New Ways of Working: does flexibility in time and location of work change work behavior and affect business outcomes?

In the changing modern economy some new factors have been addressed that are of importance for productivity and economic growth, such as human skills, workplace organization, information and communication technologies (ICT) and knowledge sharing. An increasing number of companies and organizations are implementing measures to better address these factors, often referred to as 'the New Ways of Working (NWW)'. This consists of a large variety of measures that enable flexibility in the time and location of work. Expectations of these measures are often high, such as a reduction in operating costs and an increase of productivity. However, scientific proof is still lacking, and it is worth asking whether al these implementations actually cause a change in work behavior and effect business outcomes positively. This article describes a case study of three departments (total of 73 employees) that changed from a traditional way of working towards a new way of working. Questionnaires and a new developed objective measurement system called 'work@task' were used to measure changes in work behavior (i.e. increased variation in work location, work times and a change towards NWW management style) and the effect on business objectives such as knowledge sharing, employees satisfaction, and collaboration.     

Ergonomic analysis jobs in recovered factories

With the advent of the deep economic crisis in Argentina on 2001, the recovery of companies through to the creation of the Cooperatives Working Self-Management or Factories Recovered by its workers was constituted as one of the ways in which the salaried disobeyed the increasing unemployment. When the companies turn into recovered factories they tend to leave of side practices that have been seen like imposed by the previous organization and not understanding them as a primary condition for the execution of his tasks. Safety and ergonomics are two disciplines that are no longer considered relevant to the daily work. Therefore this investigation aims to revalue, undergo semantic to give back to a place in every organization analyzed. This research developed a self-diagnostic tool for working conditions, and the environment, present in the recovered factories.     

Anerkennungsgespräche — ein Instrument gesundheitsförderlicher Führung

?Appreciative experience sharing‘ within the scope of appreciation talks is designed as an health-science based instrument for managers. It is a concept for participative monitoring of the social relations at work and the working conditions between employees and managers. At the same time, the appreciation talks show themselves to be a situational-social health resource in enterprises. The exhibited concept was developed and tested, and further developed to a workshop for managers, within the scope of a qualitative study and consulting project in three public urban-transportation companies in Germany. The conception, the results of the project, the workshop concept, and first experiences with ‘appreciative experience sharing’ by managers with direct responsibility for employees are described and discussed.     

Functional Transition of Corporation in Governance Corporate Citizens from the Viewpoint of CSR

The research work of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is a topic of world interest, and as is well known, has been frequently discussed. We try to demonstrate a functional transition of the corporation in governance society, utilizing the viewpoint of CSR. The importance of CSR is recognized by most, almost a boom. However we doubt that they understand the real meaning of the CSR. First of all, we would like to focus on the current understanding of CSR in Japan. We insist that CSR is sharing the implementation of public policy between Private Corporations and Government. A gap is occurring between the private sector and the public sector due to a lack of intermediate organization. CSR may be a bridge for the gap between Private and Public, utilizing a corporation’s business process. To simplify matters, we concentrate on how corporations should be and what they should to do. We shall show a few examples of serious problems that have occurred in our society: low birth rate, an adjustment for the difference among people, and avoidance of suicide. And we would like to refer to Japanese traditional companies existing for more than a century. Those companies have chosen to serve a purpose rather than just simply to focus on making a profit, showing attention to their values and missions. Hence, their interest in CSR, sharing the implementation of public policy between Private Corporations and Government, and their high expectations of it.     

Work–Life Balance for Fathers in Globalized Knowledge Work. Some Insights from the Norwegian Context

This article takes as its point of departure the introduction of a new flexible time regime in parts of working life. There has been increased focus on how knowledge work in particular is developing into total commitment organizations where employees put in more and more time at work. Using two case studies from law and computing companies the article focuses on the organization of work and the organization of time in globalized knowledge organizations, and what effect this has on the time practices of male employees who are fathers. In the same period the Nordic countries have introduced state incentives and regulations that aim to help fathers achieve work–life balance. The article also discusses whether this is a fruitful policy, or whether fathers working in flexible time cultures need more deregulation, individual choice and flexible policy measures.     

Gender and Bureaucracies —A Critique of Ferguson's ‘The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy’

Within the area of gender and organization studies there is a tendency to generalize about organizations and how they affect people working in them. In feminist analysis, salient in Kathy Ferguson's ‘The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy’, there is a tendency to have a one-sided view on bureaucracies and to regard these merely as products of ‘maleness’ and as incompatible with (radical) feminism. On the basis of a case-study of three different bureaucracies, this article questions the assumption of incompatibility and argues for a more nuanced assessment of gender and bureaucracies.     

Corporate social responsibility communication of Chinese and global corporations in China

This paper explored how leading Chinese and global companies operating in China communicate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles and practices to the Chinese stakeholders through a content analysis of these companies’ corporate websites. It was found that companies usually take one of the following three major approaches in their CSR communication: CSR as ad hoc public philanthropy, CSR as strategic philanthropy, and CSR as ethical business practices. Furthermore, this paper examined the effects of country of origin and industry on companies’ CSR communication and found that whether companies are targeting at businesses or consumers has a bigger impact on their CSR communication than whether they are Chinese or global. Finally, despite a tendency towards convergence, Chinese and global companies still present their CSR principles and practices differently because of their different relations with major Chinese and global stakeholders.     

Closing the Loophole: A Case Study of Organizing for More Equitable and Affordable Access to Health Care in San Francisco

This paper presents in-depth case study of a successful hybrid political and community organizing campaign to ensure equitable access to health care through the perspective of a grassroots San Francisco community-based organization, the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), which has been organizing low-income Chinese immigrants for over four decades. First, it outlines the Health Care Security Ordinance (HCSO), which, since its passage in 2006, has established a near-universal health care access program, helping to make health care accessible and affordable to individuals living and working in San Francisco. Then it presents the campaign to save the HCSO, focusing on CPA’s participation in the HCSO coalition. Finally, it discusses health care as it relates to the San Francisco’s affordability crisis and the political economic context in which it is taking place. Despite the limitations inherent in small case studies like this one, it nevertheless provides a valuable opportunity to better understand how one politically progressive city attempted to address the problem of grossly inequitable health care access through the lens of community organizing, advocacy, and coalition building. San Francisco, like many major American cities today, is being confronted with rapid gentrification and growing economic inequality—the backdrop to the HCSO. Through innovative experiments in social responsibility like the HCSO, however, the city has made leaps in health care access. It concludes with lessons learned from local organizing and advocacy to save the HCSO as these may inform other local efforts to promote health care for all.     

Liberty,slavery, and the transformation of British identity in the eighteenth‐century West Indies

This article challenges the notion that black militias were of little consequence in the antebellum United States. The establishment, personnel and equipment of these militia units, and their importance for local black organization, has largely escaped scholarly attention. The significance of armed companies of young black men at a time when they were not officially sanctioned by federal and state authorities has also not been explored.

The article makes three arguments. First, there was a trajectory towards militarization from vigilance committees to independent companies to enrolment in union armies. Second, links between self-defence and rights of citizenship were already being struggled over at local and state levels before the more famous national expression in black union soldiers fighting for the union. Third, national narratives concerning the origins of the American civil war, African American slavery, and British Canadian history, obscure the multiple roles played by people of African descent during this period. It is only through transnational approaches towards fugitives, military formation and antislavery mobilization that we realise the role of blacks in challenging American slavery in the Atlantic world.

The organization of the article is as follows. It begins with fugitives and the organization of vigilance committees of self-defense in North America. It continues with states rights of self-defence, the exclusion of black men from these rights, and the resulting organization of independent companies. The public parade of these black militias on West India Day, the most important commemoration by Americans of African descent between the early 1830’s and 1860’s, is the next section. It concludes with the continental destruction of American slavery and its consequences for the post-emancipation era.

This article has several objectives. It examines important black institutions hitherto unexamined. It aims to broaden the conventional temporal and spatial dimensions of the civil war era. The third task is to reveal the limitations of nationalist narratives by seeking out connections among people of African descent as well as in the ways in which individuals and organizations provide alternative means for comparison. Finally, this article is part of a broader project examining political mobilization against slavery in the Atlantic world.     

Gender In/equality in Worker‐owned Businesses

Gender scholars have developed a significant body of scholarship on the reproduction of gender inequality in work organizations. However, the vast majority of that research has been conducted in non‐profit organizations or in employer‐owned businesses. In this article, we review the existing literature on gender in worker‐owned businesses. We begin by defining three distinctly different types of worker‐owned businesses: companies with employee stock ownership plans, worker cooperatives, and communes. Next we review the limited research on gender inequality in each of these organizational forms. The current literature finds that women benefit from working in these alternative organizations, but gender disparities nevertheless persist due to occupational segregation and the devaluation of domestic work. Exceptions are those organizations with strong ties to feminism and those with formal power‐sharing policies. Granted the scarcity of research on this topic, however, these conclusions are tentative. We conclude with a discussion of areas for further research.     

Ergonomic analysis of workplaces in the iron casting industrial pole in Claudio, Minas Gerais--Brazil

Brazil is currently recognized as the 10th largest producer of castings, and the city of Cláudio, MG is known worldwide as the "Greatest foundry and metallurgical pole in Latin America", with more than 80 companies. However, this large number of enterprises and increasing investments in product development has demanded an increase in manpower and working hours of workers in the sector, proportionally increasing the incidence of occupational related health problems like RSI (repetitive strain injury), WMSDs (work-related musculoskeletal disorders) and industrial accidents. This article aims to characterize the industry from previously conducted case studies to relate the main causes of occupational diseases and outline possible interventions through design, showing how this tool can contribute to improve the working environment, workplace, tools and equipment through ergonomics adjustments.     

Personality traits and knowledge sharing

In this paper, we describe an empirical study that relates three personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness) to knowledge sharing. In the existing literature considerable attention has been paid to managerial influences on knowledge sharing, technological support through information and communication systems, or individual characteristics like motivation or the perception of conflict of interest or vulnerability. Instead we concentrate on the role that personal dispositions play in individual’s knowledge sharing behavior. By means of structural equation modeling with PLS, we discover significant correlations between the personality traits and knowledge sharing within teams of an engineering company. Our results clearly contribute to the existing literature, as they offer empirical evidence of the impact of enduring individual characteristics on knowledge sharing.     

Social Media Newsrooms in public relations: A conceptual framework and corporate practices in three countries

The rise of social media in organizational settings has opened up new horizons for strategic communication. However, there are also drawbacks. Arguably the most important one is increased complexity. Many communication departments use a multitude of platforms ranging from corporate websites, campaign microsites and blogs to services like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with stakeholders. Social Media Newsrooms (SMNRs) have been introduced as instruments to reduce this complexity. The basic idea is straightforward: SMNRs aggregate social media content provided by the organization and/or thematic content about the organization and its key issues from several platforms in one place. Although SMNRs have been used in public relations practice around the world since the concept was first introduced in 2007, empirical evidence is still missing. This paper closes the research gap by (a) introducing SMNRs from a conceptual perspective based on a literature review, (b) exploring opportunities and challenges for strategic communication, (c) researching empirical manifestations and modes of usage by corporations in three major international markets (United States, United Kingdom, and Germany) based on a comprehensive content analysis of the 600 largest companies and 2045 affiliated brands and subsidiaries, and (d) explaining implications for the practice of public relations.     

Stakeholder influence,government power,and new opportunities for Chinese Internet companies: A multilevel network analysis of cross-sector networks

In recent decades, Chinese Internet companies have experienced exponential growth. As the Internet industry increasingly commends tremendous financial resources, they also face growing stakeholder expectations for corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. One way through which Chinese Internet companies conduct CSR is by building cross-sectoral collaborations with nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental agencies. Aiming to understand Internet companies’ strategic relationship building on CSR issues, the researchers drew from stakeholder influence theory and research on a network approach to stakeholder influence, and applied multilevel network analysis to model three networks related to Chinese Internet companies’ CSR collaborations. Specifically, we found that power and urgency are significant predictors of the structure of Internet companies’ cross-sector CSR alliance network. Organizations affiliated or endorsed by the central Chinese government are the most desirable CSR stakeholders. Additionally, the study also revealed that for Internet companies, devoting their attention to Internet-related social issues could increase their desirability as strategic stakeholders from other sectors and among Internet companies.     

Pragmatic optimism,crisis leadership,and contingency theory: A view from the C-suite

In the last three decades, the theory of strategic conflict management has been developed so that it is a strong framework for considering the factors that influence an organization’s response to crises and identifying the importance for dynamic and flexible approaches to crisis decision-making and communication. While leadership is considered one of the critical internal contingency factors but individual characteristics of key decision-makers, like the CEO, are also one of the most understudied ones. At the same time, the concept of optimism has long been explored as a factor influencing performance and positive outcomes in many arenas, but with scant evidence in the application to senior-level leadership or crisis contexts. In fact, in the crisis literature where optimism and pessimism is addressed, it largely argues that crisis leaders should adopt a pessimistic mindset. For this study senior-leaders in multinational companies responsible for managing employees in an average of 70 countries each and with extensive crisis leadership experience reflect on their own experiences during crises. Findings indicate that optimism is a critical trait in successful crisis leadership connecting to positive outcomes for the teams and organizations. These data also provide critical insights that develop a stronger understanding of contingency planning in crisis management because we have identified a trait that amongst an elite group of managers with extensive crisis experience was consistently attributed to their own success as crisis leaders.     

Portraits of work: mapping emerging coworking dynamics

ABSTRACT

Today’s patterns of work are very much defined by the ‘lean enterprise’ practice, taking form in organizations that are more competitive, customer-driven and agile on the one hand (Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2007). Lean Solutions. New York: Simon & Schuster), and the separation of work from time and space on the other (Hochschild, A. (1997). The time bind. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books). Concepts like work and workspace are subject to an evolving nature and get a new meaning (Kirsh, D. (2000). A few thoughts on cognitive overload. Intellectia, 1(30), 19–51). This triggered the rise of new working spaces, fuelled by the aftermath of the global economic crisis that transformed the practices and meanings of work. Nevertheless, this applies only to particular sectors. This paper builds on the case of Genk, an important economic pole in the Limburg Region of Belgium. The development in the region has always been related to labour-intensive industrial activities. In light of these working shifts targeting mainly big companies/employers, Genk has turned a blind eye on the local proprietors. What about the small entrepreneurs/community economies addressing mainly the local clientele? What evolution do we see in their working pattern? By using a specific visualization tool, a series of interviews were conducted in order to explore in a playful way, existing social and economic networks. The interviews reveal networks that shape a coworking model. The paper will further present the scale of this ‘coworking’ phenomenon experienced in Genk, perceived to be the ‘new model of coworking’ in the context of the collaborative and sharing economy.     

Social forces and decision‐making by gatekeepers in arts organizations

Gatekeepers in arts organizations have an important role to play in determining which artistic works the public gets to experience. Performing arts organizations provide a good example of how these decisions made by gatekeepers necessarily delimit the art that the audiences will experience. This article catalogs the social forces that influence individual decision‐makers. Individual level forces like social background, embeddedness in social networks, and perceptions of the organization and organizational level forces like organizational structure, funding, and size all affect what they ultimately produce. This, in turn, allows us to better understand the work these companies produce form a sociological perspective.     

Notes on contributors

This article focuses on the organizational practices of the music industry to contribute a neglected dimension to our understanding of rap as a commercial activity and cultural form. It initially situates the production of rap within the context of the corporate strategies and business practices of musical entertainment companies, stressing how rap production is located within the context of corporate ‘black music divisions’ and the major labels' relationships to smaller companies. At the same time, the study considers how musical production is shaped by broader culture processes and practices that are not directly within the control or understanding of the company. As corporate organization intersects with and attempts to make sense of surrounding culture, I argue that the actions of recording companies are a direct intervention into and contribution to the way in which the social world is rationalized and fragmented and through which different cultural experiences are separated and treated unequally. This argument is focused on the theme of ‘the street’ and ‘executive suite’ through which I suggest that, while it is important to acknowledge the struggles of rap artists and entrepreneurs for both recognition and independence from the corporate world, it is also important to highlight deliberate attempts to maintain a distance between the corporate world and the genre culture of rap. This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the articulations between musical genre, occupational practices and broader cultural formations, highlighting a significant series of connections and relational practices which connect production and consumption and the articulations through which corporate organization is linked to broader cultural formations.     

Structural equation model for the evaluation of national funding on R&D project of SMEs in consideration with MBNQA criteria

Financial support on the R&D in Science & Technology for SMEs at the governmental level plays a crucial role on the improvement of the national competitiveness. Korea Science & Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) has supported the R&D projects of SMEs with the competitive technology ability by way of the Science and Technology Promotion Fund. In this paper, we propose a structural equation model (SEM) to evaluate the performance of such a funding program in terms of three aspects: output, outcome and impact under given funding inputs, R&D environment of a recipient company, and external evaluation programs of funding organization. We adopt Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria to assess the R&D environmental factors of recipient companies. In addition, we test the effect of interim evaluation of the funded project. The proposed model is applied to the real case and is used to identify the best practices as well as to provide feedback information for the improvement of the government funding programs of the R&D projects of SMEs.