Underemployment is a much discussed but little researched topic. The thesis begins with a broad discussion of the theory and methodology underlying the recent research on underemployment. It then proceeds to a quantitative analysis of underemployment using data from the 1995 follow-up of B.C. college leavers from vocational, technical and two-year academic university transfer programs. The study finds that, overall, one third of B.C. college leavers were employed in jobs that did not require the level of education that they had attained. As expected, there were significant differences by field of study and subsequent occupation. The rate of underemployment among students from academic programs was eight times the rate of underemployment for students from vocational programs and twice that of students from career/technical programs. Additionally, almost a third of all college leavers were employed in Sales and Service occupations and roughly two-thirds of those were underemployed. Labour market segmentation theory provides the most useful theoretical explanation for these findings. The markedly uneven rates of underemployment experienced by college leavers in the core and peripheral sectors support the labour market segmentation perspective. In conclusion, underemployment is a useful, though limited construct. Such a measure should only be used in conjunction with other measures of employment outcomes like unemployment, salary and full/part-time employment status.

There are currently over 900 million Facebook users worldwide (and counting). With increased use of social networking comes new concerns for personal privacy and control of social networking information. More and more, Facebook activity trickles its way into offline contexts, perhaps none more so than the employment context. A new trend in the hiring process is social networking background checks, where some employers go so far as to request a candidate’s Facebook password. Not only this, but the frequency of Facebook activity resulting in employment law disputes is increasing, and has even been found to constitute sufficient grounds for discipline and termination. This thesis examines the current privacy protection given to social networking information in the context of the employment relationship, highlights problems with the current legal landscape in this regard, and offers an emerging theory, New Virtualism, as a conceptual basis for the regulation of this issue going forward.

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<p>There is usually much reaction among employees when a new system is introduced in an organization. These things are intended to improve performance but sometimes cause considerable controversy amongst the employees and management. This study examines the implementation of LE and it attempts to analyse the reactions of employes in a manufacturing company in South Africa - GKN Sinter Metals (GKN), Cape Town. According to the literature review, the implementation of the LE can play a significant role in improving the company's performance.</p>

A model of education known as the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) (Lohmeier 2005) proposes that, for blind students, the inability to learn visually severely curtails learning opportunities. A program of instruction must teach skills and knowledge traditionally learned by visual observation. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the ECC and social capital (Lareau and Weininger 2003) and to discover whether visually impaired individuals who have received an education based on the majority of the elements from the ECC demonstrate greater ability to acquire social capital than visually impaired individuals who have received a more traditional education based on the core curriculum. The data collected established the subjects’ level of social capital; the nature of their education (Core vs. ECC); the link if any between social capital and their educational experience; and the degree of social integration including upward career mobility. Findings included: • Those subjects who reported involvement in non-work related activities perceived a positive employment relationship, indicating high social capital. • Education based on the ECC was limited, as demonstrated by subjects’ limited career development. • Subjects made good use of tacit knowledge, even though the education received was not based on the ECC. • All subjects described their social relationships at work in functional rather than sociological terms. Subjects who described limited social activities with co-workers away from the workplace appeared to have limited social lives generally. The study’s conclusions are that formal instruction in soft skills and knowledge of the organization’s culture, as well as orientation to workplace culture, are critical to the development of a high-quality employment relationship. Initiatives to compensate for the inability of visually impaired persons to acquire this information coincidentally would help others who experience challenges in their efforts to acquire social capital

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between adolescent work ethics and caregiver support and employment experiences. For this study, 114 adolescents from a local High School and their caregivers completed questionnaires. The adolescent’s questionnaire contained questions on demographics, caregivers support, perceptions of optimism and pessimism toward employment, and work ethics. The caregiver’s questionnaire included questions on demographics, educational attainment, and employment situation, status and type. Caregiver support and adolescents’ perceived optimism toward employment had a significant relationship with adolescents’ work ethics, where more support was associated with stronger work ethics, affecting a considerable number of the work ethic dimensions. The caregiver employment variables had a lesser impact, where any significant outcomes showed a relationship with only one or two of the adolescents’ work ethic dimensions. Overall, the caregiver group that was identified as primarily mothers had a stronger effect on the adolescents’ work ethics than the other caregiver group of mostly fathers. These findings suggest that caregiver support and the perceived optimism adolescents have toward employment, when evaluating their caregivers’ employment experiences, have a stronger influence on adolescents’ work ethics than the caregiver employment situation, status, or type. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This thesis explores Japanese employment policy for blind people in the context of the current decline of their traditionally reserved occupations. The thesis presents an historical analysis of the rise and fall of the occupational guild of the blind since the thirteenth century. The study focuses on blind people's attempts to reinforce their traditionally reserved occupations in the context of the emergence of Japanese social policy in the early twentieth century. Archival research suggests that the government refused to restore blind people's monopoly of massage under the influence of Western medicine and fashionable British integrationist ideas, the latter of which increasingly influenced the postwar policy despite the absence of any significant success in employment of the blind in ordinary industries. In order to assess the credibility of the government's belief in open employment, the development of British employment policy for the blind is explored. The analysis focuses on blind people's commitment to sheltered workshops, and suggests that the shift to open employment was largely caused by the government's concerns over the financial cost of providing sheltered workshops. The historical analysis in Japan and Britain demonstrates that protected employment was gradually eroded despite blind people's demand for preferential treatment. It was in this context that some blind people began to seek employment within the sighted world, but, in both countries, the blind identity was maintained in separation from the sighted. Based on in-depth interviews with 38 blind people and two postal surveys involving 323 blind people in Japan, the second part of the thesis explores why and how the blind identity is generated in the employment field, and how blind people themselves perceive work and equality. The thesis concludes that whereas the blind identity is generated by separation at work, that separation is not only due to social oppression but also to voluntary disengagement from sighted society and engagement in the blind community.

The thesis is based on data collected during a twenty months period of fieldwork undertaken in Calcutta, India. The main concern is with the effects of processes of urbanisation on middle-class women's lives in a heterogeneous neighbourhood. While focusing on members of the Bengali Hindu majority comparative material drawn from data referring to the Bengali Christian and Marwari communities is incorporated. Initially the socio-economic history of different castes and communities and in particular the Subarnabanik Bene (goldsmiths and sellers of gold) occupational and ritual patterns as well as educational standards are investigated. In the following chapters the effects of socio-economic change on marriage patterns (love- and arranged marriages) and their evaluation as well as various types of marriage transactions undertaken are described and interpreted. In the course of the remaining chapters household structures, women's work in the domestic sphere and female employment as well as redefined concepts relating to segregation and seclusion are analysed. Throughout the thesis various aspects of women's ritual activities, reproductive behaviour and kinship relations are investigated in a rapidly changing urban setting. Within the given context concepts of gender- and community-identity are explored and the influence of long-term and recent economic changes are analysed. Different meanings of phenomena like dowry, seclusion or the joint family and ideologies employed to legitimise the same are described with reference to traditional and modern practice. The domestic sphere identified with women and kinship is interpreted as linked to concepts of status within the urban setting where caste and community affiliation are among a number of defining features of group affiliation such as class and regional origin. Relations between gender and community are explored within the context of the locality and its history. As an overall hypothesis the flexibility and modern content of assumedly traditional concepts and practices is demonstrated.

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