Adaptation Trajectories of Dismissed Workers: A Critical Case Study of the Lithuanian Radio-Electronics Sector

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110412
Author(s):  
Žilvinas Martinaitis ◽  
Audronė Sadauskaitė ◽  
Mariachiara Barzotto

This article explores why some dismissed workers adapt successfully to the changing structure of an economy, while others remain trapped in low-quality jobs and experience deskilling. The associated case study relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 50 former employees of four bankrupt radio-electronics factories in Lithuania. It is found that workers with ‘inherited’ skills that are deep and technical are able to enter high-quality jobs when new firms emerge, recombining the physical, financial and human assets of destitute factories for new productive uses. However, if such economic opportunities are scarce, workers with inherited broad skill sets are relatively more successful in transitioning to services from manufacturing. Further, in line with the literature of the sociology of work, women and older workers are found to face more acute challenges in adapting to the economic shock associated with dismissal.

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 1044-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crelis F Rammelt ◽  
Maggi Leung ◽  
Kebede Manjur Gebru

Inclusiveness, with its emphasis on productive employment, has become central in development policy. From this perspective, unwaged-work is condemned for not being sufficiently productive; that is, for failing to lift incomes above a poverty threshold. However, insights from the sociology of work reveal a range of unwaged activities that are potentially highly productive in their contribution to self-reliance. The article explores whether these activities are undermined by the promotion of inclusiveness. The case study takes place in Tigray, Ethiopia. Through semi-structured interviews, the activities of different households were classified according to a typology of work based on the work of Gorz, Illich, Wheelock, Taylor, Williams and others. Results show the heterogeneous character of work and shed light on the meaning of productivity. The article ends with a discussion on the risk that inclusiveness may be achieved by replacing activities ‘that count’ with activities ‘that can be counted’.


Author(s):  
Maxim Gavrilkov ◽  

The paper approaches Maximus the Greek’s polemical work both from the text-critical and functional perspectives. The text-critical case study reveals a new, refi ned and most complete attribution of biblical and patristic quotations and their thematic division. Restructuring quotations so that they form the “Salvation Ladder” demonstrates presence of the main imperative of Christian culture in the text.


MIS Quarterly ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 1087-1112
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Vaast ◽  
Alain Pinsonneault ◽  
◽  

Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete, and they magnify both the similarity and distinctiveness of occupations with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of “optimal distinctiveness” and “persistent extinction.” We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity, i.e., how they define who they are and what they do. We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Skidmore Coggin ◽  
Sharon Daley ◽  
Jackie Sydnor ◽  
Tammi R. Davis

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