Apologies for any cross-postings
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February free-access article
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Please find details of this month's Human Relations free-access article below – we hope you will enjoy reading it.
Queering cross-sex friendships: An analysis of gay and bisexual men's workplace friendships with heterosexual women
Nick Rumens
Human Relations 2012; 65 (8): 955–978
DOI: 10.1177/0018726712442427
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/65/8/955.full.pdf+html
This article will be free to access until 28 February 2014.
Abstract
Organizational research on cross-sex friendships frequently normalizes heterosexuality
by excluding lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Challenging this heteronormative bias, this
article mobilizes queer theories to examine how UK gay and bisexual men reproduce
and contest heterosexist norms in the construction of workplace friendships with
heterosexual women. For bisexual study participants, interview data reveal how their
friendship experiences can be rendered epistemologically invisible, especially within
work environments where bi-negativity is anticipated. In contrast, gay study participants
appear to adopt discursive strategies in order to create friendships with women that
are normatively accepted. This article develops a concept of 'queer friendship' as it
relates to the opportunities that arise within workplace friendships for transcending
heterosexist norms. It is argued that sustaining the queer aspects of workplace
relationships can be challenging but worthwhile, with implications for disrupting gender
binaries and developing open-ended organizational policy definitions of 'acceptable'
workplace relationships.
Keywords
bisexuality, cross-sex friendships, gay men, organizational heteronormativity, queer
friendships, queer theory, workplace friendships, work spou
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Current issue of Human Relations
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A new issue of Human Relations is available online: February 2014; Vol. 67, No. 2
The entire issue can be accessed online at:
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/67/2.toc
Hybrid accountabilities: When western and non-western accountabilities collide
Sadhvi Dar
Human Relations 2014;67 131-151
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/131
Interaction of gender, mentoring, and power distance on career attainment: A cross-cultural comparison
Aarti Ramaswami, Jia-Chi Huang, and George Dreher
Human Relations 2014;67 153-173
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/153
Supporting 'superwomen'? Conflicting role prescriptions, gender-equality arrangements and career motivation among Dutch women physicians
Berber Pas, Pascale Peters, Hans Doorewaard, Rob Eisinga, and Toine Lagro-Janssen
Human Relations 2014;67 175-204
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/175
NGOs management and the value of 'partnerships' for equality in international development: What's in a name?
Alessia Contu and Emanuela Girei
Human Relations 2014;67 205-232
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/205
You can't go home again: And other psychoanalytic lessons from crossing a neo-colonial border
Ajnesh Prasad
Human Relations 2014;67 233-257
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/233
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Recent publication ahead of print articles
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Fun and friends: The impact of workplace fun and constituent attachment on turnover in a hospitality context
Michael J Tews, John W Michel, and David G Allen
Human Relations published 16 January 2014, 10.1177/0018726713508143
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713508143v1
Abstract
Extending the growing body of research on fun in the workplace, this article reports on a study examinining the relationship between fun and employee turnover. Specifically, this research focused on the influence of three forms of fun on turnover – fun activities, coworker socializing and manager support for fun. With a sample of 296 servers from 20 units of a national restaurant chain in the US, coworker socializing and manager support for fun were demonstrated to be significantly related to turnover. In addition, constituent attachment was found to mediate the relationship between each of the three forms of fun and turnover. This research highlights that not all types of fun are equal and demonstrates that one of the key means through which fun influences retention is by facilitating the development of high quality work relationships.
'Leader, you first': The everyday production of hierarchical space in a Chinese bureaucracy
Zhongyuan Zhang and André Spicer
Human Relations published 16 December 2013, 10.1177/0018726713503021
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713503021v1
Abstract
Recent studies highlight how organizational power relations are materialized in space. However, relatively little is known about how these spatialized power relations are reproduced on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on a ten-month ethnographic study of a large government office in China, we find that hierarchical space is produced through three intertwined processes. It proliferates as employees actively seek out signs of hierarchy in the organization's space; it becomes familiarized as employees fabricate and circulate fanciful narratives about their spatial environs; and it is ritualized by employees acting out hierarchical relations across the organization's space. These processes resulted in a hardening of the hierarchical relations of power. The study extends the existing literature by showing how hierarchical organizational space is not just something that is imposed on employees; it is also imposed by the employees themselves.
Review Article: When 'life itself' goes to work: Reviewing shifts in organizational life through the lens of biopower
Peter Fleming
Human Relations published 10 December 2013, 10.1177/0018726713508142
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713508142v1
Abstract
This review article suggests the English publication of Foucault's lectures on biopower, The Birth of Biopolitics (2008), might be useful for extending our understandings of how organizational power relations have changed over the last 20 years. Unlike disciplinary power, which constrains and delimits individuals, the concept of biopower emphasizes how our life abilities and extra-work qualities (bios or 'life itself') are now key objects of exploitation – particularly under neoliberalism. The term biocracy is introduced to analyse recent reports on workplace experiences symptomatic of biopower. Finally, the conceptual weaknesses of biopower for organizational theorizing are critically evaluated to help develop the idea for future scholarship.
Stigma, identity and power: Managing stigmatized identities through discourse
Sammy Toyoki and Andrew D Brown
Human Relations published 10 December 2013, 10.1177/0018726713503024
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713503024v1
Abstract
We analyse how men incarcerated in Helsinki Prison managed, through talk, their stigmatized identities as prisoners. Three strategies are identified: 'appropriation' of the label 'prisoner'; claiming coveted social identities; and representing oneself as a 'good' person. The research contribution we make is to show how inmates dealt with their self-defined stigmatized identities through discourse, and how these strategies were effects of power. We argue that stigmatized identities are best theorized in relation to individuals' repertoires of other (non-stigmatized) identities that they may draw on to make supportive self-claims. Prisoners, like other kinds of organizational participants, we argue, often have considerable scope for managing diverse, fragile, perhaps even contradictory, understandings of their selves.
'I had the luxury . . .': Organizational breastfeeding support as privatized privilege
Paaige K Turner and Kristen Norwood
Human Relations published 10 December 2013, 10.1177/0018726713507730
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713507730v1
Abstract
To make the combination of breastfeeding and work feasible, women who return to work full time in the USA need some measure of organizational breastfeeding support. Yet, many organizations do not have lactation policies in place, co-worker and supervisor communication can be discouraging, and predominant cultural Discourses in the US position breastfeeding at odds with organizational values, often requiring women to define and negotiate support themselves. Drawing upon Structuration Theory, we analyzed interviews conducted with US women who breastfed and worked to illuminate the meanings they held for breastfeeding and organizational breastfeeding support and how those meanings challenge and reproduce social systems that make breastfeeding and working a potentially difficult combination. We argue that their construction of breastfeeding support as a privatized privilege re/produces cultural Discourses that marginalize women's bodies in organizations. In order to engender support for all bodies that challenge the borders between public/private, feminine/masculine and personal/professional, meanings must be changed at both macro and micro levels of communication.
Resolving couples' work–family conflicts: The complexity of decision making and the introduction of a new framework
Laura S Radcliffe and Catherine Cassell
Human Relations published 10 December 2013, 10.1177/0018726713506022
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0018726713506022v1
Abstract
The goal of this study is to develop a theoretical framework in order to illuminate the cues involved in real life work–family conflict resolution within dual-earner couples. We draw on episodic and longitudinal data from qualitative diaries kept for a one-month period by both members of 24 dual-earner couples (48 participants) with child dependants, as well as from introductory and subsequent in-depth qualitative interviews with the couples, both together and apart. Two distinct types of work–family decision making: a) anchoring decisions and b) daily decisions were revealed, each of which were differentially impacted by enabling and constraining cues, considerations of fairness and equity, and beliefs, values and preferences. The findings suggest that the decision-making process engaged in by couples in incidents of work–family conflict does not progress in a logical sequence, but instead involves numerous complex negotiations and interactions. A decision-making framework encapsulating these findings is reported, highlighting the cues considered when making both types of work–family conflict decisions, and the relationships between them.
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Special issue call for papers
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30th Anniversary – Beyond Morgan's eight metaphors
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Morgan.html
Guest Editors:
Anders Örtenblad (Nottingham University Business School, China)
Linda Putnam (University of California Santa Barbara, USA) and
Kiran Trehan (University of Birmingham, UK)
Invited commenter: Gareth Morgan, York University, Canada
Submission deadline: 31 May 2014. Papers should not be submitted before 01 May 2014.
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Best wishes,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Telephone: +44 (0)7432740583
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
OnlineFirst forthcoming articles: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
Submission guidance: http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/submit_paper.html
Human Relations 2012 Impact Factor:
2-year impact factor: 1.938
5-year impact factor: 2.901
Source: 2012 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2013)