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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Groups, Teams, And The Division Of Labor — Interdisciplinary Perspectives On The Organization Of Work, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast
Groups, Teams, And The Division Of Labor — Interdisciplinary Perspectives On The Organization Of Work, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast
Rosemary Batt
The purpose of this chapter is to survey and critique this varied landscape of research on groups at work, drawing out common themes and selective weaknesses with the goal of suggesting a more synthetic and informed future agenda. Our discussion is not encyclopedic, but rather focused on three quite different research traditions: those based in psychology, in industrial relations, and in critical sociology. We outline the intellectual landscape of each case and highlight areas of agreement and disagreement. We argue that this project of cross-disciplinary theory building encounters substantial challenges, but is rich in potential. These traditions differ in their …
The Liberating Consequences Of Creative Work: How A Creative Outlet Lifts The Physical Burden Of Secrecy, Jack Goncalo, Lynne Vincent, Verena Krause
The Liberating Consequences Of Creative Work: How A Creative Outlet Lifts The Physical Burden Of Secrecy, Jack Goncalo, Lynne Vincent, Verena Krause
Jack Goncalo
A newly emerging stream of research suggests creativity can be fruitfully explored, not as an outcome variable, but as a contributor to the general cognitive and behavioral responding of the individual. In this paper, we extend this nascent area of research on the consequences of creativity by showing that working on a creative task can contribute to feelings of liberation— feelings that can help people to overcome psychological burdens. We illustrate the liberating effects of creativity by integrating the embodied cognition literature with recent research showing that keeping a secret is experienced as a psychological and physical burden. While secrecy …
Revisiting The Meaning Of Leadership, Joel Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, Marya Besharov
Revisiting The Meaning Of Leadership, Joel Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, Marya Besharov
Marya Besharov
During the past fifty years, organizational scholarship on leadership has shifted from a focus on the significance of leadership for meaning-making to the significance of leadership for economic performance. This shift has been problematic for two reasons. First, it has given rise to numerous conceptual difficulties that now plague the study of leadership. Second, there is now comparatively little attention to the question of how individuals find meaning in the economic sphere even though this question should arguably be one of the most important questions for organizational scholarship. This chapter discusses several reasons for the shift, arguing that one of …
Creativity From Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity In Mixed-Sex Work Groups, Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle Duguid, Jessica Kennedy
Creativity From Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity In Mixed-Sex Work Groups, Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle Duguid, Jessica Kennedy
Jack Goncalo
Most group creativity research is premised on the assumption that creativity is unleashed by removing normative constraints. As work organizations become increasingly diverse in terms of gender, however, this assumption needs to be reconsidered since mixed-sex interactions carry a high risk of offense. Departing from the assumption that normative constraints necessarily stifle creativity, we develop a theoretical perspective in which creativity in mixed-sex groups is enhanced by imposing a norm to be politically correct (PC)—a norm that sets clear expectations for how men and women should interact with one another. We present evidence from two group experiments showing that the …
The Experience Of Failed Humor: Implications For Interpersonal Affect Regulation, Michele Williams, Kyle Emich
The Experience Of Failed Humor: Implications For Interpersonal Affect Regulation, Michele Williams, Kyle Emich
Michele Williams
The purpose of this study was to investigate failed interpersonal affect regulation through the lens of humor. We investigated individual differences that influenced people’s affective and cognitive responses to failed humor and their willingness to persist in the interpersonal regulation of positive affect after a failed attempt.
Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer
Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …
Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore
Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …
Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Holzer's paper has a number of attributes that I find very appealing. It focuses on an important topic and uses two different data bases to test the robustness of its findings. It uses alternative specifications of the variable of interest (reservation wages), examines the sensitivity of the results to alternative sets of control variables, uses a variety of statistical methods to confront a number of statistical issues, and honestly reports cases in which any of the above leads to differences in results. Finally, the paper does not claim more than the evidence warrants—a feature not present in enough academic …
Workers, Racism And History: A Response, Nick Salvatore
Workers, Racism And History: A Response, Nick Salvatore
Nick Salvatore
[Excerpt] This intimate dependence of white egalitarianism upon black exclusion forms the central theme of Herbert Hill's essay. Arguing that this condition is neither episodic nor solely of historical interest, Hill asserts that these racist attitudes (and the action that flowed from them) were systemic across two centuries of working class development and actually provide the central continuous rational for understanding institutional trade union activity from the early nineteenth century into the present. America's labor unions. Hill writes, are "the institutional expression of white working class racism, and of policies and practices that resulted in unequal access, dependent on race, …
The Latino Immigrant Labor Experience As Depicted In Film, Duane Wright
The Latino Immigrant Labor Experience As Depicted In Film, Duane Wright
Duane E Wright II
The author argues that traditional macro-level methods of gathering data on populations create an impersonal depiction of the group. A useful pedagogical tool for teachers to counter this is to use fictional accounts in film and literature to put a more human face on the subjects being studied. Two films, Bread and Roses and El Norte, are used in this way to enhance or add another dimension to studies of the labor experience of Latino immigrants in the United States. The films are looked at through various sociological theories, Assimilation, Competition, and Neo-Marxist. The author concludes that Neo-Marxist theory best …
Introduction To Special Section: Careers In Context, Hugh Gunz, Wolfgang Mayrhofer, Pamela Tolbert
Introduction To Special Section: Careers In Context, Hugh Gunz, Wolfgang Mayrhofer, Pamela Tolbert
Pamela S Tolbert
[Excerpt] Career scholars regularly cite Hughes’ (1937: 413) dictum that the study careers as “the moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenations of office – may be expected to reveal the nature and 'working constitution' of a society.” Yet the greater part of the careers literature typically ignores this by focusing, largely, on the careers of individuals and influencing factors mainly linked to the person and his or her immediate context, to the neglect of the broader context within which the careers are lived. However, large-scale economic …
Slippage In The System: The Effects Of Errors In Transactive Memory Behavior On Team Performance, Matthew Pearsall, Aleksander Ellis, Bradford Bell
Slippage In The System: The Effects Of Errors In Transactive Memory Behavior On Team Performance, Matthew Pearsall, Aleksander Ellis, Bradford Bell
Bradford S Bell
[Excerpt] Although researchers have consistently shown that the implicit coordination provided by transactive memory positively affects team performance, the benefits of transactive memory systems depend heavily on team members’ ability to accurately identify the expertise of their teammates and communicate expertise-specific information with one another. This introduces the opportunity for errors to enter the system, as the expertise of individual team members may be misunderstood or misrepresented, leading to the reliance on information from the wrong source or the loss of information through incorrect assignment. As Hollingshead notes, “information may be transferred or explicitly delegated to the ‘wrong’ individual in …
Why I Quit The Railroad, Linda Niemann
Why I Quit The Railroad, Linda Niemann
Linda G. Niemann
The article presents the author's reasons for leaving her job in the railroad industry. She wasn't thrilled to be force-assigned to the foreman's spot on Union Pacific's Lawrence switcher. Being the junior switchman on the California coast for years, she was used to jobs that weren't so plum. What made it tough were a difficult yardmaster and her help, a switchman who outranked her but didn't want the responsibility of the foreman's spot.
The Lord Of The Night, Linda Niemann
The Lord Of The Night, Linda Niemann
Linda G. Niemann
The article presents the author's reflection on the management of Southern Pacific after it was acquired by Union Pacific (UP). The year preceding the UP merger, 1995, everyone tried to earn the maximum they could in preparation for whatever union-negotiated guarantee would come down the pike. Downsizing hit this system hard. The union contract did away with the system seniority that provided trainmen the freedom to work anywhere on the railroad.
The Hospital Yard, Linda Niemann
The Hospital Yard, Linda Niemann
Linda G. Niemann
Presents an article on working at a small switching yard in San Jose, California. Reason for thinking the switching yard as a hospital yard; Description of the yard; Details on workers at the yard.