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This accessible and exciting new text looks at the implications of aesthetic labour for work and employment by contextualizing debates and offering a critical approach. The origins of aesthetic labour are explored, as well as the relevant theories from business and management, and sociology. Coverage includes key topics such as: corporate strategy; recruitment and selection practices; and discrimination. Key features include: - a range of case studies from across different types of organizations and popular culture - the exploration of topics such as branding, 'lookism', 'dressing for success' and cosmetic surgery - suggestions for further reading.

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to compare employment relations in the hotel industry in Australia and the UK. Australian industry employment is regulated by the state and union recognition is enshrined. A substantial proportion of Australian hotel employers engage directly in firm‐level bargaining with trade unions, with unionisation rates across the industry far higher than in the UK. The analysis focuses on employment strategies emphasising numerical/temporal and functional flexibility since efforts to enhance workplace flexibility underpin employment regulation in Australia.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on interviews conducted in 13 exclusive, luxury hotels in Australia. Interviewees consisted of HR and departmental managers, employees across all hotel departments and relevant union officials.FindingsLabour utilisation practices in Australian luxury hotels reflect relatively sophisticated and systematic endeavours on the part of employers. The specific content and effect of these strategies varies in accordance with hotels' bargaining arrangements. Whilst employee relations outcomes were not entirely without problems in Australian luxury hotels, they do signify that regulation and trade union recognition can produce substantial benefits for employers and employees.Research limitations/implicationsRecognition of potentially positive employment relations outcomes in Australia points to the need for further research in the UK to reassess employers' attitudes to trade unions in a changing employment relations landscape.Originality/valueThe paper offers a comparison between Australia and the UK in an area that is still relatively under‐researched.

PurposeThis paper aims to consider the impact of the European Union procurement regulations. It assesses the impact of the re‐tendering of services on the terms and conditions of employment and sense of well being, and commitment of employees in the social care sub‐sector of the voluntary sector.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a qualitative study of three organisations utilising semi‐structured interviews with managers and employees.FindingsThe process of re‐tendering is creating intensified competition and the breakdown of co‐operation between voluntary sector organisations. Re‐tendering also has an impact on employee terms and conditions with related problems arising with regard to their morale and commitment.Research limitations/implicationsThis remains a relatively small‐scale piece of research and there is also scope to consider how these issues are played out in private, as well as voluntary sector organisations.Practical implicationsThe research highlights the potential tensions between creating greater competition and a search for value for money in the tendering and re‐tendering of services on voluntary organisations' raison d'être and the sense of commitment of employees.Originality/valueThere is little research examining the human resource aspects of re‐tendering and this research provides an important step in surfacing a number of emergent issues for how voluntary organisations manage the people dimension of the re‐tendering process.

The voluntary sector in Scotland, as in many other countries, is becoming increasingly business like. Resultantly, there is an increasing demand for graduates to work in business and support functions. In Scotland, however, despite an oversupply of graduates in the labor market, the voluntary sector reports skills shortages for graduate-level positions. Through exploratory, mainly qualitative research, this article demonstrates that one reason for this mismatch between the supply of and demand for graduates is a systems failure within the sector. Many graduates and university students remain unaware of potentially suitable paid job opportunities, in part because of the sector's voluntary label. To rectify this systems failure, thought needs to be given to the sector's nomenclature and the manner in which voluntary sector organizations attract graduate recruits, for example, through levering value congruence in potential recruits.

This article develops the conceptualization and analysis of aesthetic labour in two parts. The first part focuses on conceptualizing aesthetic labour. We critically revisit the emotional labour literature, arguing that the analysis of interactive service work is impeded by the way in which its corporeal aspects are retired and that, by shifting the focus from emotional to aesthetic labour, we are able to recuperate the embodied character of service work. We then explore the insights provided by the sociological perspectives on the body contained in the works of Goffman and Bourdieu in order to conceptualize aesthetic labour as embodied labour. In the second part, we develop our analysis of aesthetic labour within the context of a discussion of the aesthetics of organization. We discern three ways in which aesthetics is recognized to imbue organization: aesthetics of organization, aesthetics in organization and aesthetics as organization. We contend that employees are increasingly seen not simply as `software' but as `hardware', in the sense that they too can be corporately moulded to portray the organizational aesthetic. We ground this analysis in a case study from research conducted by the authors.

This article considers the intersection of sexual harassment and internal hegemonic masculinity in assessing the experiences of men working in the gay tourism industry in Spain. It reports data from 36 interviews with managers and employers in a range of organizations primarily catering for gay, male customers. Consideration of the experiences of men working in the gay tourism industry allows for an understanding of how they navigate the near-constant sexual harassment they experience from customers and how these experiences can be located within contemporary debates about masculinity. The article introduces the concept of 'submissive masculinity' to explain how the sexual harassment suffered by the men working in this context is normalized and accepted, despite being unwanted, contributing to the vulnerability and subordination of men experiencing sexual harassment from other men.

This paper considers a so far unappreciated sector of the labour market – lone parents. The number of lone parents has increased dramatically in recent years. Consideration of lone parents allows for a discussion of two key issues within the contemporary labour market: the attempts by government to increase the number of lone parents in work; and relatedly, governmental initiatives which have sought to reform the tax and benefit system to make work more attractive and also address the need for work‐life balance for parents. The paper considers these issues by reporting a small‐scale piece of research that sought to address the viability of the supermarket sector as a suitable employer for lone parents. The results suggest that the increasing numbers of students entering the labour market means that supermarkets are unlikely to consider lone parents as an important, discrete source of labour.