Apologies for any cross-posting.
The February issue of Human Relations is available online: Volume 70, Issue 2, February 2017 − we hope you enjoy reading these articles.
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FEBRUARY ISSUE ARTICLES
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The case for reinvigorating quality of working life research
Gudela Grote, David Guest
Human Relations 70(2): 149‒167; first published date: June-21-2016 10.1177/0018726716654746
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716654746
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.
Keywords: emancipation, employee well-being, policy impact, quality of working life, QWL, rigour-relevance gap, work design
Digging deeper towards capricious management: 'Personal traits become part of the means of production'
Gerard Hanlon
Human Relations 70(2): 168‒184; first published date: May-20-2016 10.1177/0018726716644661
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716644661
Abstract
What follows examines the shifting nature of work to argue that we need to look beyond the employment relationship and the work organization to understand labour. It suggests one tendency in capitalism is to generate 'all labour as productive of value' (Harvie, 2005: 161), so that we subsume life to work. The article also suggests that, rather than being new, this development is an intensification of the past. Indeed, by returning to early management writers, it asserts that we can see the scale of management's political ambition to subsume life to work. As such, to understand labour we need to comprehend the broader issue of capitalism's social reproduction and the manner in which it recalibrates the subject as a 'subject of value'.
Keywords: co-creation of value, free gifts of sociality, immaterial labour, personality market, social reproduction, subsumption
Slipping into functional stupidity: The bifocality of organizational compliance
Roland Paulsen
Human Relations 70(2): 185‒210; first published date: June-07-2016 10.1177/0018726716649246
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716649246
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.
Keywords: conflict, motivation, organizational theory, psychology, stress
Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields
Crawford Spence, Chris Carter, Javier Husillos, Pablo Archel
Human Relations 70(2): 211‒236; first published date: June-28-2016 10.1177/0018726716649247
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716649247
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.
Keywords: auditors, austerity, cultural capital, elites, new public audit, public service, Strategic Action Fields, taste
Politics of place: The meaningfulness of resisting places
David Courpasson, Françoise Dany, Rick Delbridge
Human Relations 70(2): 237‒259; first published date: May-20-2016 10.1177/0018726716641748
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716641748
Abstract
The meaningfulness of the physical place within which resistance is nurtured and enacted has not been carefully considered in research on space and organizations. In this article, we offer two stories of middle managers developing resistance to managerial policies and decisions. We show that the appropriation and reconstruction of specific places by middle managers helps them to build autonomous resisting work thanks to the meanings that resisters attribute to the place in which they undertake resistance. We contribute to the literature on space and organizations by showing that resistance is a social experience through which individuals shape physical places and exploit the geographical blurring of organizations to develop political efforts that can be consequential. We also suggest the central role played by middle managers in the subversion of these meaningful places of resistance.
Keywords: meaningfulness, middle managers, place, resistance, space
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THIS MONTH'S FREE ACCESS ARTICLE
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Free to access until 28 February 2017:
The longer your work hours, the worse your relationship?
The role of selective optimization with compensation in the associations of working time with relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure in dual-career couples
Dana Unger, Sabine Sonnentag, Cornelia Niessen, Angela Kuonath
Human Relations December 2015 68(12): 1889‒1912, first published on June 11, 2015 doi: 10.1177/0018726715571188
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726715571188
Abstract
This two-wave panel study investigates the associations between working time, selective optimization with compensation in private life and relationship outcomes (i.e. relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure) in dual-career couples. We propose that one partner's selective optimization with compensation in private life either mediates or moderates the association of this partner's working time and relationship outcomes (i.e. relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure). Moreover, we postulate the crossover (i.e. transmission) of relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure within the couple. To test these hypotheses, we conducted an online study with a time lag of six months, in which 285 dual-career couples took part. We found evidence for selective optimization with compensation in private life as a mediator: working time spent by partners in dual-career couples was associated with selective optimization with compensation in their private life that, in turn, predicted relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure. Results did not support the assumption that one partner's selective optimization with compensation in private life moderates the association between working time and relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure. Relationship satisfaction, but not self-disclosure, crossed over within the couples. The results challenge the assumption that longer work hours have negative consequences for romantic relationships.
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PAPER OF THE YEAR 2016
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The Human Relations Paper of the Year Award is given to the paper that the Editorial Team considers best encapsulates broad readership appeal, sound methods, and whose theory advances our understanding of human relations at work.
The editors looked at all the articles published in the 69th volume before arriving at a short list of nine nominated articles for consideration for the 2016 Paper of the Year Award. These shortlisted papers covered a very wide variety of topics and methods and the editors read all nine papers carefully before scoring each. Total scores for each nomination revealed a clear winner:
Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin's legacy for change management
Stephen Cummings, Todd Bridgman and Kenneth G Brown
Human Relations January 2016, 69(1): 33–60, first published on 30 September 2015, DOI 10.1177/0018726715577707
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726715577707
Abstract
Kurt Lewin's 'changing as three steps' (unfreezing → changing → refreezing) is regarded by many as the classic or fundamental approach to managing change. Lewin has been criticized by scholars for over-simplifying the change process and has been defended by others against such charges. However, what has remained unquestioned is the model's foundational significance. It is sometimes traced (if it is traced at all) to the first article ever published in Human Relations. Based on a comparison of what Lewin wrote about changing as three steps with how this is presented in later works, we argue that he never developed such a model and it took form after his death. We investigate how and why 'changing as three steps' came to be understood as the foundation of the fledgling subfield of change management and to influence change theory and practice to this day, and how questioning this supposed foundation can encourage innovation.
Keywords: CATS, changing as three steps, change management, Kurt Lewin, management history, Michel Foucault
Warm congratulations to Stephen, Todd and Kenneth – they each received a framed award certificate, a one-year subscription to Human Relations and vouchers to spend on SAGE journals or books.
We hope you enjoy reading their paper. You might also like to view the excellent video animation 'Unfreezing change as three steps' they produced to accompany the article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0018726715577707
Gain free access to previous Human Relations Paper of the Year Award winners here: http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/PaperoftheYear.html
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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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Different ways new information technologies influence conventional organizational practices and employment relationships: The case of cybervetting for personnel selection
Brenda L Berkelaar
Human Relations, first published 31 January 2017, DOI 10.1177/0018726716686400
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716686400
Abstract
Cybervetting – employers' use of online information from social media and search engines to evaluate job candidates – may displace, supplement or shape conventional personnel selection and employment relationships in unexpected ways. Analysis of 45 interviews suggests that typically extractive approaches to cybervetting have the potential to displace less recognized, yet valuable, relational functions of more interactive practices depending on the functions and values users apply to the adoption and use of particular information and communication technologies. These findings highlight the need to consider how people implicitly and explicitly compare the functions of emerging technology-enabled practices with conventional organizational practices and salient values to understand when an emerging practice may displace, supplement or have no effect on a conventional practice. This study offers a preliminary framework for understanding how emerging sociotechnical practices evolve and with what effect, thereby providing insight into information and communication technology adoption and use beyond personnel selection contexts. It also suggests the emergence of a type of parasocial employment relationship should employers conflate interacting with applicants' information with interacting with applicants themselves.
Keywords: cybervetting, employment interview, employment relationships, information and communication technologies, information technology, online screening, organizational processes, parasocial relationships, personnel selection, social media, technology adoption and use
Proactivity routines: The role of social processes in how employees self-initiate change
Heather C Vough, Uta K Bindl, Sharon K Parker
Human Relations, first published 31 January 2017, DOI 10.1177/0018726716686819
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716686819
Abstract
Proactive work behaviors are self-initiated, future-focused actions aimed at bringing about changes to work processes in organizations. Such behaviors occur within the social context of work. The extant literature that has focused on the role of social context for proactivity has focused on social context as an overall input or output of proactivity. However, in this article we argue that the process of engaging in proactive work behavior (proactive goal-striving) may also be a function of the social context in which it occurs. Based on qualitative data from 39 call center employees in an energy-supply company, we find that in a context characterized by standardized work procedures, proactive goal-striving can occur through a proactivity routine – a socially constructed and accepted pattern of action by which employees initiate and achieve changes to work processes, with the support of managers and colleagues. Our findings point to the need to view proactive work behaviors at a higher level of analysis than the individual in order to identify shared routines for engaging in proactivity, as well as how multiple actors coordinate their efforts in the process of achieving individually-generated proactive goals.
Keywords: proactive work behaviors, proactivity, qualitative methods, routines, standardized work
Evaluation of an organizational health intervention for low-skilled workers and immigrants
Christine Busch, Tobias Koch, Julia Clasen, Eva Winkler, Julia Vowinkel
Human Relations, first published 25 January2017, DOI 10.1177/0018726716682308
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716682308
Abstract
We conducted this realist evaluation study of an organizational health intervention involving 421 low-skilled workers (50% female), half of whom were immigrants, in three companies over six months. Non-profit agencies implemented peer-mentoring and taught peer-mentors and line managers how to enhance social support in order to improve workers' work situation in a participative way. We formulated five mechanisms of change: the company management encouragement mechanism, the role model mechanism, the peer-mentor support mechanism, the line manager support mechanism, and the participative work improvement mechanism. We combined realist evaluation with a quasi-experimental design and process evaluation in a multi-methods approach. Results of multiple group latent change models and qualitative research showed that intervention-group workers perceived increases in peer-mentor support but not in line manager support. Peer-mentors managed to initiate high-quality improvements at work. Intervention-group workers showed significant reductions in blood pressure. Control-group workers experienced more psychosomatic complaints over time in significant contrast to intervention-group workers. Our results suggest that peer-mentoring offers an effective way for low-skilled workers and immigrants to achieve better health. To improve such health effects, a greater focus on line managers' work situations is needed to help them provide support.
Keywords: job stress intervention, line manager training, low-skilled workers, multi-methods approach, occupational health intervention, organizational health intervention, peer-mentoring, realist evaluation, social support
Beyond brokering: Sourcing agents, boundary work and working conditions in global supply chains
Vivek Soundararajan, Zaheer Khan, Shlomo Yedidia Tarba
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726716684200 | First Published January 17, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716684200
Abstract
The role that sourcing agents, autonomous peripheral actors located in developing economies, play in the governance of working conditions in global supply chains has been greatly underexplored in the literature. The present article reports on an in-depth qualitative study of garment supply chains that examined the boundary work of Indian sourcing agents aimed at dismantling or bridging the boundaries that affect the interaction between western buyers and local suppliers, in order to facilitate development and implementation of meaningful working conditions or social relations at work. We identify four types of boundary work that sourcing agents used to manage combinations of accommodative and non-accommodative buyers and suppliers in order to work through boundaries created by buyers' liability of foreignness: reinforcing, flexing (type 1 and 2) and restoring. We also found four essential conditions for a sourcing agent to become an effective boundary spanner in practice: acquiring knowledge about the relevant fields and actors, gaining legitimacy in the relevant fields and in the opinion of the parties involved, effectively translating the expectations of each party to the other, and benefiting from satisfying incentives. We contribute to the literature on governance for working conditions in global supply chains, boundary theory and liability of foreignness.
Keywords: boundary spanners, garment industry, India, liability of foreignness, social relations
The body, identity and gender in managerial athleticism
Janet Johansson, Janne Tienari, Anu Valtonen
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726716685161 | First Published January 17, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716685161
Abstract
We argue that the healthy, fit and athletic body plays an essential role in the way contemporary managerial identities are construed. Drawing on insights from Judith Butler, we study these bodily identities as a form of regulation in organizations. We identify the cultural basis of regulation, show how it operates through specific norms, and detail how it implies gender. Based on an empirical study of men and women in management who are passionate about their healthy and fit bodies and athletic lifestyles, we demonstrate how norms set by managerial athleticism – understood as a particular regulative regime – operate through three discursive practices: perfecting the body, advocating against non-fit bodies, and becoming a role model. We show how the norms operate in both explicit and abject fashion and how they are implied in masculine language and materialized in physical (athletic) bodies. We offer new insights on how bodily identity regulation occurs and elucidate the gendered complexity and contradictions inscribed in managerial athleticism.
Keywords: body, fitness, gender, health, identity, management, managerial athleticism, regulation, sports
Identity regulation, identity work and phronesis
Thibaut Bardon, Andrew D Brown, Stéphan Pezé
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726716680724 | First Published January 6, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716680724
Abstract
How do corporations attempt to regulate the ways middle managers draw on discourses centred on 'effectiveness' and 'ethics' in their identity work, and how do these individuals respond? We analyse the discursive struggle over what it meant to be a competent manager at Disneyland, where middle managers were encouraged to construe their selves in ways that emphasized 'being effective' over 'being ethical', and managers responded with identity work that positioned them as searching for the practical wisdom (phronesis) to make decisions that were both effective and moral. The theoretical contribution we make is twofold. First, we analyse processes of identity regulation and identity work at Disneyland, highlighting divergences between corporate injunctions and middle managers' appropriations of them, regarding what it meant to be a practically wise manager. Second, we discuss a phronetic identity narrative template, contestable both by organizations and managers, in which people are positioned as questing for the practical wisdom to make decisions that are both moral and effective, and phronesis as an image by which scholars may analyse identities and identity work. This leads us to a more nuanced understanding of middle manager identities and the scope they have to constitute their selves as moral agents.
Keywords: Disneyland, effectiveness, ethics, middle managers, phronesis
Body art as branded labour: At the intersection of employee selection and relationship marketing
Andrew R Timming
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726716681654 | First Published January 6, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716681654
Abstract
Using mixed methods, this article examines the role of body art as a form of branded labour in customer-facing jobs. It brings together employee selection and relationship marketing into one framework, and uniquely conceptualizes body art as an asset in the labour market, rather than the traditional liability. In Study 1, 192 respondents with management experience participated in an online laboratory experiment in which they were asked to rate photographs of tattooed and non-tattooed job applicants in two hypothetical organizations: a fine dining restaurant and a popular nightclub. In Study 2, 20 in-depth, qualitative interviews were carried out with managers, tattooed front-line employees and potential consumers in two real-world service sector firms. The results show how body art can be strategically used to positively convey the brand of organizations, primarily those targeting a younger, 'edgier' demographic of customer.
Keywords: aesthetic labour, body art, branded labour, recruitment and selection, relationship marketing
Motivation and identity: A psychoanalytic perspective on the turn to identity in motivation research
Michaela Driver
Human Relations DOI: 10.1177/0018726716669577 | First Published January 2, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716669577
Abstract
Taking the recent turn to identity in motivation research as its starting point, the study attempts to move the field further beyond instrumentalizing and fractionalizing conceptions in which motivation is simply a question of pulling the right levers. Drawing on a psychoanalytic, particularly Lacanian, perspective and an analysis of 51 narratives shared by employees from a number of occupations, it develops a more fine-grained and complex understanding of how motivation functions in the context of identity work. Specifically, the study explores how motivation is invariably mapped onto internal struggles with unconscious subjectivity and desire. These may align individuals more with organizational ideals of the properly motivated employee, but also create an empowering space in which employees can work through work-related fantasies and find enjoyment on their own terms. The implications of this perspective are discussed.
Keywords: discourse, identity, Lacan, motivation, psychoanalysis
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
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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.
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
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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 and 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.
Human Relations is a top 5 interdisciplinary social sciences journal (Source: 2015 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2016):
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
Best wishes,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Twitter: @HR_TIHR
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org