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The following work examines the making of Kenya's plantation proletariat and its social physiognomy in Thika and Kiambu districts from the late forties to the mid sixties. The work proceeds from the value relations of the coffee commodity on the world market and then to production relations within the districts concerned. Select estates within these areas are then identified in order to trace the workings of the law of value from its appearance as prices in the world market to the origins of surplus value and struggles over its extraction within the workplace. The increased rate of exploitation throughout the plantation economy is then identified as the principal subterranean impulse to workers' recourse to trade unionism. There followed a qualitative leap forward as workers on the plantations and in industry moved into simultaneous strike actions in response to the announcement of preparations for African majority government. The formative years of the plantation unions are then reviewed in conjunction with strikes on the coffee estates. The reciprocal impacts of plantation and industrial strikes are emphasised throughout, these have been reconstructed to reveal an uneven vet combined movement of workers in both rural and urban locations, though one which suffered from bureaucratic deformations and distortions. As such this project has revealed a crucial moment in the making of the Kenyan working class along with its inherent contradictions. In opposition to this development, attempts by the State to impose severe conditions on union recognition are examined. The development of corporatism has been considered as part of attempts by the state to control and emasculate the developing working class and its organisations. How and why the bureaucratisation of the plantation unions occurred is investigated as well as analysing its impact on coffee workers during the course of decolonization. The emergence of a syndicalist trend of rank and file, often errant, agitators and the weaknesses of this tendency related to the ideology which it shared with its bureaucratic opponents is also identified. The role of the Kenya Federation of Labour as the principal agency for the incorporation of the plantation unions into the state apparatus is then traced to the advent of the omnibus Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union. This was paralleled by an opposed trajectory emanating from workers themselves which reached its highest point in the 1962 General Strike. The insoluble problems of arbitration which heralded the unstable foundations of post independence corporatism are then investigated. Overall, the thesis points to a fifth column of labour lieutenants that was pivotal to the bourgeois nationalist transmutation of Uhuru. The work also gives clause and subclause attention to the principal ordinances in the context of a wide range of disputes to show how these operated in a concrete setting. 1 he research brings the period 1959-63 into focus, when these laws were being broken on a widespread scale as result of spontaneous strike waves. The associate problems which rent conciliation machinery are contextually discussed throughout. The thesis shows that a defining characteristic of the period was the inability of the labour bureaucracy to restrain and arrest successive strike movements on the plantations and elsewhere in accordance with the rules of conflict resolution defined by colonial labour laws. Finally, the thesis has sought an epistemological break with existent work in the field and for this reason has identified the philosophical roots of past contributions and drawn upon Marx's dialectical method to help resolve the problems of analysis and interpretation that have held back previous research.

The thesis is concerned with the impact of population ageing on the future trends of male employment and unemployment in Japan, since it is thought that rising unemployment amongst older people will increase the dependency rate, leading to a reduction in capital accumulation and slower economic growth. The study is based on material and data obtained while researching in Japan for one year and draws heavily on Japanese-language sources. First, the role of rapidly falling fertility in stimulating economic growth in Japan is examined, followed by a detailed analysis of employment practices across different sizes of company in Japan that draws on surveys published by government and private institutions. It is found that existing analyses of Japanese employment practices ignore the importance of workforce age structure in internal labour markets. An efficiency age structure hypothesis that stresses labour demand rigidities is formulated: it is hypothesised that large firms with internal labour markets attempt to maintain a given internal age structure to maximise workforce efficiency. This behaviour implies that as the population ages, the unemployment rate of older men will rise. The implications of this hypothesis are examined at a micro level through an analysis of the adjustments firms have made to employment practices; and at the macro level through an analysis of the macro labour market. The absorptive capacity of small companies and self-employment for older men was examined using cohort analysis. Finally the impact of government policy on the labour market for older men is examined and assessed. Government policy is divided into two main categories: labour market intervention and public pension reform. The thesis indicates that raising the pension eligibility age will not reduce dependency unless employment practices that generate unemployment of older people are changed.

In the short run, the size of a labour force is strongly influenced by, participation rates. In the longer term it is governed by the rate of population growth through natural increase and immigration and by a country's investment in its human resources that raises the productivity of the workforce. The challenges facing Singapore as it tries to overcome its manpower constraints will involve tradeoffs. For instance, raising the female labour force participation rate may exact higher costs in the long run by preventing the achievement of replacement level fertility rates, thereby constraining the rate of future population growth. On the other hand, accepting stable participation rates, ceteris paribus, would mean a continued sizable foreign worker presence in Singapore. Government intervention to increase the provision of childcare facilities may help to raise both the female participation rate in the short run as well as long run fertility levels. Decisions will have to made with respect to the type of education best suited to future growth. At present a technical and vocationally-oriented curriculum is favoured to support what is still a primarily manufacturing-based development strategy. Cost-benefit calculations based on starting salary data suggest that, while the returns to middle-level skilled worker technical training are higher than those to general tertiary training, the payoff to tertiary finance and business-related courses are greater than the payoff to engineering. One factor that will impinge significantly on the scope of policy is the incidence of international mobility. The large scale influx of foreign workers was one factor that spurred the restructuring programme. Any attempt to restrict individual mobility within the economy may provoke a flood of emigration among the well educated. This is a factor that has made general skills and training a public good requiring public subsidy and an area where the government will continue to exert its influence in resource allocation.

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From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s economic and technological forces created significant pressure on organisations to downsize and delayer in order to maximise asset utilisation, retain competitive advantage and, literally in some cases, survive. In the wake of these changes it seemed the classic, bureaucratic organisational career was also under threat of survival as organisations were no longer able to offer a job for life, and with it the promise of regular hierarchical progression. Thus, the 'death' of the traditional career was proclaimed. As a result, academics began to assert that we were witnessing a fundamental redefinition of the individual-organisation relationship, and that the new imperative was to re-contract with individuals, rebuild trust, and thus strike up a new deal. This talk of the demise of the career and, with it, the old, relational 'deal' began to take on the character of a universalistic truth, and by the mid-1990s academics and practitioners alike were widely announcing the arrival of 'the New Deal'. This research offers a challenge to this pervasive rhetoric. It is argued that analysis of employees' own talk on the issue at an important historical point in the new deal storyline indicates a much more contextually- specific and emergent phenomenon than the rhetoric implies. In pursuit of this broad aim, the research takes a contextualist-interpretivist, theory- generating approach. More specifically, from the perspective of Social Constructionism it is argued that we can only talk of the emergence of new deals when such deals are part of employees' daily realities, as evinced by their talk about careers. The foundation of the research is twenty four semi-structured interviews, coupled with in-depth analyses of the two case study organisations in which this data were generated: the Bank of England and IBM (UK) Limited. Discourse Analysis represents the theoretic al/methodological lens through which the data are analysed, and thus the actual talk of subjects in each case study organisation is presented in order to consider the organisation and function of their talk. The emphasis, however, is on the discourses evident in (or absent from) subjects' talk and, in particular, the vocabularies of 'new' and 'old' deals. The contributions of the research can be expressed as follows. First, by catching employees at the cusp of the change process in each of the case study organisations, the research makes a unique, processual contribution to our understanding of the apparent demise of the 'old deal' and emergence of the 'new' in two specific contexts. By examining individuals' own talk of these changes, and of the implications for their careers, it shows how their understandings were changing. Second, the research points up the distinction between linguistic elements (discourses, interpretative repertoires, vocabularies) that were context-specific, and thus culturally forined, versus those that were transcontextual and emergent in subjects' talk and which were therefore likely to be present, or continue to emerge, after the new deal had become a 'reality'. Thus, the research indicates how assumptions about careers change over the longer term and how new perspectives do and will continue to emerge. Third, the research makes a methodological contribution to the field, principally in its illustration of the application of Discourse Analysis and its ability to raise 'novel' questions for those concerned with the nature of the subjective career.

In the late 1980s, in Britain, teacher retention was an important issue in public education, with inner city schools suffering most from teachers' unwillingness to be retained. Most labour market studies, even those written about teachers, concentrate on the 'demand side' : there are few empirical studies of the supply side. Those researched from the perspective of the employees themselves are rare. A literature search yielded three main categories of supply side job satisfactions: groupings of intrinsic, extrinsic and contextual factors. A research approach was developed to establish the significance and stability of such factors in teaching. The method was one of refinement from qualitative exploration to quantitative explanation. The field work began with an analysis of student writings about their most valued experiences in informal educational settings, continued with interviews with four head teachers and tested the abstracted satisfaction characteristics with two populations: trainee teachers and established teachers. The retention factors identified were adequate resources, colleagues, community support and the feeling of doing a worthwhile job allowing for personal and professional development, in the context of stable educational policy. Results were obtained by correlation and principal components analysis. A contrast is drawn between quit factors and stay factors. This analysis focuses on the collegiate nature of schools and teaching. Experienced teachers concur, extending this collegiality towards relationships with the community through parents and governing bodies. Gender is found to be a consistent correlate. The conclusion discusses retention and motivation in the light of the findings. Retention policies are found to omit the professional concerns of teachers. In effect, evidence of vocationalism challenges the dependence of retention on extrinsic as distinct from intrinsic and contextual factors. Gender seems to be systematically ignored by employers, particularly in attempts to proletarianise teaching, despite the statistical evidence that it is a feminised occupation.

The research presented in this thesis sought to identify the key issues underlying the current recruitment and retention problems in general practice. Previous studies have tended to focus on medical careers in isolation, neglecting the wider context of professional careers in the non-medical workplace. In an attempt to untangle the effects of being in general practice from the effects of being in professional practice per se, medical professionals were compared with those in a parallel profession - law. Therefore the present research focused on identifying, and comparing, the career aspirations of doctors and lawyers. The work comprised two qualitative studies. Study 1 compared the values, beliefs and work perceptions of experienced doctors and lawyers, to establish similarities and differences between the two groups. Study 2 focused on the career expectations of both general and hospital trainees to allow comparisons between trainee groups, and between trainees and experienced practitioners. Participants totalled fifty nine for both studies. Data pertaining to the first study were analysed within the framework of the Job Characteristics Model (JCM). These findings subsequently determined the direction and shape of the second study. Problems in general practice related to a combination of organisational change, and doctors' reasons for their career choice. Whilst both lawyers and doctors have experienced aggressive government intervention, doctors seemed to have interpreted this as a violation of their relational psychological contract with the State. Moreover, many doctors appear to have chosen general practice for less than positive reasons. Findings according to the JCM showed general practice to be low in motivating potential, with experienced practitioners strongly resenting their diminishing professional autonomy. Trainee GPs appeared very similar to their predecessors, in terms of reasons for choosing general practice. Furthermore, they were overly optimistic regarding both the job's characteristics, and their ability to cope with potential difficulties. They were also less committed than their experienced counterparts. The data could offer few assurances of retention problems being eased by this new generation of GPs.

The employment problems of graduates in Taiwan are explored in terms of conflicting ideas of higher education. The unemployment rate of graduates with higher qualifications has been increasing for a decade. An increasing number of graduates are engaged in jobs which, in the past, demanded only high school qualifications. There is little or no relationship between the requirements of the job and the knowledge and skills graduates acquired in higher education. Conflicting ideas of higher education are identified as an obstacle to solutions of graduates' employment problems. These ideas can be categorised by two dels. One is the traditional idea of higher education, especially that universities should teach the liberal arts and should aim to foster virtue. Useful and practical knowledge and skills have been thought unsuitable. Confucian ideas of education can be linked to this view. The second model is that higher education should respond to the needs of society and the economy and that the curriculum of higher education naturally should refer to the content of job. This conflict between economic and traditional functions of higher education is serious in Taiwan. The revival of Confucian education was a government reaction to the Cultural Revolution in Xainland China. On the other hand, economic and manpower planning has been a government policy with economic implications for higher education. This conflict means that employment problems of graduates must be considered in their wider cultural and social aspects. The conflicting ideas of higher education are investigated in the process of graduates moving from university to work. There are four aspects: npower planning and higher education policy; collaboration between university and industry; graduates' aspirations for jobs; and careers guidance and counselling in universities and colleges. The final part of the thesis reports the results of analysis of the views of academics and students in Taiwan. This investigation uses questions derived from the two models developed earlier.