Rethinking Work: Time, Space and Discourse

This 2006 book is an innovative reconsideration of a changing and contested domain in society. New essays from scholars at the University of Sydney are structured around the themes of time, space and discourse to highlight the value-laden and constructed nature of these categories as they are applied to the organisation of our working lives. Contributors draw from their expertise in strategic management, organisational theory, labour and business history, law, economics, industrial relations, human resource management, geography, and discourse and narrative analysis. Their stimulating chapters in Rethinking Work reflect that the study of work must itself be capable of adaptation to the profound changes reshaping this most powerful expression of human relationships and experience.

Grant Michelson teaches and researches in the areas of business ethics, organisational behaviour and change, and industrial relations and his work has been published in many national and international journals. Grant is currently exploring contemporary discourses in business ethics as well as the role of new actors in industrial relations with an emphasis on workplace chaplains.

Mark Hearn has published extensively on the historical and contemporary analysis of work and trade unions. He recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship on 'Labour and National Identity: Work, Authority and the Australian Settlement, 1901–20', with a methodological focus in narrative theory. He is currently researching the relationship between workers, unions and neo-liberalism, with an emphasis on addressing issues of social citizenship and union organisation. Mark is an associate editor of Labour History.