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Ways of Living

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10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
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10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Ways of Living
Work, Community and Lifestyle Choice

Edited By

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Paul Blyton
Professor of Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology, Cardiff Business School,
Cardiff University, UK

Betsy Blunsdon
Senior Lecturer, School of Management, Deakin University, Australia

Ken Reed
Associate Professor, School of Management, Deakin University, Australia

Ali Dastmalchian
Dean, Faculty of Business, University of Victoria, Canada

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Selection and editorial content © Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon,
Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian 2010
Individual chapters © the contributors 2010
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the

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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–20228–3 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Contents

List of Tables vii

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List of Figures viii
Preface ix
Contributors x

1 Social Change and Ways of Living: An Introduction 1


Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed, Paul Blyton and Ali Dastmalchian

Part I Lifestyle and Identity


2 An Analysis of Time Use to Reveal National Differences
in Lifestyle Patterns 17
Ken Reed and Guy Cucumel
3 Households, Work, Time Use and Energy Consumption 33
Steven McEachern
4 Longer to Launch: Demographic Changes in Life-Course
Transitions 75
Rosemary A. Venne
5 Fortunate Lives: Professional Careers, Social Position
and Life Choices 99
Tanya Castleman and Rosslyn Reed
6 ‘Live to Work or Work to Live?’ The Search for
Work-life Balance in Twenty-first Century Japan 120
Tim Craig

Part II Community
7 Personal Communities and Lifestyle: The Role of
Family, Friends and Neighbours 147
Betsy Blunsdon and Nicola McNeil
8 To Downshift or Not to Downshift? Why People Make
and don’t Make Decisions to Change their Lives 175
Carmel Goulding and Ken Reed

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
vi Contents

9 Ways of Life after Redundancy: Anatomy of a Community


Following Factory Closure 202
Paul Blyton and Jean Jenkins

Part III Work and Organisations


10 What Do (And Don’t) We Know About Part-Time

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Professional Work? 223
Vivien Corwin

11 Work Values Across Cultures: The Role of Affect and


Job Outcomes among Young Executives in Canada,
Iran and Turkey 241
Hayat Kabasakal, Pinar Imer and Ali Dastmalchian

12 Designing for Well-Being: The Role of the Physical


Work Environment 267
Claudia Steinke, Rei Kurosawa and Ali Dastmalchian

13 Shifting Responsibility for Health and Healthy


Lifestyles: Exploring Canadian Trends 288
Angela Downey, Ali Dastmalchian, Helen M. Kelley,
David Sharp and Kristene D’Agnone

Index 311

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Tables

2.1Sample sizes and numbers within each socio-

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demographic group, by country 24
2.2 List of activities 25
2.3 Socio-demographic differences in activity, by country 31
3.1 Descriptive statistics for data used in analysis 46
3.2 Linear regression of time spent on other activities,
by household type 51
3.3 Linear regression of log (gross household income)
on time use activities, by household type 52
4.1 Education enrolment (full and part-time) of
20–29 year olds (as a per cent of 20–29 year olds) 84
4.2 Percentage of population aged 25–34 with
post-secondary education 84
4.3 Per cent of young adults living at home: Canada,
U.S., and U.K. 86
4.4 Mean or median age at first marriage 88
4.5 Total fertility rate 89
4.6 Key population statistics – Canada, U.S., U.K.
and Sweden, 2008 89
6.1 Workers’ compensation claims, 2002–0632 131
7.1 Coding schema for content analysis of interviews 157
8.1 Demographic details of study sample 183
11.1 Loadings from factor analysis of items assessing
work values 250
11.2 Means, standard deviations, Cronbach alphas and
intercorrelations among study variables* (n=20) 253
11.3 Regression analyses results for job satisfaction
as the dependent variable 254
11.4 Regression analyses results for performance
as the dependent variable 256
11.5 Means comparisons (analysis of variance) and
multiple comparisons (Scheffé tests) between
Turkey, Iran and Canada 257
12.1 Results of the principal components analysis (n=180) 281
12.2 Descriptive statistics (aggregated measures; n=180) 283
13.1 The incidence of workplace health activities, 1996 and 2006 303

vii

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Figures

2.1 All four countries – dimensions 1 X 2 27

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2.2 All four countries – dimensions 1 X 3 28
2.3 Age and gender differences in activity – Canada 29
2.4 Age and gender differences in activity – U.K. 29
2.5 Age and gender differences in activity – Australia 30
2.6 Age and gender differences in activity – France 30
3.1 A model of time use, income and energy consumption 34
3.2 Proportion of time spent in different locations in an
average day by Australians 36
3.3 Proportion of time spent with particular groups in
different locations in an average day by Australians 38
3.4 Household expenditure on electricity per annum
by gross household income level 50
3.5 Relationships between time use, income and
electricity expenditure – all households 55
3.6 Relationship between time use, income and
electricity expenditure – by household type 56–57
3.7 Relationship between time use, income and
expenditure on motor vehicle fuel – by household type 58–59
4.1 Median age of first marriage in the U.S. 1950–2006 87
6.1 Generic model of the influences and outcomes
of individuals’ work-life choices 122
6.2 Applied model: the influences and outcomes
of individuals’ work-life choices in Japan 125
8.1 Key influences on lifestyle change 191
8.2 The life trajectory of a lifestyle changer – common
themes and patterns 194

viii

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Preface

The chapters in this volume were presented at an international

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colloquium held in Melbourne in December 2008. Four years earlier
the same editorial team organised a similar event which resulted in the
publication of Work-Life Integration: International Perspectives on the
Balancing of Multiple Roles (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). We found the
experience of bringing the chapter authors together for discussion and
reflection prior to chapter finalisation to be both productive and mean-
ingful, and therefore wanted to utilise this approach again. However,
unlike the earlier publication, which was squarely focused on the issue
of work-life balance, what we became increasingly aware of in the inter-
vening period was the greater need to situate continuing work-life dis-
cussions within a broader context.
We have sought to do this by inviting contributors to write chapters
on a series of issues which help shape the contexts within which people
develop and experience the relationship between their paid work lives
and their lives outside work. These include chapters that explore values,
identity and community, ones that examine how people use their time,
and ones that consider the role that work organisations – their policies,
practices and physical design – play in individual well-being. Overall we
hope that this combination stimulates further interest in exploring the
broader contexts within which the relationship between work and non-
work lives are located.

Paul Blyton
Betsy Blunsdon
Ken Reed
Ali Dastmalchian
Cardiff, Melbourne and Victoria, May 2009

ix

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Contributors

Betsy Blunsdon is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Deakin University,

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Victoria, Australia and Co-director of Deakin’s Computer Assisted
Research Facility. Her main research interests include understanding
how significant others (family, friends, neighbours) influence lifestyle
decisions; issues around sustainability and lifestyle; understanding
social and workplace trust and institutional level confidence; and the
impact of organisational change on the individual experience of work,
family and community. Her publications include work on organisational
flexibility, work-family integration, and employee-management trust.

Paul Blyton is Professor of Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology


at Cardiff Business School, and a Research Associate in the ESRC Centre
for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society
(BRASS) at Cardiff University. His main research interests include work-
ers’ experience of working time schedules, and the relationship between
working time and non-work life. Recent and forthcoming publications
include The Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations (co-edited with
N. Bacon, J. Fiorito and E. Heery, 2008) and The Realities of Work (with
M. Noon, 4th Edition, 2010).

Tanya Castleman is Professor of Information Systems at Deakin


University, Australia and is Head of the Deakin Business School. Her
background in organisational sociology has underpinned her research
on diversity and gender management issues and incorporation of
technology, in particular eBusiness technologies, in the workplace. She
has conducted research projects for business organisations, unions and
government agencies.

Vivien Corwin is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and


Service Management at the University of Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada. Her main research interests include work-life balance, meaning
in work, and work and identity. Her research has been published in
Harvard Business Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and American
Behavioral Scientist.
Tim Craig is a Professor at Doshisha University’s Institute for Language
and Culture, Japan and guitarist and lead vocalist for the Zen Brothers
band. Until 2008 he was Associate Professor of International Business

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Contributors xi

and MBA Program Director at Canada’s University of Victoria. His


research, writing, and teaching cover a wide range of areas, including
management, Japan, popular culture, and language learning.

Guy Cucumel is Professor of Quantitative Methods and Accounting at


the École des sciences de la gestion of Université du Québec à Montréal
(ESG UQAM), Canada and a member of the Centre de recherche sur les

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innovations sociales (CRISES) of UQAM. He presently serves as Associate
Dean of Research at ESG UQAM. His main research interests include time
use data analysis and consensus in cluster analysis. Recent publications
include Selected Contributions in Data Analysis and Classification (co-edited
with P. Brito, P. Bertrand and F. De Carvalho, 2007 Springer, Berlin).

Kristene D’Agnone received an MSc in Management from the University


of Lethbridge. Her research interests have focussed on the integration of
health care services, health promotion and organisational change.

Ali Dastmalchian is Professor of Organizational Analysis and Dean,


Faculty of Business, University of Victoria, Canada. His recent research
interests include organisational change, organisational design in health
care, and healthy organisations. His work has appeared in journals such
as the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Industrial and Labor Relations
Review and Human Relations.

Angela Downey is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Faculty of


Business, University of Victoria, Canada. Her research interests are cen-
tred in the health environment with a special focus on measurement
and design of meaningful metrics for evaluation. Her latest research in
this area investigates the steps taken by successful firms to build a “well-
ness culture”. She has published extensively on the role of measurement
in health promotion and prevention as well as management’s motivation
to undertake worksite wellness programming.

Carmel Goulding is a PhD student at Deakin University, Australia.


Her main research interests include the role of values in lifestyle choice
and alternative lifestyle patterns. Previously she worked as a tourism
economist and project manager with organisations in industry and
government.

Pinar Imer is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant in the Department


of Management, Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research
interests include the relationships between individual attitudes and
both individual and interpersonal behaviours in work life as well as
their potential causes.

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
xii Contributors

Jean Jenkins is Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Cardiff


University. Her research interests centre on employment relations in
the manufacturing sector, particularly in the clothing industry, and
employees’ experiences in the increasingly internationalised market for
labour. Her recent publications include Key Concepts in Work (with Paul
Blyton), Sage 2007.

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Hayat Kabasakal is Professor of Organisation Studies at the Management
Department of Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey. Her research inter-
ests centre on organisational behavior, with a focus on leadership, cul-
ture, attitudes, and gender in organisations. She has published widely
in journals such as the Journal of Strategic Management, Journal of Applied
Psychology, Journal of World Business, and International Journal of Human
Resource Management. She is the co-editor of Human Side of Disasters
(Bogaziçi University Press).

Helen M. Kelley is an Associate Professor of Information Systems in the


Faculty of Management and Director of the Master of Science in
Management Program at the University of Lethbridge. Her research
focuses on the individual user of information, enterprise resource plan-
ning, and eHealth technologies, viewed from social cognitive and attri-
butional perspectives, within medical, governmental, and entrepreneurial
settings.

Rei Kurosawa is a Research Assistant for Cohos Evamy Integratedesign


and a student in Urban Studies with the Faculty of Social Sciences at the
University of Calgary, Canada.

Steven McEachern is a Lecturer in Management in the Graduate School


of Business at Curtin University of Technology. His research interests
include industrial relations, work-life balance and household time use
and decision-making.

Nicola McNeil is a Lecturer in Management at Latrobe University,


Australia. Her main research interests include the impact of institu-
tional forces on organisational practices. Her PhD thesis investigates the
development of organisational strategies in pluralistic contexts. Other
broad areas of research interests include organisation theory and the
integration of work with other facets of life.

Ken Reed is Associate Professor and the director of an academic survey


research centre at Deakin University. He is also currently Chair of the
Australian Consortium of Social and Political Research Inc (ACSPRI) a
consortium of universities and government agencies whose objective is

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Contributors xiii

to advance social science methodology in Australia. His main areas of


research are in organisational theory and the sociology of work. His
current research focuses on the issue of how people make choices about
lifestyle, and the roles that societal institutions and social networks
play in shaping those choices.

Rosslyn Reed is an Honorary Research Associate of the Faculty of Arts

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and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She
is a sociologist with a long-standing interest in researching work,
employment and organisations with particular reference to gender and
equal employment opportunities.

David Sharp is Associate Professor in the managerial accounting and


control group at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of
western Ontario. Apart from his interest in the role of workplace well-
ness programmes in reducing health care costs, his recent research
includes cross-cultural ethics in the accounting profession, published
(with Jeffrey Cohen and Laurie Pant) in Contemporary Accounting
Research, Journal of Business Ethics and other publications.

Claudia Steinke is the Research Lead for Cohos Evamy’s research initia-
tives in Calgary, Canada, with specialisation in Health Care. Her main
research and teaching interests are in the areas of organisational design,
organisational climate, service management, and health services
research. She has a degree in nursing from the University of British
Columbia, an MSc in management from the University of Lethbridge,
and a PhD in business and public administration from the University of
Victoria. Claudia specializes in applying a service industry perspective
to the design of health care services with emphasis on physical design
and service climate.

Rosemary A. Venne is an Associate Professor in the Department of


Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour at the Edwards School
of Business at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests
include demography as it relates to human resource issues, including
labour supply, aging of the labour force, and changing career patterns.
Research interests also include hours of work, and alternative work-time
arrangements, especially as these relate to an aging labour force.

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10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
1
Social Change and Ways of
Living: An Introduction

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Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed, Paul Blyton and Ali Dastmalchian

An important theme to emerge from our earlier collection, Work-Life


Integration (Blyton et al., 2006), was the importance of understanding
the experience and impact of work within a broader context than has
often been the case hitherto. We were also very aware of a key issue in
the work-life debate: the degree to which lifestyles, or ways of living,
reflect choices motivated by personal values and preferences rather than
economic, social, or cultural constraints. We aim to extend these themes
and issues in the present volume and more explicitly to consider the fac-
tors that influence individual lifestyles. We do this by exploring aspects
of lifestyle and identity before examining societal influences on ways
of living, the relevance of social networks and geographic communities
for lifestyle choices, and the significance of organisational policies and
practices (in conjunction with other institutional actors such as govern-
ment) for lifestyle outcomes.

Lifestyle, preferences and choice

Catherine Hakim’s argument, known as preference theory, has been


the focus of an ‘agency versus structure’ debate in recent research in
the work-life area. She argues that women’s participation in employ-
ment primarily reflects differences in preferences for involvement in
work, home, or a combination of the two, rather than the economic
and social constraints that women face (though she recognises that
economic and social structures still impose a degree of constraint
on employment choices, and that women’s choices are more con-
strained than men’s) (Hakim 2000, 2002). This contrasts with the
view of others, however (for example, Crompton and Harris, 1998a,
1998b; McRae, 2003; Probert, 2002, 2005; Probert and Murphy, 2001)

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
2 Blunsdon et al.

that choice remains highly constrained for some social groups, nota-
bly mothers of young children, whose options are limited by the
provision of jobs, access to transport and the provision of afford-
able childcare. McRae (2003) also suggests that women are subject
to normative constraints, in that social expectations of gender roles
are internalised to form part of women’s identities and, through the

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attitudes of those around them, are a persistent component of the
social environment. A study by Reed and Blunsdon (2006) reported
in our earlier volume, provides support for this. An analysis of survey
data from over 40,000 people in 34 countries showed that normative
constraints, as exemplified by the influence of religious affiliation
on gender identities, affects choice in two ways: shaping evaluations
of the desirability of certain courses of action (e.g. whether moth-
ers of pre-school children should work); and influencing assessments
of the feasibility of particular courses of action that depend on the
approval of those with the power to provide or restrict opportunities.
The debate over preference theory focuses on what roles choice and
constraint play in women’s employment patterns. However, we can
consider this question more broadly by asking: what roles do individ-
ual choice and structural constraints play in shaping lifestyle? What
factors shape lifestyle today? How free are we to choose? Have tradi-
tional structures and institutions shaping choices eroded? And if so,
what are replacing those structures?
At the individual level, lifestyles reflect, on the one hand, habits and
routines and on the other, choices. Sociological definitions of lifestyle
focus on the ‘patterns of unconstrained daily choice individuals make
in leisure, shopping, recreation and so on’ (Binkley 2007: 111). Time
use and consumption patterns are important aspects of ‘lifestyle’ and
reflect underlying sets of choices that people make. These choices are
an indication of what individuals value, what they deem desirable, and
the beliefs they have about the courses of action that are available.
There is a widespread presumption that more choice leads to increased
happiness because people best know what they want: increasing the
options available to people is seen to improve the chances they will
get what they want, and getting what one wants is more likely to make
one happy. These are the principles that underlie economic models of
individual choice-making where choice is seen as having high util-
ity. Choice also connotes freedom and so is considered to be moral.
As examples, this is a core principle in the abortion debate, and has
been central to the legitimising of diversity of sexual orientation (and

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
Social Change and Ways of Living 3

the rhetoric often associated with ‘lifestyle choice’ and the freedom to
choose). Choice is therefore valued because it encompasses both moral
and utilitarian values.
People, however, do seem to make ‘wrong’ lifestyle choices in that they
find themselves in situations that make them unhappy. Dysfunctionality
seems to be related to some choices (stress, drug abuse, and so on),

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of California-CDL - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-14


and so-called ‘lifestyle diseases’ (such as atherosclerosis, heart disease,
stroke, obesity and type 2 diabetes) are major issues for contemporary
medicine. These outcomes may be the result of error – miscalculation or
character flaws – on the part of those making choices and decisions, or
it may be the result of the social context, or the environment, in which
people find themselves and the habits that have been instilled in that
environment.
To understand how people live their lives – their ways of living – we
must understand both the values that motivate people, the beliefs that
frame the way they interpret their worlds, and the social and institu-
tional structures that constrain and provide opportunities for them
to act on those desires and beliefs. In considering these, three societal
changes that potentially shape modern lifestyles are particularly signif-
icant: changes in social structure; an increase in commodification and
marketisation; and greater rationalisation through scientific knowledge
and expertise. We will examine each of these briefly.

Structural change

Lifestyle construction is, on the one hand, an individual journey as


argued by Bauman (2001). On the other hand, individuals are not iso-
lated from others or their environments. As Jackson (2005: 20) observes:
‘Modern society celebrates choice and personal opportunity, and at the
same time we often find ourselves locked into rather predictable pat-
terns of living, work and consuming’. Therefore, lifestyles may result
as much from habits and routines as from choice. Structures in various
forms hold people to traditions, habits and routines. Yet recent history
is characterised by the re-structuring of a number of aspects of society.
Constraints and opportunities that frame both habits and choices are
embedded in social structure; and change in those societal structures
alters the opportunities and constraints that individuals face. Elder-Vass
(2008), drawing on Lopez and Scott (2000) identifies three dimensions
of social structure – embodied structure, relational structure, and
institutional structure.

10.1057/9780230273993 - Ways of Living, Edited by Paul Blyton, Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmalchian
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