About - Organisations, Work & Care
About
Meet the team
Find out more about research project staff in our profiles.
This website provides summaries of our research and dissemination activities on the theme of work-related well-being policies and practices in employing organisations.
The Organisations, Work and Care Programme considers how 'care' is incorporated in myriad and multi-faceted ways in policies and practices. These can support, survey and control workers, as well as having implications for employers and managers.
Aspects of care can be found in a range of statutory duties, policies and related activities, including: health and safety, equality and diversity, maternity and parental leave, religious observance, bullying and harassment, personal development, early retirement, voluntary redundancy, grievance procedures, and dismissal.
To help explain policies and practices the team have developed the concept of organisation carescapes. This, we argue, can aid the analysis and identification of planned 'routes' (policies and practices) of employing organisations and workers, how these transform and develop with shifts in national and supranational policies (for example, the introduction of disability rights legislation, and flexible working guidelines), and respond to changes in labour market competitiveness.
The underlying premise to our programme - organisation carescapes - grew from earlier work to develop a framework for analysis termed caringscapes (see McKie et al., 2002, Sociology, 36, 4, 897-924 and briefing paper, Caringscapes. Experiences of Caring and Working). This framework considers how space and time impact on past and present experiences, and anticipations of caring and working across the lifecourse.
- Caringscapes. Experiences of Caring and Working - June 2007 (PDF)
Members of the programme team collaborate across a number of organisations in the UK and Europe including:
- University of Edinburgh
- Heriot-Watt University
- University of Reading
- University of Strathclyde
- Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration
Major seminar and project work includes:
- 2004: 'Care': Research, Policy and Practice
- Seminar Series funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
- 2004: Women in their Fifties: Well-being, Ageing and the Anticipation of Ageing
- Funded by Glasgow Caledonian University.
- 2005-7: Gender Related Family Work-Life Balance in Scottish Food Retail Businesses
- Large research project funded by the European Social Fund (ESF).
- 2006-7: Work-life Balance across the Life Stages: Proofing Policies and Practices
- Large research project funded by ESF.
- 2005-9: UK Work-related Well-being. Organisation Carescapes: Policies and Practices of Work-related Well-being
- Large ESRC funded research project.