Walking around the commercial streets of New York, San Francisco, Milan, London, or Paris and looking at the succession of multinational chain stores’ windows, you can easily forget what country you are in. However, if you hear the small talk among the employees, you hear very different stories. In New York, a 30-year-old woman is worried because she does not know if she will work enough hours to make a living the following week—whereas, in Milan, a mother of the same age knows she will work 20 hours a week but is concerned about whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the following month. Following three years of fieldwork, which included 100 in-depth interviews with front-line retail workers and unionists in New York City and Milan, Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy investigates both the lived experiences of salespersons in the "fast fashion" industry—a retail sector made of large chains of stores selling fashion garments at low prices—and the possibilities of collective action and structured forms of resistance to these global trends. In the face of economic globalization and vigorous managerial efforts to minimize labor costs and to standardize the retail experience, mass fashion workers’ stories tell us how strong the pressure toward work devaluation in low-skilled service sectors can be, and how devastating its effects are on the workers themselves.

"Walking around the commercial streets of New York, San Francisco, Milan, London, or Paris and looking at the succession of multinational chain stores' windows, you can easily forget what country you are in. However, if you hear the small talk among the employees you hear very different stories. In New York, a 30-year-old woman is worried because she does not know if she will work enough hours to make a living the following week - whereas, in Milan, a mother of the same age knows she will work 20 hours a week but is concerned about whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the following month. Following three years of field work which included 100 in-depth interviews with front-line retail workers and unionists in New York City and Milan, Front-Line Workers in the Global Service Economy investigates both the lived experiences of salespersons in the 'fast fashion' industry - a retail sector made of large chains of stores selling fashion garments at low prices - as well as the possibilities of collective action and structured forms of resistance to these global trends. In the face of economic globalization and vigorous managerial efforts to minimize labor costs and to standardize the retail experience, mass fashion workers' stories tell us how strong the pressure towards work devaluation in low skilled service sectors can be, and how devastating its effects are on the workers' themselves"--

Manufacturing-led development has provided the traditional model for creating jobs and prosperity. But in the past three decades the conventional pattern of structural transformation has changed, with the services sector growing faster than the manufacturing sector. This raises critical questions about the ability of developing economies to close productivity gaps with advanced economies and to create good jobs for more people. At Your Service? The Promise of Services-Led Development (www.worldbank.org/services-led-development) assesses the scope of a services-driven development model and policy directions that can maximize the model’s potential.

A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD

Presents research in Employee-Driven Innovation, an emergent field of study that meets the demand for exploiting new innovative potentials in organizations. There is a growing interest in creating new knowledge in innovation, emphasizing human resources and social processes. The authors intend to take the global lead in research on these areas.

2.7 billion of the world's workforce are frontline workers - this book explains how business leaders can transform their organization by making frontline workers more effective, efficient, motivated, and happier in their work."An essential business book for senior management in retail, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, or indeed any industry that employs large numbers of frontline workers." Given that 80% of the world's workforce is employed on the frontline, why have organizations not invested in the mobile tools that will make those workers more effective, efficient, motivated, and happier in their work? Desk-based workers have been provided with such tools, why not their frontline counterparts?These are the questions that Cristian Grossmann addresses in his new book, The Rise of the Frontline Workers, in which he outlines why it is so important for businesses to digitalize their frontline workforce and explains how organizations should best approach doing so.Cristian is a tech entrepreneur whose company Beekeeper has raised more than $80M in funding and supplies its employee communications app to some of the world's biggest and best-known organizations, including London Heathrow Airport, Domino's Pizza, and Hilton Hotels. Cristian, a former frontline worker himself, has an extensive understanding of what technology is required to make the frontline workforce more effective and describes why frontline workers need tools and solutions that are designed specifically for them, not a patched-up version of something that works for desk-based workers.The Rise of the Frontline Workers explores how frontline workers are essential to the smooth running of society. The events of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic have proved that beyond any doubt. Yet for many employers, frontline workers and their needs are overlooked, time and time again. During the various lockdowns of 2020, frontline workers rarely had the option of working from home and continued to work on the frontline, often at personal risk to themselves due to a lack of PPE.This ignoring of frontline worker needs is not new and dates back centuries. But things are changing. Covid-19 has accelerated trends that had been building for years. People were already using smartphones in massive numbers and reaching frontline workers via their smartphones has become a mission-critical objective for many organizations. The on-going rise of mobile technology and changing perceptions of how frontline workers are valued have combined to create a perfect storm in which the needs of the frontline workforce are finally being addressed. Providing frontline workers with the tools to communicate with, to give them access to the information that will keep them safe at work, and to ensure they feel valued has become one of the biggest priorities for businesses now.By the end of The Rise of the Frontline Workesr, you will have gained a greater understanding of the perfect storm that has gathered to make digitalization of frontline workers so important, learn from companies that have already done so, and be ready to start your own frontline worker digitalization projects. Organizations that take the needs of 80% of their workforce seriously by providing them with the right digital tools for the job will survive and indeed thrive in the future. Those that continue to ignore the needs of the frontline workforce will head in the opposite direction. This book makes it clear why you should choose the former option.