The research examines the factors leading individuals to undertake self-employed teleworking and their experiences in managing flexibility and restructuring their home and work boundaries. The research contributes to the existing literature on self-employed home teleworking as this particular form of telework has been given less attention compared to employed telework. The experiences of self-employed home teleworkers have been collected using diaries, questionnaires and telephone interviews. The findings reveal that respondents are generally 'pushed' into becoming self-employed rather than voluntarily choosing this option. The literature describes these as 'refugees', and once the advantages of self-employed teleworking become clear most of them become 'converts'. The findings indicate general enthusiasm for the freedom and flexibility which self-employment permits. Nevertheless, control and flexibility were also found to generate anxiety and stress. Flexibility brings with it a number of challenges, largely concerned with the balancing between work and non-work activities in the home. This research therefore challenges existing conceptions of self-employed teleworking as either liberating or exploitative and as either facilitating or hindering the achievement of a work-life balance. The findings indicate that flexibility needs to be managed appropriately in order to help achieve a work life balance as it does have the potential of hindering family and work domains as the boundaries become increasingly blurred. The research examines the experiences of managing the blurriness and integration of boundaries and contributes to the literature by further developing and refining existing notions of boundary. The research adds that the ability to manage boundaries appropriately is a factor leading individuals to reconcile to self-employed home teleworking and become converts after initially being pushed into it.

Employment among women with children has grown rapidly in the United Kingdom since the early 1980s. Nonetheless, in this society motherhood remains the major correlate of female labour force participation and women, on becoming a mother, typically make a decision as to whether they should leave employment, interrupting their working lives to raise children, or continue in employment throughout the childbearing years. The aims of this study were to explore the decisions made by women on the transition to motherhood, and to gain an understanding of why some women continue in employment while others do not. The research for the study was based on interviews with a sample of two hundred and two women, who were first time mothers, taking maternity leave from employment in the health service in Northern Ireland. The interviews were structured around eight propositions suggesting a probablistic relationship between various characteristics and circumstances, and the likelihood of a woman continuing in employment. The study found that almost three-quarters of women intended to return to work. Analysis of the data indicated that for the majority, the co-existence and interaction of three variables - high earnings, availability of childcare and a care-sharing partner - influenced the likelihood of a woman continuing in employment. The conclusions drawn are that a woman's circumstances, in particular her income level, the availability of childcare, and the support of her partner, will largely determine the choice-set available to her, and hence may restrict the role which personal preference can play in her employment decision following maternity leave. The policy implications of the study's findings are considered, and a range of policy responses proposed, with a view to enhancing the choices available to both men and women for combining parenthood and employment.

Like most OECD countries, the UK has experienced a long-term trend towards earlier Etirement, beginning in the 1970s, a trend that has only recently been reversed. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on these trends. Chapters 1-3 consider the nature of retirement. Economic models typically assume that retirement is voluntary, discrete and irreversible, and synonymous with drawing a pension, and this has been the dominant pattern for men in the UK. But there is a large minority, typically those with low wealth, for whom the path to retirement is through unemployment or long-term sickness and for whom unemployment and disability benefits provide alternative early retirement vehicles. Analysis of retirement expectations show that shocks to health and to marital status cause retirement plans and outcomes to diverge. The distinction between "voluntary" and "involuntary" retirements is important in understanding the well-documented fall in spending that occurs after retirement (the "retirement- consumption puzzle"). Spending falls significantly only when retirement is involuntary, a finding that is consistent with a negative wealth shock arising from involuntary early retirement lying behind the puzzle. Chapters 4-6 explore the responsiveness of the labour supply of older workers to incentives in state and private pensions. Pens ion wealth and accrual are shown to have significant effects on retirement, at least for the state pension and for defined benefit occupational pensions. However, early evidence suggests that wealth in defined contribution schemes does not have the expected positive effect on retirement, a finding that is consistent with their greater flexibility. The labour supply of older workers is also shown to be affected by earnings tests the removal of such a test in the UK is estimated to increase average weekly hours by three - four hours for men and two hours for women.

Hong Kong, as an open economy is susceptible to the tiniest changes in other economies. An ever increasingly competitive market has increased demand for a highly skilled workforce. Employers expect their employees to be more adaptive, well-versed and able to navigate this rapidly changing landscape with minimal supervision. Therefore, tertiary institutions, as a very important provider of vocational skills, are not only providing professional training but also instilling various soft skills, such as analytical and problem solving skills, communication skills, interpersonal skills and the like in the students. The formal classroom setup at universities is no longer the only way for students to acquire working knowledge. Hands-on learning is gaining popularity. Learning activities - such as group-based projects, field trips and internship - are branded as 'experiential learning' or "out~of-classroom learning" that provide alternative modes of learning to classroom teaching. Even as more and more institutions are adding experiential learning activities to the curriculum to enrich or fill the gap of classroom teaching, the impact of such learning activities on the skill development of students is not well documented. Internship, as a specific form of experiential learning, is least chronicled. This study aims at shedding light on what kind of internship experience helps students develop a set of soft skills commonly requested by local employers. A large-scale survey was conducted at a local Business School whose students have a long tradition of participating in internship programmes. Quantitative analyses were employed to identify what specific attributes, such as internship length, task spectrum, number of internship programmes and so on, of an internship could drive the skill development of a student. The regression models provided specific input to administrators and educators on policy design when they are developing internship programme while other qualitative comments from students gave meaning to the phenomenon. The results showed that length of time of internship, variety of industries and the spectrum of tasks given to the student-interns are perceived by the students as having a positive impact on the development of their skills, particularly in work attitude, problem solving and analysis and management. Other factors did not appear to significantly affect the skill development of students. This research has potential to inform the development of the future of internship programmes. Future research directions are also suggested given the findings in this study.

The role of mindfulness in the work place is an area of increasing interest. Mindfulness has its roots in religious practice and is particularly associated with Buddhism. In the past 30 years, it has been developed independently, away from religion, into interventions designed to reduce stress and improve well-being. Clinical psychologists are in an ideal position to research the impact of mindfulness for employees and employers. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and work engagement and to examine whether self-acceptance and stress mediate the relationship between these two constructs. Design The study utilised a cross sectional design. Participants were employees who worked a minimum of 30 hours and lived in the UK. Three hundred and thirty nine participants completed measures of mindfulness, self-acceptance, stress and work engagement as well as demographic characteristics through an online survey. Results Significant positive correlations were found between all three different aspects of work engagement (absorption, vigour and dedication) and all five aspects of mindfulness (acting with awareness, observing, describing, non-judgement of inner experience and non-reactivity). The effect size for overall mindfulness with vigour and dedication was medium to large, whilst the overall effect size for mindfulness with absorption was small to medium. The observe sub scale of the rnindfulness measure showed the lowest effect sizes with all of the engagement subscales, whilst acting with awareness showed the largest effect size. Overall mindfulness scores significantly predicted overall work engagement scores. Stress was found to mediate this relationship, whilst self-acceptance did not. Conclusions and Implications Higher levels of mindfulness were associated with higher levels of work engagement through lower levels of stress. Although clinical psychologists traditionally work in healthcare settings, this study highlights the importance of studying psychological phenomena in non-clinical populations.

Longevity risk is a major issue for the developed world. As both mortality rates and birth rates fall, the increasing burden of providing for retirees falls on a smaller working population. Under such circumstances, the accurate modelling and measurement of longevity risk becomes particularly important. Longevity risk is present in the annuity portfolios of insurance companies, and increasingly of reinsurers as well. However, the biggest concentration of longevity risk in the private sector in the United Kingdom is most often in the shape of de nedbene t pension promises by employers. This makes longevity risk of crucial interest to managers and investors, even if they think that their business has nothing to do with insurance. Actuaries handle longevity risk by breaking it into two components: the current (or period) rates of mortality, and the projection of future rates. In both areas actuaries have made signi cant advances in their modelling and understanding of longevity risk. This critical review outlines how methods have developed, and how the papers in the accompanying thesis have contributed to these advances.

No description available.

Pensions are fundamentally methods of addressing and managing the risks of aging. However, in terms of coverage, the acknowledged difference between the formal and informal sector workers in developing countries has led to the assumption that people in the formal sector do not have to worry about pension. Against this background, this thesis investigates the extent to which pension ensures adequate income for retired women civil servants in Nigeria. Understanding these women‘s retirement experiences necessitated an approach that incorporated gendered life course and gendered political economy. Central to a life course approach is the notion that it is difficult to divorce pension and retirement outcomes from the life course experiences that precede them. A gendered political economy approach allows for the de-bunking of the unitary household model and enables the adaptation of Razavi‘s ―care diamond‖ with a focus on retirees‘ financial support for dependants. By using interviews and questionnaires, this thesis analyses the links between and comparisons across pension schemes, educational levels, retirement age, pension entitlements, adequacy and supplements. Cross tabulation is used as a lead to identifying and pursuing potential patterns in dataset and digging deep into the factors that impact women‘s pension adequacy. Despite the limitations of the study, it is apparent that in the context of normative expectations of extended family structure, linked lives, high rate of un/under employment of dependants and limited (and high cost of ) access to social provisioning, pension is and will always be inadequate. This then forces formal sector women retirees into the informal sector to supplement their pension income. Findings of the study clearly demonstrate that the sustainable provision of formal sector pensions should not be the end of policy concerns about wellbeing in later life; but the start of a much wider focus on social provision and social relations in later life. This study‘s findings have implications for the pension, ageing and social protection policies in Nigeria, which are applicable to the wider sub Saharan African. The implications of this study for assessing pension adequacy also extend beyond Nigeria.

This paper explores the establishment and operation of the Chelsea Outpension from 1688 up to 1755. It asks why such rewards for service to the Crown should have been paid to members of the labouring classes distributed across the British Isles, at a time when central government welfare did not exist. It examines the structure and organisation of the Army, with particular emphasis on the recruitment of the Other Ranks, who were the recipients of the pension. It describes the work of soldiering in the early eighteenth century; accounts for the reasons why men reached the conclusion of their military service - whether long or short - and it examines the qualifications that entitled soldiers to a pension or debarred them from it. The process of discharge is rehearsed against the background of statistical examination of length of service and age at discharge along with a major study of the incidence of wounds, illness or injury that terminated soldiers' service. How the pension was paid; what verification procedures were instituted; whether abuses of the system were perpetrated and how it was reformed, occupy the latter part of the narrative. The study concludes with some consideration of the sufficiency of the pension to sustain life and how Out-pensioners managed for the remainder of their days as, mostly elderly and increasingly infirm, civilians. Through this investigation light is shed on concepts such as the 'duty of care' that the State was prepared to adopt in respect of its servants and its willingness and capability to undertake the multitude of tasks required in administering and paying the pension.

This thesis is concerned with one aspect of the state's intervention into industrial training in Britain, namely the policy programmes which constituted between 1917-93 the Government Training Centre and subsequent Skillcentre networks. These training initiatives are presented as one example of government's attempts at national and local labour market regulation and governance, placed within the context of industrial, social and political change within Britain and Greater London. This analysis of state intervention and policy formulation is set into a theoretical and explanatory framework which is both historically and geographically located. The thesis is structured into three distinct parts. Part one establishes the theoretical framework and is based upon a critique of selected local labour market research maintaining that an interpretation of regulation theory, involving the identification of sub-national landscapes of labour regulation and governance, offers an important basis for the study of labour market process within any particular geographical context. Part two provides a detailed presentation of the development of state-funded adult industrial training in Britain from the instructional factories of 1917, through the subsequent Government Training Centre and Skillcentre initiatives and concluding with the privatisation and eventual closure of the Skillcentre network in 1993. This historical perspective is presented in terms of nine distinct regulatory periods and a series of distinctive geographies of labour market regulation. Part three sets the findings of a survey of Skillcentre trainees in Greater London into this context. Skillcentre catchment areas in London in the early 1980s are identified and interpreted in terms of both contemporary processes of labour market change and the residual consequences of policy formulation and implementation derived under previous conditions of regulatory need. Access to Skillcentre training in the local labour market context of Greater London is seen to be the outcome of the intersection and interaction of a range of economic, social and political processes, operating over time and at a variety of spatial scales.