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This research investigates women's experiences of sexual harassment in three different organizations in the same New Zealand town. Women working at the local meat-processing plant, a retail store and a local bank were interviewed about their personal experiences of sexual harassment. The interviews revealed that sexual harassment took different forms and was interpreted and responded to differently in each organization. Women at the meatworks were often socially isolated from other women and had few effective strategies for combating the verbal and physical harassment collectively perpetrated by male employees. In contrast, women at the store had a range of collective coping strategies which enabled them to regard harassment from fellow-workers and customers as an irritant rather than a serious threat. Women at the bank also had various collective coping strategies, but were more constrained by customer service norms in the organization. These findings are discussed in relation to three key themes; firstly, the influence of the local environment on organizational life; secondly, the effects of differing organizational structures and cultures on the expression and interpretation of sexual harassment and thirdly, the effectiveness of the various 'communities of coping' which women develop to combat sexual harassment in the workplace.

This article uses the theoretical framework provided by social models of addiction to interpret freelance film production workers’ subjective experiences of project-based labour. The article suggests that the structural conditions of project-based labour within the film industry create a subjective experience in which the financial, creative, social and emotional rewards of employment are interspersed with the anxieties of repeated unemployment. The stark contrast between highly gratifying periods in work and highly aversive periods in between work produces an addictive psycho-social dynamic that repeatedly draws freelance production workers back into the industry. This process can only be fully understood by considering the relationship between employment conditions and subjective experiences as an integrated whole. The development of freelance film production workers’ addictive relationships with the film industry is illustrated using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 11 male and 10 female New Zealand freelance film production workers.

This study investigates the relationship between mature female job-seekers and private employment agencies in the Auckland region. Twelve women who were made redundant after age 40 were interviewed about their experiences of using agencies to find clerical work. Five agency staff were also interviewed to discover their views on placing such women in work. Although the two groups occupy contrasting positions within the employment relationship, several complementary themes emerged from the two sets of interviews. Both groups described gendered ageism as a key issue for older women seeking office work and identified a range of strategies employers use to avoid employing them in permanent positions. In contrast to most previous research, which emphasizes perceived skills deficits, both groups saw problems of appearance and 'team fit' as more formidable barriers to re-employment. The findings are discussed in relation to the expanding role of employment agencies and policy approaches to combating gendered ageism in employment.

This article examines the implicit assumptions underlying current research into occupational stress and burnout. It argues that the two fields utilize similar theoretical models and research techniques and therefore have a number of problems in common. These problems arise from their common tendency to adopt a psychological perspective which pays insufficient attention to the complexity of the interrelationship between social conditions and subjective experience. The article suggests that both fields could be strengthened by incorporating more sociological concepts and developing analyses of the effects which discrepancies between the manifest and latent functions and surface and deep structures of organizations have on the individual's subjective experiences of work. The value of such analyses is illustrated with three examples of empirical research utilizing this perspective.