Net-Works: Workplace Change in the Global Economy

A Critical and Practical Guide

Net-works: Workplace Change in the Global Economy primarily discusses how sociology may be applied to the Global Net-Work Economy and the changing workplace. It demonstrates how the sociological perspective has both explanatory power and extraordinary practical applicability to the world of work and employment in the emerging global economy. Finkelstein argues that it is more accurate to think of work organizations as Net-Works, a new form of organization that links individuals, groups and organizations of all kinds in a vast web of relationships that may span locations around the world. Thus, the jobs of the future (and many of the present) will involve a new kind of work: Net-Work!
In order to understand how Net-Works have emerged, Finkelstein assumes that the workplace is socially constructed, meaning that we should see jobs and work as the product of the decisions people have made throughout history and in particular social contexts. The book argues that we should not take current workplace arrangements as a given. This is why it offers a way to understand the world of work both critically and practically. Net-works presents alternatives to rigid bureaucracies and divisive hierarchies, and the practical steps that can be taken to create workplace change, arguing that such changes must not only be organizational but also societal and on a global scale.