Renate Ortlieb
Renate Ortlieb is Professor of HRM from the University of Graz, Austria. She is part of the Erasmus Professorial teaching exchange agreement between Graz and Brighton. Her research interests are in gender and power relations in organisations, workplace diversity, employee absenteeism and company pension plans. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Applied Statistics, Management Revue and Schmalenbach Business Review.
Renate will deliver a lunchtime seminar to faculty members on the reproduction of gender regimes within workplaces on Thursday 17th November, 1.00pm - 2.00pm in room M142.
Vist Renate's profile at the University of Graz.
Géradline Rieucau
Dr. Géraldine Rieucau is Associate Professor in Economics (Paris 8 University-St Denis, France), member of the Laboratoire d'économie dyonisien (Paris 8) and researcher associated at the Centre d'études de l'emploi. Her research focus on job search, coordination and recruitment in labour markets. It is based on the theoretical framework of the economy of conventions, which considers that to tackle uncertainty, economic actors have to "shape" information. Currently, she is working on two projects: drawing on the panel data from the Labour Force Survey (2003-2011), she analyses, with G. de Larquier, the ways of searching and finding a job in France. Drawing on interviews with managers and employees, the second project deals with recruitment practices of low-wage workers in the retail industry (with Marie Salognon). She is research visitor at CROME (March-July 2012).
Her seminar "Recruitment practices and selectivity in the French retail industry" Wednesday 21st March 2012 focused on low-wage jobs, this research presents a framework for thinking about recruitment in French retail industry. Drawing on interviews with managers involved in recruitment and with recently employees hired, I insist on the way employers and applicants first interact (job-hiring channel) and point out the diversity of the screening criteria and methods used. The selection process impacts the profile of workers hired. You can view her slides in Powerpoint format.
Read Géraldine's blog.
Anu-Hanna Anttila
Research visitor April-June 2012.
Post-doc Researcher (Academy of Finland) Department of Social Research/ Sociology
FI-20014 University of Turku, Finland
email: anantti@utu.fi, web pages: http://anu-hanna.blogspot.com/.
Dr José-Luis Álvarez-Galván
Dr José-Luis Álvarez-Galván is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded through the National Councial of Science and Technology (CONACYT) in Mexico as part of its Estancias Postdoctorales and Sabáticas en el Extranjero programme in its 2012-2013.
His research project examines qualification mismatch and labour market inequality in Mexico and OECD countries. His previous research has been on economic trends in Mexico, in particular on the growth of call centres, and on high technology industries in the United States. He will be based at CROME for the academic year 2012-13 and part-time at the OECD in Paris.
His recent publications include Outsourcing and Service Work in the New Economy: The Case of Call Centres in Mexico City, Date Of Publication: Apr 2012 (Isbn13: 978-1-4438-3738-5, Isbn: 1-4438-3738-5)
This book examines the impact of outsourcing on workers and their employment conditions in the new economy. To do so, the call centre industry in Mexico City is analysed through a large number of in-depth interviews with workers and managers, available statistics and visits to leading firms in the sector. The case of call centres is paradigmatic as it is often seen as a flag-ship industry of the new economy, rapidly growing and subject to high pressures for costs reduction. The Mexican experience is crucially relevant to understand employment conditions in a weak institutional setting where labour protection is low and business competition intense.
Overall, outsourcing has gained popularity as a mechanism to deal with the uncertainty of increasingly challenging business environments. Nonetheless, the practice of outsourcing also raises important concerns. This book identifies those managerial practices which have a substantial impact on workers and their employment conditions such as: job designs; customer segmentation; non-standard contracts; intensified supervision; union avoidance; limited career opportunities; and strict social divisions in the workplace. These findings also suggest that a number of practices that were common in the 'old' economy are still dominant in the organisation of work in the twenty-first century.
The book is a useful reference for scholars and students concerned with employment and labour studies, economic development, and globalisation.
José-Luis Álvarez-Galván holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts and a bachelor's degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and has published extensively on foreign direct investment, employment and development. He currently lives in Paris where he works as a Consultant for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).