Work-Life Advantage (eBook)

Al James is Reader in Economic Geography at Newcastle University, UK. His research interests include gendered labour geographies of work-life and socially inclusive growth; the regional cultural economy of learning and innovation; and the hybrid economic/development geographies of India's new service economy. His work has been funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, Nuffield Foundation, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Isaac Newton Trust. He has published in a wide range of leading international journals, including Progress in Human Geography, Journal of Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Geoforum, Gender Work and Organization, Gender Place and Culture, Environment and Planning A and Development and Change. From 2008-2011, he was Secretary of the RGS-IBG's Economic Geography Research Group.

List of Figures viii

List of Tables ix

Series Editor's Preface xi

Preface and Acknowledgements xii

List of Abbreviations xv

1 Inclusive Regional Learning? 1

2 Recentering Regional Learning: Beyond Masculinist Geographies of Regional Advantage 16

3 Work?]Life Balance and its Uncertain 'Business Case' 38

4 Researching Labour Geographies of Work?-Life and Learning in Ireland and the UK 67

5 Juggling Work, Home and Family in the Knowledge Economy 86

6 Overcoming Work?-Life Conflict and the Gendered Limits to Learning and Innovation? 117

7 Work?-Life Balance, Cross?-Firm Worker Mobility and Gendered Knowledge Spillovers 145

8 Conclusions: Gendered Regional Learning and Work?-Life Advantage 176

References 197

Index 000

'Who thought the topic of work-life balance could be so interesting? Al James makes it riveting. His sometimes-poignant, sometimes heart-rending, sometimes outrageous (how can they get away with that?) stories of the collision of work lives and every-day lives of high-tech workers in Dublin and Cambridge make for utterly compelling reading. James' ability to bring together seamlessly gender, work, corporate life, and the geography of the everyday is a great achievement. It exemplifies yet again the power of economic geography in understanding crucial issues of our present moment.'
Trevor Barnes, Professor of Geography, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada

'The changing nature of employment, the growing diversity of the workforce and the implications for individuals and households are the questions of our time. In this fascinating book, feminist and regional economics meet head-on as James provides insights into the implications of the growth of 'knowledge work' for firms and for families in Cambridge and Dublin.'
Linda McDowell, Research Professor of Geography, University of Oxford and Honorary Professor of Geography, University of Exeter, U