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The United States has a large number of well-educated, experienced professional women ready, willing, and able to move into the boardrooms and executive suites of corporate America. They represent a great, untapped economic resource and this book argues that this is America’s competitive secret. Drawing on in-depth interviews with top executives and middle managers, and the latest research on working women and organizational change, the author describes the unique contribution of female professionals. Her profiles of top women managers reveal that they cope well with ambiguity, are comfortable sharing power, and tend to empower others' leadership traits that lead to increased employee productivity, innovation, and profits. The book offers evidence that the changes that help organizations more fully utilize the talents of women are the same changes that will give them an important edge in today’s global workplace. The author explains why the glass ceiling still prevents many competent women from reaching the upper echelons of management. She analyses why women and men are perceived and evaluated differently at work, and provides new insight into the feelings of men who are asked to interact with women in new roles when there are few new rules. The book shows that removing the glass ceiling can no longer be viewed solely in terms of social equity—it is now an economic imperative.

Is job insecurity the new norm? With fewer and fewer people working in steady, long-term positions for one employer, has the dream of a secure job with full benefits and a decent salary become just that—a dream? This book surveys the new topography of the global workplace and finds an emerging pattern of labor instability and uneven development on a massive scale. It looks at what the new landscape of contingent employment means for workers across national, class, and racial lines—from the emerging “creative class” of high-wage professionals to the multitudes of temporary, migrant, or low-wage workers. Developing the idea of “precarious livelihoods” to describe this new world of work and life, the book explores what it means in developed nations—comparing the creative industry policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, as well as developing countries—by examining the quickfire transformation of China's labor market. It also responds to the challenge of sustainability, assessing the promise of “green jobs” through restorative alliances between labor advocates and environmentalists. The book argues that regardless of one's views on labor rights, globalization, and quality of life, this new precarious and “indefinite life,” and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany it is likely here to stay and must be addressed in a systematic way. A more equitable kind of knowledge society emerges in these pages—less skewed toward flexploitation and the speculative beneficiaries of intellectual property, and more in tune with ideals and practices that are fair, just, and renewable.