The Changing Nature of Work (Volume 4)

by Frank Ackerman (editor), Robert Reich (Foreword), Neva R. Goodwin (Editor)

Human impacts on the environment are largely driven by economic forces. If a more ecologically sustainable world is to be achieved, significant changes must be made to the current growth- and consumption-dependent economic system. The Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series was designed to assist the growing number of economists and others who are responding to the need for new thinking about economics in the face of environmental and social forces that are reshaping the world. The Changing Nature of Work examines the causes and effects of the rapid transformation of the world of work. It provides concise summaries of the key writings on work and workplace issues, extending the frontiers of labor economics to include the often overlooked social and psychological dimensions of work.The book begins with a foreword by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich that presents labor in contemporary perspective. An introductory overview provides a brief history of the changing nature of work and situates current problems in the context of longer-term developments. Following that are eight topical sections that feature three- to five-page summaries for each of the ten to twelve most important articles or book chapters on a subject.Sections cover.new directions in labor economics social and psychological dimensions of work and unemployment globalization and labor new technologies and organizational change flexibility and internal labor markets new patterns of industrial relations family, gender, paid and unpaid work difference and diversity in the workplaceThe book provides a roadmap for scholars on the vast and diverse literature concerning labor issues, and affords students a quick overview of that rapidly changing field. It is an important contribution to the series and is a valuable book for anyone interested in labor, as well as for students and scholars of labor economics, industrial sociology, industrial relations, social psychology, and their respective disciplines.

456 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1998

About the author

Frank Ackerman received a BA in mathematics and economics from Swarthmore College in 1967. After serving for two years as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he entered graduate school, and received a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1975.

He was a founder of Dollars & Sense magazine, where he worked as a writer, editor, and business manager from 1974 to 1982. After two years as a visiting professor (at the University of Massachusetts’ Amherst and Boston campuses) and one year as a computer programmer, he joined Tellus Institute, where he studied the economics of energy systems, and of solid waste and recycling, from 1985 to 1995.

From 1995 to 2007 he worked at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE). He was an editor of GDAE’s Frontier Issues in Economic Thought book series, a coauthor of GDAE’s macroeconomics textbook, and director of the institute’s Research and Policy program. For several of his years at GDAE, he also taught in the Tufts Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.

From 2007 through 2012 he was at the Stockholm Environment Institute’s U.S. Center, also at Tufts University, where he directed the Climate Economics Group.

In late 2012 he is joining Synapse Energy Economics, a public interest-oriented consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He was a co-founder, and is a member of the steering committee, of Economics for Equity and Environment (E3 Network). He is a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, an organization offering progressive scholarship and writing on environmental law and regulation.

In addition to his day job, he is a (very amateur) trumpet player in the Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band (SLSAPS), playing New Orleans-style and other music at community events and good causes in the Boston area.