Labor Relations Commons^™

Tackling Under-Declared Employment In The European Union: Input Paper To Thematic Discussion Of European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Evaluating Policy Approaches Towards Undeclared Work: Some Lessons From Fyr Of Macedonia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Workplace Dignity In A Total Institution: Examining The Experiences Of Foxconn’S Migrant Workforce, Kristen Lucas, Dongjing Kang, Zhou Li

Kristen Lucas

In 2010, a cluster of suicides at the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group sparked worldwide outcry about working conditions at its factories in China. Within a few short months, 14 young migrant workers jumped to their deaths from buildings on the Foxconn campus, an all-encompassing compound where they had worked, eaten, and slept. Even though the language of workplace dignity was invoked in official responses from Foxconn and its business partner Apple, neither of these parties directly examined workers’ dignity in their ensuing audits. Based on our analysis of media accounts of life at Foxconn, we argue that its …

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Virginia Doellgast

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

Metatheory And Friendly Competition In Theory Growth: The Case Of Power Processes In Bargaining, Edward J. Lawler, Rebecca Ford

Edward J Lawler

[Excerpt] This paper analyzes the theoretical development taking place in a program of research on power processes in bargaining (see Bacharach and Lawler 1976, 1980, 1981a, 1981b; Lawler and Bacharach 1976, 1979, 1987; Lawler, Ford, and Blegen 1988; Lawler and Yoon 1990; Lawler 1986, 1992). The theoretical program takes as its starting point a situation where individuals, groups, organizations, or even societies with conflicting interests voluntarily enter into explicit bargaining. Explicit (as opposed to tacit) bargaining assumes the mutual acknowledgment of negotiations, conflicting issues along which compromise is possible, and open lines of communication through which parties can exchange offers …

Power Dependence And Power Paradoxes In Bargaining, Samuel B. Bacharach, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

[Excerpt] What this article (and our larger program of work) is designed to demonstrate is that these very simple ideas represent a particularly suitable starting point for understanding the power struggle between parties who regularly engage in negotiation. Specifically, in this article we show that the approach contains certain paradoxes regarding the acquisition and use of power in an ongoing bargaining relationship. The dependence framework treats the ongoing relationship as a power struggle in which each party tries to maneuver itself into a favorable power position.

Introduction To A Special Issue On Inequality In The Workplace (“What Works?), Pamela S. Tolbert, Emilio J. Castilla

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] While overt expressions of racial and gender bias in U.S. workplaces have declined markedly since the passage of the original Civil Rights Act and the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a half century ago (Eagly and Chaiken 1993; Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan 1997; Dobbin 2009), a steady stream of research indicates that powerful, if more covert forms of bias persist in contemporary workplaces (Greenwald and Banaji 1995; Pager, Western, and Bonikowski 2009; England 2010; Heilman 2012). In line with this research, high rates of individual and class-based lawsuits alleging racial and gender discrimination suggest that many …

Introduction: Bringing Jobs Back In: Toward A New Multi-Level Approach To The Study Of Work And Organizations, M. Diane Burton, Lisa E. Cohen, Michael Lounsbury

M. Diane Burton

In this paper, we call for renewed attention to the structure and structuring of work within and between organizations. We argue that a multi-level approach, with jobs as a core analytic construct, is a way to draw connections among economic sociology, organizational sociology, the sociology of work and occupations, labor studies and stratification and address the important problems of both increasing inequality and declining economic productivity.

Domesticating The Diaspora: Memory And The Life Of Sister Katie, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Caroline Merithew

Three shrines in Illinois honor heroes of the working class: one for the legendary Mother Jones; one for the Virden martyrs, who died for coal mining unionism, and whose memory is kept alive by labor organizers around the world; and one for Catherine (Katie) Bianco DeRorre. Katie's monument, unlike the others, draws few visitors today. But when it was dedicated in 1961, men and women — on the floor of the U.S. Congress, in the neighborhood where Katie grew up, at American universities, in union halls, on the streets of New York City, and in Milan — took notice and …

The Impact Of Family Economic Structure On Dual-Earners’ Career And Family Satisfaction, Ronit Waismel-Manor, Asaf Levanon, Pamela S. Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

The present study builds on the explanatory power of the “doing gender” perspective to understand the effects of family economic structure on the family and career satisfaction of husbands and wives. Using data from a two-panel, couple-level survey of full-time employed middle-class families in the Northeastern United States, we find that when wives’ earnings increase relative to their husbands’, their career satisfaction significantly increases whereas their husbands’ is significantly depressed. In contrast, family economic structure has little effect on women’ and men’s level of family satisfaction, although we find a significant reduction in family satisfaction among couples who have recently …

Empathy Gaps Between Helpers And Help-Seekers: Implications For Cooperation, Vanessa K. Bohns, Francis J. Flynn

Vanessa K. Bohns

Help-seekers and potential helpers often experience an “empathy gap” – an inability to understand each other’s unique perspectives. Both parties are concerned about their reputation, self-esteem, and relationships, but these concerns differ in ways that lead to misinterpretation of the other party’s actions, and, in turn, missed opportunities for cooperation. In this article, we review research that describes the role-specific concerns of helpers and help-seekers. We then review studies of emotional perspective-taking, which can help explain why help-seekers and helpers often experience empathy gaps. We go on to discuss recent work that illustrates the consequences of empathy gaps between helpers …

Guilt By Design: Structuring Organizations To Elicit Guilt As An Affective Reaction To Failure, Vanessa K. Bohns, Francis K. Flynn

Vanessa K. Bohns

In this article, we outline a model of how organizations can effectively shape employees’ affective reactions to failure. We do not suggest that organizations eliminate the experience of negative affect following performance failures—instead, we propose that they encourage a more constructive form of negative affect (guilt) instead of a destructive one (shame). We argue that guilt responses prompt employees to take corrective action in response to mistakes, while shame responses are likely to elicit more detrimental effects of negative affect. Further, we suggest that organizations can play a role in influencing employees’ discrete emotional reactions to the benefit of both …

Underestimating Our Influence Over Others At Work, Vanessa K. Bohns, Francis J. Flynn

Vanessa K. Bohns

Employees at all organizational levels have influence over their subordinates, their colleagues, and even their bosses. But are they aware of this influence? We present evidence suggesting that employees are constrained by cognitive biases that lead them to underestimate their influence over others in the workplace. As a result of this underestimation of influence, employees may be reluctant to spearhead organizational change, discount their own role in subordinates’ performance failures, and fail to speak up in the face of wrongdoing. In addition to reviewing evidence for this bias, we propose five moderators that, when present, may reverse or attenuate the …

The Role Of Leader Emotion Management In Leader-Member Exchange And Follower Outcomes, Laura M. Little, Janaki Gooty, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

Drawing upon social exchange and emotion regulation theories, we develop and test a model of four specific leader behaviors directed at managing followers’ negative emotions. These leader interpersonal emotion management (IEM) strategies are posited to affect followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors performed within interpersonal relationships (OCBIs) and job satisfaction via follower perceptions of the quality of the leader-follower exchange relationship. In contrast to most current cognitive-transactional views of social exchange, here we posit that some, but not all, leader emotion management behaviors promote and strengthen the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship. Specifically, we contend that followers’ perception of problem-focused leader emotion-management strategies …

Occupations, Organizations, And Boundaryless Careers, Pamela S. Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] The central premise of this chapter is that, as organizations become less important in defining career pathways and boundaries, occupations will become increasingly more important. While occupational demarcations have always had a significant, albeit often unacknowledged, impact on individual career patterns, the significance of such demarcations for careers is likely to be heightened by current trends in employment relationships. In this chapter, then, I review the sociological literature on occupational labor markets and on the structure of professional occupations, in an effort to shed light on a number of issues associated with occupationally based careers. Of specific concern are …

On Organizations And Oligarchies: Michels In The Twenty-First Century, Pamela S. Tolbert, Shon R. Hiatt

Pamela S Tolbert

[Excerpt] A central problem for those interested in studying and explaining the actions of organizations is how to conceptualize these social phenomena. In particular, because organizations are constituted by individuals, each of whom may seek to achieve his or her interests through the organization, questions of how decisions are made in organizations and whose preferences drive those decisions are critical to explaining organizational actions. Although early organizational scholars spent much time wrestling with these questions (e.g. Barnard 1938; Simon 1947; Parsons 1956; March and Simon 1958), more recent work in organizational studies has tended to elide them, adopting an implicit …

Thinking About You: Perspective Taking, Perceived Restraint, And Performance, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

Conflict often arises when incompatible ideas, values or interests lead to actions that harm others. Increasing people’s willingness to refrain from harming others can play a critical role in preventing conflict and fostering performance. We examine perspective taking as a relational micro-process related to such restraint. We argue that attending to how others appraise events supports restraint in two ways. It motivates people to act with concern and enables them to understand what others view as harmful versus beneficial. Using a matched sample of 147 knowledge workers and 147 of their leaders, we evaluate the impact of appraisal-related perspective taking …

Affect, Emotion And Emotion Regulation In The Workplace: Feelings And Attitudinal Restructuring, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

[Excerpt] Almost 40 years after publishing A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations in 1965, the fields of negotiations and organizational behavior experienced an “affective revolution” (Barsade, Brief and Spataro 2003). Although Walton and McKersie could not have predicted the widespread academic and public interest in emotion and emotional intelligence, they foreshadowed this affect-laden direction in the section of their book on attitudinal structuring, which identified the dimension of friendliness-hostility as a critical aspect of the relationship between negotiating parties in the workplace and other settings.

Generational Diversity Can Enhance Trust Across Boundaries, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

In interorganizational project teams, generational diversity among team members undermines the experience of trust within demographically similar dyads but enhances the experience of trust within demographically dissimilar dyads.

Being Trusted: How Team Generational Age Diversity Promotes And Undermines Trust In Cross-Boundary Relationships, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

We examine how demographic context influences the trust that boundary spanners experience in their dyadic relationships with clients. Because of the salience of age as a demographic characteristic as well as the increasing prevalence of age diversity and intergenerational conflict in the workplace, we focus on team age diversity as a demographic social context that affects trust between boundary spanners and their clients. Using social categorization theory and theories of social capital, we develop and test our contextual argument that a boundary spanner’s experience of being trusted is influenced by the social categorization processes that occur in dyadic interactions with …

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Rosemary Batt

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

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 …

Introduction To Part 1: The Division Of Labor, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

The changing nature of work, technology, and the division of labor in the last quarter of the twentieth century has been a central preoccupation of scholarship on organizations. Debate has centered on the extent to which a fundamental shift in employment systems has occurred—from so-called Fordist to post-Fordist models. The stylized facts portray the former as characterized by internal labor market systems in large organizations, narrow jobs in hierarchical career ladders, and long-term employment relations. The latter include decentralized organizations, flatter hierarchies, team-based forms of work organization, and shorter employment relations that reflect external market pressures. The accumulated body of …

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 …

Hedonic And Transcendent Conceptions Of Value, Joel M. Podolny, Marya Besharov

Marya Besharov

In this paper we introduce a conceptual distinction between a hedonic and transcendent conception of value. We posit three linguistic earmarks by which one can distinguish these conceptions of value. We seek validation for the conceptual distinctions by examining the language contained in reviews of cars and reviews of paintings. In undertaking the empirical examination, we draw on the work of M.A.K. Halliday to identify clauses as fundamental units of meaning and to specify process types that can be mapped onto theoretical distinctions between the two conceptions of value. Extensions of this research are discussed.

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 …

Is It Me Or Her? How Gender Composition Evokes Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior On Collaborative Cross-Boundary Projects, Michele Williams, Evan Polman

Michele Williams

This paper investigates how professional workers’ willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity is influenced by the gender and power of their interaction partners. We call into question the idea that mixed-gender interactions involve more interpersonal sensitivity than all-male interactions primarily because women demonstrate more interpersonal sensitivity than do men. Rather, we argue that the social category “women” can evoke more sensitive behavior from others such that men as well as women contribute to an increase in sensitivity in mixed-gender interactions. We further argue that the presence of women may trigger increased sensitivity such that men can also be the recipients …

The Relational Ecology Of Identification: How Organizational Identification Emerges When Individuals Hold Divergent Values, Marya Besharov

Marya Besharov

This research builds on theory about how identification develops when members differ in which organizational values they hold to be important. It is relatively well established that conflict and dis-identification arise under such conditions. In the socially responsible retail company I studied, in contrast, I found identification as well as dis-identification. Both outcomes emerged from members’ interactions with others whose values and behaviors differed from their own. Identification arose when managers interpreted and enacted organizational values for frontline employees by developing integrative solutions, removing ideology, and routinizing ideology. Dis-identification developed in the absence of these practices. The resulting process model …

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 …

Multiple Institutional Logics In Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature And Implication, Marya Besharov, Wendy K. Smith

Marya Besharov

Multiple institutional logics present a theoretical puzzle. While scholars recognize their increasing prevalence within organizations, research offers conflicting perspectives on their implications, causing confusion and inhibiting deeper understanding. In response, we propose a framework that delineates types of logic multiplicity within organizations, and we link these types with different outcomes. Our framework categorizes organizations in terms of logic compatibility and logic centrality and explains how field, organizational, and individual factors influence these two dimensions. We illustrate the value of our framework by showing how it helps explain the varied implications of logic multiplicity for internal conflict. By providing insight into …