Apologies for any cross-posting.
A new issue of Human Relations is available online: May 2018; 71(5). You might also like to take a look at recent issues: April 2018, March 2018 and Feb 2018.
We also have lots of preview articles listed below, many of which look at Gender & Diversity in Organizations.
We hope you enjoy reading these articles.
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FEATURED ARTICLE & VIDEO FOR MAY ‒ FREE ACCESS
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Scaling up to institutional entrepreneurship:
A life history of an elite training gymnastics organization
Ryan S Bisel, Michael W Kramer and John A Banas
Human Relations 70(4): 410 ‒435 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716658964
Institutional resistance leadership video ‒ https://youtu.be/-E0OVbsrugk
Abstract
This organizational life history documents how the founder of an elite gymnastics training organization led her organizational members to resist what she deemed to be unethical institutional influences prior to working toward changing those institutional practices. The study contributes the idea that institutional resistance leadership at the team and organizational levels can precede disruptive institutional entrepreneurship activities at the institutional level. The diachronic analysis describes the micro, local, historical, intra-organizational work that serves as a proving ground for generating resistance before proceeding to institutional level work; in doing so, the article explores how leadership activities can be 'scaled up' to affect institutions through the intermediary of an organization. Identity violations triggered a founder's sensemaking and moved her to lead others to resist institutional forces on her own organization's training practices. The founder used the rhetorical strategy of narrative to create sensebreaking to help members make sense of the dominant institutional influence, articulate an alternative philosophy, translate the alternative into practices, and acquire material resources for undertaking resistance at the local organizational level. Finally, in attempting to scale up to institutional entrepreneurship, the institutional resistance leadership then struggled with defining success for the organization in the view of dominant institutional actors.
Keywords: institutional disruption, resistance leadership, sensebreaking, sociomateriality
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MAY 2018 ISSUE
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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 71(5): 617‒639. 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
History, gendered space and organizational identity:
An archival study of a university building
Yihan Liu and Christopher Grey
Human Relations 71(5): 640‒667 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717733032
Abstract
How do buildings contribute to an organization's sense of what it is? In this article, we present the findings of a major archival study of an iconic university building to answer this question. Founded in the 19th century as a college for women, the building is analysed as a gendered space that embodies meanings that are selectively deployed and adapted by the present-day, now co-educational, university. By bringing together concepts of space and history so as to examine 'space in history' we show how over long periods of time what buildings 'say' about an organization change so that the past is both a legacy and a resource for shifting organizational identity.
Keywords: archive methods, Founder's Building, gender, history, Lefebvre, organizational identity, Royal Holloway, space
Talking into (non)existence:
Denying or constituting paradoxes of Corporate Social Responsibility
Jochen Hoffmann
Human Relations 71(5): 668–691 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717721306
Abstract
Organizations can be understood as sites of persistent tensions between equally legitimate claims. In other words, organizations may be paradoxical. However, paradoxes do not pre-exist as a matter of fact. This article investigates how dominant academic discourses either constitute or deny potential paradoxes of Corporate Social Responsibility. It follows the theoretical perspective of CCO – Communication Constitutes Organizations and, more specifically, a ventriloqual approach. Academics are like ventriloquists, they breath life into dummies who establish theoretical figures that may or may not support paradoxical thinking in organizational research. The qualitative meta-analysis shows that potential Corporate Social Responsibility paradoxes are primarily talked into nonexistence. Managerial ventriloquists reject Corporate Social Responsibility tensions in the interests of organizational consistency and harmony. Critical ventriloquists accept tensions, but assume their causes lie in gaps between rhetoric and practice. The preferred figure is not a paradoxical one, but that of organizational hypocrisy. Overall, non-paradoxical approaches dominate; they, in turn, ventriloquize their creators, thereby limiting the scope of future research. A communicative perspective is instead open to the constitution of Corporate Social Responsibility paradoxes. It enables practitioners to engage in a proactive management of organizational tensions and encourages scholars to reflect on the constituted nature of academic discourses.
Keywords: Communication Constitutes Organizations, Corporate Social Responsibility, critical research, managerialism, paradox, ventriloquism
Configuring shared and hierarchical leadership through authoring
Flemming Holm and Gail T Fairhurst
Human Relations 71(5): 692‒721 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717720803
Abstract
How does organizing proceed when leadership is both shared and hierarchical? Who sets the context, how and when do people share influence, and who produces authoritative texts for going forward? Using the lens of authoring claims and grants (Taylor and Van Every, 2014), we display the complex relationship between shared and hierarchical leadership in meeting interactions in a Danish municipality attempting to implement shared leadership. Our findings suggest that issues of time and timing are fundamental to understanding their interrelationship. We highlight discursive devices such as 'bookending,' including the creation of authoritative texts, which render the shared and hierarchical leadership configuration an ambiguous space that requires interrogating the nature of leadership attributions. Finally, we demonstrate the relevance of leadership as a concept for both hierarchical and shared decision-making situations.
Keywords: authoring, authoritative texts, authority, ethnography, hierarchical leadership, shared leadership
Identity, mental health and work: How employees with mental health conditions recount stigma and the pejorative discourse of mental illness
Hadar Elraz
Human Relations 71(5): 722‒741 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726717716752
Abstract
This article asks how identity is constructed for individuals with mental health conditions (MHCs) in the workplace. It takes especial regard to how MHCs are discursively situated, constructed and reconstructed in the workplace. Employees with MHCs face a difficult situation: not only do they need to deal with the stigma and discrimination commonly associated with MHCs, but they must also manage their health condition whilst adhering to organizational demands to demonstrate performance and commitment to work. Discourse analysis derived from 32 interviews with individuals with MHCs delineates how these individuals feel both stigmatized and empowered by their MHCs. The findings address three discursive strands: (i) a pejorative construction of mental illness in employment and society; (ii) contesting mental illness at work by embracing mental health management skills; and (iii) recounting mental illness through public disclosure and change. This article enhances understanding of how the construction of positive identity in the face of negative attributions associated with MHCs contributes to literature on identity, organizations and stigma as well as raising implications for policy and practice.
Keywords: disability, discourse, employment, mental illness, mental health, MHC
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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
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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Editor's Choice Collections:
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Celebrating over 70 years: Reflections on the history of HR from Paul Edwards, FBA:
- 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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How professionalization and organizational diversity shape contemporary careers: Developing a typology and process model
Young-Chul Jeong and Huseyin Leblebici
Human Relations First Published April 29, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718761552
Abstract
How are contemporary careers constructed?' The aim of the article is to answer this question by developing a conceptual model of how professional and organizational environments shape careers in today's knowledge-based economy. Focusing on the interplay of two macro-level forces, professionalization and the diversity of organizations, we develop a typology of four distinct career models and incorporate them into a dynamic evolutionary process of careers. The implications for developing a more integrated and dynamic approach on contemporary careers are discussed.
Keywords: careers, career variation, diversity of organizations, professionalization, situational mechanisms
Leadership in an interorganizational collaboration:
A qualitative study of a statewide interagency taskforce
Michael W Kramer, Eric Anthony Day, Christopher Nguyen, Carrisa S Hoelscher and Olivia D Cooper
Human Relations First Published April 29, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718763886
Abstract
The increased reliance on interorganizational collaborations (ICs) has created new challenges for leaders. They must attempt to apply leadership theories and behaviors developed primarily for leading within one organization or group to leading collaborations of multiple organizations and stakeholders. To provide insight into this issue, this study examines leadership behavior in an IC developing a strategic plan to promote changes to address public health and safety concerns related to substance abuse. Combining observations and interviews, we followed a statewide interagency taskforce in a southwestern state of the United States from its inception through completion of its strategic plan within a 10-month deadline. Findings show different leadership behaviors were integrated and evolved over time to strike a balance between decision-making effectiveness and efficiency. In particular, the findings support recent research on examining leadership behavior holistically to develop a 'fuller full-range' leadership perspective (Antonakis and House, 2014), especially in terms of how collectivistic and instrumental leadership should complement transformational leadership, and by demonstrating that the combinations of leadership change over time and occur at multiple levels. These findings provide guidance for future practice and research on ICs promoting change.
Keywords: collectivistic leadership, fuller full-range leadership, instrumental leadership, interorganizational collaboration
Temporality and gendered agency: Menopausal subjectivities in women's work
Gavin Jack, Kathleen Riach and Emily Bariola
Human Relations First Published April 29, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718767739
Abstract
This article advances feminist organizational theorizing about embodiment and subjectivity by investigating menopause at work as a temporally constituted phenomenon. We ask how time matters in women's embodied and subjective experiences of menopause at work. Theoretically, we draw on feminist writers McNay and Grosz to explore the relationship between gendered agency and time in a corpus of 48 qualitative interviews conducted with women employed at two Australian universities about their experiences of menopause. Our empirical analysis identifies three temporal modalities – episodic, helical and relational – that show how gendered organizational subjectivities are not simply temporally situated, but created in and through distinct temporal forces. We offer two contributions to feminist organizational theory: first, by illuminating the ontological role played by time in gendered agency; and second, by fleshing out the notion of a 'body politics of surprise' with implications for feminist studies of organizational embodiment, politics and ethics.
Keywords: ageing, agency, body, embodiment, older worker, time
Practice makes perfect? Skillful performances in veterinary work
Caroline A Clarke and David Knights
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717745605 | First Published April 24, 2018
Abstract
Is vetting a craft that must be learned owing to the limitations of scientific discipline, or simply a question of practice makes perfect? This question arose from our empirical research on veterinary surgeons (vets), who we found were often struggling with the divergence between the precise and unambiguous knowledge underlying the training and the unpredictability and imprecision of their everyday practices. These are comparatively underexplored issues insofar as the literature on vets tends to be descriptive and statistical, focusing primarily on clinical matters and associated human-animal interactions. Our cliché title has a question mark because while many vets remain embedded in the disciplined 'certainties' and causal regularities within their training, in practice this ordered world is rarely realized, and they are faced with indeterminacy where the 'perfect' solution eludes them. Vets often turn these unrealistic ideals of expertise back in on themselves, thus generating doubt and insecurity for any failure in their practices. In analysing vets' experiences, we pay attention to the anatomical models of science, where linear causal analysis is expected to provide orderly and predictable outcomes or 'right' answers to problems, as well as notions of expertise that turn out to be illusory.
Keywords: competence, doubt practice, expert, medical, perfect, performances, science, skill, vets
Loyal after the end: Understanding organizational identification in the wake of failure
Ian J Walsh, Federica Pazzaglia and Erim Ergene
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718767740| First Published April 24, 2018
Abstract
Prestige has traditionally been viewed as a primary explanation for individuals' identification with organizations. Yet there are clues in the literature that some individuals identify with organizations that have lost their prestige owing to failure. We use data from a survey of former employees of a defunct technology firm to test a proposed model of identification with failed organizations. We find that the extent to which the perceived identity of a failed organization fulfills former members' self-enhancement and belongingness motives has a positive relationship with their identification with it. Identification, in turn, inclines former members to socially interact with each other and participate in alumni associations. Further qualitative analysis reveals the organizational identity work practices by which former members recast a failed organization's identity in positive terms. These findings suggest the merit of relaxing assumptions about prestige as a necessary precursor to organizational identification, and augment scholarly understanding of the cognitive and relational mechanisms that facilitate individuals' identification with organizations in the wake of events that injure their reputations.
Keywords: former members, identity motives, identity work, organizational failure, prestige, stigma
Dynamisms of financialization: Circuits of power in globalized production networks
Isabel Pedraza-Acosta and Jan Mouritsen
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751612| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
This article analyses the dominant ideological mode of rationality of financialization, its operationalization via accounting devices and deployments in political intra- and inter-organizational processes, and its dynamisms in global production networks. It asks how are political processes informed and conditioned by calculative devices that mediate financialization processes? Drawing on a study of a French multinational corporation whose accounting devices – one concerning performance that requires suppliers to be 'poor' and another concerning risk that requires suppliers to be 'rich' – the article focuses on the dynamic of circuits of power. Accounting devices provide one-sided incentives by categorizing suppliers as costs, silencing the industrial rationality of the network where suppliers are the capabilities and skills needed by the multinational corporation. Such tensions put the network at risk, as when the suppliers went bankrupt, the multinational corporation was devoid of its industrial competencies. Financialization is ambiguous. Its devices are not inherently facilitative of systemic powers but reflect an ideological mode of rationality and political processes that produce overflows. The associated circuits of power show that systemic power is never eternal but dynamic. Circuits of power develop ambiguous political processes that push disruptive dynamisms of financialization processes in global production networks. Financialization produces costly tensions.
Keywords: accounting, calculative devices, dominant ideological modes of rationality, financialization, global production network, multinational corporations, MNC, political processes, risk
Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics
Melissa Tyler
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764264| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
This article considers inclusion through the lens of embodied ethics. It does so by connecting feminist writing on recognition, ethics and embodiment to recent examples of political activism as instances of recognition-based organizing. In making these connections, the article draws on insights from Judith Butler's recent writing on the ethics and politics of assembly in order to rethink how inclusion might be understood and practised. The article has three interrelated aims: (i) to emphasize the importance of a critical reconsideration of the ethics and politics of inclusion given – on the one hand, its positioning as an organizational 'good', and on the other, the conditions attached to it; (ii) to develop a critique of inclusion, drawing on insights from recent feminist thinking on relational ethics; and (iii) to connect this theoretical critique of inclusion, reconsidered here through the lens of embodied ethics, to assembly as a form of feminist activism. Each of these aims underpins the theoretical and empirical discussion developed in the article, specifically its focus on the relationship between embodied ethics, the interplay between theory and practice, and a politics of assembly as the basis for a critical reconsideration of inclusion.
Keywords: assembly, Judith Butler, embodied ethics, inclusion, recognition, relationality
Mothers and researchers in the making: Negotiating 'new' motherhood within the 'new' academia
Astrid S Huopalainen and Suvi T Satama
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764571| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
How do early-career academic mothers balance the demands of contemporary motherhood and academia? More generally, how do working mothers develop their embodied selves in today's highly competitive working life? This article responds to a recent call to voice maternal experiences in the field of organization studies. Inspired by matricentric feminism and building on our intimate autoethnographic diary notes, we provide a fine-grained understanding of the changing demands that constitute the ongoing negotiation of 'new' motherhood within the 'new' academia. By highlighting the complexity of embodied experience, we show how motherhood is not an entirely negative experience in the workplace. Despite academia's neoliberal tendencies, the social privilege of whiteness, heterosexuality and the middle class enables – at times – simultaneous satisfaction with both motherhood and an academic career.
Keywords: autoethnography, early-career academics, embodied experience, matricentric feminism, motherhood
Measuring affective well-being at work using short-form scales:
Implications for affective structures and participant instructions
Emma Russell and Kevin Daniels
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751034| First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
Measuring affective well-being in organizational studies has become increasingly widespread, given its association with key work-performance and other markers of organizational functioning. As such, researchers and policy-makers need to be confident that well-being measures are valid, reliable and robust. To reduce the burden on participants in applied settings, short-form measures of affective well-being are proving popular. However, these scales are seldom validated as standalone, comprehensive measures in their own right. In this article, we used a short-form measure of affective well-being with 10 items: the Daniels five-factor measure of affective well-being (D-FAW). In Study 1, across six applied sample groups (N = 2624), we found that the factor structure of the short-form D-FAW is robust when issued as a standalone measure, and that it should be scored differently depending on the participant instruction used. When participant instructions focus on now or today, then affect is best represented by five discrete emotion factors. When participant instructions focus on the past week, then affect is best represented by two or three mood-based factors. In Study 2 (N = 39), we found good construct convergent validity of short-form D-FAW with another widely used scale (PANAS). Implications for the measurement and structure of affect are discussed.
Keywords: affect, PANAS, positive and negative affect schedule, psychological well-being, psychometrics, short-form measures, validity
A trickle-down model of task and development i-deals
Yasin Rofcanin, Mireia Las Heras, P Matthijs Bal, Beatrice IJM Van der Heijden and Didem Taser Erdogan
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751613| First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
In today's competitive landscape, employees increasingly negotiate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), referring to personalized work arrangements that address recipients' unique work needs and preferences. While i-deals unfold in a dyadic context between subordinates and their managers, the consequences of i-deals concern everyone including co-workers and the organization. Focusing on task and development i-deals, we propose a trickle-down model to explore whether and how organizations benefit from i-deals. First, we argue that managers' task and development i-deals cascade down to their subordinates, leading them to have similar i-deals with downstream consequences for co-workers and the organization. Furthermore, we propose that effective implementation of task and development i-deals are context-specific: we integrate the role of managers' servant leadership as a boundary condition to explore the association between managers' and subordinates' task and development i-deals. We also integrate subordinates' prosocial motives to explore the association between subordinates' task and development i-deals and their work outcomes. We draw on work adjustment, social learning and social information processing theories to study our proposed associations. The results of a matched employee–manager dataset collected in the Philippines support our hypothesized model. This study contributes to i-deals research by: (1) testing whether and how task and development i-deals can be mutually beneficial for all the involved parties; and (2) revealing how the context, at the individual level, explains how and when task and development i-deals can best be implemented in workplaces. This study highlights that individualization of HR practices need not be a zero-sum game.
Keywords: prosocial motives, servant leadership, socially connecting behaviours, task i-deals, work performance
Politicization and political contests in and around contemporary multinational corporations: An introduction
Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718755880 | First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
This article looks at core arguments in international business, organization studies and surrounding academic fields that focus on the study of politicization and political contests in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). Two evident streams of debate are identified. Equally evident is that these streams hardly connect. One stream is mainly interested in studying politicization from the outside, whereas the other is mainly interested in politicization from within. As a way of connecting both streams, we introduce the circuits of power framework. Next, we introduce the contributions of our Special Issue, followed by concluding comments which distinguish five emergent themes. First, we show how the application of the circuits of power framework sheds new light on the study of political contests of MNCs. Second, we highlight that the role of nation states has not lost its significance as, for example, political corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches would have us believe. Third, dominant ideologies play an important role in establishing and controlling circuits of power in and around MNCs. Fourth, it is vital to take labour issues into account in this field of study. Fifth, there is increasing evidence that asymmetric and hierarchical forms of organizing do not disappear in new MNC network forms.
Keywords: circuits of power, employment and labour relations, political contests within and around multinational corporations, politicization of multinational corporations, transnational social spaces
Identity work within attempts to transform healthcare: Invisible team processes
Cindy L Cain, Monica Frazer and Tina R Kilaberia
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764277 | First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
Studies have shown that workers' identities matter for a host of individual and organizational outcomes. However, the question of how identities work becomes more complex when considering settings where workers must negotiate multiple – and sometimes conflicting – identities. Interprofessional healthcare teams are one such setting. Within interprofessional teams, workers are expected to adopt both professional and team-based identities, sometimes leading to confusion and conflicts. Using longitudinal qualitative analyses of healthcare team members' reflective audio diaries, we document identity work of one team as they attempted to create and adopt a new approach to care. We analyze 176 recordings over 30 weeks and find that: team members experience multiple identification targets more or less conflicting, depending on the organizational context; team members from different professional backgrounds experience identity processes differently; and conflicts with others affect how team members see themselves and one another. These findings enrich our understanding of how multiple identities are reconciled in the workplace, and illustrate hidden aspects of forming and sustaining team-based work.
Keywords: change, conflict, healthcare organizations, innovation, organizational culture, teamwork
The democratic rejection of democracy:
Performative failure and the limits of critical performativity in an organizational change project
Daniel King and Christopher Land
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751841| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
'How do we introduce democracy democratically to people who are not sure they want it?' This question was posed to us at the outset of what became a three-year experiment in seeking to implement more democratic organizational practices within a small education charity, World Education (WE). WE were an organization with a history of anarchist organizing and recent negative experiences of hierarchical managerialism, who wanted to return to a more democratic organizational form. This was an ideal opportunity, we thought, for the type of critical performative intervention called for within Critical Management Studies. Using Participant Action Research, which itself has a democratic ethos, we aimed to democratically bring about workplace democracy, using a range of interventions from interviewing, whole organization visioning workshops through to participating in working groups to bring about democratic change. Yet we failed. WE members democratically rejected democracy.
We reflect on this failure using Jacques Derrida's idea of a constitutive aporia at the heart of democracy, and suggests the need to more carefully unpack the difficult relationship between power and equality when seeking to facilitate more democratic organizational practices. The article presents an original perspective on the potential for, and limits of, critical performativity inspired interventions in organizations.
Keywords: charities/not-for-profit organizations, critical consultancy, critical management studies, Derrida, employee voice, participation and workplace democracy
Informal creative labour practices: A relational work perspective
Ana Alacovska
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754991| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
The informal nature of creative work is routinely acknowledged in the studies of creative labour. However, informality of creative work has been so far treated dualistically: firstly, as the informal governance of creative labour markets and secondly, as the ever-increasing informalization of creative workplaces. In contrast, this article argues for the importance of focusing on informal labour practices as infused in relational contexts so as to understand how creative workers uphold career sustainability and cope daily with contingent, insecure and underpaid work. Drawing on the relational work perspective from economic sociology, I contend that creative workers' informal labour practices and economic activities are constituted by the meanings and quality workers attach to interpersonal relations. The more socially and spatially intimate and closer the interpersonal relationship, the less the economic benefit. The more socially and spatially distant the relationship, the greater the pecuniary motivation. The article maps relational work dynamics in: (1) informal paid labour practices, comprising work under-the-radar of state authorities, such as cash-in-hand work including online crowd-work, tips-based work, and paid favours and (2) informal unpaid labour practices, practices happening in webs of reciprocity that are not directly compensated with money, such as barter, favour-swapping and voluntary work.
Keywords: creative industries, creative labour, creative work, economies of favour, informality, informal labour practices, informal work, post-socialist work, precarity, relational work
Respectful leadership:
Reducing performance challenges posed by leader role incongruence and gender dissimilarity
Suzanne van Gils, Niels Van Quaquebeke, Jan Borkowski and Daan van Knippenberg
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754992| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
We investigate how respectful leadership can help overcome the challenges for follower performance that female leaders face when working (especially with male) followers. First, based on role congruity theory, we illustrate the biases faced by female leaders. Second, based on research on gender (dis-)similarity, we propose that these biases should be particularly pronounced when working with a male follower. Finally, we propose that respectful leadership is most conducive to performance in female leader–male follower dyads compared with all other gender configurations. A multi-source field study (N = 214) provides partial support for our hypothesis. While our hypothesized effect was confirmed, respectful leadership seems to be generally effective for female leaders irrespective of follower gender, thus lending greater support in this context to the arguments of role congruity rather than gender dissimilarity.
Keywords: gender dissimilarity, respectful leadership, role congruity theory
Professional image under threat: Dealing with learning–credibility tension
Alaric Bourgoin and Jean-François Harvey
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718756168 | First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
How does one learn and build credibility simultaneously? Such is the challenge faced by an increasing number of professionals, who must quickly get to grips with new assignments while displaying sufficient knowledge to be regarded as experts. If they do not, they will be unable to exert influence over the situation. To address this puzzle, we draw on data from 21 months of participant observation during consulting assignments, and interviews with 79 management consultants. Building on Goffman's notion of face, we identify 'learning–credibility tension' – a discrepancy between a newcomer position that requires professionals to learn, and a role-based image that requires credibility – as a salient and costly issue during organizational entry. Specifically, we find that consultants experience threats to their face during interactions with clients. They deal with these threats by performing individual tactics that help them reduce the anxiety associated with learning–credibility tension, and support their relationship with clients. Our study builds theory in socialization by revealing tactics that allow professionals to keep face while seeking the information they require to adjust to new settings. We also contribute to substantive debates on management consulting by relating insights from the sociology of professions to contemporary knowledge workers.
Keywords: credibility, ethnography, impostor syndrome, impression management, information seeking, learning, management consulting, socialization tactics
How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?
Markus Helfen , Elke Schüßler and Jörg Sydow
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718757060| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Ensuring social responsibility is a continued challenge in value creation processes that are globally dispersed among multiple organizations. We use the literature on interorganizational network management to shed new light on the question of how employment relations can be managed more responsibly in global value networks (GVNs). In contrast to the structure-oriented global value chain perspective, a network management perspective highlights the practices by which employment relations can be addressed in the context of plural forms of network governance. Using examples of GVNs in the automotive and garment industries, we illustrate how the network management practices of selecting, allocating, regulating and evaluating can enable lead firms and suppliers to effectively deal with social responsibility challenges on the level of whole networks. We also discuss how network management practices can handle field-level and firm-level constraints for the management of multi-employer relations in GVNs.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, labour standards, multi-employer relations, network governance, network management
No funny business: Precarious work and emotional labour in stand-up comedy
Nick Butler and Dimitrinka Stoyanova Russell
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718758880| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Freelance creative work is a labour of love where opportunities for self-expression are combined with exploitative working conditions. This article explores this dynamic by showing how a group of freelance creative labourers navigate employment while coping with the pressures associated with economic precarity. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we argue that full-time stand-up comedians engage in 'pecuniary' forms of emotion management in an occupational field where social networks and professional relationships play a prominent role. First, comedians project an image of positivity to demonstrate a willingness to work for little or no pay in order to curry favour with comedy club promoters. Second, comedians suppress feelings of anxiety and frustration that arise from financial insecurity in order to keep their relationships with promoters on an even keel – even when the rate of pay and promptness of remuneration fall below acceptable standards. Our study thus has implications for other creative sectors in which precarity is the norm, since it suggests that emotional labour is a resource not only for engaging with customers and clients but also for engaging with multiple employers, negotiating pay and dealing with conditions of insecurity in freelance settings – often with unintended, paradoxical, results.
Keywords: creative labour, emotional labour, freelance work, precarity, stand-up comedy
Contested compliance regimes in global production networks:
Insights from the Bangladesh garment industry
Fahreen Alamgir and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718760150| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
This article reports the findings of a field study on the emergence of collective agreements led by global brands enacting compliance measures to improve safety and working conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry. We explore how key actors in the Bangladesh garment sector who constitute the local production system of the global supply chain experienced the implementation of global agreements on factory safety. We argue that global safety compliance measures through multi-stakeholder initiatives provide legitimacy to multinational corporations and their global brands but do little to address the structural problems arising from exploitative pricing and procurement practices, which are the key reasons for deplorable working conditions in garment factories. Our findings indicate that neoliberal development policies of the state, where local economies are incorporated into global production networks, resulted in differential treatment and regulation of specific populations that comprise garment factory workers. The reconfiguration of state power to meet the demands of global supply chains also involved use of state violence to suppress dissent while undermining labour rights and working conditions. Our article contributes to the politicization of multinational corporations in global production chains by showing how contestations between workers, factory owners, the state, trade unions and multinational corporations create new private forms of governance and new regimes of compliance in the industry.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, garment industry, global compliance regimes, global supply chains, private governance
Who will I be when I retire?
Introducing a Lacanian typology at the intersection of present identity work and future narratives of the retired self
Michaela Driver
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718761553 | First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
The study introduces a framework by which insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis can be employed to offer a more nuanced understanding of how retirement is currently being reinvented. Building on an analysis of 49 stories in which early-career employees describe their retirement aspirations, the study explores the complexities of how individuals draw on retirement discourse to articulate who they are and what they want. The analysis suggests that the narrative construction of retirement is not only a space for becoming further attached to fantasies that align identity with existing power structures but also a space in which to work through such attachments and open up identity in transformative ways. The study contributes novel perspectives on the effects of the contradictions in current retirement discourse at the interstice of identity, discourse and power, offering new avenues for research on retirement and identity.
Keywords: identity, Lacan, narratives, psychoanalysis, retirement
Guiding and enabling liminal experiences between business and arts organizations operating in a sponsorship relationship
Annmarie Ryan
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718761784| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Through the lens of liminality, this article considers the identity work engaged in by managers working at the boundary of the organization. Liminality has been used to shed light on the ambiguous positions of temporary employees, consultants and project teams. As such, the concept has become synonymous with temporary, transient or precarious work settings. However, in this article I consider the efforts that managers make to set up and co-create the support structure they require to enter into and leave liminal experiences. I draw on a social anthropology to reconsider the movements between these 'in' and 'out' phases, and introduce two kinds of enabling roles: guide and ally. Through the use of a longitudinal case study research design the article contributes to the delineation between transitory and perpetual liminality, to include the notion of temporary incorporation. In distinguishing temporary incorporation from perpetual liminality, we can shift attention towards the possibilities of incremental learning in limen, where the subject and the context remain subject to change.
Keywords: ally, guide, inter-organizational relationships, liminality, organizational learning sponsorship
Self-authorship and creative industries workers' career decision-making
Dawn Bennett and Sophie Hennekam
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717747369| First Published March 5, 2018
Abstract
Career decision-making is arguably at its most complex within professions where work is precarious and career calling is strong. This article reports from a study that examined the career decision-making of creative industries workers, for whom career decisions can impact psychological well-being and identity just as much as they impact individuals' work and career. The respondents were 693 creative industries workers who used a largely open-ended survey to create in-depth reflections on formative moments and career decision-making. Analysis involved the theoretical model of self-authorship, which provides a way of understanding how people employ their sense of self to make meaning of their experiences. The self-authorship process emerged as a complex, non-linear and consistent feature of career decision-making. Theoretical contributions include a non-linear view of self-authorship that exposes the authorship of visible and covert multiple selves prompted by both proactive and reactive identity work.
Keywords: artists, arts careers, career aspirations, career development, gender, precarious work
Creaming and parking in marketized employment services: An Anglo-German comparison
Ian Greer, Lisa Schulte and Graham Symon
Human Relations First Published March 4, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717745958
Abstract
The delivery of public services by nonprofit and for-profit providers alters the nature of services and jobs, often in unintended and undesired ways. We argue that these effects depend on the degree to which the service is 'marketized', that is, subjected by the funder to price-based competition. Using case studies of British and German employment services, this article scrutinizes the link between funding practices and service quality. Of particular concern in marketized employment services is the problem of 'creaming and parking', in which providers select job-ready clients for services and neglect clients more distant from the labour market. We explore three questions. What are the mechanisms through which marketization produces creaming and parking? What are the differences between these mechanisms in commercial and non-commercial service providers? Which national institutions might serve as a buffer for the landscape of service provision facing price-based competition?
Keywords: contracted-out public services, front-line service work, marketization of employment services, nonprofit public service providers, private-sector public-service providers, quasi-markets, vouchers
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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
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Best wishes,
Claire
Claire Castle, Managing Editor, Human Relations, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org Telephone: +44 (0)7432740583 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)