Professor Paul Thompson, of the Department of Human Resource Management, gave the keynote address at a conference of German social scientists at Jena University on June 9. With a theme of Re-Thinking Labour, 250 delegates from across the country attended a two-day event.
Professor Thompson, who is Vice Dean Research at the Business School, kicked off the first day with a presentation about dissent at work. As with the UK and other countries, German social scientists have had a debate about whether labour in general and labour resistance at work has become marginal. As the author of Organizational Misbehaviour, not surprisingly, Professor Thompson disagreed. In a well-received talk, he set out the evidence for a growing crisis of employee attachment in the workplace, referring to a recent survey that showed that British employees are the most critical in the world of their management.
As the rest of the conference was in German, the opportunities lay more in networking than listening. He hopes to follow through by establishing better links with German colleagues, with potential for staff collaboration and doctoral student exchanges.