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This article explores how gender is embodied and embedded in organizations. Organizational embodiment and gendered work are linked to new forms of labor market segmentation around aesthetic labor. The analysis makes visible the situated forms of body management and the productive modes of embodiment in a gender regime as ways of organizing and ordering masculinities and femininities in a valued hierarchy A case study of temporary employment provided by a multinational temporary-help company situates the global in culturally local contexts of gendered work and employment conditions. KEY WORDS aesthetic labor / embodiment / gender/Japan / temporary employment

Most organizational research fails to examine the communication experiences of temporary employees. Based on uncertainty reduction theory and impression management, this study compares the information-seeking and information-giving behaviors of temporary employees and newly hired, regular employees. Results suggest that temporary employees are less concerned about impression management, seek appraisal information less frequently, and practice less information giving than newly hired, regular employees. The data indicate temporary employees are more communicatively isolated from organizational members than other newcomers. Results suggest organizations may improve organizational learning and innovation by increasing communication with temporary employees., Most extant research examining communication among organizational members assumes that those members have permanent appointments with the organization. To date, organizational communication research has ignored an important type of organizational [...]

The corporate downsizing trend which started in the early 1970s has led to a reduction in the number of permanent employees. Temporary workers have taken up some of the slack. Reasons why management likes this arrangement include the fact that temporary workers usually have lower salaries and no fringe benefits, can be easily laid off when no longer needed and are usually not at one workplace long enough to develop a sense of solidarity with other workers. Disadvantages for the temporary workers are obvious.

Prevailing explanations of power, class fragmentation, participation, and resistance in the contemporary workplace have not explicitly incorporated three factors: the decentered work systems increasingly typical in blue- and white-collar occupations; the terms of the employment contract; and exogenous variables, such as previous labor market experiences, that strengthen or weaken workers' commitments to their jobs. This paper demonstrates the significance of these three factors by investigating the empirical case of temporary workers. Using interview and observational field data, I demonstrate how a system of temporary employment in a participative workplace both exploited and shaped entry-level workers' aspirations and occupational goals. I conclude by suggesting that capacities for collective action, or a social movement that might pose a critique of the current transformation of employment relations into a system increasingly characterized by nonstandard jobs, is limited by structural features and by individual embeddedness in stratified occupational systems.

Karin Genton-L'Ep[acute{e}]e glanced at her appointment calendar and reflected on the short time horizon she had given herself to get Start Temps up and running in the Czech Republic. Start [...]

The article adopts a systematic historical and cross-national perspective to examine changes in employment policy and practice from a period of welfare capitalism to the current period of market capitalism. The trends towards employment flexibility in Britain, West Germany and France are documented in some detail, and both the role of the state and the practices of employers are examined. An attempt is made to assess the significance of the flexibility trends in the three societies and to explain their emergence/intensification in the 1980s. Finally, the article considers the impact of flexible employment practices on the quantity and quality of employment of various social groups.

A number of social scientists (see for example, Allen et al., 1986; Brown, 1984; Purcell, 1985; Purcell et al., 1986; Roberts et al., 1985) have drawn attention to the way in which patterns of working have changed radically in recent years suggesting that we need to rethink and reconceptualise with regard to work, employment and unemployment. This paper examines these issues in Sweden where recession in the early eighties and economic restructuring, similar to the experience in other Western countries, have affected individuals' relation to the labour market. It is our view that the effects of these developments (have) affect(ed) women and immigrants differently. It is furthermore our contention that welfare state policies related to the functioning of the labour market (inadvertently) play a role in the maintenance of inequality.

A visiting assistant sociology professor at Bowdoin College describes his research into temporary employment, which was inspired by his own summer job experiences. The resulting book, 'Just Temps,' published by Temple University Press, details Kevin Henson's feelings about working at tedious assignments such as data entry and filing, and includes interviews with 35 temporaries. Henson asserts that the flexibility factor in temporary work benefits the employer rather than the temporary worker.