Decent Work Opportunities and Challenges

Exploring contemporary challenges and opportunities for the realisation of Decent Work, this edited collection reviews the origins of the concept and helps to demonstrate its working in practice. Using a Decent Work lens to explore the realities of eroding work conditions in typical and atypical work, the analyses presented here argue that urgent action is required to address these issues for the benefit of individual workers, and society as a whole. 

Prepared by researchers and collaborators associated with the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, this volume provides insights from an exceptional blend of authors presenting high-quality research from multiple disciplines including economics, labour market studies, organisation studies, sociology, psychology, career development and education. These unique and wide-ranging contributions position Decent Work as valuable to important questions about the future of work, and emerging interdisciplinary research about work.

Addressing changes to today’s work and employment relationships – including the roles of governments, employers, and trade unions – this volume offers suggestions for how public and private sector policy and practice can support the realisation of Decent Work, while also theorising the concept’s contested nature, and exploring urgent and practical possibilities to secure fair and decent working lives for all.

Fiona Christie is a Senior Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, with research interests in career studies, higher education, employability, graduates, and young people’s working lives.

Marilena Antoniadou is a Reader in Management and Work Psychology at the Department of People and Performance of Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Kevin Albertson is Professor of Economics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, with a background in statistics and political economics.

Mark Crowder is Education Lead for the Department of Strategy, Enterprise and Sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is also a senior lecturer in Strategy and Business Psychology.