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In this chapter, we explore menopause transition in the workplace. Menopause describes the cessation of periods and is a natural life stage. Menopause transition, or ‘peri-menopause’, is ‘the time between onset of menstrual irregularity and the menopause’ (O’Neill and Eden, 2017, p 303).1 It is associated with a number of symptoms, usually experienced between the ages of 45– 55, which include hot flushes, night sweats, mood changes, poor concentration, memory loss, anxiety and weight gain. How each woman experiences menopause transition is different and unique (Banks, 2019) and the impact, duration, onset and severity of symptoms experienced vary greatly. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that, for many, transition symptoms have a negative effect on working lives (Griffiths and Hunter, 2014), with nearly 40 per cent of those in transition agreeing that menopausal symptoms had some negative effect on their work performance (Griffiths, Maclennan and Hassard, 2013). Indeed, a recent study suggests that up to a quarter of those experiencing serious symptoms have left employment (Powell, 2021).
There are a number of reasons why this workplace impact should concern employers, drawing on legal, business and social justice cases (Atkinson et al, 2021). Legally, organizations have a responsibility to employees in menopause transition. They need, for example, to ensure compliance with both the Equality Act 2010 and Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and ensure they are aware of ‘best practice’ guidelines. Employer failure to recognize the impact of menopause in the workplace has resulted in a number of employer losses at employment tribunal on the grounds of discrimination and unfair dismissal. The first was recorded in 2012 (Merchant vs BT) and, while numbers are still small, cases brought had grown to ten in the first half of 2021 (Hill, 2021). There is also clearly a strong business case: the workforce is ageing and it is estimated that there are 4.3 million workers who identify as cis women aged between 50– 64 in the UK workforce (ONS, 2019). Given that the average age of menopause is 51, a significant number will be working while in transition (O’Neill and Eden, 2017).
It is a little-known fact that only humans and two species of whale go through menopause. We learned this during a 2016 BBC documentary – ‘The whale menopause’ – that described menopause as ‘one of human evolution's great mysteries’ (BBC Radio 4, 2016). Presenting the case of 100+ year-old killer whale (‘J2’), anthropomorphically dubbed ‘Granny’, the programme marvelled at the centrality of the non-reproductive female to the survival of the family group, or pod, concluding that older female killer whales are ‘not redundant. They actually have an important role to play’. Granny's physical capacity to ‘prolifically’ breach (that is, to rise out of the water) was also noted as marvellous, given her age. In 2017, when her death was announced, Granny was described as ‘the leader’ and ‘matriarch’ of the group in a BBC radio report (BBC Radio 4, 2017). The interviewed scientist stated that ‘post-reproductive females’ like Granny direct the pod to navigate safely through foraging grounds, ‘storing ecological knowledge for the group’. Dependent adult sons (age 30+ years) are, the scientist reported, eight times more likely to perish when post-reproductive females die: these sons are dependent on their mothers for food. Again, it was confirmed that the females of only two species of whale and humans live beyond their reproductive years.
Humans, the 2016 documentary explained, have much to learn from this fact in understanding the value of older women's lives. It suggested that the story of the killer whales has the empowering potential for appreciating ‘the importance of older females in society’ (BBC Radio 4, 2016). For us, this conclusion indicates the astonishing depth and strength of prevailing accounts of women's core value as reproductive beings and of menopause as a catastrophic ending to reproductive capacities. Although extensively studied within biology and medicine, menopause remains ‘a mystery’ because of the persistent social, cultural and scientific difficulties in conceptualizing female human and nonhuman animals’ value beyond species propagation.
The ‘Rethinking Work, Ageing and Retirement’ book series explores the impact of extended working lives and changes to welfare states and labour markets on people, organizations and society. The radical changes affecting work and retirement were an impetus for the series. In particular, rising state pension ages, shifts towards individual responsibility and risk in private pensions saving, and the abolition of mandatory retirement ages in a number of countries now frame decisions about retirement. In theory, these policy developments extend individual discretion about continuing in employment, which may create new opportunities for those who want – and are able – to work. In practice, however, it arguably makes retirement timing only a hypothetical choice that people can be held more accountable for. Individuals must now assume greater financial responsibility for remaining in work as long as they need to. For significant numbers of older people this may be difficult to achieve, however, given evidence of widespread age discrimination in the labour market and reduced employment opportunities for this group. This is in addition to difficulties individuals experience in the labour market at any age – for example, due to racism or ableism, or constraints on time and energy stemming from outside paid work, such as care responsibilities. Work itself also appears to be getting more precarious, albeit to differing degrees across countries, and the management of older workers is becoming less straightforward given uncertainties around retirement.
It is in this context, we are delighted to welcome this excellent volume on menopause transitions and the workplace edited by Vanessa Beck and Jo Brewis. It is well established that health-related issues have a significant impact on whether people continue working up to, and beyond, pension ages. We also know, as the editors of this volume point out in their introduction, that over half of women will at some stage experience one or more severe symptom(s) of menopause and some will consider leaving work because of this. Despite this, menopause transitions in the workplace have only recently been recognized as an issue of importance within the academic and policy literature, and this was in part because of the significant work the editors and authors of this book have done on this topic.
Despite significant improvements in many health outcomes over the past sixty years, many chronic problems in Indonesia's health system including financial sustainability, governance and inequities in accessing health care have long been apparent, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The epidemiological transition associated with demographic and socioeconomic change in recent decades makes Indonesia one of many countries that still struggle to address the issues of communicable, maternal and nutritional diseases while facing an increasing burden of non-communicable diseases.
The contributors to In Sickness and In Health: Diagnosing Indonesia investigate challenges and opportunities facing the Indonesian health system and assess hurdles that Indonesians have to navigate in their quest to achieve a longer and better quality of life. Politics shaping recent health policy reforms in Indonesia, barriers to the supply of specialist doctors and quality medicines, availability of accurate health and population data, and the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic are among the topics discussed in this book. Accessing essential health services for mothers and children and for those living with disability, discrimination and mental illness, as well as an innovative trial to control dengue, are also examined.
Forced labour, encompassing various types of coercive practices and rights violations, is an entrenched problem in Malaysia. Recent years have seen more decisive and concerted efforts to resolve the problem and repair Malaysia's damaged reputation, but the country's forced labour woes escalated amid COVID-19, with exposés and trade embargoes in 2020-21. Most consequentially, the US has imposed withhold release orders (WROs) on major rubber glove manufacturers and palm oil producers. For two consecutive years, 2021-22, Malaysia has occupied the lowest Tier 3 in the US Trafficking in Persons report. In November 2021, the country's National Action Plan on Forced Labour (NAPFL), formulated through tripartite engagements with the participation of the International Labour Organization, was launched, with the third National Action Plan on Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP 3.0) operating in tandem. The NAPFL outlines strategies and integrated measures for eventually eliminating forced labour by 2030, which requires systemic solutions commensurate with the magnitude of underlying problems. Forced labour has persisted despite the official termination of labour outsourcing and increased intergovernmental bilateral initiatives to better manage foreign worker flows.
Continual challenges in the labour supply industry and the administrative system, including the problematic overlapping powers of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Human Resources, complicate the creation and implementation of a more just, effective and accountable migrant worker system. Government-to-government (G2) agreements, through Memorandum of Understanding, have become the established platform, but are marred by inconsistency and lack of transparency.
This Element reviews the varieties of capitalism approach (VoC) first developed by Hall and Soskice and subsequent extensions to emerging markets. The author suggests that by reinvigorating existing ideal types and creating new ones through an analysis of its five variables in a variety of countries VoC can be used to evaluate the viability of economic reforms across a wide range of countries. He argues that governments should base changes on lessons from other countries belonging to their ideal type. This Element illustrates the utility of VoC in understanding how reforms will differ across countries by examining how the future of work is likely to differ across nations depending on the degree to which the five institutions explored in this approach promote the standardization of tasks. It analyzes how these institutions shape degrees of standardization in the United States, Germany, and Brazil, offering suggestions for reforms in each of them.
We study household credit responses to Hurricane Harvey using new, geographically granular data on credit cards, mortgages, and flooding. Estimates from a differences-in-differences design that exploits the flooding gradient show that affected households only borrow at low-interest rates, often using promotional (zero interest) cards and that they quickly pay down balances. We also document that take-up of forbearance (borrowing by missing mortgage payments without penalty) increases with flooding. These results are attenuated in floodplains, particularly in structures subject by code to physical hardening. Our results indicate that credit acts as a substitute for the lack of physical hardening.
Over the second half of the 20th century, Greek governments failed to tax business income in line with the country’s level of economic development. This paper uses the “slippery slope” model of tax compliance to explain why the reform of income and corporate taxation in the late 1950s met strong resistance in the business sector. We argue that the negative legacy of interwar reforms, the lack of sustained and credible investment in trust building in coincidence with the postwar reforms, and the intensification of coercive threats in tax enforcement led to an antagonistic tax climate and a degradation of enforced and voluntary compliance. Our qualitative analysis based on original primary sources shows that the arguments publicly voiced by entrepreneurs and their organizations reflected their persistent perception of tax power as unfair, arbitrary and extractive. Using aggregate tax returns data, our quantitative analysis finds evidence of systematic and increasing income underreporting both by unincorporated and incorporated businesses. This vicious circle of non-cooperation and mutual distrust explains why governments got trapped into a persistent low tax capacity equilibrium that still casts a shadow on the Greek economy.
The institutional logics perspective provides a powerful theory that emphasizes how symbolic beliefs and material practices are intertwined in relatively enduring configurations that can profoundly shape behavior across space and time. In this article, we build upon the arguments and insights of Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner, and Li, suggesting the need for a broader research agenda on the dynamics of institutional logics in China and around the world. Building on some of our recent writings, we argue for the need to go beyond the study of how logics have effects, to understand how logics themselves cohere, endure, and co-evolve in dynamic interrelationships with other logics.
Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner, and Li's (2023) perspective article contributes important insights into China's transition away from central planning and redistribution toward greater market coordination of economic exchange. In our commentary on their insightful article, we build on and extend their arguments in three main ways. First, we discuss how future studies might extend the authors’ work by leveraging the ‘messiness’ of institutional change to explore the cross-level dynamics involved in transforming institutional logics. Second, we build on the authors’ call for more historically grounded, contextualized research on institutional logics to argue that the conditions surrounding logic emergence have important implications for inter-logic dynamics and organizational responses. Third, we build on the authors’ suggestions for future research to underscore the broader consequences of institutional logics and their potential to perpetuate or exacerbate social inequalities and other societal challenges.
Self-Determination as Voice addresses the relationship between Indigenous peoples' participation in international governance and the law of self-determination. Many states and international organizations have put in place institutional mechanisms for the express purpose of including Indigenous representatives in international policy-making and decision-making processes, as well as in the negotiation and drafting of international legal instruments. Indigenous peoples' rights have a higher profile in the UN system than ever before. This book argues that the establishment and use of mechanisms and policies to enable a certain level of Indigenous peoples' participation in international governance has become a widespread practice, and perhaps even one that is accepted as law. In theory, the law of self-determination supports this move, and it is arguably emerging as a rule of customary international law. However, ultimately the achievement of the ideal of full and effective participation, in a manner that would fulfil Indigenous peoples' right to self-determination, remains deferred.
Historians have long explored the links between the environmental and the economic. Yet as the global climate crisis deepens with every passing month, it becomes ever more obvious just how related the environmental and the economic are. Driven by the by-products of economic growth, rising sea levels, floods, droughts, and extreme heat devastate ecosystems and claim increasing numbers of lives. They also continue to wreck enormous economic damage, itself the cause of untold immiseration. The climate crisis, most obviously, is an environmental crisis. But it is also an economic crisis and a crisis of political and social action.
COVID-19 may not only pose threats but also provided opportunities for innovation and growth for many high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial passion (EP), dynamic capability (DC) for innovation and product innovation performance in SMEs during COVID-19. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods were employed per the survey data of 195 Chinese SMEs. The results reveal that EP is an imperative antecedent of DC and product innovation. DC also positively mediates the relationship between SMEs’ product innovation performance and top managers’ EP. In addition, this mediation effect of DC becomes more pronounced when firms are facing more opportunities. These findings advance the existing literature by specifying the process top managers use to cultivate product innovation within SMEs in times of crisis.
This conceptual paper examines the considerable scope of leadership theories built from literature originating in the West to focus on the ‘process’ of leadership. By opening the door to include traditional Chinese thought, the worldview of Western tradition is challenged using the work of philosopher and sinologist François Jullien. Chinese culture views process as the basis of transformation and renewal in the world. It is explained through ‘the propensity of things’ in relation to European ontology and causality. Recognizing the evolving nature of reality through the generic Chinese notion of shi 勢, which serves as a conceptual tool for Jullien, leadership process is understood as an aspect of organization propensity. Shi 勢 is then recognized as a leading force encompassing human agency that is able to open a new avenue for research nurturing the emerging quantum phase of leadership.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the influencing mechanism of shared leadership (SL) on taking charge behavior (TCB) based on cognitive–affective system theory. Specifically, the current study intends to build a model of perceived insider status and emotional intelligence that mediate the relationship between SL and TCB from a dual cognitive–affective perspective. Further, given the nature of SL that develops through social interactions, we propose and examine the moderating role of social media use in the relationship between SL and TCB. We used multilevel and multi-sourced data to test the theoretical model and used a social network approach to measure SL in teams. Our findings provide a significant contribution to the literature in that this paper shows perceived insider status and emotional intelligence as a crucial dual mediating mechanism through which SL influences TCB and affords fresh thoughts for IT-related contextual conditions.