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A new issue of Human Relations is available online: Human Relations August 2016; 69(8) − we hope you enjoy reading these articles.
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AUGUST ISSUE ARTICLES
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Older British employees' declining attitudes over 20 years and across classes
Michael White and Deborah Smeaton
Human Relations August 2016 69(8): 1619‒1641; doi: 10.1177/0018726715618765
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/8/1619?etoc
Abstract
British employers, under increasing competitive pressures, and applying new technology and work organization, have sought to reduce labour costs, resulting in work intensification and precarity. Older employees as a result are exposed to work demands that conflict with expectations of favourable treatment in late career. National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2001, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate a decline in overall job attitude among older employees following the changed conditions of the 1990s and across the major recession that began in 2008. To assess whether this decline is unequally distributed, decomposition by socio-economic class is carried out. This shows that older employees in the 'service class' of managerial and professional employees are affected at least as much as older employees in intermediate and less-skilled classes, thus underlining the age effect and showing that 'service-class' employees are not invulnerable to a changing economic environment.
Food and music matters:
Affective relations and practices in social justice organizations
Lynne Keevers and Christopher Sykes
Human Relations August 2016 69(8): 1643‒1668; doi: 10.1177/0018726715621368
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/8/1643?etoc
Abstract
In this article, we focus on the organizing practices of a community-based, not-for-profit, social justice organization. We investigate how organizational participants interweave bundles of practices involving food and music to choreograph the affective relations that bring forth a sense of belonging, participation, recognition and respect between diverse people, thereby enacting social justice. This article examines the everyday, organizing practices associated with food and music and shows how not only are food and music excellent entrances to understanding organizational practices but they are also instrumental in constituting and reconstituting the performance of social justice. In this way, our article brings attention to the dimensions of knowing which are not primarily about representing but about affecting. In particular, practices of respect, recognition and belonging are rendered communicable across the boundaries of difference, dependency and inequality, forming platforms for solidarity and the understanding of differences. The article illustrates how organizing practices involving food and music play important roles in creating the conditions of possibility for diverse people to work collaboratively and respectfully together. We contend that the lived experience of organization cannot be understood without attentiveness to affect and affective relations.
Theorization as institutional work:
The dynamics of roles and practices
Sébastien Mena and Roy Suddaby
Human Relations August 2016 69(8): 1669‒1708; doi: 10.1177/0018726715622556
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/8/1669?etoc
Abstract
This study unpacks the construct of theorization – the process by which organizational ideas become delocalized and abstracted into theoretical models to support their diffusion across time and space. We adopt an institutional work lens to analyse the key components of theorization in contexts where institutional work is in transition from changing institutions to maintaining them. We build on a longitudinal inductive study of theorization by the Fair Labor Association – a private regulatory initiative that created and then enforced a code of conduct for working conditions in apparel factories. Our study reveals that when institutional work shifts from changing to maintaining an institutional arrangement of corporate social responsibility, there is a key change in how the Fair Labor Association theorizes roles and practices related to this arrangement. We observe that theorization on key practices largely remains intact, whereas the roles of different actors are theorized in a dramatically different manner. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the work involved in the aftermath of radical change by demonstrating the relative plasticity of roles over the rigidity of practices.
Enabling team learning when members are prone to contentious communication: The role of team leader coaching
John Schaubroeck, Abraham Carmeli, Sarena Bhatia, and Etty Paz
Human Relations August 2016 69(8): 1709-1727; doi: 10.1177/0018726715622673
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/8/1709?etoc
Abstract
Members of teams are often prone to interpersonal communication patterns that can undermine the team's capacity to engage in self-learning processes that are critical to team adaptation and performance improvement. We argue that team leader coaching behaviors are critical to ensuring that team discussions that may foster learning new teamwork skills and strategies are unfettered by the tendency of two or more members to exhibit contentious interpersonal communications. We accordingly test a model in which team contentious communication moderates the mediated relationship of team leader coaching behaviors on team innovation effectiveness and team task performance. In a study of 82 work teams, team leader coaching behaviors exhibited indirect, positive relationships with both team innovation effectiveness and team task performance through team learning, but only among teams with an average or higher level of contentious interpersonal communication. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the leadership of teams.
Binary logics and the discursive interpretation of organizational policy: Making meaning of sexual harassment policy
Debbie S Dougherty and Marlo Goldstein Hode
Human Relations August 2016 69(8): 1729-1755; doi: 10.1177/0018726715624956
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/8/1729?etoc
Abstract
Although workplace policies are written in neutral terms that give the appearance of rationality, research shows that policy meanings are in fact constructed and negotiated through discursive practices. Sexual harassment policies illustrate this phenomenon. Sexual harassment is a highly complex and fluid phenomenon that is dependent on context and culture for its meaning. Although sexual harassment policies tend to use language that appears to lie outside of the interpretive stream, these policies are in fact always subject to discursive interpretation. One particularly powerful form of discursive interpretation lies in the interplay between binary logics and binary language. This study explored the interplay between macro-level binary logics, mezzo-level sexual harassment policy and micro-level binary language during organizational members' discussions about their organization's sexual harassment policy. Our analysis of focus group and interview data revealed that participants discursively produced what we have termed a complex binary web that reshaped the meaning of the policy, such that usage of the policy contradicted organizational norms and values. Understanding sexual harassment policy discourse as constructed in a binary web reveals that rational assumptions underlying sexual harassment policy may be inconsistent with the lived experiences in organizational cultures.
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JULY FREE ACCESS ARTICLE
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This article will be free to access until 31 July 2016:
The (non)distribution of leadership roles:
Considering leadership practices and configurations
Samia Chreim
Human Relations 2015 68(4): 517–543; doi: 10.1177/0018726714532148
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/4/517.full.pdf+html
Abstract
This article draws on distributed leadership and leadership-as-practice perspectives to report on a comparative case analysis of leadership configurations. The context of acquisitions is used in the study. Attention is given to the practices of members of the two leadership teams – one from each of the acquiring and acquired organizations – as they attempted to integrate their practices and redistribute leadership roles. The findings show that, despite expectations that distributed leadership would be achieved, the emergent configurations varied across the firms and consisted of distributed leadership, distributed leaderlessness, overlapping leadership and non-distributed leadership. These configurations were underpinned by members' framings, relational practices and (non)exercise of agency. The article contributes to the leadership literature by proposing the notions of leadership deficits and leadership surpluses in configurations, by exploring how ambiguous leadership spaces are constructed, and by providing evidence of leadership models that vary in terms of conflict tractability. The study uncovers the limits of distributed leadership and shows that not all is well with distributed leadership models. The article also contributes to a broader understanding – than has been achieved through extant literature – of various potential leadership configurations that can emerge in the case of acquisitions and beyond.
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
Human Relations 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:
2-year impact factor: 2.619 Ranked: 4/93 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 37/192 in Management
5-year impact factor: 3.544 Ranked: 2/93 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 40/192 in Management
Source: 2015 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2016)
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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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Extrinsic work values and feedback: Contrary effects for performance and well-being
Kimberly K Merriman
Human Relations, first published on July 8, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716655391
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/07/05/0018726716655391?papetoc
Abstract
This article investigates the interactive effects of extrinsic value orientation and competence supportive feedback on the work outcomes of in-role and extra-role performance, and employees' subjective well-being at work. Two studies are presented with samples consisting of a cross-section of employees and, for Study 1, their managers. In keeping with established theory and findings, competence supportive feedback demonstrated positive and significant main effects. In support of this article's unique predictions, these relationships were amplified (in-role and extra-role performance) and attenuated (subjective well-being) at higher levels of individual extrinsic value orientation. Findings for well-being were more closely examined with the second sample, and an underlying mechanism of experienced work demands was identified. Thus, it seems that motivational sensitivity to the instrumental value of competence supportive feedback, in addition to its recognized psychological value, may drive work engagement all too well. Implications for future research and performance management are discussed.
Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields
Crawford Spence, Chris Carter, Javier Husillos and Pablo Archel
Human Relations, first published on June 28, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716649247
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/23/0018726716649247?papetoc
Abstract
Recent literature suggests that elites are increasingly fragmented and divided. Yet there is very little empirical research that maps the distinctions between different elite groups. This article explores the cultural divisions that pertain to elite factions in two distinct but proximate Strategic Action Fields. A key insight from the article is that the public sector faction studied exhibits a much broader, more aesthetic set of cultural dispositions than their private sector counterparts. This permits a number of inter-related contributions to be made to literature on both elites and field theory. First, the findings suggest that cultural capital acts as a salient source of distinction between elite factions in different Strategic Action Fields. Second, it is demonstrated how cultural capital is socially functional as certain cultural dispositions are strongly homologous with specific professional roles. Third, the article demonstrates the implications for the structure of the State when two culturally distinct elites are brought together in a new Strategic Action Field.
The case for reinvigorating quality of working life research
Gudela Grote and David Guest
Human Relations, first published on June 21, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716654746
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/21/0018726716654746?papetoc
Abstract
The quality of working life became an important topic in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to stimulate an early approach to evidence-based policy advocacy drawing on interdisciplinary research by social scientists. Over the years it fell out of the limelight but much relevant, albeit fragmented, research has continued. We present a case for rekindling an integrated and normative approach to quality of working life research as one means of promoting workers' well-being and emancipation. We outline an updated classification of the characteristics of quality of working life and a related analytic framework. We illustrate how research and practice will benefit from following this renewed quality of working life framework, using work design as an example. Concluding, we aim to stimulate debate on the necessity and benefits of rebuilding a quality of working life agenda for marrying academic rigour and practical relevance in order to support interventions aimed at fostering worker emancipation and well-being.
A Web of opportunity or the same old story?
Women digital entrepreneurs and intersectionality theory
Angela Martinez Dy, Susan Marlow and Lee Martin
Human Relations, first published on June 10, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716650730
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/09/0018726716650730?papetoc
Abstract
This article critically analyses the manner in which intersectionality and related social positionality shape digital enterprise activities. Despite popular claims of meritocratic opportunity enactment within traditional forms of entrepreneurship, ascribed social characteristics intersect to influence the realization of entrepreneurial potential. However, it is purported that the emerging field of digital entrepreneurship may act as a 'great leveller' owing to perceived lower barriers to entry, disembodiment of the entrepreneurial actor and the absence of visible markers of disadvantage online. Using an interpretivist approach, we analyse empirical evidence that reveals how the privileges and disadvantages arising from intersecting social positions of gender, race and class status are experienced by UK women digital entrepreneurs. This analysis challenges the notion that the internet is a neutral platform for entrepreneurship and supports our thesis that offline inequality, in the form of marked bodies, social positionality and associated resource constraints, is produced and reproduced in the online environment.
The indeterminacy of 'temporariness':
Control and power in neo-bureaucratic organizations and work in UK television
Jonathan Morris, Catherine Farrell and Mike Reed
Human Relations, first published on June 10, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716648387
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/09/0018726716648387?papetoc
Abstract
Whereas historically the UK television industry has been characterized by hierarchy and vertical integration of programme production within a few large broadcasters, new neo-bureaucratic temporary organizational forms have proliferated in the industry in the past 20 years. This has been a product of a variety of factors, including globalization, technological change in the industry, deregulation and cost-cutting. This article draws on research involving 75 participants working in the large broadcasters, independents and as freelancers. The temporary form in the industry is an extreme case, in that they can be of very short duration (under a week). This has far-reaching implications for industry coordination and control. However, these forms are far from 'one-offs' and they are continuously reinvented and recast. This neo-bureaucratic form is controlled and regulated by the major producers through a set of powerful normative methods, based partly on an evolving custom and practice, but also in the extreme familiarity of people in the industry, across the large broadcasters, the independents and freelancers. The article evaluates how the structures, processes and coordination of these organizations through the manipulation of social capital in the industry are used to regulate and control a set of confused and 'messy' temporary arrangements.
The systems psychodynamics of gendered hiring:
Personal anxieties and defensive organizational practices within the New Zealand film industry
Jocelyn Handy and Lorraine Rowlands
Human Relations, first published on June 10, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716651690
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/09/0018726716651690?papetoc
Abstract
This article uses systems psychodynamic concepts to explore the creation and reproduction of gendered inequality within the New Zealand film industry. The article focuses on the ways in which senior film production workers' anxieties about hiring, or working with, women influence the process of assembling project teams. It suggests that the process of choosing team members creates considerable anxiety for both senior film production workers with responsibility for hiring and lower-status team members who need to rely on them to create high-functioning teams. The industry ideal of the autonomous creative worker is implicitly gendered, conforming more closely to traditional concepts of the unencumbered male worker than traditional ideals of femininity and motherhood. The antithesis between these representations creates anxiety, raising unconscious fears that women as a category are less trustworthy workers. Consequently, discriminatory hiring practices that diminish these anxieties become collectively accepted as rational responses to organizational problems and embedded within the social system as collectively endorsed defences against anxiety. Given that project-based employment is temporary, this pattern of discrimination against women is regularly repeated and contributes to entrenched gender inequality within the film industry. Qualitative data from interviews with 12 male and 13 female film production workers is presented to illustrate this analysis.
Slipping into functional stupidity: The bifocality of organizational compliance
Roland Paulsen
Human Relations, first published on June 7, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716649246
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/03/0018726716649246?papetoc
Abstract
Drawing on ethnographical work at the Swedish Public Employment Service, this article contextualizes functional stupidity in relation to other types of organizational compliance. Rather than seeing stupidity as a personality trait, I argue that it should be regarded as a transient unreflective mode of compliance one may yield to for a number of reasons but also reflect on in hindsight. Based on the empirical material, I distinguish 10 'stupidity rationales' emanating from reflective types of compliance with which employees can motivate the practice of functional stupidity. Functional stupidity can be seen as the modus operandi of ego-dystonic compliance we enter in order to endure long hours of imposed work assignments we would rather not perform.
In pursuit of ambidexterity: Managerial reactions to innovation–efficiency tensions
Angeliki Papachroni, Loizos Heracleous and Sotirios Paroutis
Human Relations, first published on June 7, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726715625343
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/03/0018726715625343?papetoc
Abstract
Whereas tensions arising from the pursuit of ambidexterity have been documented, how
these are interpreted and managed by actors themselves remains largely unexplored.
Based on in-depth case research in a large Scandinavian-based telecommunications
organization pursuing ambidexterity, we identify a path-dependent process of tension
interpretation and tension management at different levels of the organization. Our
findings suggest that, in the context of an ambidextrous strategy, actors are actively
involved in managing arising tensions based on their differing interpretations of these
tensions (where ambidextrous demands are seen as complementary, conflicting or
interrelated). We find that these interpretations are influenced by actors' strategic
orientation and organizational level. Our study extends understanding of the pursuit of
ambidexterity in practice, offering a pluralist, path-dependent perspective of how actors
perceive and deal with ambidexterity tensions.
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
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Special issue: Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational corporations – submit by 30 September 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Politics%20and%20MNCs.html
Special issue: Organizing feminism: Bodies, practices and ethics – submit by 30 November 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Organizing%20feminism.html
Special issue: The changing nature of managerial work – submit by 31 January 2017
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Managerial%20work.html
Special issue: Inserting professionals and professional organizations in studies of wrongdoing: The nature, antecedents, and consequences of professional misconduct – submit by 30 April 2017
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Professional%20misconduct.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.
Best wishes,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
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