In this paper, we demonstrate that Project Management (PM) in Information Technologies (IT) sector, despite the claims of autonomy and self-determination at work of creative experts, sets up fairly tight controls through management and the rhetoric of professionalism. The client's position of strength overrides the employer's direct control, transferring a major share of the risk inherent in PM to the IT experts themselves. Ensuing long hours of unplanned and unpaid overtime are the most important obstacle facing women in IT's workforce. This paper is based on a qualitative research conducted on 7 Canadian companies acting in multimedia, information technology (IT) business services and optics-photonics. We have interviewed 88 IT experts, women and men, who talk about their working conditions.

This paper contributes to the union renewal literature by examining the union voting propensity of workers in the high-tech tertiary sector of videogame development toward different forms of unionization. We used exclusive data from a survey of videogame developers (VGD) working primarily in Anglo-Saxon countries. When looking at the factors related to voting propensity, our data indicated that the type of unionism matters and that industry/sectoral unionism is an increasingly salient model for project-based knowledge workers. This is an important policy dimension given that the legal structures and norms in Anglo-Saxon countries still tend to support decentralized enterprise-based unionism. It is also important for unions insofar as their organizing tactics remain geared toward a shop-by-shop approach or, at least, a localized geographical approach. Although additional work is required, our analyses lends support to the argument that high-commitment and high-involvement workplaces can engender a desire for collective representation and voice such as is offered through unionization. Whether this is because such workplaces step over a breaking-point line where the requirement for full alignment with employer goals becomes untenable and a source of discontent, whether this represents the existence of dual commitment where a representative agent like a union is seen as necessary to protect the work that people love, or whether there is a combination of these forces is not yet clear, but it is a critical area of future study for project-based knowledge workers.

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Dans les entreprises, les aménagements officieux et discrétionnaires restent un moyen très répandu pour régler les problèmes de conciliation des employés. Cependant, une étude menée dans des entreprises montréalaises de la nouvelle économie révèle que cette pratique est également un outil important de contrôle pour les supérieurs immédiats. Ceux-ci, bénéficiant d’une grande liberté d’action, utilisent l’octroi d’aménagements comme moyen de récompenser la flexibilité et la disponibilité de leurs employés. Dans cette situation, pour parfois travailler moins, il faut souvent travailler plus, car les heures supplémentaires non rémunérées sont le moyen clef de négociation.Since the 1960s, the French-speaking Montréal business class have formulated various representations of the economic and urban restructuring problems that the metropolitan area has had to face. They have also thought of several solutions. Beginning with the postulate that in the economic analysis of the city, discourse and representations have taken on greater importance, the authors examine the representations of the decline and recovery of Montréal as covered in articles published in the French-language business press between January 1960 and January 2003. First, six recurring themes can be found : the status in Montréal within Québec, the decline of Montréal’s economy in comparison with that of Toronto, local and metropolitan governance, the role of the State, the entrepreneurship of the business class, and the contribution of the new economy to Montréal’s recovery. Secondly, we examine the scope of the discourse of the business class regarding government policies and programs focusing on the recovery of Québec’s largest city

INTRODUCTIONIn view of the widespread transformations affecting the world economy (Coutu and Murray, 2005), observers are increasingly noting the inadequacy of efforts, dating back to Fordism, to theorize industrial relations, particularly the systems model (Dunlop, 1958) and the strategic model (Kochan, Katz and McKersie, 1986). These models feature only three actors: unions, employers, and the government, which interact primarily within the framework of the Nation-State: (Translation)[A structurationist approach to industrial relations] allows us to recognize the potential fluidity or plasticity of institutions, particularly during times of major social transformations. In industrial relations, one could hypothesize that the Fordist (or Keynesian) crisis and the attempts to break free from these regulations in a fast-paced era of globalization, is one such episode of major transformation. That is why we think it is justified to study the boundaries between industrial relations systems or the social practices that contribute, on a small or large scale, to their systemization (Bellemare and Briand, 2006, p. 11).In a context where new emergent actors are making a significant impact on industrial relations, business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies (B2BTSC) are good subjects to study regarding emergent modes of the regulation of labour because 2 of their extensive exposure to international competition on the product and international labour markets. As part of the knowledge economy, they hire highly qualified information technology professionals. The study of work-life balance (WLB) in this segment of the labour market sheds light on the wider canvas of industrial relations and human resource management (HRM) practices in the so-called new economy.Given that modes of regulation are emerging from these situations, new actors and new issues should be integrated into theoretical models of industrial relations (IR) systems if their current complexities are to be explained. This article re-examines the classical identification of IR actors and illustrates its flaws with the case of the B2B sector in the Montreal Area. To demonstrate the presence of actors who are as important as they are unrecognized in the IR system of this branch of industry, we adopt Bellemare's (2000) definition of the IR actor and discuss how it impacts the definition of the boundaries of IR systems. The case study of the B2BTSC is used here as an example that supports the relevance of a wider theoretical framework in progress rather than developed. This example is used as part of a plea for a theoretical renewal and in that way of reasoning, addresses the question: are there new modes of regulation in this economic sector and if so, are there new actors besides the traditional employeremployees -state IR triangle? As we conclude so, our example supports our wider case but is not generalised at this early state; it will be added to a bank of examples that feeds the work towards theoretical renewal of IR. Bellemare (2000) put forw...

The scarcity of women among highly qualifi ed professionals in business-to-business information and communication technologies (ICT) in Europe and in North America has been noted as recently as the late 1990s (Panteli, Stack, Atkinson, & Ramsay, 1999

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Studies of digital game labor have tended to document problems in the working lives of developers while devoting relatively limited attention to solutions, or to collective representation as a step toward solutions. An increasing number of game developers are dissatisfied with their working conditions, and dissatisfaction is a necessary condition for workers to engage in collective action to gain the representational power needed to achieve change in the workplace. Noting that the landscape of collective mobilization in the game industry has not yet been systematically mapped, this article documents collective actions over the past five decades, and asks, “Are the collective actions of developers building momentum toward a viable, sustained mobilization?” The article presents a thematic survey of such actions, including the Quality of Life Movement, exposés of working conditions, gender equity struggles, and unionization efforts. In conclusion, the authors revisit John Kelly’s mobilization theory to assess developers’ capacity to engage in collective mobilization.