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Working in a Risk Society
Author(s) -
Reimer Suzanne
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-2754.1998.t01-1-00116.x
Subject(s) - risk society , work (physics) , procurement , sociology , social risk , positive economics , economics , social science , management , engineering , mechanical engineering
Through much of the 1980s, discussions of transformations within work and employment debated the emergence of a new, more ‘flexible’ era ‐ or, at a different level of analysis, the growth of more ‘flexible’ working practices. Recent accounts of contemporary socio‐economic change have been framed within new sets of theoretical contexts, such as Ulrich Beck's notion of ‘social risk’. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate the utility of such an approach, drawing upon empirical work which has investigated changes to terms and conditions of manual employment in British local authorities as a result of the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering.