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OCTOBER FREE ACCESS ARTICLE
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Free to access until 31 October 2016:
Something happened: Spectres of organization/disorganization at the airport
Hannah Knox, Damian P O'Doherty, Theo Vurdubakis and Christopher Westrup
Human Relations June 2015, 68(6): 1001-1020, doi: 10.1177/0018726714550257
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/6/1001.full.pdf+html
Abstract
The article explores the practical accomplishment of organization at an international airport during the course of a number of 'security alerts' that disrupted routine 'modes of ordering' (Law, 1994). Airports, we suggest, invite us to re-think 'organization' as the partial, contingent and always-incomplete outcome of complex order(ing)s and disorder(ing)s played out across various spaces, agencies and materials. When 'something happens' we begin to see how spaces, agents and materials are subject to unexpected becomings: objects appear treacherous, spaces mutable, agencies ineffectual and informants unreliable. Following the work of Weick we might say that in such moments of uncertainty we are forced to reconsider our customary ways of thinking about objects, subjects and systems. We argue this thinking requires a relational understanding of organization so that we can better grasp how organizations are continuously being made and un-made through an on-going co-creation and dispersal of parts.
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OCTOBER ISSUE ARTICLES
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Accumulation through derealization: How corporate violence remains unchecked
Rohit Varman and Ismael Al-Amoudi
Human Relations October 2016 69(10): 1909-1935
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/10/1909?etoc
Abstract
This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropriates their claims to vulnerability through a paternalistic discourse that justifies intensified violence and derealization. This research offers insights into accumulation through derealization and on the effects of resistance to it.
Becoming hybrid: The negotiated order on the front line of public–private partnerships
Simon Bishop and Justin Waring
Human Relations October 2016 69(10): 1937-1958
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/10/1937?etoc
Abstract
This article examines how tensions in institutional logics, created in the formation of hybrid organizations, are played out, and partially resolved, through micro-level interactions within everyday work. Drawing on the negotiated order perspective, our research examined how the 'context', 'processes' and 'outcomes' of micro-level negotiations reflect and mitigate tensions between institutional logics. Our ethnographic study of a public–private partnership within the English healthcare system identified tensions within the hybrid organization around organizational goals and values, work activities, hierarchies and the materials and technologies of work. We also identified processes of negotiation between actors, which contributed to negotiated settlements, at times combining elements of parent institutional logics, and at other times serving to keep parent logics distinct. The article demonstrates the relevance of negotiated order perspective to current institutional logics literature on hybrid organizations.
Expatriation and career success: A human capital perspective
Aarti Ramaswami, Nancy M Carter, and George F Dreher
Human Relations October 2016 69(10): 1959-1987
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/10/1959?etoc
Abstract
Very little is known about the linkages between expatriation and objective measures of career success. In this field study we address the expatriation–compensation attainment relationship, after controlling for different kinds of international experience, among 440 graduates of elite MBA programs from around the world. The results suggest that a positive compensation return only accrues to repatriates who have experienced more than one expatriate assignment, perceived acquired knowledge and skills to be utilized during post-repatriation periods, and who are working at higher organizational levels. These findings, along with a supplementary analysis, support an explanation of the results based on human capital theory. That is, expatriation relates to compensation attainment because it is an intense developmental experience, and not merely a selection or signaling mechanism. Furthermore, by incorporating the concepts of value of human capital, richness of human capital, and opportunity to display human capital, we provide a stronger test of when and for whom completing expatriate assignments is positively associated with compensation. The results also suggest that there are currently few readily available substitutes for expatriation.
Flexible scheduling, degradation of job quality and barriers to collective voice
Alex J Wood
Human Relations October 2016 69(10): 1989-2010
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/10/1989?etoc
Abstract
This article examines the operation of flexible scheduling in practice through a case study of a large retail firm in the United Kingdom. It includes analysis of 39 semi-structured interviews, participant observation of shop floor work and non-participant observation of union organizing as well as analysis of key documents. The findings highlight the high level of generalized temporal flexibility across employment statuses. This temporal flexibility enables firm flexibility without necessitating a reliance upon contingent workers. Temporal flexibility is found to entail manager-control of flexible scheduling and is shown to be damaging to perceptions of job quality as it acts as a barrier to work-life balance. Union presence and collective bargaining at the firm are found to be ineffective at influencing flexible scheduling so as to improve job quality. This ineffectiveness can be explained by the union operating in an employer-dominated industrial relations environment in which its associational power is unable to compensate for a lack of institutional and structural economic power.
A dual-mode framework of organizational categorization and momentary perception
Kimberly D Elsbach and Heiko Breitsohl
Human Relations October 2016 69(10):2011-2039
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/69/10/2011?etoc
Abstract
We examine how both automatic and motivated modes of categorization are integral to understanding momentary perceptions of organizations, including perceptions of organizational identity and legitimacy. We begin by discussing how extant organizational research has relied, primarily, on single modes of categorization to describe how we form momentary perceptions of organizations. These 'single-mode' frameworks have explained momentary organizational perceptions as the result of either automatic categorization (i.e. driven by unconscious cognitive processes) or motivated categorization (i.e. driven by individual needs and desires). While these frameworks explain much about momentary organizational perceptions, we provide some notable examples that do not follow the paths they predict. To more fully explain momentary organizational perceptions, we present a framework grounded in psychological research that considers how both motivated and automatic modes of categorization influence these perceptions. In doing so, we illustrate how such a 'dual-mode' framework might better account for organizational perceptions that seem counter-intuitive when viewed through a single-mode lens. We conclude by outlining some theoretical and practical implications of our framework, and presenting an agenda for future research on organizational categorization and perception that may capitalize on our dual-mode framework.
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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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Communicative tensions of meaningful work: The case of sustainability practitioners
Rahul Mitra and Patrice M Buzzanell
Human Relations 0018726716663288, first published on September 30, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716663288
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/09/26/0018726716663288?papetoc
Abstract
This study, based on in-depth interviews with 45 practitioners in the emerging field of environmental sustainability, argues for a more nuanced approach to studying the meaningfulness of work. Drawing from the tension-centered approach, we posit that sustainability practitioners derived meaningfulness in tensional ways from circumstances and factors that were both enabling and constraining, stemming from various organizational, professional and political structures. This occurs through ongoing negotiation that spans everyday work processes, the perceived impact of such work, and participants' career positioning. In addition to examining meaningfulness as a dynamic and contested negotiation, rather than a purely positive outcome, the political implications of such meaning-making are traced. We close by discussing some implications for future research on meaningfulness of work.
FREE TO ACCESS:
Thinking together: What makes Communities of Practice work?
Igor Pyrko, Viktor Dörfler, and Colin Eden
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716661040
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/03/0018726716661040?papetoc
Abstract
In this article, we develop the founding elements of the concept of Communities of Practice by elaborating on the learning processes happening at the heart of such communities. In particular, we provide a consistent perspective on the notions of knowledge, knowing and knowledge sharing that is compatible with the essence of this concept – that learning entails an investment of identity and a social formation of a person. We do so by drawing richly from the work of Michael Polanyi and his conception of personal knowledge, and thereby we clarify the scope of Communities of Practice and offer a number of new insights into how to make such social structures perform well in professional settings. The conceptual discussion is substantiated by findings of a qualitative empirical study in the UK National Health Service. As a result, the process of 'thinking together' is conceptualized as a key part of meaningful Communities of Practice where people mutually guide each other through their understandings of the same problems in their area of mutual interest, and this way indirectly share tacit knowledge. The collaborative learning process of 'thinking together', we argue, is what essentially brings Communities of Practice to life and not the other way round.
Incorporating the creative subject: Branding outside–in through identity incentives
Nada Endrissat, Dan Kärreman, and Claus Noppeney
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716661617
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/03/0018726716661617?papetoc
Abstract
This article explores the intersection of branding, identity and control. It develops the notion of identity-incentive branding and links research on the collective-associative construction of occupational identities with work on identity incentives as an engaging form of control. Empirically, we draw on a case study of a North American grocery chain that is known for employing art-school graduates and other creative talents in creative (store artist) and non-creative shop-floor positions. The study shows that the brand is partly built outside–in through association with employees who embody brand-relevant characteristics in their identities and lifestyles. In return, those employees receive identity opportunities to validate their desired sense of self as 'creative subject'. We discuss the dual nature of identity-incentive branding as neo-normative control and outline its implications for the organization and the employees.
How practice makes sense in healthcare operations:
Studying sensemaking as performative, material-discursive practice
Lotta Hultin and Magnus Mähring
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716661618
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/03/0018726716661618?papetoc
Abstract
This article aims to move sensemaking theory forward by exploring a post-humanist view of how sense is made in material-discursive practices. Answering recent calls for novel theoretical views on sensemaking, we adopt a relational ontology, assuming subject and object to be ontologically entangled, and viewing agency as a circulating flow through material-discursive practices. Employing this perspective, we study how sensemaking unfolds at the emergency ward of a Nordic university hospital. By working through the concepts of material-discursive practices, flow of agency and subject positions, we produce an account of sensemaking that decenters the human actor as the locus and source of sensemaking, and foregrounds the performativity of practices through which certain ways of acting become enacted as sensible. This allows us to propose an alternative to the traditional view of sensemaking as episodic, cognitive-discursive practices enacted within and between separate human actors. With this view, what makes sense is understood as a material-discursive practice and related subject positions, which owing to their specific positioning in the circulating flow of agency emerge as sensible. Consequently, every actor is not just making sense, but is also already being made sense of; positioning and being positioned in the flow of agency.
Scaling up to institutional entrepreneurship:
A life history of an elite training gymnastics organization
Ryan S Bisel, Michael W Kramer, and John A Banas
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716658964
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/03/0018726716658964?papetoc
Abstract
This organizational life history documents how the founder of an elite gymnastics training organization led her organizational members to resist what she deemed to be unethical institutional influences prior to working toward changing those institutional practices. The study contributes the idea that institutional resistance leadership at the team and organizational levels can precede disruptive institutional entrepreneurship activities at the institutional level. The diachronic analysis describes the micro, local, historical, intra-organizational work that serves as a proving ground for generating resistance before proceeding to institutional level work; in doing so, the article explores how leadership activities can be 'scaled up' to affect institutions through the intermediary of an organization. Identity violations triggered a founder's sensemaking and moved her to lead others to resist institutional forces on her own organization's training practices. The founder used the rhetorical strategy of narrative to create sensebreaking to help members make sense of the dominant institutional influence, articulate an alternative philosophy, translate the alternative into practices, and acquire material resources for undertaking resistance at the local organizational level. Finally, in attempting to scale up to institutional entrepreneurship, the institutional resistance leadership then struggled with defining success for the organization in the view of dominant institutional actors.
Network characteristics: When an individual's job crafting depends on the jobs of others
Lorenzo Bizzi
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716658963
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/07/28/0018726716658963?papetoc
Abstract
Because job crafting research proposes that individuals alter jobs on their own, there is an open debate on how others influence an individual's job crafting. Whereas previous research has recognized that incumbents engage in job crafting depending on the characteristics of their own job, this study shows that job crafting depends on the job characteristics of the incumbents' network contacts, meaning all employees in the organization with whom the incumbents frequently communicate about task-related issues. Applying role theory, the article theorizes that network contacts act as role senders who affect job crafting because they communicate role expectations that vary as a function of their own task activities. Key empirical findings show that contacts' autonomy and contacts' feedback from the job positively affect job crafting, whereas contacts' task significance exercises a negative effect. The findings further show that the effect of job crafting on performance depends on the central position occupied by the incumbent in the network of relationships. When designing jobs, managers should therefore not only consider the tasks of each single incumbent but also the tasks of the people connected to him or her.
A history of vocational ethics and professional identity:
How organization scholars navigate academic value spheres
Susanne Ekman
Human Relations, first published on August 25, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0018726716660370
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/03/0018726716660370?papetoc
Abstract
In recent years, Michael Burawoy has sparked a discussion about the role of social sciences in society. He calls for an increased interaction between different value spheres in social science, because 'the flourishing of each depends on the flourishing of all.' To ensure this interaction, he proposes that we pay better attention to the micro-politics of academic lives, not least their historical, geographical and biographical specificity. The current article contributes to this agenda, contextualized in the field of Organization Studies. It analyzes the vocational micro-politics of organization scholars, especially with a focus on historical and biographical specificity. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 senior scholars, many considered founding figures of Organization Studies, I analyze how they navigate value tensions in different historical periods. To understand historical differences, the article draws on a combination of Burawoy and Boltanski and Chiapello. To understand individual navigation of value spheres, I apply terms such as selective incorporation, decoupling, antagonism and double attribution. In the end, I discuss how some scholars navigate spheres to ensure mutual correction while others navigate them to enable opportunism. The latter is a tempting strategy for young scholars trying to survive extreme performance pressures today.
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
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Special issue: Organizing feminism: Bodies, practices and ethics – submit by 30 November 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Organizing%20feminism.html
Special issue: The changing nature of managerial work – submit by 31 January 2017
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Managerial%20work.html
Special issue: Inserting professionals and professional organizations in studies of wrongdoing: The nature, antecedents, and consequences of professional misconduct – submit by 30 April 2017
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Professional%20misconduct.html
Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays:
- Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria.
- Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal's scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief.
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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 (effective from January 2017) 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