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FEATURED ARTICLE FOR JUNE ‒ FREE ACCESS
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Network characteristics: When an individual's job crafting depends on the jobs of others
Lorenzo Bizzi
Human Relations 70(4): 436‒460. First published August 25, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716658963
Abstract
Because job crafting research proposes that individuals alter jobs on their own, there is an open debate on how others influence an individual's job crafting. Whereas previous research has recognized that incumbents engage in job crafting depending on the characteristics of their own job, this study shows that job crafting depends on the job characteristics of the incumbents' network contacts, meaning all employees in the organization with whom the incumbents frequently communicate about task-related issues. Applying role theory, the article theorizes that network contacts act as role senders who affect job crafting because they communicate role expectations that vary as a function of their own task activities. Key empirical findings show that contacts' autonomy and contacts' feedback from the job positively affect job crafting, whereas contacts' task significance exercises a negative effect. The findings further show that the effect of job crafting on performance depends on the central position occupied by the incumbent in the network of relationships. When designing jobs, managers should therefore not only consider the tasks of each single incumbent but also the tasks of the people connected to him or her.
Keywords: individual performance, job characteristics, job crafting, network centrality, proactive behaviors, social networks
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JUNE 2018 ISSUE
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Human Relations special issue:
Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational corporations
Guest Editors: Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
FREE ACCESS: Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational corporations: An introduction
Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
Human Relations 71(6): 745‒765. First Published April 13, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718755880
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
Political ideology and the discursive construction of the multinational hotel industry
Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, Roy Suddaby and Kevin O'Gorman
Human Relations 71(6): 766‒795. First Published September 8, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717718919
Abstract
How might political ideology help to shape an organizational field? We explore the discursive construction of the multinational hotel industry through analysis of one of its leading actors, Hilton International (HI), conceived by Conrad Hilton as a means of combatting communism by facilitating world peace through international trade and travel. While the politicized rhetoric employed at hotel openings reflected institutional diversity, it resonated in parallel with a strong anti-communist discourse. We show that through astute political sensemaking and sensegiving, macro-political discourse that is ideological and universalizing may be allied to micro-political practices in strategic action fields. Our study illuminates the processes of early-stage post-war globalization and its accompanying discourses, demonstrating that the foundation of a global industry may be ideologically inspired. Our primary contribution to theory is specific acknowledgement of the importance of political ideology as a particular 'social skill', helping to determine how international business has been 'won'.
Keywords: discourse, global hotel industry, macro-politics, micro-politics, power, rhetoric
Transnational power and translocal governance: The politics of corporate responsibility
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
Human Relations 71(6): 796‒821 First Published September 19, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717726586
Abstract
In this article, I provide a critical analysis of the politics of corporate social responsibility. I argue that corporate social responsibility is a strategy that enables multinational corporations to exercise power in the global political economy. Using the global extractive industries as a context, I focus on conflicts between communities, the state and multinational corporations that arise owing to the negative social and environmental impacts of mining and extraction. In particular, I analyse the role of political corporate social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives in managing conflicts and argue that these initiatives cannot take into account the needs of vulnerable stakeholders. Power asymmetries between key actors in the political economy can diminish the welfare of communities impacted by extraction. Several governance challenges arise as a result of these power asymmetries and I develop a translocal governance framework from the perspective of vulnerable stakeholders that can enable a more progressive approach to societal governance of multinational corporations.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, governance, marginalized stakeholders, multinational corporations, power
Competition for control over the labour process as a driver of relocation of activities to a shared services centre
Petr Mezihorak
Human Relations 71(6): 822‒844. First Published September 18, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717727047
Abstract
New approaches to studying multinational corporations sensitive to issues of power and politics often neglect the way power and politics in corporations shape workplaces, specifically labour processes and modes of their control. The article presents a case study of a firm's relocation of activities to a shared services centre. The relationships among the shared services centre, its client departments and the headquarters involve an ongoing combination of cooperation and competition, resulting in increased managerial control over labour processes and changes in corporate governance. The shared services centre established as a support unit aims to strengthen its position in the organizational structure by gaining control over labour processes and their modification. Competition with client departments for control over labour processes leads to the introduction of controlling mechanisms, norms and standards both in the centre and in client departments. These rules, on the one hand, limit uncertainty; on the other hand, they drive the fragmentation of labour processes, rendering them more codifiable and less complex. These effects make labour processes easier to control and, eventually, to relocate, which is advantageous for the headquarters. Changes in labour processes thus shape the relationships within the corporation and the space for power struggles and politics.
Keywords: competition, control, global value chain, labour, labour process, multinational corporation, outsourcing, power, shared services, work
Dynamisms of financialization: Circuits of power in globalized production networks
Isabel Pedraza-Acosta and Jan Mouritsen
Human Relations 71(6): 845‒866. First Published April 17, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751612
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
The politics of cultural capital: Social hierarchy and organizational architecture in the multinational corporation
Orly Levy and B Sebastian Reiche
Human Relations 71(6): 867‒894. First Published October 9, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717729208
Abstract
How is social hierarchy in multinational corporations (MNCs) culturally produced, contested and reproduced? Although the international business literature has acknowledged the importance of culture, it gives little consideration to its role in constructing social hierarchies and symbolic boundaries between individuals and groups within MNCs. We take a Bourdieusian approach to understanding the role of cultural capital in structuring the social hierarchy in the MNC under two contrasting organizational architectures: hierarchical and network architecture. We argue that cultural capital serves as an instrument of power and status within the MNC, influencing access to valuable resources such as jobs, rewards and opportunities. Our framework further suggests that the transition from hierarchical towards network architecture sets in motion a high-stakes political struggle between headquarters and subsidiary actors over the relative value of their cultural capital in a bid to preserve or gain dominance and to determine the 'rules of the game' that order the social hierarchy in the MNC. We elaborate on this political struggle by theorizing about the relative dominance of cultural versus social capital, the content and relative value of firm-specific and cosmopolitan cultural capital, and the convertibility of cultural capital into other forms of capital under hierarchical and network architectures.
Keywords: Bourdieu, cultural capital MNC, multinational corporation, organizational architecture, social capital, social hierarchy
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SNEAKY PEEK: FEMINISM SPECIAL ISSUE
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Human Relations special issue:
Organizing feminism: Bodies; practices and ethics
Guest edited by Emma Bell, Susan Meriläinen, Scott Taylor and Janne Tienari
Introduction
Emma Bell, Susan Meriläinen, Scott Taylor and Janne Tienari
- Pending OnlineFirst publication
Ethics, politics and feminist organizing: Writing feminist infrapolitics and affective solidarity into everyday sexism
Sheena J Vachhani and Alison Pullen
- Pending OnlineFirst publication
Re-assembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics
Melissa Tyler
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764264
Splitting and blaming: The psychic life of neoliberal executive women
Darren T Baker and Elisabeth K Kelan
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718772010
Mothers and researchers in the making - negotiating 'new' motherhood amidst 'new' academia
Astrid S Huopalainen and Suvi T Satama
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764571
Temporality and gendered agency: Menopausal subjectivities in women's work
Gavin Jack, Kathleen Riach and Emily Bariola
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718767739
Five movements in an embodied feminism: A memoir
Amanda Sinclair
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718765625
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SELECTED RECENT ONLINE FIRST PREVIEW ARTICLES
You can access all our OnlineFirst articles here: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
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The lingering effects of work context:
Ambient work-unit characteristics and the impact of retirement on alcohol consumption
Inbal Nahum-Shani and Peter Bamberger
Human Relations First Published May 30, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718772883
Abstract
Although it is well established that workplace demands and culture can affect employee well-being, to what degree might these same factors have lingering implications on individual well-being after employees retire? To begin to answer this question, in this article we propose and test a model explaining how retiree alcohol consumption may depend on pre-retirement contextual conditions. Specifically, we propose and test a moderated-mediation model in which two ambient work-unit characteristics – work-unit stress climate and work-unit drinking norms – moderate the indirect effects of retirement, via distress, on modal alcohol consumption (i.e. the typical quantity and frequency of alcohol consumed). Using a prospective study design and a multi-level, zero-inflated negative binomial model for predicting modal alcohol consumption, our findings lend partial support for the proposed model. We found retirement (vs continued employment) to be associated with a heightened probability of being an abstainer after retirement eligibility (i.e. at Time 2), regardless of the hypothesized unit-level moderators. Still, retirement had mixed effects on the level of modal consumption among those not abstaining at Time 2, with these effects being partially mediated by distress and contingent upon unit-level stress climate and unit-level drinking norms.
Keywords: alcohol, coworker norms, prospective design, retirement, stress climate
Prospective sensemaking, frames and planned change interventions:
A comparison of change trajectories in two hospital units
Stefan Konlechner, Markus Latzke, Wolfgang H Güttel and Elisabeth Höfferer
Human Relations First Published May 30, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718773157
Abstract
Changing organizations is difficult. In this article, we analyze how sensemaking that follows the initiation of change projects relies on the interplay of prospective and retrospective aspects, and we elucidate how organization members' frames develop over time based on this interplay. Our data, 38 in-depth interviews with nursing and medical staff held at four different points in time, reveal how expectations impact the dynamics of meaning construction in change processes. Our findings demonstrate that the frames through which actors make sense of change initiatives develop continuously, although the expectations embedded in them are 'sticky' to some extent. The degree of 'stickiness' depends on expectations that are formed through initial prospective sensemaking, as these expectations influence actors' tolerance regarding dissonant cues. Change initiatives fail when this tolerance becomes exhausted. Our study contributes to theory on sensemaking and change by elaborating on the undertheorized role of prospective sensemaking during change processes.
Keywords: change, expectations, healthcare organizations, narrative approach, prospective sensemaking, sensemaking
Entrepreneurial agency and field relations: A Realist Bourdieusian Analysis
Steve Vincent and Victoria Pagan
Human Relations, first published May 28, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718767952
Abstract
This article addresses the problem of understanding and assessing how entrepreneurial and self-employed workers engage with economic fields as they pursue their interests. It considers the differing experiences of entrepreneurial workers by developing a transferable approach to studying the relations between their environments, practices and values. The approach developed combines Bourdieusian and critical realist scholarship to explore qualitative data about the networking practices of 25 self-employed and entrepreneurial human resource consultants who competed in a conurbation in the North of England. We argue that the form of analysis that develops, which we call Realist Bourdieusian Analysis, reveals more about the causal properties of the social formations entrepreneurial workers navigate than analyses that are limited within each lexicon. Arguably, combining Bourdieusian analysis and critical realism enriches our understanding of the constituent parts of economic fields, the resources entrepreneurial workers access through them, and agents' relations, experiences and reflexive struggles. This novel approach, we argue, facilitates deeper appreciation of these workers' experiences and more insightful critique of existing supports to entrepreneurship, as well as the possibility of prescribing policy supports that might enable workers within the field studied. The analysis concludes by highlighting the practical, theoretical and methodological contributions of this research.
Keywords: Bourdieu, critical realism, entrepreneurship, networks, reflexivity, self-employment
Splitting and blaming: The psychic life of neoliberal executive women
Darren T Baker and Elisabeth K Kelan
Human Relations, first published May 28, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718772010
Abstract
The aim of the article is to explore the psychic life of executive women under neoliberalism using psychosocial approaches. The article shows how, despite enduring unfair treatment and access to opportunities, many executive women remain emotionally invested in upholding the neoliberal ideal that if one perseveres, one shall be successful, regardless of gender. Drawing on psychosocial approaches, we explore how the accounts given by some executive women of repudiation, as denying gender inequality, and individualization, as subjects completely agentic, are underpinned by the unconscious, intertwined processes of splitting and blaming. Women sometimes split off undesirable aspects of the workplace, which repudiates gender inequality, or blame other women, which individualizes failure and responsibility for change. We explain that splitting and blaming enable some executive women to manage the anxiety evoked from threats to the neoliberal ideal of the workplace. This article thereby makes a contribution to existing postfeminist scholarship by integrating psychosocial approaches to the study of the psychic life of neoliberal executive women, by exploring why they appear unable to engage directly with and redress instances of gender discrimination in the workplace.
Keywords: blaming, individualization, neoliberalism, postfeminism, psychic life, psychosocial, repudiation, splitting
Managerial work and coordination: A practice-based approach onboard a racing sailboat
Isabelle Bouty and Carole Drucker-Godard
Human Relations First Published May 23, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718773854
Abstract
This article investigates managerial work in relation to the managerial function 'coordination'. The work and efforts of managers have been assumed to be central to preparing coordination by both the managerial work and coordination literature; however, none of these have thus far clarified exactly what managers do in coordination as it unfolds. This article adds to the literature by accounting for a study investigating of what the managerial practice of coordination consists. For this purpose, we adopt a practice theory-based approach to managerial work and relate the managerial function 'coordination' to the daily doings and sayings of a manager, to the overall activity and context of the organization. We empirically study the instrumental case of the skipper and crew of a racing sailboat. We show that, and how, managerial work is pivotal in situ to coordination as it occurs through sustaining circulation among coordination mechanisms and combinations of these mechanisms. We also contribute to the managerial work literature by putting forward rhythmicity and the temporal engagement of the skipper within the ongoing flow of activity.
Keywords: coordination, managerial work, practice, rhythmicity, sailing
Bringing the ugly back:
A dialogic exploration of ethics in leadership through an ethno-narrative re-reading of the Enron case
Gareth Edwards, Beverley Hawkins and Doris Schedlitzki
Human Relations, first published May 21, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718773859
Abstract
In this article, we adopt a dialogic approach to examining narratives on ethics in leadership. We do this through an ethno-narrative re-reading of writing on the Enron case informed by Bakhtin's ideas on dialogue. Employing concepts such as beautyism, aesthetic craving and recent writing around disgust and abjection in organizations helps us to develop a deeper relational interpretation of written accounts of leadership and ethics in organizations. We identify two underlying and interrelated social tensions exemplified in existing narratives on this popular example of 'unethical' leadership practice. Both tensions, we conclude, are linked to denigrating the ugly in favour of the beautiful, and we have labelled them 'suppressing the ugly' and a fetish for 'looking good'. We go on to suggest that these two tensions then combine in the stories about this case to ultimately beautify a toxic masculinized persona. We suggest therefore that our dialogic perspective on ethical leadership narratives helps to uncover how accounts about Enron are developed through an intricate interplay between seeking to 'look good' and the suppression of moral judgment by leaders of the organization.
Keywords: Bakhtin, beauty, dialogism, ethics, leadership, ugliness
Workplace flexibility as a paradoxical phenomenon: Exploring employee experiences
Almudena Cañibano
Human Relations, first published May 14, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718769716
Abstract
How do employees of dynamic consulting firms deal with their demanding professional environment, where they must be accessible, responsive and flexible seemingly around the clock? This case study of a large consulting firm explores employee experiences of flexible working through the lens of paradox. It finds that flexible working far exceeds the set of approved flexible work arrangements and practices enshrined in formal HR policies. Rather, individuals develop varied perceptions, expectations and ways of organizing flexible working, which emerge and evolve as they accumulate experience in a context where client-focused responsiveness is key. The article argues that flexible working is part of the deeper psychological contract between professional employees and the firm. This allows us to better understand how the paradoxical tensions that characterize workplace flexibility are experienced as evolving combinations of contributions and inducements. Employees manage these tensions in different ways, including vacillating between polar opposites and integrating contradictory elements, creating an overall mental picture of their flexible working experience.
Keywords: flexible work arrangements, flexible working, paradox, paradoxical tensions, psychological contract, workplace flexibility
The effects of personality on job satisfaction and life satisfaction:
A meta-analytic investigation accounting for bandwidth–fidelity and commensurability
Piers Steel, Joseph Schmidt, Frank Bosco and Krista Uggerslev
Human Relations, first published May 14, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718771465
Abstract
To what extent do employees' personality traits shape their perceptions of job and life satisfaction? To answer this question, we conducted the largest meta-analysis on the topic to date, summarizing a total of 12,682 correlations among combinations of personality, job satisfaction and life satisfaction. We also sought to refine previous meta-analytic estimates by comparing the effects of personality facets to broad trait domains, while controlling for commensurability of personality measures. The results showed that the Big Five personality traits accounted for about 10% of the variance in job satisfaction, which in turn accounted for 13% of the variance in life satisfaction. Compared with the broad trait domains, personality facets typically accounted for twice as much variance in life satisfaction, with only a minor increase for job satisfaction, which contradicts the typical bandwidth–fidelity heuristic. The results also provided support for a trickle-down or top-down effect, where dispositions affect perceptions of life satisfaction, which then influenced the more specific subdomain of job satisfaction. The results have important implications for researchers and practitioners, suggesting that information is lost when personality facets are overlooked, and that educational and workplace interventions could enhance perceptions of satisfaction for those prone to lower levels of subjective well-being.
Keywords: facets, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, meta-analysis, personality
Embodied spatial practices and everyday organization: The work of tour guides and their audiences
Katie Best and Jon Hindmarsh
Human Relations First Published May 9, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718769712
Abstract
This article introduces an interactional perspective to the analysis of organizational space. The study is based on the analysis of over 100 hours of video recordings of guided tours undertaken within two sites (an historic house and a world-famous museum), coupled with interviews and field observations. The analysis is informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in order to focus on the everyday organization of these tours, and the lived experience of inhabiting museum spaces. We use an interactional lens to unpack the 'embodied spatial practices' critical to the work of tour guides and their audiences, which reveals how the sense and significance of the workspace emerges moment to moment, and in relation to the ongoing work at hand. As a result, for those with an interest in organizational space, the article introduces a novel perspective, and methods, to highlight the dynamic and interactional production of workspaces. Additionally, for those with an interest in practice, the article demonstrates the fundamental import of taking spatial arrangements seriously when analysing the organization of work.
Keywords: conversation analysis, embodiment, ethnomethodology, practice, space, tour guiding, workspace
Five movements in an embodied feminism: A memoir
Amanda Sinclair
Human Relations, first published May 8, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718765625
Abstract
How can bodies, embodied experiences and feelings, be recognized as central elements of becoming and being feminist? This article – a mixture of memoir and research reflection – aims to reveal the emergent and embodied nature of feminist paths using myself as case in point. Recounting five personal 'movements' over three decades, I show how my material situations, physically-felt struggles and embodied encounters with others, especially women, wrested – sometimes catapulted – my precarious self-identification as a feminist. Writing this as a memoir, I hope to evoke in the reader memories and experiences that highlight their own embodied feminism. The article identifies some problems feminists commonly face, contesting unhelpful hierarchies of 'good' and 'bad' feminists. I explore some gifts of feminism – encounters with writing and people – which have provided theoretical innovation and personal insight for me, and offer fertile avenues for further research. Avoiding trying to 'trap' feminism as one set of views or experiences, I seek to show how our feminisms are always embodied: opportunistic, emergent, sometimes inconvenient, neither comprehensive nor respectable, but frequently bringing agency, invigoration and surprising pleasures. It gives all who call ourselves feminists, cause for optimism.
Keywords: bodies, embodiment, feminism, feminists, feminist scholars, physicality, materiality, women's writing, memoirs
Routinization, free cognitive resources and creativity:
The role of individual and contextual contingencies
Heesun Chae and Jin Nam Choi
Human Relations, first published May 8, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718765630
Abstract
In job design and creativity literature, challenging and complex jobs drive individual creativity, whereas routinization impedes creative outcomes. This study challenges this prevailing view by exploring the intermediate psychological mechanism and boundary conditions enabling the potential benefits of routinization to foster creativity in organizations. Routinization economizes employees' use of resources in performing tasks, thereby generating free cognitive resources that can be utilized for creative problem-solving. In addition, the effect of routinization on creativity, as mediated by free cognitive resources, is positively moderated by two boundary conditions: learning goal orientation of employees and supervisor support for creativity. Field data collected from 198 engineers and technicians and 56 supervisors working in manufacturing companies in South Korea confirm the moderated mediation hypotheses. The conditional indirect effects of routinization on creativity through free cognitive resources are significant and positive when the learning goal orientation of employees and supervisor support for creativity are high. These findings highlight the need for a balanced consideration of the ambivalent effects of task complexity and routinization on employee creativity along with further investigations on the contingencies of their effects.
Keywords: creativity, free cognitive resources, job complexity, learning goal orientation, routinization, supervisor support for creativity
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
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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)