Participation is a social process, which is basically part of an exchange relationship. Thus, it is principally pluralist and ambiguous in its meaning. As a consequence, the reconciliation of voices needs innovative approaches to support balanced participation experiences. The ambivalent character of participation intends to provide a look at new initiatives in the various fields of work-place participation. Leading international scholars examine the role of institutional contexts for participation, the development of new forms of interest organisation as well as the relationship between organisational performance, participation practices and quality of working life. The contributions are not limited to taking stock of new experiences in the field of workplace participation, but also contribute to designing a new research agenda.

This thoroughly revised second edition presents up-to-date analysis from various academic streams and disciplines that illuminate our understanding of employee voice from a range of different perspectives. Exploring the previously under-represented paradigm of the organizational behaviour approach, new chapters take account of a broader conceptualization of employee voice. Written by expert contributors, this Handbook explores the meaning and impact of employee voice for various stakeholders and considers the ways in which these actors engage with voice processes such as collective bargaining, individual processes, mutual gains, task-based voice and grievance procedures

Since the 1980s, the process of European economic integration, within a wider context of globalization, has accelerated employment change and placed a new premium on ‘flexible’ forms of work organization. The institutions of employment relations, specifically those concerning collective bargaining between employers and trade unions, have had to adapt accordingly. The Transformation of Employment Relations focuses not just on recent change, but charts the strategic choices that have influenced employment relations and examines these key developments in a comparative perspective. A historical and cross-national analysis of the most important and controversial ‘issues’ explores the motivation of the actors, the implementation of change, and its evolution in a diverse European context. The book highlights the policies and the role played by different institutional and social actors (employers, management, trade unions, professional associations and governments) and assesses the extent to which these policies and roles have had significant effects on outcomes. This comparative analysis of the transformation of work and employment regulation, within the context of a quarter-century timeframe, has not been undertaken in any other book. But this is no comparative handbook in which changes are largely described on a country-by-country basis, but instead, The Transformation of Employment Relations is rather focused thematically. As Europe copes with a serious economic crisis, understanding of the dynamics of work transformation has never been more important.

This report assesses the current trends, drivers, obstacles, mechanisms, impacts, costs and benefits of stakeholder engagement in the water sector.

Behind the steady stream of new products, technologies, systems and services in our modern societies there is prolonged and complicated battle around the role of users. How should designers get to know the users’ interests and needs? Who should speak for the users? How may designers collaborate with users and in what ways may users take innovation into their own hands? The New Production of Users offers a rare overview of these issues. It traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation. In addition to a number of new case studies, the book provides a thorough account of theories of user involvement as well as and offers further developments to these theories. As a part of this, the book relates to the wide spectrum of fields currently associated with user involvement, such as user-centered design, participatory design, user innovation, open source software, cocreation and peer production. Exploring the nexus between users and designers, between efforts to democratize innovation and to mobilize users for commercial purposes, this multi-disciplinary book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners in fields such as Innovation Studies, Innovation Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Consumption studies, Marketing, e-commerce, Media Studies as well as Design research.

Creative Participation presents the theory and practice of new innovative forms of political participation. Examples covered in the book include consumers engaging in political shopping, capitalists building green developments, UK Muslim youth campaigning on the internet, Sicilian housewives taking on the Mafia, young evangelical ministers becoming concerned with social change and vegetarians making political statements. The authors show how in these new campaigns individuals swarm like honeybees around particular issues, causing those in power to sit up and take notice. This is the essential guide to the new politics of participation.

This book explores the weird and mean and in-between that characterize everyday expression online, from absurdist photoshops to antagonistic Twitter hashtags to deceptive identity play. Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner focus especially on the ambivalence of this expression: the fact that it is too unwieldy, too variable across cases, to be essentialized as old or new, vernacular or institutional, generative or destructive. Online expression is, instead, all of the above. This ambivalence, the authors argue, hinges on available digital tools. That said, there is nothing unexpected or surprising about even the strangest online behavior. Ours is a brave new world, and there is nothing new under the sun – a point necessary to understanding not just that online spaces are rife with oddity, mischief, and antagonism, but why these behaviors matter. The Ambivalent Internet is essential reading for students and scholars of digital media and related fields across the humanities, as well as anyone interested in mediated culture and expression.