Apologies for any cross-posting.
A new issue of Human Relations is available online: February 2018; 71(2). You might also like to take a look at recent issues: Jan 2018, Dec 2017, Nov 2017.
We hope you enjoy reading these articles.
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FEBRUARY ISSUE
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ARTICLES
Imagining 'non-nationality': Cosmopolitanism as a source of identity and belonging
Irene Skovgaard-Smith and Flemming Poulfelt
Human Relations 71(2): 129‒154. First Published September 19, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717714042
Abstract
Current literature tends to see cosmopolitan identity formation as an individual endeavour of developing a stance of openness, and transcending discourses of national and other cultural identities. This article challenges the essentialism inherent in this model by proposing a different framing of cosmopolitan identity formation that shifts the focus to how people collectively mobilize cosmopolitanism as a resource for cultural identity construction. The article is based on an anthropological study of transnational professionals who are part of a diverse expatriate community in Amsterdam. The analysis shows how these professionals draw on cosmopolitanism to define themselves as 'non-nationals'. This involves downplaying national affiliations and cultural differences while also marking national identity categories and 'cultural features' to maintain the difference they collectively embrace. This, however, does not imply openness to all otherness. Boundary drawing to demarcate the cosmopolitan 'us' in relation to national (mono)culture is equally important. The article argues that cosmopolitan identities are socially accomplished as particular modes of collective belonging that are part of – not beyond – a global discursive sphere of identity politics.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan identity formation, cultural identity and belonging, expatriate communities, global mobility, self-initiated expatriates, skilled migration, translocality, transnational professionals
When the past comes back to haunt you:
The enduring influence of upbringing on the work–family decisions of professional parents
Ioana Lupu, Crawford Spence and Laura Empson
Human Relations 71(2): 155 ‒181. First Published July 14, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717708247
Abstract
Prior research generally presents work–family decisions as an individual's rational choice between alternatives, downplaying the crucial role that upbringing plays in shaping work and parenting decisions. This article emphasizes how habitus – historically constituted and embodied dispositions – structures perceptions about what is 'right' and 'normal' for working mothers and fathers. This relational approach explores how the entrenched dispositions of individuals interact dynamically with contextual imperatives to influence professionals' work–family decisions. Drawing on 148 interviews with 78 male and female professionals, our study looks at much deeper rooted causes of work–family conflict in professional service firms than have hitherto been considered. We show how dispositions embodied during one's upbringing can largely transcend time and space. These dispositions hold a powerful sway over individuals and may continue to structure action even when professionals exhibit a desire to act differently. In turn, this implies that the impediments to greater equality lie not only in organizational and societal structures, but within individuals themselves in the form of dispositions and categories of perception that contribute towards the maintenance and reproduction of those structures. Additionally, in a more limited number of cases, we show how dispositions adapt as a result of either reflexive distancing or an encounter with objective circumstances, leading to discontinuity in the habitus.
Keywords: habitus, professional parents, professional service firms, socialization, upbringing, work–family decisions, working parents
Expanding role boundary management theory:
How volunteering highlights contextually shifting strategies and collapsing work–life role boundaries
Disraelly Cruz and Rebecca Meisenbach
Human Relations 71(2): 182‒205. First Published September 8, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717718917
Abstract
Despite interest in expanding work–family research to focus on work–life issues, few scholars have addressed non-family life enrichment roles and their potential additional forms of and issues for boundary management. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, this study investigates the management of under-researched work–life boundaries by focusing on how volunteers communicatively manage the volunteer role in light of work and home demands. The findings suggest new boundary management processes. Specifically, in addition to the established segmenting and integrating processes, the volunteers also articulated a process of collapsing boundaries. This latter new category is manifested in two forms, named simultaneous role enactment and role value fusion. Furthermore, findings highlight how rather than only enacting one stance, individuals described contextually dependent, shifting ways of managing multiple life roles. These findings have implications for how scholars study work–life management, how practitioners seek to recruit members, and how volunteers and organizational employees make membership decisions.
Keywords: multiple role engagement, role boundary management, volunteerism, work and family, work–life enrichment
Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors
Karen Lee Ashcraft and Sara Louise Muhr
Human Relations 71(2): 206‒228. First Published August 8, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717709080
Abstract
Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called 'promiscuous coding', conducive to disrupting the gender divisions that currently anchor most leadership metaphors. Promiscuous coding can assist leadership scholars by translating the vague promise of queering leadership into a tangible method distinguished by specific habits. The article formulates this analytical practice out of empirical provocations encountered by the authors: namely, a striking mismatch between their experiences in military fields and the dominant metaphor of leading as military command. Ultimately, the article seeks to move scholarly practices of leadership toward queer performativity, in the hopes of loosening other leadership practices from a binary grip and pointing toward new relational possibilities.
Keywords: gender, leadership, metaphor, military command, queer, sexuality
The role of co-workers in the production of (homo)sexuality at work:
A Foucauldian approach to the sexual identity processes of gay and lesbian employees
Koen Van Laer
Human Relations 71(2): 229‒255. First Published September 19, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717711236
Abstract
Adopting a Foucauldian perspective that focuses on the way power contributes to ensuring that sexuality leads a discursive existence, this study investigates the role of co-workers in the production of gay and lesbian employees' sexuality. Drawing on interviews with 31 employees who self-identify as gay or lesbian, this article makes three contributions to the literature on sexual minorities' identities at work. First, it shows how the production of sexuality is shaped by relations of attribution, evocation and circulation, which involve sexualizing practices through which co-workers directly contribute to ensuring that employees become sexually intelligible. By shaping the way sexual identities can be managed, these practices can turn the production of sexuality into a process that is not only unmanageable, but also even unmanaged by gay and lesbian employees themselves. Second, this article shows how an important element in sexual identity management is negotiating relations of truthfulness and inclusion, and constructing the occupied sexual subject position as positive or necessary. Third, it shows the connections between these different relations, which can occur and work together to ensure that all individuals come to be linked to a clear sexual identity.
Keywords: disclosure, diversity, gay and lesbian employees, identity, power, sexuality, sexual minorities
Analytics and expert collaboration:
How individuals navigate relationships when working with organizational data
Joshua B Barbour, Jeffrey W Treem, and Brad Kolar
Human Relations 71(2): 256‒284. First Published August 18, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717711237
Abstract
Analytics is heralded as an important, new and increasingly widespread organizational function, and one that promises new approaches for generating value from organizational knowledge. What is not yet clear is how analytics may affect how organizations work with data, or how organizations can realize the benefits of analytics. Analytics, envisioned as not just a technical skill but a reconceptualization of data's place in the organization, may improve, challenge or undermine existing processes and procedures. Building upon scholarship on expert collaboration and multidisciplinary knowledge work, this study reports a mixed-methods investigation of the implementation of analytics at a Fortune 500 financial services company. The findings make multiple contributions, including (a) confirming the importance of relationships among organizational experts in analytics work; (b) exploring specific communicative strategies employed by practitioners in those relationships; (c) demonstrating that the functioning of those relationships may differ depending on the type of analytics work (i.e. the degree to which it involves requesting, collaborating or commissioning); and (d) indicating that analytics practitioners need autonomy, as well as technical acumen, to question entrenched ideas about organizational data and problems. The findings contribute to practice by identifying problems that may be common in implementing analytics and strategies employed to address them.
Keywords: analytics, data, expert collaboration, expert relationships, knowledge work
Gender segregation, underemployment and subjective well-being in the UK labour market
Daiga Kamerāde and Helen Richardson
Human Relations 71(2): 285‒309. First Published September 8, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717713829
Abstract
This article argues that gender segregation influences patterns of underemployment and the relationships that underemployment has with the subjective well-being of men and women. Previous studies have paid little attention to how gender segregation shapes underemployment, an increasingly prominent feature of the UK and European labour markets since the economic crisis of 2008. Using data from the UK Annual Population Surveys, this article examines time-related underemployment: people working part time because they cannot find a full-time job. The article asks whether there are gender differences in underemployment trends and in the links between underemployment and subjective well-being. The results suggest that the probability of underemployment is growing at a faster rate among women rather than men and that underemployment is most common in the jobs that women are more likely to perform, namely in female-dominated occupations, the public sector and small organizations. Underemployment is least common in male-dominated occupations and industries and in the private sector. Moreover, for employees with longer tenures, underemployment has more negative relationships with the subjective well-being of women than with that of men. These findings imply that gender segregation in labour markets is a crucial factor to consider when researching underemployment and its consequences.
Keywords: anxiety, gender segregation, happiness, involuntary part-time work, life satisfaction, part-time work, recession, subjective well-being, underemployment
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FREE ACCESS FEATURED ARTICLE FOR JANUARY
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Winner of the Human Relations Paper of the Year Award 2017.
This highly readable paper challenges common belief and practice to deliver surprising and socially important findings. The authors translate complex arguments very clearly to show how a market-based approach (microfinance) to poverty reduction can have a negative effect on the poor and in fact exacerbate those people's vulnerabilities.
Microfinance and the business of poverty reduction: Critical perspectives from rural Bangladesh
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee and Laurel Jackson
Human Relations 70(1): 63‒91. First Published May 12, 2016
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716640865
Abstract
In this article we provide a critical analysis of the role of market-based approaches to poverty reduction in developing countries. In particular, we analyse the role of microfinance in poverty alleviation by conducting an ethnographic study of three villages in Bangladesh. Microfinance has become an increasingly popular approach that aims to alleviate poverty by providing the poor new opportunities for entrepreneurship. It also aims to promote empowerment (especially among women) while enhancing social capital in poor communities. Our findings, however, reflect a different picture. We found microfinance led to increasing levels of indebtedness among already impoverished communities and exacerbated economic, social and environmental vulnerabilities. Our findings contribute to the emerging literature on the role of social capital in developing entrepreneurial capabilities in poor communities by highlighting processes whereby social capital can be undermined by market-based measures like microfinance.
Keywords: microfinance, NGOs, non-governmental organizations, poverty reduction, social capital, vulnerability
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CALL FOR PAPERS
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Special issue: Collective dimensions of leadership: The challenges of connecting theory and method – submit by 15 June 2018
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/LeadershipCollectiveDimensions.html
Special issue: Organizational change failure: Framing the process of failing – submit by 01 December 2018
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/ChangeFailure.html
NEW! Special issue: Careers in cities – submit by 31 January 2019
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/CareersInCities.html
Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays:
- Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria.
- Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal's scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief.
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VIRTUAL SPECIAL ISSUES
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Coming soon: Identity in organizations
- Job crafting
- Knowledge and knowing in the study of organization: From commodity to communication
- Women, men, and work: Gender identity and gender differences in the workplace
- Diversity research: Theorizing the new frontier in sexual orientation diversity
- Change management
- Critical performativity
Editor's Choice Collections:
- Paper of the Year Award winners
- Classic papers from Human Relations
- Papers that have influenced Paul Edwards, former EIC
Celebrating 70 years: Reflections on the history of HR from Paul Edwards, former EIC:
- Human Relations: The first 10 years, 1947–1956
- Human Relations: 1957–1966
- Human Relations: 1967–1986
- Human Relations: 1987–1996 and beyond
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RECENT ONLINE FIRST PREVIEW ARTICLES
Access all OnlineFirst articles here: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
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Creative work and affect: Social, political and fantasmatic dynamics in the labour of musicians
Casper Hoedemaekers
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717741355 | First Published December 7, 2017
Abstract
How can we understand contradictory identifications within work to which one is passionately attached? This article explores how seemingly competing accounts of the self at work can not only appear side by side within the self-presentation of creative workers, but also how dominant patterns within the daily socio-economic realities of creative work are reproduced through faux-contestations of them. Following Glynos and Howarth, I will argue that such transgressive notions often recall earlier historical arrangements that have been displaced by current dominant social grammars, or were vital components of the institution of current social hegemony. In a study of musicians, I analyse how alongside dominant logics of employability and virtuosity, traditional notions of artists' craft and autonomy drive counter-identifications that allow dominant social logics to fill the gaps in the indeterminacy and ambiguity of everyday lived experience. By applying an understanding of discursive logics to creative work, this article seeks to contribute to literatures spanning work in the cultural industries, identification, affect and transgression at work, and commons and immaterial labour.
Keywords: affect, creative work, enterprising selves, freelance work, precarity
Performing accountability in health research: A socio-spatial framework
Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Mark Thompson, Marianna Fotaki
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717740410 | First Published December 4, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717740410
Abstract
The article explores how spaces aimed at improving accountability in health systems are socially produced. It addresses the implications of an initiative to promote patient involvement in government-funded research in the context of a large cancer research network in England. We employ a socio-spatial theoretical framework inspired by insights from Henri Lefebvre and Judith Butler to examine how professional researchers, doctors and patients understand and perform accountability in an empirical context. Our data reveal fundamental tensions between formally required and routinely enacted dimensions of accountability as these are experienced by patients. Consequently, our analysis argues for a need to challenge abstract, professionalized discourse about accountability in health services by acknowledging embodied spaces of representation, in which patients themselves can contribute to making participatory accountability a reality. We suggest that such a shift will provide a more rounded appraisal of patient experiences within health research, and health systems more widely.
Keywords: accountability spaces, citizen participation, ethnography, health research, patient experience, performativity
Crossing team boundaries:
A theoretical model of team boundary permeability and a discussion of why it matters
Rebekah Dibble, Cristina B Gibson
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717735372 | First Published November 28, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726717735372
Abstract
Given the context in which teams work today, many teams are necessarily dynamic and permeable; that is, workers must be able to move quickly and easily in and out of teams, across team boundaries. We develop a model of team boundary permeability that incorporates the features of the team that give rise to boundary permeability, the outcomes experienced by teams with permeable boundaries, and moderators that serve to enhance the benefits and mitigate the liabilities of boundary permeability. In doing so, we extend theory on the fluid nature of teams. We conclude with implications for theory, directions for future research and implications for practice.
Keywords: boundary permeability, team boundaries, team effectiveness, team membership, teams
Servant leadership as a driver of employee service performance:
Test of a trickle-down model and its boundary conditions
Zhen Wang, Haoying Xu and Yukun Liu
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717738320, first published November 28, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717738320
Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated the role of servant leadership, a leadership style emphasizing serving others, in promoting frontline employees' service performance. It is unclear, however, how servant leadership by leaders at different organizational levels would exert such an influence. Integrating insights from both social learning theory and the trickle-down paradigm of leadership, we develop a cross-level model in which we argue that servant leadership by high-level managers could cascade downward through the organizational hierarchy to influence frontline employees' service performance and that this trickle-down effect is contingent on the extent to which subordinates identify their leaders as embodying the organization. Using a matched sample of 92 supervisors and 568 frontline employees across 92 sub-branches of a large banking company, we found that servant leadership by high-level managers could indeed promote employees' in-role and extra-role service performance through its effect on low-level supervisors' servant leadership. We also found that this trickle-down effect was stronger when high-level managers and low-level supervisors were perceived by their subordinates as more fully embodying the organization. Implications, limitations and future directions are discussed.
Keywords: organizational embodiment, servant leadership, service performance, social learning theory, trickle-down effect
Crossing team boundaries: A theoretical model of team boundary permeability and a discussion of why it matters
Rebekah Dibble and Cristina B Gibson
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717735372, first published November 28, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717735372
Abstract
Given the context in which teams work today, many teams are necessarily dynamic and permeable; that is, workers must be able to move quickly and easily in and out of teams, across team boundaries. We develop a model of team boundary permeability that incorporates the features of the team that give rise to boundary permeability, the outcomes experienced by teams with permeable boundaries, and moderators that serve to enhance the benefits and mitigate the liabilities of boundary permeability. In doing so, we extend theory on the fluid nature of teams. We conclude with implications for theory, directions for future research and implications for practice.
Keywords: boundary permeability, team boundaries, team effectiveness, team membership, teams
Employee commitment before and after an economic crisis:
A stringent test of profile similarity
John P Meyer, Alexandre JS Morin, S Arzu Wasti
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717739097, first published November 27, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717739097
Abstract
Researchers have recently begun to take a person-centered (profile) approach to investigate how the affective, normative and continuance commitment mindsets combine within the three-component model of organizational commitment. The meaningfulness of the profiles identified in this research depends, in part, on evidence that similar profiles emerge across samples, particularly those drawn from a common population. We conducted a particularly stringent test of similarity by comparing profiles for samples of employees drawn from a large Turkish conglomerate prior to (N = 346) and following (N = 797) a major economic crisis. Using procedures recently introduced by Morin et al., (2016) we found similarity in the number (seven) and structure of the profiles before and after the crisis; only the distribution of individuals across profiles (i.e. the relative size of the profiles) differed. We also found similarity in the patterns of relations with theoretical antecedent, correlate, and outcome variables, suggesting that a common set of principles might be operating regardless of major differences in the work environment. In addition to providing strong evidence for the meaningfulness of commitment profiles, this study is one of the first to investigate the impact of an economic crisis on employee commitment.
Keywords: economic crisis, latent profile analysis, profile similarity, three-component model of commitment, Turkey
Unemployment as a liminoid phenomenon: Identity trajectories in times of crisis
Maria Daskalaki and Maria Simosi
Human Relations 10.1177/0018726717737824. First Published November 23, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717737824
Abstract
This article explores the formation of work identities in times of financial crisis and extreme austerity. In particular, we build upon prior studies of liminality, a state of in-betweenness and ambiguity, and explore how individuals, whose employment opportunities and career paths have been disrupted, construct their work/professional identities. The study draws on 39 semi-structured interviews conducted in Greece, where high levels of unemployment and economic stagnation prevail. Persistent crisis and austerity have prompted extended periods of instability and unpredictability during which the unemployed narratively (re)construct their past, present and future work selves. We propose that frequent job changes and persistent lack of work are not linear experiences but, instead, require multiple and, at times, ambiguous, fluid and incomplete identifications. These identifications include attempts to re-affirm prior stable professional identities, to institute new, yet still unidentified, careers or to enact what we term 'liminoid identity positions'. When in liminoid positions, instead of pursuing intangible work futures, the unemployed create anti-structural spaces in which they collectively practice alternative forms of work and organization. Concluding, the article provides grounds for the study of individuals' capacity to challenge the neoliberal restructuring of work and the possibilities for transformation in periods of unemployment and crisis.
Keywords: alternatives, anti-structural, communitas, Financial Crisis, identity, liminality, unemployment
Keeping up with the Joneses: Industry rivalry, commitment to frames and sensemaking failures
Federica Pazzaglia, Maeve Farrell, Karan Sonpar and Pablo Martin de Holan
Human Relations, first Published November 10, 2017
0018726717719993
Abstract
Drawing on a qualitative study of the banking crisis in Ireland, we examine how a cognitive frame of environmental conditions that is shared among industry rivals constrains their ability to act on the cues of slowly incubating threats. We find that shared frames are reinforced through social comparisons that prompt imitation and through their enactment that prompts a reconfiguration of internal control structures and power relationships. The reinforcement of a shared frame dulls the emerging cues of changing market conditions and weakens perception of the risks of staying the course. A core contribution of this study is to highlight the cognitive and political processes by which a shared frame solidifies within an industry, trapping organizations in their enacted environment and resulting in their collective failure.
Keywords: cognitive frames, crisis, cues, framing, politics, risk, rivalry, sensemaking
The competing influences of national identity on the negotiation of ideal worker expectations: Insights from the Sri Lankan knowledge work industry
Charlotte Croft and Weerahannadige Dulini Anuvinda Fernando
Human Relations, first Published November 10, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717733530
Abstract
How does national identity influence the way individuals respond to the demands of their work? Despite an increasing awareness of the complex interplay between intersecting social identities and work demands, our understanding of how they are influenced by national identity is underdeveloped. This article presents the accounts of employees from two Sri Lankan knowledge work industries, who were attempting to align work demands associated with ideal worker expectations, with the social demands associated with their national identity. Conceptualizing the empirical setting of Sri Lanka as a collectivist national context, we offer two theoretical contributions. First, by showing how a shared national identity significantly influences divergence from, and conformity to, ideal worker expectations in Sri Lankan organizations, we generalize understandings of individuals' negotiation of ideal worker expectations. In doing so, we build on and extend the prevailing 'individualistic' assumptions in collectivistic settings. Second, we show how ideal worker expectations enabled individuals to fulfill and refine demands associated with their non-western national identity, contesting assumptions that non-western national identities are challenging or constraining in global organizations. These findings lead us to propose a reciprocal influence between ideal worker expectations in global organizations, and expectations associated with national identities.
Keywords: ideal workers, international HRM, national identity, Sri Lanka, work demands
Disentangling passion and engagement: An examination of how and when passionate employees become engaged ones
Violet T Ho and Marina N Astakhova
Human Relations, first Published November 10, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717731505
Abstract
While anecdotal industry evidence indicates that passionate workers are engaged workers, research has yet to understand how and when job passion and engagement are related. To answer the how question, we draw from person-environment fit theory to test, and find support for, the mediating roles of perceived demands–abilities (D–A) fit and person–organization (P–O) fit in the relationships between passion and job engagement, and between passion and organizational engagement, respectively. Also, because the obsessive form of passion is contingency-driven, we answer the when question by adopting a target-similarity approach to test the contingent role of multi-foci trust in the obsessive passion-to-engagement relationships. We found that when obsessively passionate workers trust their organization, they report greater levels of organizational engagement (because of increased P–O fit). In contrast, when these workers trust both their co-workers and supervisor simultaneously, they report greater levels of job engagement (because of increased D–A fit).
Keywords: engagement, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, person–environment fit, POF, trust
Drawing on the discursive resources from psychological contracts to construct imaginary selves: A psychoanalytic perspective on how identity work drives psychological contracts
Michaela Driver
Human Relations First Published November 10, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717733312
Abstract
The study contributes novel theoretical perspectives for a more comprehensive and processual understanding of psychological contracts in the context of identity work. It builds on a psychoanalytic, specifically Lacanian, perspective to analyze 106 psychological contract narratives by employees of a wide range of organizations. Based on this analysis, the study suggests that psychological contracts can be understood as providing discursive resources on which narrators draw in complex and non-linear fashion to construct imaginary selves. Their inevitable unsettlement prompts both imaginary and symbolic responses that seem independent of the viability and type of psychological contract narrated. This suggests that identity work drives psychological contracts in surprising ways and empowers individuals as contract and identity-makers. Implications for psychological contract research are discussed.
Keywords: discourse, identity, Lacan, narratives, psychoanalysis, psychological contract
Censored: Whistleblowers and impossible speech
Kate Kenny
Human Relations, first Published November 10, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717733311
Abstract
What happens to a person who speaks out about corruption in their organization, and finds themselves excluded from their profession? In this article, I argue that whistleblowers experience exclusions because they have engaged in 'impossible speech', that is, a speech act considered to be unacceptable or illegitimate. Drawing on Butler's theories of recognition and censorship, I show how norms of acceptable speech working through recruitment practices, alongside the actions of colleagues, can regulate subject positions and ultimately 'un-do' whistleblowers. In turn, they construct boundaries against 'unethical' others who have not spoken out. Based on in-depth empirical research on financial sector whistleblowers, the article departs from existing literature that depicts the excluded whistleblower as a passive victim – a hollow stereotype. It contributes to organization studies in a number of ways. To debates on Butler's recognition-based critique of subjectivity in organizations, it yields a performative ontology of excluded whistleblower subjects, in which they are both 'derealized' by powerful norms, and compelled into ongoing and ambivalent negotiations with self and other. These insights contribute to a theory of subjective derealization in instances of 'impossible speech', which provides a more nuanced conception of excluded organizational subjects, including blacklisted whistleblowers, than previously available.
Keywords: Butler, censorship, financial sector, speech, subjectivity, whistleblowing
Women on corporate boards: Do they advance corporate social responsibility?
Alison Cook and Christy Glass
Human Relations, first Published November 10, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717729207
Abstract
Do women board directors change how companies do business? Firms face growing pressure to appoint more women to their boards of directors, yet little is known about the factors that enable female directors to impact their organizations. This study analyzes the representational thresholds that facilitate women's leadership in the area of corporate social responsibility. We test the predictions of token theory and critical mass theory to evaluate the ability of women to impact firm outcomes based on their numerical representation on the board of directors. Our analysis focuses on board composition and organizational outcomes in the Fortune 500 from 2001 to 2010. Our findings challenge the theoretical assumptions that solo and token women are unable to exert significant influence over their organizations, and underscore the importance of board diversity for today's firms.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility (CSR), gender in organizations, leadership, organizational diversity, women on corporate boards
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
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Human Relations is included in the FT50 list of journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the FT Research rank, included in the Global MBA, EMBA and Online MBA rankings.
It is an A* journal – the highest category of quality – in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABCD) Journal Quality List 2013.
It is also ranked 4 in the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide 2015.
Human Relations is a top 5 interdisciplinary social sciences journal (Source: 2016 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2017):
2-year impact factor: 2.622 Ranked: 4/96 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 58/193 in Management
5-year impact factor: 4.027 Ranked: 2/93 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 50/186 in Management
Read the journal's mission statement.
Best wishes,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
Human Relations is one of 50 Journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the FT Research rank, included in the Global MBA, EMBA and Online MBA rankings.
2-year impact factor: 2.622 Ranked: 4/96 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 58/193 in Management
5-year impact factor: 4.027 Ranked: 2/93 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 50/186 in Management
Source: 2016 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2017)