Rethinking work: time, space and discourse

Rethinking Work is an innovative reconsideration of the most vital and contested domain of our social being. New contributions from academics in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney are structured around the themes of time, space and discourse to highlight the value-laden and constructed nature of these categories as they are applied to the organization our working lives. Time may function as a container of meaning, that reflects social and workplace roles; time shaped at work to construct identity and the subjectivity of the individual. Imagined and material regimes of space permeates organisational, managerial and working life: the nature of union power, the movement of migrant labour and the organization of work reflect the spatial distribution of labour market function and power, and the attempts by workers, unions and managers to contest these allocations. Discourse analysis and narrative theory offer crucial insights into the construction of work-based identities, and critical methodogical tools for analyzing the metaphors and practices that govern work. The contributors to Rethinking Work draw from their expertise in strategic management, discourse and narrative analysis, organizational theory, labour and business history, labour geography and the study of unions, gender and human resource management. Their innovative and heterogeneous contributions to Rethinking Work reflect that the study of work must itself be capable of adaptation to the profound changes reshaping this most powerful expression of human relationships and experience.