour mobility survey of 439 call centre workers in India’s National Capital Region (May 2007). Here, previous work has heavily criticized the ‘dead-end’ nature of call centre jobs offshored to India from the Global North, yet has done so based on an intra-firm
focus of analysis. By taking an alternative cross-firm worker agency approach, our analysis documents for the first time some Indian call centre agents’ abilities to circumvent a lack of internal job ladders and achieve career progression through lateral ‘career staircases’, as they job hop between firms in pursuit of better pay, improved working conditions and more complex job roles. In the absence of widespread
unionization within this sector, the article also discusses the productive and social reproductive factors that underpin these patterns of Indian call centre worker agency, and their mediation by a complex nexus of labour market intermediaries beyond the
firm. In so doing, the article ‘theorizes back’ (Yeung, 2007) on ‘mainstream’ (Western) theories of the limits to call centre worker agency and career advancement.
regional cultures of innovation - research agendaAl James
The purpose of this chapter is to off er a broad introduction to this important research stream concerned with the regional cultural economy of learning, innovation and development. The chapter begins by setting out its intellectual origins and ‘founding parents’; explaining core conceptual frameworks which scholars have developed to theorize regional cultures of innovation and their growth effects; summarizing important
debates around the need to ‘demystify’ regional culture and how to ground ‘innovative milieux’ empirically; and outlining some important case studies that have analysed the links between regional culture, knowledge production and regional development (specifically Silicon Valley, Boston’s Route 128, Salt Lake City, Oxford’s Motorsport Valley and Cuba’s bioscience cluster). The chapter concludes by charting two newly emergent research agendas around gendered cultural economies of learning within high- tech regions; and a decentring of the mainstream research literature (with its almost exclusive focus on the Global North) to regional industrial systems in the Global South, in order to expose the limits of Western- centred readings of regional cultural economy, learning and development.
economic / development geography trading zoneAl James
In an increasingly globalized world, the long-standing intellectual division of labour between ‘economic’ geographers and ‘development’ scholars is becoming less tenable. This paper explores some of the practical implications and synergistic outcomes of developing a hybrid economic/development geography ‘trading zone’. Drawing on experiences from our collaborative research on India’s new service economy,
we reflect on: our intellectual journey through this project from relatively conventional subdisciplinary start points; how we were forced to rethink those start points at each stage of the research project; and the wider implications of these experiences for contemporary debates on internal interdisciplinarity
within human geography.
This paper explores the lived experiences and aspirational social constructions of call centre work and employment in India’s high profile IT Enabled Services–Business Process Outsourcing (ITES–BPO) industry; the ways in which they differ from those previously documented amongst call centre workers in the Global North (specifically the UK); and the consequences of that geographical reconfiguration of offshored call centre work for the replicability in India of workplace collective bargaining strategies successfully developed in some UK call centres. These issues are analysed using new empirical evidence from a
regional survey of 511 non-unionised ITES–BPO workers and 42 in-depth interviews in India’s National Capital Region. Based on this analysis, the paper then discusses the operation, outcomes and ongoing challenges faced by the newly formed ‘Union for ITES Professionals’ (UNITES Pro) in developing an alternative occupational organising model better suited to the particular needs, motivations and preferences of India’s young, mobile, call centre workers. The empirical analysis presented in the paper is located, therefore, within wider debates on the role of geographical context in shaping possibilities for organising
white-collar service workers at different ends of global service chains in the new economy.
This document discusses professional service firms and their growth over the last three decades. It makes three key points:
1. Professional service firms apply specialized technical knowledge through interpersonal relationships to solve clients' problems. Major sectors include law, accounting, architecture, advertising, consulting, and financial services.
2. Professional service firms have exhibited rapid growth and spatial clustering in integrated clusters. This clustering enhances firms' learning and innovation processes, which are important to their competitiveness.
3. More recently, some professional service firms have internationalized by sending staff abroad from countries like the US and Europe. This allows insights into emerging global service networks and new international divisions of labor.
Book Review of 'Economic Geography: A Contemporary Introduction' by Neil Coe, Philip Kelly and Henry Yeung (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA, USA; and Carlton 10 Victoria, Australia: Blackwell, 2007).
A growing body of research explores how different dimensions of high-tech regional economic development are fundamentally
and unavoidably gendered. This article offers a summary introduction to this nascent research agenda, focused on three phenomena widely documented in the regional literature as supporting intra- and interfirm learning and innovation processes, but whose attendant gendered social relations and gender divisions have yet to be fully analysed and understood, namely, (i) processes of worker mobility, labour ‘churning’ and their brokering by different labour market intermediaries; (ii)
venture capital financing, entrepreneurship and firm start-up; and (iii) the origins and implications of (masculinist) corporate cultures for firms’ absorptive capacities. By way of conclusion, the article outlines some interesting directions in which
future research in this area might usefully develop in order to contribute to a broader project around holistic regional (socio)economic development.
Although recognition of the significance of gender divisions continues to transform economic geography, the discipline nevertheless remains highly uneven in its degree of engagement with gender as a legitimate focus of analysis. In particular, although social institutions are now widely
regarded as key determinants of economic success, the regional learning and innovation literature remains largely gender blind, simultaneously subordinating the female worker voice and making invisible distinctively gendered patterns of work in the face of an increasingly feminised labour force.
Focusing on the industrial agglomeration of information and communication technology firms in Cambridge, England, we first outline the nature of the inequalities in patterns of work and social interaction among female versus male employees within Cambridge's high-tech regional economy. Second, we demonstrate how these inequalities in turn constrain female employees' abilities to contribute to key processes widely theorised to underpin firms' innovative capacities and economic
competitiveness. Specifically, these self-identified constraints centre on female workers' abilities to: (a) act as agents of information and knowledge diffusion between firms; and (b) use new information and knowledge once they enter the firm. Overall, our results suggest that gender issues of social equity
at the level of the individual worker need to be explicitly integrated with issues of economic competitiveness at the levels of the firm and the region. This is a case not simply of female employees being socially excluded at work, but of their simultaneous exclusion from key elements of firms'
productive processes.
how cultures shape economies - everyday mechanismsAl James
This document provides an introduction and background to a case study of the high tech regional economy in Salt Lake City, Utah. It discusses how economic geographers have drawn on the concept of "cultural embeddedness" to understand how cultural norms and values shape regional economic development and innovation. However, our understanding of the causal links and everyday practices through which cultural embeddedness affects firms remains limited. The case study of Salt Lake City aims to advance this understanding by exploring both the local and extra-local causal mechanisms, practices, and processes through which firms become culturally embedded in the Mormon culture of the region and how this impacts their economic performance.
The rise of cultural economic geography over the last two decades is one of the most significant, exciting, and contentious developments in the sub-discipline’s recent history. The result is a vibrant sub-discipline more heterodox and pluralist than ever before (Peck, 2005). This chapter explores the various drivers of the cultural turn, its intellectual contributions to economic geography as a sub-discipline, and the work of some of the cultural turn’s main proponents.
graduate students - doing cultural economy researchAl James
While many commentators have recently argued forcefully for increased ‘rigour’ and ‘relevance’ within cultural economic geography, they have offered relatively less guidance on how
we might achieve that in practice, according to criteria that are methodologically and epistemologically appropriate to the cultural turn. Within this context, I outline a series of feasible
concrete strategies that researchers (especially those with limited resources of finance, status and power) might employ in the pursuit of these twin research ideals across five commonly
experienced moments in the research process, namely: (i) development of research questions; (ii) research design and case study selection; (iii) data collection; (iv) empirical analysis and theory building; and (v) write-up and communication.
Previous work has analysed the intersection between social constructions of skill and women’s exclusion from many elite scientific jobs. However, this work has largely failed to specify the processes by which the reworked gender composition of high-tech workforces affects intra-firm and interfirm learning and innovation processes in the region. Crucially, rather than
simply describing the gendered sociorelational properties of these regions, we need to specify how these social relations affect female workers’ abilities both to access and use new sources of information and expertise on behalf of their respective firms, relative to their male colleagues. These
socioeconomic phenomena form the focus of this chapter.
Explore the key differences between silicone sponge rubber and foam rubber in this comprehensive presentation. Learn about their unique properties, manufacturing processes, and applications across various industries. Discover how each material performs in terms of temperature resistance, chemical resistance, and cost-effectiveness. Gain insights from real-world case studies and make informed decisions for your projects.
1. Gender Inclusive
Regional Studies
Al James
al.james@ncl.ac.uk
@Re_AlJames
Regional Studies Association Conference
Lugano, Switzerland, 5 June 2018
2. Gender Inclusive
Regional Studies
Brings regional learning and innovation
agenda into new conversation with labour
geography
Documents everyday struggles of high tech
professionals to combine work, home and
family.
Demonstrates how employer–provided
′family friendly′ working arrangements can
also enhance firms′ capacities for learning
and innovation.
Exposes masculinist myopia of regional
learning and innovation agenda and
attendant theories of regional advantage.
150 firms (employing 8000),
300 IT workers, 10 years of research,
UK & Ireland
3. Entry 1: Demystifying the Geographical
Foundations of Regional Advantage
Widely accepted: fundamental changes within
advanced economies 1970s- herald new era of
capitalist economic development
Geography of this new order marked by ‘re-
emergence of regional economies’ as salient
foci of wealth creation.
Multiple labels: industrial districts, new
industrial spaces, territorial production
complexes, regional innovation milieux,
learning regions, clusters
A geographical research obsession! – 3+
decades of work to explain regional
(dis)advantage
From transaction costs reductions to socio-
cultural analyses: careers made, an expansive
research literature, a cornerstone of regional
studies, multiple generations of PhD students!
4. Demystifying Regional Advantage:
Major RQs, Successive Refinements
Why do some regional economies perform better than
others?
Mechanisms through which learning and innovation
are enhanced through spatial proximity?
How are clusters inserted into knowledge spillovers at
different spatial scales?
Constraints on learning, and innovation and growth
amongst knowledge intensive firms in industrial
clusters?
Moving beyond earlier distinctions between tacit and
codified knowledge:
analytical (science-based), symbolic (arts-based)
versus synthetic (engineering-based) knowledges
‘component’ vs. ‘architectural’ knowledges
‘know-what’, ‘know-why’, ‘know-how’, ‘know-who’
multi-scalar boundaries of innovation systems /
‘deterritorialisation of closeness’
Phew…
5. ‘Neither of the NEGs [New Economic Geographies]
pays any attention to questions in the immediate
sense of the social division of labour between
different kinds of paid work and between paid work
and caring, or the wider sense of establishing
sustainable regional development. Yet these
dimensions are central to understanding the well-
being of people within regions and therefore to
regional or spatial development as a whole’ (Perrons
2001: 211).
‘Holistic regional development’ agenda (Pike et al. 2006
2007): integrates economic concerns around
competitiveness, growth and productivity with normative
questions around workers’ quality of life, gender equality,
well-being and social reproduction (see also Rees 2000;
Morgan 2004; Blake and Hanson 2005)
Calls to Recenter the Regional Learning
and Innovation Agenda
6. (Re)Theorising (Masculinist) Regional Advantage
Three analytical myopias (James, 2018)
1.Labour / ‘human capital’ factor input to production
(cf. workers’ experiences being used as labour?)
2.Theoretical invisibility of female worker agency
3.Abstraction of knowledge production from social
reproduction (role of family and care in shaping
regional learning dynamics?)
Strong legacy in earlier studies (e.g. Saxenian’s (1994)
romanticised ‘Silicon Cowboys’ (11k citations & counting)
Cf. increasing numbers of female high tech professionals
Gendering regional advantage: Massey (1995) on high tech
monasteries, Benner (2003) on female-dedicated cross-firm
learning infrastructures, Gray and James (2007, 2008) on
constrained female agency in high tech.
But ltd engagements with expansive work-life agenda
(responds to same post-Fordist economic transition)
7. Lazzeretti, L., Sedita, S.R. and Caloffi, A. 2013. Founders and disseminators of cluster research.
Journal of Economic Geography. Bibliometric analysis of 1586 journal articles on clusters /
industrial districts published from 1989 to 2010 in 250 international scientific journals)
Also note lack of female
scholars in this list…
8. Entry 2: Gendered Work-Life Conflict
(or, when the Silicon Cowboys and Cowgirls hang up their spurs)
TRIPLE WHAMMY:
1. Working longer, harder, less predictable
schedules
2. Increased female labourforce; more dual
earner & lone-parent households; complex
household lives
3. Neoliberal attack on social provisioning –
transfer care down to ‘natural’ level of home
(Bakker and Gill 2003) - women typically
assume majority burden
Complex, multi-variable juggling act: workers
have finite time and energy
Work Foundation (Cowling 2005): Ireland and UK
have the longest ave work hrs of all EU
members states
9. Evidencing the Profound Social &
Economic Importance of WLB
Lack of WLB: increased stress, negative effects on
psychological and physical well-being, increased
family and marital tensions (multiple studies)
Emerging evidence Ireland: ‘quarter life crisis’ (?)
Unions: WLB to improve workers’ quality of life &
combat increasing work pressures that are
destabilising households
BUT: employers remain sceptical of ‘business case’
Ongoing govt refusal in firms’ right to manage
Limited evidence base: how employer provided WLB
provision can enhance firm performance
Also: no analysis of impacts of WLB provision on
firms’ innovative capacities (long term sustainable
advantage); firms atomised from regional
industrial systems
10. Policy Type Description Examples
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Policies designed to give
workers greater
‘flexibility’ in the
scheduling and location
of work hours while not
decreasing average work
hours per week
Flextime (flexible beginning or end work time, sometimes with
core hours)
Flexplace / Telecommuting (all or part of the week occurs at
home)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
Reduced Work
Hours
Policies designed to
reduce workers’ hours
Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (employees compact total working
hours into 4 days rather than 5)
Term-time working
Practical Help
with Child Care
Policies designed to
provide ‘workplace social
support’ for parents
Employer-subsidised childcare – in-site
Employer-subsidised childcare – off-site
Information service for childcare
Workplace parent support group
Breast-feeding facilities
Personal Leave Policies and benefits that
give leave to provide time
for personal commitments
& family caregiving
Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Adoption leave
Unpaid leave during school holidays
Guaranteed Christmas leave
Use of own sick leave to care for sick children
Leave for caring for elder relatives
Emergency leave
Study leave
Sports achievement leave
Employer Provided WLB (vs. Scepticism)
11. RQs, Methodology, Evidence Base
1. Gendering of everyday work-life conflict & workers’ preferred WLB
support in high tech regional economies?
2. How do WL conflict and uneven WLB provision by employers
shape worker mobility and hence interfirm embodied knowledge
transfers within and between firms?
3. Conditioning role of regional and national institutional and
regulatory frameworks?
Dublin and Cambridge IT regional case studies (EU
‘blueprint’ regions) + longest EU work hours (national)
65 in-depth interviews (working parents, HR
managers, unions, industry watchers)
Online employer survey: 150 firms (8068 workers,
20% female workforce): WLB provision & performance
Online IT worker survey: 162 workers (WLB & mobility)
(only 9 men! hard to convince WLB goes beyond women)
Policy engagement: UK: TUC, Amicus, GirlGeeks, WIT
Ireland: ICTU, SIPTU, Irish Equality Authority, WITS
12. Major causes of work-life conflict
Highly variable workloads over devt cycle
Need for rapid response to client crises
International work teams in multiple time zones
Maintaining skill sets in dynamic IT sector
Everyday experiences of work life conflict
interrupted sleep patterns
stress and exhaustion
regular evening and weekend working
relationships with partner / children suffer
working (at home) when feeling unwell
missing out on leisure / hobbies
checking email in hospital close to child birth
Particular pressures on women with children: identity of ‘a good mother’
invokes an everyday presence and involvement in childrearing absent from
dominant societal expectations ‘a good father’ (see Hardhill and van Loon 2006)
‘Agents of Innovation’? Cf. Everyday
Work-Life Conflicts (Highly Gendered)
“If you just try and deal with
it, you’ll just muddle through,
same as you always have.
But, the only way I could
make a decision for us as a
family was to play it forward
20 yrs. OK, there would be
more money in the bank,
that’s if we’re still talking to
each other, if the kids haven’t
gone off the rails because we
haven’t had time to sit down
and talk anymore...” Female
Business Devt Manager, now
on 3 day work week, Dublin
13. Atomised ‘Agents of Innovation’???
‘The active units behind the formation of new knowledge are ‘epistemic communities’,
simply defined as groups of knowledge-driven agents linked together by a common
goal, a common cognitive framework and a shared understanding of their work’
(Cohendet et al. 2014: 930).
‘Agglomeration does not ensure learning or determine its content. [Rather] the use and
development of information in such a way that technological learning takes place has to
do with the qualitative behaviours of agents in a network’ (Storper 1997: 135).
‘I’m the CEO of [IT company] and I’m also the mum of two kids… Pretty much the stress
comes from wanting to be successful at work, and also wanting to be successful as a
mother, or wanting to be successful at a hobby, or wanting to do a lot of different things
and having the conflict’. Chief Executive Officer, female, IT start-up, UK SE region.
‘I was working for [large IT firm], and in my last year I had my son. I had 300 people
working for me: you think to yourself “I eat nails for breakfast, I’m gonna have a child
and I’ll be right back in there, grrrr,”. And the reality is, it’s not that way, because all of
a sudden you have something that you actually care more deeply about than your job’.
CEO, female, 2 children, MNC, UK SE region.
14. Diverse Worker Preferences Vs.
Uneven and Ltd Employer Provided Support
Category Arrangement Dublin
(N=74)
%
Cambridge
(N=76)
%
Flexible Work
Arrangements
Flextime
Flexplace (work from home 1 or 2 days a week)
Flexplace (work from home 3 or 4 days a week)
Job sharing (one job undertaken by 2 or more persons)
Annualised hours
73
74
35
9
8
61
58
53
4
11
Reduced Work Hours Part-time work
Compressed work weeks (4 days work in 5)
Term-time working
49
31
8
59
29
9
Personal Leave Extra-statutory maternity leave
Extra-statutory paternity leave
Career break / sabbatical
32
14
19
12
9
7
Practical Help with
Child Care
Employer-subsidised childcare
Information referral service for childcare
Workplace nursery
4
4
3
8
3
1
Other WLB counselling / training 15 4
15. WLB - Routine Learning Benefits
Employer Survey
Perceived impacts of WLB provision on
organisational performance (2004-7) (N=142)
Improved workplace envt for creativity
and learning: 54%
Increased worker productivity: 61%
Improved company image to potential
recruits: 63%
Increased retention of women post
maternity leave: 52%
Increased workforce diversity: 44%
Increased female recruitment: 36%
Consistency with multiple metrics of firm
performance over same timeframe
In-depth Interviews
Workers & Managers
Three key mechanisms through which
uptake of worker preferred WLB
arrangements benefits routine learning:
Worker self-determination and
increased engagement
Reduced stress and improved
quality of team communication
Enhanced capacity for
comprehensive problem solving
Work team diversity
Diversity of external networks
16. Uneven Employer WLB Provision: Impacts on
Labour Mobility (worker survey)
Differential WLB provision shapes
workers’ inter-firm job-to-job mobility
preferences (often with pay cut)
Worker survey evidence (N=122):
Ave tenure: 3.5 yrs (excl 19% non-
movers)
WLB provision not useful previous
firm: 41%
PUSH: poor WLB in previous firm as
important reason for leaving: 33%
(39% for working mothers)
PULL: better WLB provision in
current firm as important reason for
moving: 65% (76% for working
mothers)
Interviews: key role of managerial
non-ratification of WLB take-up
(push)
“I rejected a job offer from a company
closer to home because they were not
open to the idea of working from home
or even starting 30 minutes later than
others (to sync my commute with my
wife)!” Male Software Engineer, Dublin
“The previous company I had a very
tough time and that’s the main reason
for me to look elsewhere. So one of
my children has a health problem, and
I’m receiving on the other side
pressure from my boss: ‘when are you
coming back to work? Enough of your
rest’. That’s what I’m hearing, but I’m
not resting there I’m struggling with
my kid you know?” IT Specialist,
mother of young twins, Cambridge
17. Unpacking Labour Churning, Cross-Firm
Job-To-Job Mobility & Knowledge Transfer
‘One of the most important sources of
knowledge flows is the knowledge
embodied in highly qualified personnel
which flows directly from research
institutes to private firms in the form of
graduates and also moves between firms
in the form of mobile labour… the
recombining of talent in new
constellations through labour mobility is
[…] one of the most important sources of
innovation in dynamic clusters’. (Wolfe
and Gertler 2004: 1076)
Well rehearsed set of arguments,
however…
18. Knowledge Spillovers & Spatial Advantage:
(Beyond) The Regional Learning Boys’ Club?
Majority insights from male / genderless ‘labour mobility’:
Henry and Pinch (2000) Oxford’s Motorsport Valley: cross-firm
labour churning of designers, managers, engineers every 3.7 yrs, 8
moves per career, 100 career biographies all male
Almeida and Kogut (1999): track US regional variations in knowledge
spillovers in the semiconductor industry via 483 patent holders, 473
male, only 10 ‘star engineers’ female
Power and Lundmark (2004): track mobility of 1.1 million
ICT professionals in Kista science park
Sweden (29% female) –
impressive time-series database lumped together as genderless
mass
Other gender-blind examples: Keeble et al. (1999); Fallick et al.
(2005); Lawton-Smith and Waters (2005); Agrawal et al. (2006); and
Breschi and Lissoni (2009).
Instrumental, dehumanised language of ‘labour market
externalities’; or else of ‘mobile labour’ / ‘knowledge carriers’ /
‘human capital stocks’ / even ‘mobile brains’ as apparently
disembodied factor inputs to knowledge production
19. Gendered work-life conflict, WLB and
constrained job-to-job interfirm mobility
Question assumption: interfirm job-to-job mobility always
and everywhere ‘good’
Disruptive effects on family support networks,
established school runs, etc – i.e. complex temporal and
spatial coordination of caring activities (urban
carescapes)
Interviews: female (and some male) IT workers who stay put as a
function of WLB considerations
Dominant atomistic conceptions of self-motivated, ideal worker
inter-firm job hopping in regional learning literature also ignore:
Trailing spouse syndrome
Devaluation of female embodied knowledge through
compromise jobs in other sectors chosen not for individual
utility but family utility (Folbre 1994)
Myriad of ‘glass ceiling’ structures that further undermine
female worker mobility (extensive occupational mobility
literature)
20. Uneven Regional Geographies of
Work-Life Advantage
Overall: Dublin workers having a harder time: 46% Dub IT workers
unsatisfied with current WLB (c.f. 30% Cam IT workers)
Interviews highlight Dublin urban sprawl (Celtic Tiger, house price
growth, longer commutes): 19% of Dublin workers surveyed commute 3 or
more hours per day (c.f. 7% of Cambridge workers)
Differences in gendered welfare regime:
NO statutory provision for paternity leave in Ireland
NO legal right to work PT in Ireland (employer discretion)
Statutory maternity leave lower in Ireland c.f. UK
Ireland’s higher costs of childcare in relation to average
incomes
i.e. ‘employer provided extra-statutory maternity / paternity leave’ has a
different meaning in Dublin c.f. Cambridge
(Im)mobility effect? e.g. 57% Dublin IT employers report increased female
retention post-maternity leave as a function of their WLB provision 2004-7
(c.f. 42% Cambridge)
21. Concluding Comments
Book opens up unexplored dimensions of high tech regional economies
(labour, gender, family)
How workers’ embeddedness in gendered, reproductive networks of family,
care and community shapes their (non)participation in routine learning and
innovation activities of knowledge production
Employer provided WLB arrangements important (yet under-researched)
element of firms’ institutionalised learning envts
CORE TENSION: worker mobility so widely celebrated in regional learning and
innovation literature (and policy) as underpinning regional competitiveness
also premised on:
Gendered dissatisfaction with work-life conflict, unequal division of
household labour, uneven & often inadequate employer WLB provision,
concerns beyond ‘the economic’ around care & improved quality of life.
Gender exclusions in regional studies yielding partial, undersocialised
regional learning characatures… & dessicated regional development policy
Engendering regional studies - need to reright the boat!!
22.
23. ′Who thought the topic of work–life
balance could be so interesting? Al
James makes it riveting. His sometimes–
poignant, sometimes heart–rending,
sometimes outrageous (how can they get
away with that?) stories of the collision of
work–lives and every–day lives of high–
tech workers in Dublin and Cambridge
make for utterly compelling reading′
Professor Trevor Barnes, UBC.
′The changing nature of employment, the
growing diversity of the workforce and
the implications for individuals and
households are the questions of our time.
In this fascinating book, feminist and
regional economics meet head–on as
James provides insights into the
implications of the growth of ′′knowledge
work" for firms and for families.′
Prof Linda McDowell, Oxford.