This thesis studies the role of a craft guild as a training organisation. The study looks at the London Dyers’ Company binding and joining records over 150 years, available from the mid seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. The study initially deals with transmission of knowledge from master to apprentice, a single generation. It then looks at factors associated with chains of transmission over several generations, taking advantage of available occupational specialization data. The Dyers’ Company records of membership are estimated to be at least 94 percent complete from 1710-1792, and probably similarly complete in the earlier period 1660-1710. In 1750, 93 percent and in 1792 81 percent of dyers in livery companies were members of the Dyers’ Company. In those same years, 34 percent in the livery of the Dyers’ Company were not practicing dyers. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the dynamics of the Dyers’ Company from binding and joining information. The apprentice binding data includes information about families of apprentices, their places of residence, their father’s occupation, along with what premia were paid when they were bound. Information is presented about time as a journeyman, about how many apprentices an individual master bound in a lifetime, and about women apprentices and women who bound apprentices. Scattered information about specialized dyeing occupations allowed categorisation of chains of transmission by occupation. One specialty, calico printing, potentially the most innovative of any in the dyeing trade, was not fully represented in the Dyers’ Company records. Sixty one percent of all chains were no more than three generations long. Chains involving silk dyers were more often longer than those involving dyers with no stated specialty. Long chains might either be evidence of technological conservatism, a more technically difficult craft, greater use of innovation, or increased economic activity.

This thesis presents the results of a qualitative investigation of Unemployment Benefit II (UBII) recipients' experiences of skill training and job placement services under Germany's Hartz IV welfare reforms—arguably a (neo-) liberal intervention in the context of what has traditionally been described as a conservative-corporatist welfare regime. This thesis explores the experience of skills training and job placement services in terms of the degree to which these support mechanisms engage with UBII recipients’ needs and perceptions and how these necessarily reflect the purposes of the support and activation mechanisms (to provide support to and assist the long-term unemployed find work) and the underlying policy assumptions (that the long-term unemployed need to be made to demonstrate responsibility in finding work). The evidence presented suggests such services have not necessarily provided a route into regular employment. Instead the ‘support’ mechanisms tend to ‘busy’ the recipients; to be irrelevant to the recipients’ employment history and/or future interests; and not to match what recipients wish to, or are interested in, doing. Secondly, the policy rhetoric and design of the Hartz IV reforms implied, ostensibly, a shift with some cultural significance—from social solidarity to individual responsibility; from old (conservative) to new (neo-liberal) paternalism. The thesis examines UBII recipients’ perception of their ‘right’ to and ‘responsibility’ in finding work. The evidence suggests that popular discourse and understandings of the right to and responsibility in finding work in Germany are not so distinct or dissimilar from the Anglophone world. Finally, this thesis identifies a potential contradiction within the German government’s political objective of providing support (Fördern) to recipients in return for UBII recipients demonstrating responsibility (Fordern) in finding work. The findings suggest there is little need to make unemployed Germans feel ‘responsible’ for finding work. The demands placed on recipients to demonstrate to case managers that they are taking responsibility for finding work may undermine the recipient’s ability responsibly to look for work. And UBII recipients may ‘trick’ the system to meet these demands, ostensibly wasting the time and resources of Jobcenter staff and UBII recipients. This thesis concludes by arguing that Fördern and Fordern are ultimately not compatible within a policy framework. Where Fordern (demand/require) exists in conjunction with the threat of sanctions for non-compliance, there is too much of a chance that Fördern (support), in the form of job placement and skill training services, will be used to regulate the conduct of and discipline UBII recipients rather than provide legitimate support. Thus, any support provided starts to break down as soon as Fordern is inserted into the policy framework.

This study aims to understand the factors and dynamics that influenced a major social policy change. This is undertaken by unravelling the policymaking processes involved in the largest public pension scheme in Korea, the National Pension System (NPS). Changes to the NPS followed a very different direction to other expansionary welfare developments either in Korea or in similar East Asian welfare systems. This research set out to explain how and why this happened. This is examined via a case study approach with a particular focus on the role of policy actors. This provides an analysis of this single policy change across three time periods, which are characterised by different political and economic regimes: authoritarian rule; democratisation in the midst of a financial crisis; and finally a democracy in recovery from the financial crisis. Data was gained from 44 interviews with the actual policymakers and major policy actors involved, and was complemented by extensive archival data. The findings suggest that, first, although authoritarian governments in Korea may pursue social policy to harness economic development in order to legitimise their non-democratic rule, subtle yet crucial policy competition can still exist among key policy actors. Second, democratisation does not necessarily lead to a dominant view favouring welfare system expansion. Third, new major policy actors - strengthened by a democratic, centre-left government - may not always favour an expansive welfare system. The analysis suggests that, despite the emergence of an increased range and number of policy actors as the democracy matured, there was a marked continuity in policy development in the case of the NPS. Key policy actors pursued a reform in line with liberal economic policy that had been the dominant tendency during the authoritarian era. This suggests that the major mechanism contributing to this continuity was the role of a persistent and powerful epistemic policy community, members of which continued to influence policymaking throughout its development. The conclusion points to how incremental changes in the pension system led to the path dependency of the original policy ideas. We suggest that future research could apply a similar analytical approach to understanding change processes in various policy domains and to other East Asian welfare systems.

Access to family-friendly working time arrangements is unequally spread both within and between workplaces, leaving many working parents with difficulties in combining employment with family responsibilities. The British and German governments have started to address this problem, but have done so in different ways. Focusing on time allocation in the work/family interface and its implications for gender and employment relations, this thesis explores the differences between the British and German government strategies to improve access to family-friendly working time arrangements for working parents, and how variation can be explained. As the flexibility requirements of employers and employees often diverge and can be in conflict, the thesis further investigates to what extent the German and British policy strategies were designed to empower working parents to access the time flexibility they need. It applies an empowerment perspective to the analysis of policy choice and design and draws on the policy making literature to analyse cross-national variation. Between 1997 and 2005, the incoming centre-left New Labour and ‘Red-Green’ governments both introduced information campaigns and employment rights to improve access. The lack of economic incentives for the provision and take-up of family-friendly working time arrangements reduced the overall empowering potential of the British and German strategies. Although similar at the level of policy choice, employment rights and information campaigns varied at the level of policy design with different implications for access. The thesis concludes that family-friendly working time policy did not achieve a significant redistribution of control over working time to employees in either of the two countries. This can be in part explained by a strong employer lobby and opportunities to influence policy choice and design, but also by the ‘competitive advantage’ of childcare services over family-friendly working time policy, directing government resources to more ‘employer-friendly’ reconciliation policies.

Over the past three decades, the number of incapacity benefit claimants in the UK has trebled. Conventional wisdom argues that this rise cannot reflect ‘real’ incapacity; Britons are perceived to have got healthier and jobs to have become less physically demanding. Yet self-reported work-limiting disability (WLD) grew over the 1990s. Moreover, some working conditions deteriorated, with ‘job strain’ (the combination of high job demands and low job control) rising sharply. In this thesis, I investigate the possibility that rising job strain partly explains the rise in WLD and incapacity benefit receipt through four pieces of empirical research. First, different surveys appear to conflict on whether job strain has risen. Given that trends in job strain are of paramount importance, I systematically review the available trend data across 44 individual datasets. Second, I look at whether self-reported demands and control predict WLD and healthrelated job loss. Using the Whitehall II cohort, I look longitudinally at whether baseline job strain predicts WLD/health-related job loss at the following wave. I also look at the extent to which WLD mediates any relationship between job strain and health-related job loss. Third, the Whitehall II analysis is limited to civil servants and is based on self-reports. I therefore complement this analysis by looking at average job strain in particular occupations and imputing this into the nationally representative BHPS. I then relate job strain to later WLD and incapacity benefit receipt in parallel fashion to the Whitehall II analyses. Finally, the quantitative analyses leave unanswered questions about the meaning of ‘fitness-for-work’, the processes through which working conditions affect incapacity benefit receipt, and how these impact differently on different people. These are explored in a qualitative analysis of 32 interviews with people with health problems, culminating in a conceptual model of job strain, WLD, and incapacity benefit receipt.

The aim of this research is to present empirical evidence on the effects of framing the business commitment to work-family life issues as a corporate social responsibility. Some authors (Pitt-Catsouphes and Googins, 2004, Goodstein, 1994b) have already claimed the need for recasting the work-family agenda as a corporate social responsibility, by considering employees and their families as a social concern fundamental for sustainability. However further research is missing. The core of this research is the confrontation and cross-analysis of both arenas and literatures. The research consisted of a national cross-sectional study based on a set of twelve medium-large Portuguese firms, aggregated in four clusters grouped by economic activity: Banking and Financial Services, Wholesale and Retail, Transport and Utilities Services. Different research methods were used: a survey and in-depth semi-structured interviews. The survey was answered by the human resources managers and 2472 employees. Sixty interviews were performed. The triangulation of different perspectives and research methods enhanced the study with insightful conclusions. The analysis situated the firms according to their work-family life policies, culture and corporate social responsibility approaches, in a general map describing the panorama regarding the way firms consider their role in society (Garriga and Mele, 2004). In line with the literature, the study also assessed that a gap existing between the institutional perspective and the employees’ perception of the value and accessibility of work-family initiatives and an organization’s overall family-supportiveness (e.g. Parker and Allen, 2001, Allen, 2001, O'Driscoll et al., 2003). The research revealed that there is a relationship between the organization and employees’ perceptions gap and the alignment (or misalignment) between the approaches to both fields: work-family practices and corporate social responsibility. Whereas inconsistency between both approaches was detrimental for the perception of the employees, regarding organizational supportiveness alignment between them proved to reinforce perceptions regarding initiatives in both fields. By establishing the bridge between these two normally separately studied themes, the research opens doors to new directions of work. It also confirms the importance of a holistic view of the organization and its role towards its people and society.

In this thesis, South African survey data (which was collected as part of a separate project on ageing and wellbeing), is analysed in order to explore old age social pension-handling and the extent to which social pensions influence decisions about living arrangements. The findings have implications for current policy debates in South Africa and beyond. A key argument against widening the South African social safety net to cover other groups which do not currently have access to grants (such as the unemployed), is based upon the premise that social grants foster dependency. Empirical evidence which suggests that family members move into the households of pensioners has been used to suggest that social grants cultivate a disincentive to work. A Regression Discontinuity design is used to consider the relationship between pensions and household composition around the threshold of age eligibility for a pension. The study contributes new empirical evidence which demonstrates that pensions are linked to changes in living arrangements just before and following the age of eligibility. The changes are not extensive and are restricted to particular age/gender groups. Nevertheless, effects are established, which is not surprising in light of the fact that pensions represent a regular, reliable and principal income source for many South Africans and that, based on new evidence contributed by this study, as well as previous studies, intra-household pension sharing appears to be a pervasive and persistent social norm. Overall, the analysis finds stronger evidence of pensions having either a ‘crowding out’ effect, or no effect at all, as opposed to a ‘crowding in’ effect, which casts doubt on dependency theories. Furthermore, the results suggest that pensions given to men may lead to fewer changes in household composition than pensions given to women. A key difference is that there was no evidence to suggest that for men, pensions are associated with systematic changes in the average number of prime working-age household members. This is generally consistent with findings from previous studies. A key theory regarding gender-based disparities in pension effects, relates to gender-based differences in the extent of intra-household pension sharing. In this study, there was no evidence produced to suggest that beneficiary gender influences the extent of intra-household pension sharing. The methodological challenges associated with the analysis of intra-household income-handling are acknowledged. However, with no evidence of differences in pension sharing behaviour observed, other potential explanations are considered. In particular, it is speculated that gender-based differences in child care provision by pensioners may influence the ability of parents, particularly mothers, to become labour migrants, and that gender-based disparities in life expectancy after pension eligibility age may be important factors.

This thesis considers how work has changed in post-industrial society. It shows that while insecure or stressful work can be reliably linked with poor health, individual outcomes depend upon a range of micro- and macro-level moderators. Bad jobs are invariably harmful, but context matters. It begins by charting the shift in advanced economic nations from industry and agriculture to service sector and knowledge-based employment. Most accounts of post-industrialisation share common flaws. Namely, the tendency for technological determinism; the depiction of discontinuous, all-encompassing social transformation; and the dislocation from individual experience. Such failings, however, do not negate the micro-level impact of these changes. This thesis focuses on two: job insecurity and work intensity. Recent decades have witnessed a destandardisation of employment relations and an intensification of working conditions. These changes have important consequences for well-being, whether or not they collectively constitute a new form of society. The methodological theme is one of moderation. Successive analytical chapters show how the consequences of insecure or stressful work depends upon (a) family arrangements, (b) economic climate, (c) labour market policies, (d) job resources and (e) national characteristics such as culture or trade union density. The analyses combine European survey data and contextual information using a range of quantitative methods, including multilevel modelling, structural equation modelling and latent class analysis. While the empirical chapters contribute to their respective literatures, they also feed into broader arguments regarding the synthesis of micro- and macro-level perspectives. Work invariably impacts upon health, but a simultaneity of moderating influences results in a diversity of outcomes. These findings underline the contextual sensitivity of work-related policy.

The thesis examines the political dynamics behind the contemporary trend towards pension privatization in Europe. Its aim is to develop a theoretical model that can explain not only why governments have increasingly replaced their public pay-as-you-go systems with private fully-funded schemes, but also why there is considerable diversity both in the extent and in the content of pension privatization. Private pension funds can indeed be governed by a variety of institutional arrangements and can have very different types of links with the financial system. They do not necessarily contribute to a financialization of the economy. The thesis takes issue with the idea that pension privatization would be primarily the result of a new pensions orthodoxy promoted by international organizations such as the World Bank or of an electoral strategy that consists in attracting the votes of the middle class. I argue that the driving force behind the more or less dramatic rise of funded pensions in Europe is a series of lobbying campaigns launched by the financial industry, and their varying influence. Financial firms have a vested interest in the development of a market in private pensions, which should profit them as an industry. However, pension reform is an issue that matters to voters and can therefore prove dangerous for party politicians. Moreover, it involves complex changes that directly affect key material interests of employers and workers. In this context, the success of financial firms’ campaign for pension privatization depends on their capacity to forge alliances with a variety of actors. This in turn contributes to limit the influence financiers can exert. The argument is tested using a comparative historical analysis of pension debates in the United Kingdom, France and Poland since the beginning of the 1980s.

Η παρούσα διατριβή πολυπαραμετρικής ανάλυσης και αξιολόγησης των ενεργειών προαγωγής της υγείας και της ασφάλειας στις επιχειρήσεις ολοκληρώνεται με τη δόμηση ενός ολιστικού προτύπου διαχείρισης ποιότητας της εργασιακής ζωής. Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο πραγματοποιείται επισκόπηση του πεδίου της υγιεινής και ασφάλειας (επιστημονικές μελέτες, νομοθετικό πλαίσιο, δράσεις κοινωνικών φορέων). Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο προσδιορίζεται το πεδίο έρευνας της διατριβής. Η προαγωγή της υγείας και της ασφάλειας αποτελεί σήμερα την αιχμή των ενεργειών πρόληψης των κινδύνων. Στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο καταγράφονται οι τεχνικές πραγματοποίησης και αναλύονται τα δεδομένα της εμπειρικής έρευνας (εξετάσεις, συμπεριφορά, οργάνωση, κοινωνικά προγράμματα, ασφάλεια και φυσικό περιβάλλον). Τέλος στο τέταρτο κεφάλαιο στοιχειοθετείται η τελική πρόταση που περιλαμβάνει τα κεντρικά αποτελέσματα της έρευνας. Δομείται ένα ολιστικό πρότυπο το οποίο απαντά στις απαιτήσεις συνολικότητας στην ποιοτική διαχείριση των επαγγελματικών κινδύνων. / The present thesis lies in the field of working health and safety promotion (WHSP) which is the enabler of all activities aiming at the prevention of occupational hazards.After an extended review of the related literature, legislation and social actions (Chapter 1), we concentrate on the role of WHSP and we develop a framework to be used in its study (Chapter 2). The 3rd chapter discusses the results of an empirical research conducted on the basis of the aforementioned framework that extends over the areas of health screening, health behaviour promotion, organizational change, social welfare and the physical environment. Finally, in the 4th Chapter, based on the results of our research and through a multi-factor analysis we arrive at a set of propositions which are integrated into an holistic model. The model can be used to provide guidelines in response to the requirements concerning occupational hazards within the framework of total quality management.