There can be no doubt that the composite Roman de la rose, an allegorical love poem begun between 1225 and 1245 by an otherwise unknown court poet, Guillaume de Lorris, and completed between 1268 and 1285 by the scholastic author Jean de Meun, was the most admired, influential, and controversial literary work of the French Middle Ages. With nearly 300 extant manuscripts (several times the number for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), the Rose clearly enjoyed exceptional renown among medieval literate populations. The reason for this popularity may well be the poem’s encyclopaedic range of themes and styles and its openness to diverse interpretive approaches. Not only does Guillaume’s mannerly, euphemistic, and concise Rose stand in stark contrast to Jean’s ironic, explicit, and sprawling continuation, but also each of the two authors complicates the production of meaning in his poem by eschewing thematic unity, singular perspectives, and structural stability. Some medieval readers sought to straighten out these problems, emphasizing the passages they considered edifying or amusing, and minimizing or expurgating the rest. Others were evidently fascinated by the hermeneutical challenges posed by a hybrid text and sought to exaggerate its contradictions. Likewise, some modern scholars have claimed that the poem teaches Christian ethics by promoting sensuality ironically, others that it revels in moral indeterminacy and sexual liberation. Regardless of critical bent, most readers would agree with the early humanist Jean Gerson that the Rose contains a remarkably wide range of themes and styles and could 'rightly [be] called a formless chaos, a Babylonian confusion, and a German broth, like Proteus changing into all his shapes'. Indeed, even those scholars who insist on the poem’s orthodoxy acknowledge that it teaches its lessons through the juxtaposition of contradictory viewpoints and ironic reversals of meaning.

Medieval French literature is replete with alien and exotic beings: magical creatures, such as fairies and werewolves; marvellous or savage beings, such as giants and wild men; and ethnically or culturally different humans, such as Saracens. While there might seem initially to be a great difference between ordinary humans of a different culture, and marvellous creatures of an entirely different order of being, in fact this difference is often elided in medieval texts. In the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, for example, the Saracen champion that Roland fights is a Syrian Muslim who calls upon 'Mahomet' at the moment of his death; he is also a giant with the strength of twenty men and skin so tough that it cannot be pierced with a sword. This chapter will examine selected examples of Old French texts involving fairies, giants, and Saracens. And while the aura of otherness surrounding magical beings may be more exciting, more exotic, and more dangerous, in the end all of these stories serve a common purpose, that of probing both the dangers and the delights of cross-cultural and inter-ethnic contact.

Attempted unions between humans and fairies figure in numerous medieval French texts, and are always presented as both alluring and problematic. Early examples can be found in the twelfth-century Lais of Marie de France. In Lanval, for example, the eponymous knight, a bit of a loner at Arthur’s court, is summoned by a fairy who offers him her love on condition that the relationship remain completely secret. This arrangement is successful for a time, though it has the effect of isolating Lanval, who constantly seeks opportunities to evade his companions so that he can enjoy the company of the fairy. The conflict comes to a head when Lanval gets into an altercation with the queen, who has attempted to seduce him, and tells her that she is less beautiful than his lady, or indeed, than his beloved’s least servant.

Introduction

There are many facets to the typical employment relationship. At its very simplest, employment involves the exchange of labor for compensation. Nevertheless, employment relationships also involve control of the worker by the firm, the acquisition of skills through experience and training, learning about each others' qualities and intentions, and career progression as the worker moves from role to role within the organization. In addition, employment usually imposes a variety of specific legal obligations on both employer and employee. Traditionally, these obligations have been combined into a single relationship between worker and firm.

In recent years, however, we have seen the growth of “triadic” employment arrangements, in which important characteristics of employment are divided among workers' relationships with two firms: a “client” and an “intermediary.” The intermediary generally acts as the legal employer of the worker, but the actual work is performed at a client site. Consider, for example, employment relationships for temporary agency workers. Legally, the worker is employed by the agency, which also provides the worker with compensation and any benefits. Career progression for the worker often results from the worker being assigned by the agency to roles in different clients. The worker's relationship with the client also has clear elements of an employment tie, however: the worker provides labor to the client at its site; the worker often also accepts substantial control by the client over his or her work. We cannot therefore understand how the worker is employed without examining both these ties.

Introduction

There is a frequent refrain from scholars and practitioners alike that the professions are becoming ever more bureaucratized. If true, what does this trend imply for professional careers? Several volumes have been devoted to the implications of bureaucratization in general, nearly all of which see it negatively from the point of view of professional workers themselves (e.g. Derber, 1982; Leicht and Fennell, 2001; Freidson, 2001). In this chapter I advance another, perhaps less obvious, interpretation: that bureaucracy offers those in professional careers the kind of career flexibility that today is welcomed. I argue that bureaucratization is (largely unintentionally) creating a range of flexible career options that were previously unavailable – and that are increasingly valued by professional workers themselves. I advance this argument using data from a multi-method study of primary care physicians.

A review of the historical and current trends in professional organizations (e.g. law firms, medical practices) in the research literature shows that they are indeed becoming more bureaucratic. This process entails a greater use of formalized rules and procedures (Gerth and Mills, 1946), and more centralized control of professional activities and client relationships (Pugh et al., 1968). Some of the resulting effects on careers are straightforward. For example, bureaucracy tends to increase the demand for professionals to take on managerial roles (see Rothman and Perrucci, 1970, and Raelin, 1985).

We are pleased to introduce Peter Cappelli's Employment Relationships: New Models of White-Collar Work, as part of the Cambridge Companions to Management series. The series is intended to advance knowledge in the fields of management by presenting the latest scholarship and research on topics of growing importance. Bridging the gap between journal articles and student textbooks, the volumes offer in-depth treatment of selected management topics, exploring the current knowledge base and identifying future opportunities for research. Each topic covered in the series is one with great future promise, and one that also has developed a sufficient body of research to allow informed reviews and debate.

Management scholarship is increasingly international in scope. No longer can scholars read only the work conducted in their own countries, or talk only to their near neighbors; creative and innovative work in management is now being conducted throughout the world. Each volume is organized by one of our most prominent scholars, who brings researchers from several countries together to provide cross-national perspectives and debate. Through this series we hope to introduce readers to scholarship in their field they may not yet know, and open scholarship debate to a wider set of perspectives.

We feel fortunate to be working with Cambridge University Press. Their rigorous independent scholarly reviews and board approval process helps ensure that only the highest-quality scholarship is published. We feel confident that scholars will find these books useful to their own research programs, as well as useful in their doctoral courses.

The above partner is a microcosm of the changed world of large law firms and their lawyers in the past thirty years.

Introduction

Widespread corporate restructuring has transformed employment relationships in numerous lasting ways in recent decades, as the process of corporate reduction in force (RIF) ended the careers of many employees and corporate reorganization changed the way managers are evaluated and rewarded (see Cappelli et al., 1997). Scholarly interest in understanding this transformation process has led to the creation of a wealth of knowledge on employment change from a number of academic disciplines. Economists have analyzed changes in tenure with a firm along age, sex, occupation, and industry lines, showing that – in stark contrast to previous temporary layoffs, which tended to be limited to blue-collar employees – terminations during RIF are now permanent and disproportionately affect previously protected groups such as middle-aged managers in manufacturing firms (Baumol, Blinder, and Wolff, 2003). Psychologists have studied the negative effects of restructuring on employees who remain in restructured firms, demonstrating that survivors of RIF often responded with reduced morale and work effort (Brockner et al., 1992). Further, sociologists have examined broad patterns of career mobility, finding that restructuring spurred the movement of employees across organizations and industries (DiPrete, 1993).

Despite the clear effects of restructuring on the employment relationship, our understanding of the upward career mobility patterns of managers in restructured firms is surprisingly limited.

Introduction

Social scientists have conducted numerous wage studies in the past few decades, yet promotions and employment separations in organizations remain relatively unexplored areas. In the past decade, as organizations flatten their organizational hierarchies, restructure, merge, and divest to ensure agility, efficiency, and effectiveness, promotions have become less common, whereas separations have become more commonplace. Understanding who gets promoted and exploring the nature of separation have important implications for both the efficiency of organizations and the compensation levels of workers. Using administrative data from between 1996 and 2000 from a large North American high-tech organization with annual employment ranging from 19,000 to 26,000 employees, this chapter explores the trends, the correlates, and the consequences of these two phenomena: promotions, the “up” side of the story, and separations, the “out” side of the story. In particular, the role of race and gender, as well as other factors, in promotions and separations will be explored.

The “up” side of the story

Promotions have a significant positive impact on wage levels: the rate of wage gain is often higher for those who have been promoted than it is for those who have not (Baker, Gibbs, and Holmstrom, 1994a, 1994b; McCue, 1996; Bognanno, 2001). An employee's rank in an organizational hierarchy not only determines the level of financial rewards but also confers other non-pecuniary benefits, such as more autonomy and more opportunities for personal development. It has also been shown that promotions lead to higher levels of job satisfaction (Francesconi, 2001).

Introduction

To some, call centers represent the modern-day “factory floor.” With strict controls over the quality and quantity of work, Taylorism seems to be alive and well in the call center. The reality is not that simple, however. Call centers, with virtually constant customer contact and attendant interpersonal demands on workers, will always be stressful for workers to a point. How the organization balances the demands of quantity and quality, by controlling the pace and the content (through the scripting and monitoring) of calls, can have a profound effect on the workplace. It can even influence how stressful the interpersonal demands of the job are for workers. Indeed, the choices employers make about how to manage call centers can be more important than the call center context per se in determining employee outcomes.

This chapter starts by providing a basic overview of the call center, highlighting the different types of calls and callers, and the power of technology to control both the quantity and the quality of the service interactions. Much of the chapter is dedicated to a study of how workers struggle to meet the competing demands of quantity and quality. Then I examine all the parties in the interpersonal context for call center workers and highlight the role that supervisors and co-workers may play in mitigating or exacerbating the stresses of the work with customers.

The context of new models of white-collar work

The Organization Man, the famous book by Fortune editor William H. Whyte written in 1955 about corporate careers, defined for a generation the career experience of managers entering the business world, as well as the effects of that experience on society. It provided the details for practical issues such as how corporations made hiring decisions (even detailing how to “cheat” on personality tests), how executives thought and acted, and how they got ahead in their careers. In those days, virtually all the good jobs in business were in large corporations.

When The Organization Man was published, and for the generation that followed, business careers began with college recruiting, when employers looked for candidates who could be molded into executives with the values and characteristics appropriate for their company. They looked for potential, and the key component of potential was their personality. Once hired, the company set about training and developing the skills of the young manager – not just their business skills but their social and interpersonal skills. Pressures to conform were considerable, and those pressures extended to their family and to their life outside work. Managers were groomed to see their interests and identity as defined by their organization, hence “the Organization Man.” The defining attribute of careers was that they were governed by the company's rules and interests.

In a 1991 essay reviewing the theological achievements of the Jesuits between the Council of Trent and Vatican II Avery Dulles, S. J., posed the question as to whether one could speak of such a thing as “Jesuit theology.” In response, Dulles wrote: “If Jesuit theology is taken to mean a brand of theology distinctive and common to all Jesuits, no such thing exists. Jesuits do not follow any method proper to their Society, nor do they take any member of their own order as their theological mentor in the way that Augustinians might presumably follow St. Augustine, Dominicans might follow St. Thomas, and Franciscans might follow St. Bonaventure or Duns Scotus.” However, Dulles claimed, one could speak of characteristic Jesuit concerns and themes in theology, concerns that “stem principally from the example and writings of St. Ignatius Loyola.” Ignatian spirituality has been and continues to be a fulcrum for the writings of Jesuit theologians; however, given the vast quantity of theological writing Jesuits have produced since Vatican II and the limited space of this essay, a narrower focus seemed warranted. Thus, I have selected three central themes from two of the post-Vatican II General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (in Jesuit parlance: “GC 32” and “GC 34”) to serve as guideposts for mapping Jesuit theological discourse since the Council. Just as John XXIII's word aggiornamento became a byword at Vatican II, the phrases “the service of faith and the promotion of justice,” “inculturation and interreligious dialogue,” “cooperation with our partners in ministry” have become solidly enshrined in post-Vatican II Jesuit theological discourse.