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Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields
Crawford Spence, Chris Carter, Javier Husillos and Pablo Archel
Human Relations 70(2):211‒236 https://doi.org/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
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APRIL ISSUE
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SPECIAL ISSUE: Global supply chains and social relations at work
Guest edited by Juliane Reinecke, Jimmy Donaghey, Adrian Wilkinson and Geoffrey Wood
Global supply chains and social relations at work: Brokering across boundaries [Free access]
Juliane Reinecke, Jimmy Donaghey, Adrian Wilkinson and Geoffrey Wood
Human Relations 71(4): 459–480 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718756497
Abstract
Global supply chains are not just instruments for the exchange of economic goods and flow of capital across borders. They also connect people in unprecedented ways across social and cultural boundaries and have created new, interrelated webs of social relationships that are socially embedded. However, most of the existing theories of work are mainly based at the level of the corporation, not on the network of relations that interlink them, and how this may impact on work and employment relations. We argue that this web of relations should not just be seen in economic, but also social terms, and that the former are embedded and enabled by the latter. This article argues for the value of focusing on the role of brokers and boundary workers in mediating social relations across global supply chains. It develops four approaches that lie on a spectrum from structural perspectives focused on brokers who link otherwise unconnected actors to more constructivist ones focused on boundary workers performing translation work between domains.
Keywords: boundary work, global governance, global production networks, GSC, global value chains, socio-economics
Beyond brokering: Sourcing agents, boundary work and working conditions in global supply chains
Vivek Soundararajan, Zaheer Khan and Shlomo Yedidia Tarba
Human Relations 71(4): 481–509 https://doi.org/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
Global supply chains, institutional constraints and firm level adaptations:
A comparative study of Chinese service outsourcing firms
Jingqi Zhu and Glenn Morgan
Human Relations 71(4): 510–535 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717713830
Abstract
The focus on inter-firm governance relations within global supply chains analysis has left social relations at workplaces as a 'black box' and relatively underdiscussed. Through an in-depth, comparative study of two Chinese IT service providers for Japanese clients, this article explores how the work and employment relations in the supplier firm are shaped by the institutional contexts of both the supplier firm and the lead firm as well as by the nature of the global supply chain in which they are located. The article shows how the intersection of global supply chains and local institutional environments creates potential gaps between what is required by the lead firms and what is feasible within the supplier firms. Therefore, managers in the supplier firm have to negotiate ways of managing these expectations in the light of their own institutional constraints and possibilities. We identify three forms of adaptation made by the suppliers that we describe as wholesale adaptation, ceremonial adaptation and minimal adaptation to lead firms' expectations. We argue that these interactions and forms of adaptation can be extended and explored more generally in global supply chains and provide the basis for a fruitful integration of institutional approaches with global supply chain analysis.
Keywords: comparative case study, global supply chain, institutional analysis, service outsourcing, strategic choice, workplace relations
From horizontal to vertical labour governance:
The International Labour Organization (ILO) and decent work in global supply chains
Huw Thomas and Peter Turnbull
Human Relations 71(4): 536–559 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717719994
Abstract
The role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the governance of global supply chains is typically neglected or simply dismissed as ineffective. This is understandable as global supply chains have undermined the traditional nation state (horizontal) paradigm of global labour governance, most notably the international Conventions agreed by the tripartite constituents (governments, employers and workers' representatives) of the ILO. But this simply poses the question of whether, and if so how, the ILO can reframe the system of global labour governance to include the (vertical) global supply chains that all too often fail to deliver 'decent work for all'. Based on an extended ethnographic study, we demonstrate how policy entrepreneurs (international civil servants) within the ILO can play a pivotal role in not only reframing the discourse in a way that resonates with the 'lived experiences' of constituents but also 'orchestrate' the social partners in order to secure majority support for a process that might ultimately lead to a new standard (Convention) for decent work in global supply chains. A new approach to employment relationships in global supply chains is 'in the making', with the potential to improve working conditions and rights at work for millions across the globe.
Keywords: decent work, discursive institutionalism, global labour governance, global supply chains, international labour standards, strategic framing
The role of intermediaries in governance of global production networks:
Restructuring work relations in Pakistan's apparel industry
Kamal Munir, Muhammad Ayaz, David L Levy and Hugh Willmott
Human Relations 71(4): 560–583 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717722395
Abstract
This article locates the reorganization of work relations in the apparel sector in Pakistan, after the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quota regime, within the context of a global production network (GPN). We examine the role of a network of corporate, state, multilateral and civil society actors who serve as intermediaries in GPN governance. These intermediaries transmit and translate competitive pressures and invoke varied, sometimes contradictory, imaginaries in their efforts to realign and stabilize the GPN. We analyse the post-MFA restructuring of Pakistan's apparel sector, which dramatically increased price competition and precipitated a contested adjustment process among Pakistani and global actors with divergent priorities and resources. These intermediaries converged on a 'solution' that combined and enacted imaginaries of modernization, competitiveness, professional management and female empowerment, while also emphasizing low costs and female docility. We highlight the intersection of economic, political and cultural dynamics of GPNs, and reveal the gendered dimensions of GPN restructuring. We theorize the role of these actors as a transnational managerial elite in GPN governance, who led a restructuring process that preserved the hegemonic stability of the GPN and protected the interests of western branded apparel companies and consumers, but did not necessarily serve the interests of workers.
Keywords: cultural political economy, development, employment, gender in organizations, global governance, Gramsci
Mind the gap: Grass roots 'brokering' to improve labour standards in global supply chains
Sarah J Kaine and Emmanuel Josserand
Human Relations 71(4): 584‒609 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717727046
Abstract
While governance and regulation are a first step in addressing worsening working conditions in global supply chains, improving implementation is also key to reversing this trend. In this article, after examining the nature of the existing governance and implementation gaps in labour standards in global supply chains, we explore how Viet Labor, an emerging grass-roots organization, has developed practices to help close them. This involves playing brokering roles between different workers and between workers and existing governance mechanisms. We identify an initial typology of six such roles: educating, organizing, supporting, collective action, whistle-blowing and documenting. This marks a significant shift in the way action to improve labour standards along the supply chain is analysed. Our case explores how predominantly top-down approaches can be supplemented by bottom-up ones centred on workers' agency.
Keywords: governance, implementation gap, labour standards, migrant labour, supply chains
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How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?
Markus Helfen, Elke Schüßler and Jörg Sydow
Human Relations. First Published March 26, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718757060
Abstract
Ensuring social responsibility is a continued challenge in value creation processes that are globally dispersed among multiple organizations. We use the literature on interorganizational network management to shed new light on the question of how employment relations can be managed more responsibly in global value networks (GVNs). In contrast to the structure-oriented global value chain perspective, a network management perspective highlights the practices by which employment relations can be addressed in the context of plural forms of network governance. Using examples of GVNs in the automotive and garment industries, we illustrate how the network management practices of selecting, allocating, regulating and evaluating can enable lead firms and suppliers to effectively deal with social responsibility challenges on the level of whole networks. We also discuss how network management practices can handle field-level and firm-level constraints for the management of multi-employer relations in GVNs.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, labour standards, multi-employer relations, network governance, network management
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Practice makes perfect? Skillful performances in veterinary work
Caroline A Clarke and David Knights
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717745605 | First Published April 24, 2018
Abstract
Is vetting a craft that must be learned owing to the limitations of scientific discipline, or simply a question of practice makes perfect? This question arose from our empirical research on veterinary surgeons (vets), who we found were often struggling with the divergence between the precise and unambiguous knowledge underlying the training and the unpredictability and imprecision of their everyday practices. These are comparatively underexplored issues insofar as the literature on vets tends to be descriptive and statistical, focusing primarily on clinical matters and associated human-animal interactions. Our cliché title has a question mark because while many vets remain embedded in the disciplined 'certainties' and causal regularities within their training, in practice this ordered world is rarely realized, and they are faced with indeterminacy where the 'perfect' solution eludes them. Vets often turn these unrealistic ideals of expertise back in on themselves, thus generating doubt and insecurity for any failure in their practices. In analysing vets' experiences, we pay attention to the anatomical models of science, where linear causal analysis is expected to provide orderly and predictable outcomes or 'right' answers to problems, as well as notions of expertise that turn out to be illusory.
Keywords: competence, doubt practice, expert, medical, perfect, performances, science, skill, vets
Loyal after the end: Understanding organizational identification in the wake of failure
Ian J Walsh, Federica Pazzaglia and Erim Ergene
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718767740| First Published April 24, 2018
Abstract
Prestige has traditionally been viewed as a primary explanation for individuals' identification with organizations. Yet there are clues in the literature that some individuals identify with organizations that have lost their prestige owing to failure. We use data from a survey of former employees of a defunct technology firm to test a proposed model of identification with failed organizations. We find that the extent to which the perceived identity of a failed organization fulfills former members' self-enhancement and belongingness motives has a positive relationship with their identification with it. Identification, in turn, inclines former members to socially interact with each other and participate in alumni associations. Further qualitative analysis reveals the organizational identity work practices by which former members recast a failed organization's identity in positive terms. These findings suggest the merit of relaxing assumptions about prestige as a necessary precursor to organizational identification, and augment scholarly understanding of the cognitive and relational mechanisms that facilitate individuals' identification with organizations in the wake of events that injure their reputations.
Keywords: former members, identity motives, identity work, organizational failure, prestige, stigma
Dynamisms of financialization: Circuits of power in globalized production networks
Isabel Pedraza-Acosta and Jan Mouritsen
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751612| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
This article analyses the dominant ideological mode of rationality of financialization, its operationalization via accounting devices and deployments in political intra- and inter-organizational processes, and its dynamisms in global production networks. It asks how are political processes informed and conditioned by calculative devices that mediate financialization processes? Drawing on a study of a French multinational corporation whose accounting devices – one concerning performance that requires suppliers to be 'poor' and another concerning risk that requires suppliers to be 'rich' – the article focuses on the dynamic of circuits of power. Accounting devices provide one-sided incentives by categorizing suppliers as costs, silencing the industrial rationality of the network where suppliers are the capabilities and skills needed by the multinational corporation. Such tensions put the network at risk, as when the suppliers went bankrupt, the multinational corporation was devoid of its industrial competencies. Financialization is ambiguous. Its devices are not inherently facilitative of systemic powers but reflect an ideological mode of rationality and political processes that produce overflows. The associated circuits of power show that systemic power is never eternal but dynamic. Circuits of power develop ambiguous political processes that push disruptive dynamisms of financialization processes in global production networks. Financialization produces costly tensions.
Keywords: accounting, calculative devices, dominant ideological modes of rationality, financialization, global production network, multinational corporations, MNC, political processes, risk
Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics
Melissa Tyler
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764264| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
This article considers inclusion through the lens of embodied ethics. It does so by connecting feminist writing on recognition, ethics and embodiment to recent examples of political activism as instances of recognition-based organizing. In making these connections, the article draws on insights from Judith Butler's recent writing on the ethics and politics of assembly in order to rethink how inclusion might be understood and practised. The article has three interrelated aims: (i) to emphasize the importance of a critical reconsideration of the ethics and politics of inclusion given – on the one hand, its positioning as an organizational 'good', and on the other, the conditions attached to it; (ii) to develop a critique of inclusion, drawing on insights from recent feminist thinking on relational ethics; and (iii) to connect this theoretical critique of inclusion, reconsidered here through the lens of embodied ethics, to assembly as a form of feminist activism. Each of these aims underpins the theoretical and empirical discussion developed in the article, specifically its focus on the relationship between embodied ethics, the interplay between theory and practice, and a politics of assembly as the basis for a critical reconsideration of inclusion.
Keywords: assembly, Judith Butler, embodied ethics, inclusion, recognition, relationality
Mothers and researchers in the making: Negotiating 'new' motherhood within the 'new' academia
Astrid S Huopalainen and Suvi T Satama
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764571| First Published April 17, 2018
Abstract
How do early-career academic mothers balance the demands of contemporary motherhood and academia? More generally, how do working mothers develop their embodied selves in today's highly competitive working life? This article responds to a recent call to voice maternal experiences in the field of organization studies. Inspired by matricentric feminism and building on our intimate autoethnographic diary notes, we provide a fine-grained understanding of the changing demands that constitute the ongoing negotiation of 'new' motherhood within the 'new' academia. By highlighting the complexity of embodied experience, we show how motherhood is not an entirely negative experience in the workplace. Despite academia's neoliberal tendencies, the social privilege of whiteness, heterosexuality and the middle class enables – at times – simultaneous satisfaction with both motherhood and an academic career.
Keywords: autoethnography, early-career academics, embodied experience, matricentric feminism, motherhood
Measuring affective well-being at work using short-form scales:
Implications for affective structures and participant instructions
Emma Russell and Kevin Daniels
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751034| First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
Measuring affective well-being in organizational studies has become increasingly widespread, given its association with key work-performance and other markers of organizational functioning. As such, researchers and policy-makers need to be confident that well-being measures are valid, reliable and robust. To reduce the burden on participants in applied settings, short-form measures of affective well-being are proving popular. However, these scales are seldom validated as standalone, comprehensive measures in their own right. In this article, we used a short-form measure of affective well-being with 10 items: the Daniels five-factor measure of affective well-being (D-FAW). In Study 1, across six applied sample groups (N = 2624), we found that the factor structure of the short-form D-FAW is robust when issued as a standalone measure, and that it should be scored differently depending on the participant instruction used. When participant instructions focus on now or today, then affect is best represented by five discrete emotion factors. When participant instructions focus on the past week, then affect is best represented by two or three mood-based factors. In Study 2 (N = 39), we found good construct convergent validity of short-form D-FAW with another widely used scale (PANAS). Implications for the measurement and structure of affect are discussed.
Keywords: affect, PANAS, positive and negative affect schedule, psychological well-being, psychometrics, short-form measures, validity
A trickle-down model of task and development i-deals
Yasin Rofcanin, Mireia Las Heras, P Matthijs Bal, Beatrice IJM Van der Heijden and Didem Taser Erdogan
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751613| First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
In today's competitive landscape, employees increasingly negotiate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), referring to personalized work arrangements that address recipients' unique work needs and preferences. While i-deals unfold in a dyadic context between subordinates and their managers, the consequences of i-deals concern everyone including co-workers and the organization. Focusing on task and development i-deals, we propose a trickle-down model to explore whether and how organizations benefit from i-deals. First, we argue that managers' task and development i-deals cascade down to their subordinates, leading them to have similar i-deals with downstream consequences for co-workers and the organization. Furthermore, we propose that effective implementation of task and development i-deals are context-specific: we integrate the role of managers' servant leadership as a boundary condition to explore the association between managers' and subordinates' task and development i-deals. We also integrate subordinates' prosocial motives to explore the association between subordinates' task and development i-deals and their work outcomes. We draw on work adjustment, social learning and social information processing theories to study our proposed associations. The results of a matched employee–manager dataset collected in the Philippines support our hypothesized model. This study contributes to i-deals research by: (1) testing whether and how task and development i-deals can be mutually beneficial for all the involved parties; and (2) revealing how the context, at the individual level, explains how and when task and development i-deals can best be implemented in workplaces. This study highlights that individualization of HR practices need not be a zero-sum game.
Keywords: prosocial motives, servant leadership, socially connecting behaviours, task i-deals, work performance
Politicization and political contests in and around contemporary multinational corporations: An introduction
Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718755880 | First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
This article looks at core arguments in international business, organization studies and surrounding academic fields that focus on the study of politicization and political contests in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). Two evident streams of debate are identified. Equally evident is that these streams hardly connect. One stream is mainly interested in studying politicization from the outside, whereas the other is mainly interested in politicization from within. As a way of connecting both streams, we introduce the circuits of power framework. Next, we introduce the contributions of our Special Issue, followed by concluding comments which distinguish five emergent themes. First, we show how the application of the circuits of power framework sheds new light on the study of political contests of MNCs. Second, we highlight that the role of nation states has not lost its significance as, for example, political corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches would have us believe. Third, dominant ideologies play an important role in establishing and controlling circuits of power in and around MNCs. Fourth, it is vital to take labour issues into account in this field of study. Fifth, there is increasing evidence that asymmetric and hierarchical forms of organizing do not disappear in new MNC network forms.
Keywords: circuits of power, employment and labour relations, political contests within and around multinational corporations, politicization of multinational corporations, transnational social spaces
Identity work within attempts to transform healthcare: Invisible team processes
Cindy L Cain, Monica Frazer and Tina R Kilaberia
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718764277 | First Published April 13, 2018
Abstract
Studies have shown that workers' identities matter for a host of individual and organizational outcomes. However, the question of how identities work becomes more complex when considering settings where workers must negotiate multiple – and sometimes conflicting – identities. Interprofessional healthcare teams are one such setting. Within interprofessional teams, workers are expected to adopt both professional and team-based identities, sometimes leading to confusion and conflicts. Using longitudinal qualitative analyses of healthcare team members' reflective audio diaries, we document identity work of one team as they attempted to create and adopt a new approach to care. We analyze 176 recordings over 30 weeks and find that: team members experience multiple identification targets more or less conflicting, depending on the organizational context; team members from different professional backgrounds experience identity processes differently; and conflicts with others affect how team members see themselves and one another. These findings enrich our understanding of how multiple identities are reconciled in the workplace, and illustrate hidden aspects of forming and sustaining team-based work.
Keywords: change, conflict, healthcare organizations, innovation, organizational culture, teamwork
The democratic rejection of democracy:
Performative failure and the limits of critical performativity in an organizational change project
Daniel King and Christopher Land
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751841| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
'How do we introduce democracy democratically to people who are not sure they want it?' This question was posed to us at the outset of what became a three-year experiment in seeking to implement more democratic organizational practices within a small education charity, World Education (WE). WE were an organization with a history of anarchist organizing and recent negative experiences of hierarchical managerialism, who wanted to return to a more democratic organizational form. This was an ideal opportunity, we thought, for the type of critical performative intervention called for within Critical Management Studies. Using Participant Action Research, which itself has a democratic ethos, we aimed to democratically bring about workplace democracy, using a range of interventions from interviewing, whole organization visioning workshops through to participating in working groups to bring about democratic change. Yet we failed. WE members democratically rejected democracy.
We reflect on this failure using Jacques Derrida's idea of a constitutive aporia at the heart of democracy, and suggests the need to more carefully unpack the difficult relationship between power and equality when seeking to facilitate more democratic organizational practices. The article presents an original perspective on the potential for, and limits of, critical performativity inspired interventions in organizations.
Keywords: charities/not-for-profit organizations, critical consultancy, critical management studies, Derrida, employee voice, participation and workplace democracy
Informal creative labour practices: A relational work perspective
Ana Alacovska
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754991| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
The informal nature of creative work is routinely acknowledged in the studies of creative labour. However, informality of creative work has been so far treated dualistically: firstly, as the informal governance of creative labour markets and secondly, as the ever-increasing informalization of creative workplaces. In contrast, this article argues for the importance of focusing on informal labour practices as infused in relational contexts so as to understand how creative workers uphold career sustainability and cope daily with contingent, insecure and underpaid work. Drawing on the relational work perspective from economic sociology, I contend that creative workers' informal labour practices and economic activities are constituted by the meanings and quality workers attach to interpersonal relations. The more socially and spatially intimate and closer the interpersonal relationship, the less the economic benefit. The more socially and spatially distant the relationship, the greater the pecuniary motivation. The article maps relational work dynamics in: (1) informal paid labour practices, comprising work under-the-radar of state authorities, such as cash-in-hand work including online crowd-work, tips-based work, and paid favours and (2) informal unpaid labour practices, practices happening in webs of reciprocity that are not directly compensated with money, such as barter, favour-swapping and voluntary work.
Keywords: creative industries, creative labour, creative work, economies of favour, informality, informal labour practices, informal work, post-socialist work, precarity, relational work
Respectful leadership:
Reducing performance challenges posed by leader role incongruence and gender dissimilarity
Suzanne van Gils, Niels Van Quaquebeke, Jan Borkowski and Daan van Knippenberg
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718754992| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
We investigate how respectful leadership can help overcome the challenges for follower performance that female leaders face when working (especially with male) followers. First, based on role congruity theory, we illustrate the biases faced by female leaders. Second, based on research on gender (dis-)similarity, we propose that these biases should be particularly pronounced when working with a male follower. Finally, we propose that respectful leadership is most conducive to performance in female leader–male follower dyads compared with all other gender configurations. A multi-source field study (N = 214) provides partial support for our hypothesis. While our hypothesized effect was confirmed, respectful leadership seems to be generally effective for female leaders irrespective of follower gender, thus lending greater support in this context to the arguments of role congruity rather than gender dissimilarity.
Keywords: gender dissimilarity, respectful leadership, role congruity theory
Professional image under threat: Dealing with learning–credibility tension
Alaric Bourgoin and Jean-François Harvey
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718756168 | First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
How does one learn and build credibility simultaneously? Such is the challenge faced by an increasing number of professionals, who must quickly get to grips with new assignments while displaying sufficient knowledge to be regarded as experts. If they do not, they will be unable to exert influence over the situation. To address this puzzle, we draw on data from 21 months of participant observation during consulting assignments, and interviews with 79 management consultants. Building on Goffman's notion of face, we identify 'learning–credibility tension' – a discrepancy between a newcomer position that requires professionals to learn, and a role-based image that requires credibility – as a salient and costly issue during organizational entry. Specifically, we find that consultants experience threats to their face during interactions with clients. They deal with these threats by performing individual tactics that help them reduce the anxiety associated with learning–credibility tension, and support their relationship with clients. Our study builds theory in socialization by revealing tactics that allow professionals to keep face while seeking the information they require to adjust to new settings. We also contribute to substantive debates on management consulting by relating insights from the sociology of professions to contemporary knowledge workers.
Keywords: credibility, ethnography, impostor syndrome, impression management, information seeking, learning, management consulting, socialization tactics
How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?
Markus Helfen , Elke Schüßler and Jörg Sydow
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718757060| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Ensuring social responsibility is a continued challenge in value creation processes that are globally dispersed among multiple organizations. We use the literature on interorganizational network management to shed new light on the question of how employment relations can be managed more responsibly in global value networks (GVNs). In contrast to the structure-oriented global value chain perspective, a network management perspective highlights the practices by which employment relations can be addressed in the context of plural forms of network governance. Using examples of GVNs in the automotive and garment industries, we illustrate how the network management practices of selecting, allocating, regulating and evaluating can enable lead firms and suppliers to effectively deal with social responsibility challenges on the level of whole networks. We also discuss how network management practices can handle field-level and firm-level constraints for the management of multi-employer relations in GVNs.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, labour standards, multi-employer relations, network governance, network management
No funny business: Precarious work and emotional labour in stand-up comedy
Nick Butler and Dimitrinka Stoyanova Russell
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718758880| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Freelance creative work is a labour of love where opportunities for self-expression are combined with exploitative working conditions. This article explores this dynamic by showing how a group of freelance creative labourers navigate employment while coping with the pressures associated with economic precarity. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we argue that full-time stand-up comedians engage in 'pecuniary' forms of emotion management in an occupational field where social networks and professional relationships play a prominent role. First, comedians project an image of positivity to demonstrate a willingness to work for little or no pay in order to curry favour with comedy club promoters. Second, comedians suppress feelings of anxiety and frustration that arise from financial insecurity in order to keep their relationships with promoters on an even keel – even when the rate of pay and promptness of remuneration fall below acceptable standards. Our study thus has implications for other creative sectors in which precarity is the norm, since it suggests that emotional labour is a resource not only for engaging with customers and clients but also for engaging with multiple employers, negotiating pay and dealing with conditions of insecurity in freelance settings – often with unintended, paradoxical, results.
Keywords: creative labour, emotional labour, freelance work, precarity, stand-up comedy
Contested compliance regimes in global production networks:
Insights from the Bangladesh garment industry
Fahreen Alamgir and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718760150| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
This article reports the findings of a field study on the emergence of collective agreements led by global brands enacting compliance measures to improve safety and working conditions in the Bangladesh garment industry. We explore how key actors in the Bangladesh garment sector who constitute the local production system of the global supply chain experienced the implementation of global agreements on factory safety. We argue that global safety compliance measures through multi-stakeholder initiatives provide legitimacy to multinational corporations and their global brands but do little to address the structural problems arising from exploitative pricing and procurement practices, which are the key reasons for deplorable working conditions in garment factories. Our findings indicate that neoliberal development policies of the state, where local economies are incorporated into global production networks, resulted in differential treatment and regulation of specific populations that comprise garment factory workers. The reconfiguration of state power to meet the demands of global supply chains also involved use of state violence to suppress dissent while undermining labour rights and working conditions. Our article contributes to the politicization of multinational corporations in global production chains by showing how contestations between workers, factory owners, the state, trade unions and multinational corporations create new private forms of governance and new regimes of compliance in the industry.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, garment industry, global compliance regimes, global supply chains, private governance
Who will I be when I retire?
Introducing a Lacanian typology at the intersection of present identity work and future narratives of the retired self
Michaela Driver
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718761553 | First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
The study introduces a framework by which insights from Lacanian psychoanalysis can be employed to offer a more nuanced understanding of how retirement is currently being reinvented. Building on an analysis of 49 stories in which early-career employees describe their retirement aspirations, the study explores the complexities of how individuals draw on retirement discourse to articulate who they are and what they want. The analysis suggests that the narrative construction of retirement is not only a space for becoming further attached to fantasies that align identity with existing power structures but also a space in which to work through such attachments and open up identity in transformative ways. The study contributes novel perspectives on the effects of the contradictions in current retirement discourse at the interstice of identity, discourse and power, offering new avenues for research on retirement and identity.
Keywords: identity, Lacan, narratives, psychoanalysis, retirement
Guiding and enabling liminal experiences between business and arts organizations operating in a sponsorship relationship
Annmarie Ryan
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718761784| First Published March 26, 2018
Abstract
Through the lens of liminality, this article considers the identity work engaged in by managers working at the boundary of the organization. Liminality has been used to shed light on the ambiguous positions of temporary employees, consultants and project teams. As such, the concept has become synonymous with temporary, transient or precarious work settings. However, in this article I consider the efforts that managers make to set up and co-create the support structure they require to enter into and leave liminal experiences. I draw on a social anthropology to reconsider the movements between these 'in' and 'out' phases, and introduce two kinds of enabling roles: guide and ally. Through the use of a longitudinal case study research design the article contributes to the delineation between transitory and perpetual liminality, to include the notion of temporary incorporation. In distinguishing temporary incorporation from perpetual liminality, we can shift attention towards the possibilities of incremental learning in limen, where the subject and the context remain subject to change.
Keywords: ally, guide, inter-organizational relationships, liminality, organizational learning sponsorship
Self-authorship and creative industries workers' career decision-making
Dawn Bennett and Sophie Hennekam
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717747369| First Published March 5, 2018
Abstract
Career decision-making is arguably at its most complex within professions where work is precarious and career calling is strong. This article reports from a study that examined the career decision-making of creative industries workers, for whom career decisions can impact psychological well-being and identity just as much as they impact individuals' work and career. The respondents were 693 creative industries workers who used a largely open-ended survey to create in-depth reflections on formative moments and career decision-making. Analysis involved the theoretical model of self-authorship, which provides a way of understanding how people employ their sense of self to make meaning of their experiences. The self-authorship process emerged as a complex, non-linear and consistent feature of career decision-making. Theoretical contributions include a non-linear view of self-authorship that exposes the authorship of visible and covert multiple selves prompted by both proactive and reactive identity work.
Keywords: artists, arts careers, career aspirations, career development, gender, precarious work
Creaming and parking in marketized employment services: An Anglo-German comparison
Ian Greer, Lisa Schulte and Graham Symon
Human Relations First Published March 4, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717745958
Abstract
The delivery of public services by nonprofit and for-profit providers alters the nature of services and jobs, often in unintended and undesired ways. We argue that these effects depend on the degree to which the service is 'marketized', that is, subjected by the funder to price-based competition. Using case studies of British and German employment services, this article scrutinizes the link between funding practices and service quality. Of particular concern in marketized employment services is the problem of 'creaming and parking', in which providers select job-ready clients for services and neglect clients more distant from the labour market. We explore three questions. What are the mechanisms through which marketization produces creaming and parking? What are the differences between these mechanisms in commercial and non-commercial service providers? Which national institutions might serve as a buffer for the landscape of service provision facing price-based competition?
Keywords: contracted-out public services, front-line service work, marketization of employment services, nonprofit public service providers, private-sector public-service providers, quasi-markets, vouchers
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
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Human Relations is included in the FT50 list of journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the FT Research rank, included in the Global MBA, EMBA and Online MBA rankings.
It is an A* journal – the highest category of quality – in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABCD) Journal Quality List 2013.
It is also ranked 4 in the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide 2015.
Human Relations is a top 5 interdisciplinary social sciences journal (Source: 2016 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2017):
2-year impact factor: 2.622 Ranked: 4/96 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 58/193 in Management
5-year impact factor: 4.027 Ranked: 2/93 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 50/186 in Management
Read the journal's mission statement.
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)