A Provisional Conceptual Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations

Positioning within public relations is a concept not often addressed in public relations literature. This article reports on the progress of a project that aims to develop a way in which positioning could be usefully conceptualized within public relations. It suggests a conceptual framework that takes positioning beyond the marketing definitions that have limited use in the broader public relations field. The article reports on the development of a provisional conceptual framework for intentional positioning within a public relations context. Drawing from recent developments in positioning theory in the field of psychology, a framework was developed and applied to 57 award winning public relations campaign entries. Findings reveal that the positioning framework has the potential to be applied both as an heuristic to aid analysis of practice and also as a framework to aid practitioners in designing positioning strategies. Possibilities for further research are discussed.     

Autoethnography: The story of applying a conceptual framework for intentional positioning to public relations practice

This autoethnography is an exercise in reporting, recording and reflecting on the process of attempting to apply a public relations theoretical construct to a practice environment. I take a social constructionist approach where the practice of autoethnography presumes that reality is socially constructed and where I, as the autoethnographer, can contribute to the social construction of what is known as public relations practice. I applied an analytical autoethnographic approach and used my own experiences, reflections and memories to construct myself in my writing as an academic and practitioner working within the context of a pro bono public relations consultancy project. The aim of this research was to ascertain whether the Framework for Intentional Positioning in Public Relations could assist practitioners to develop positioning strategies for future programs and campaigns. I applied the positioning framework to the design of a positioning strategy for a small university-affiliated environmental organization. My work indicated that the framework could aid in designing a positioning strategy, however, applying the framework to organizational circumstances could be challenging. The framework was found to have two distinct sections to it when applied to practice and this was not evident in previous analytical work. The project also indicated that further research is needed on how to adapt the framework to the concept of emergent strategy. My hope is that this autoethnography shows that even seasoned practitioners/academics can be challenged in practice situations.     

Government-community relationships: extending the relational theory of public relations

A study of government-citizen relationships found that public relations can contribute to community building. The study also found that the Bruning-Ledingham Relationship Scale is an effective tool for assessing relationship quality, and for predicting citizen behavior. Moreover, social exchange was found to serve as a useful concept for explaining human behavior within the broader framework of relationship management. Further, the study demonstrates the usefulness of the relational perspective as a paradigm for public relations.     

Employment Practices and the Gendering of Air Canada's Culture during its Trans Canada Airlines Days

From the earliest days women have had active roles in the commercial aviation industry. Yet most airlines' employment practices have led to narrow definitions of what constituted women's work. This study, as a part of a broader study on employment practices and the gendering of organizational culture, mirrors a similar study of British Airways by Mills (1994) and takes a rules approach, within a sensemaking framework (Helms Mills and Mills, 2000), to analyze the data. In this case, the first three 'junctures' in the history of Air Canada/TCA will be explored to show how women's work was understood and how women were represented during each of these periods. The use of corporate documents will support the notion that women were mostly thought of and portrayed as idealised, sexualised objects, which were considered dispensable. This narrow definition of women's roles has not only diminished the opportunities for career advancement but it has also minimized the importance of the work women in the airline industry have done.     

Social workers in the new human services marketplace: Trends,challenges and responses

This paper examines employment trends in social welfare occupations and challenges to the industrial and cultural recognition of professional social work in the new human services market place. Following examination of the threats posed by market reform and the crisis in public confidence in some domains of human services work, I focus on three key concerns. First, through analysis of Census data from 1996 to 2001, I compare trends in the employment of social workers, welfare workers and community workers. Second, drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser (1997), I argue that the challenges facing social workers can be understood as problems of ‘recognition’. Using this framework, I examine the external contests to the valuing of professional social work and also the internal challenges, that is, threats from within the social work profession to the industrial and cultural recognition of social work. Finally, I will consider how social workers, particularly new graduates, can respond to the challenges facing them in the new human services marketplace. I propose that social workers should claim a position as practice leaders and I outline practical strategies for achieving this goal.     

Money in the household: some underlying issues of power

This paper addresses criticisms of a number of papers (Vogler and Pahl, 1993, 1994; Vogler, 1994) in which we attempted to explore the relationships between money, power and inequality within marriage. Subsequent criticisms have mainly centred around the concept of power that we used in those papers. It has been suggested that we either lacked a theory of power (Rottman, 1996) or that our conceptualisation of power as control over decision making was too limited (Shove, 1993). I would argue however, that while it was not made explicit in our original papers our findings point towards a more general theory of power in the household, namely to a modified version of Lukes’ three dimensional model of power. While we initially conceptualised power as control over decision making (Lukes’ first dimension of power) our findings also show the importance of ideological and cultural factors (Lukes’ third dimension of power) as both a cause and a consequence of the allocative systems couples use to organise money within the household. More theoretically, I also suggest that discourses about money within the household may be part of, and operate in a similar way to discourses of decision making at the broader political level. It may therefore be possible to conceptualise the different ways of managing money within the household as mini political systems akin to different sorts of democracy at the broader political level, and with similar consequences for gender relations.     

Indetermination: professional knowledge,organization and control

This paper is a critique of the tradition of sociological writing which has emphasized the ability of occupations organized on the professional principle to gain for their members an occupational monopoly and a position in the division of labour which provides them with autonomy to determine occupational tasks and functions. It is argued that theories which seek to account for the conditions which provide the framework for successful resistance to rationalization and codification in professional work have not adequately articulated the concept of power. The theoretical discourse on professional and managerial power has therefore tended, with few exceptions, to locate the determination and exercise of power as though it were a zero sum commodity deriving from social relations of organizations. Theories predicting the emergence of professional rather than mangerial forms of control therefore have little explanatory ability other than for a particular mode of rationality within a limiting theoretical framework. This analysis represents an attempt to propose a mediation between structuralist theories of power and organization and those theoretical reflections on the professions which locate the determination of occupational authority in a broader matrix of social processes.     

Rethinking Post-Fordism: The Meaning of Workplace Flexibility

Social scientists increasingly claim that work structures based on the mass production or "Fordist" paradigm have grown obsolete, giving way to a more flexible, "post-Fordist" structure of work. These claims have been much disputed, however, giving rise to a sharply polarized debate over the outcome of workplace restructuring. I seek to reorient the debate by subjecting the post-Fordist approach to theoretical and empirical critique. Several theoretical weaknesses internal to the post-Fordist approach are identified, including its uncertain handling of "power" and "efficiency" as factors that shape work organizations; its failure to acknowledge multiple responses to the crisis of Fordism, several of which seem at odds with the post-Fordist paradigm; and its tendency to neglect the resurgence of economic dualism and disparity within organizations and industries. Review of the empirical literature suggests that, despite scattered support for the post-Fordist approach, important anomalies exist (such as the growing authority of "mental" over manual labor) that post-Fordism seems powerless to explain. In spite of its ample contributions, post-Fordist theory provides a seriously distorted guide to the nature of workplace change in the United States. Two alternative perspectives toward the restructuring of work organizations are sketched—neoinstitutionalist and "flexible accumulation" models—which seem likely to inspire more fruitful lines of research on the disparate patterns currently unfolding within American work organizations.     

Towards a European information economy

The aim of the paper is to analyse whether and to what extent the network concept has become the Leitbild of an emerging new economy. The analysis is based on a company survey conducted in eight European territories. There is empirical evidence that only a minority of companies have applied the network concept as a dominant restructuring model, while various types of Fordism are still influencing companies' view on efficient techno-organisational forms. The regional analysis demonstrates that there is not only one path into an informational economy. Some territories still stick to low-tech Fordism, while others apply a technology-based flexi-Fordism, in which ICT functions as a key mechanism to make Fordist structures more flexible. Only in a minority of territories is an informational network economy emerging in which ICT has the function of enabling and supporting communication and co-operation within decentralised organisational forms.     

Market returns? Gender and theories of change in employment relations

This paper explores recent arguments about the marketization of female labour, in the context of a wider analysis of the role of concepts like 'the market' and 'individualization' in sociological accounts of change in employment relations. It will be argued that within sociology there has been a tendency for rapid, large-scale changes in employment relations to be characterized as the breakdown of social influences or structures and as the emergence of atomized, individuated market forces. In the most recent models, change in the nature of gendered positions within employment are presented in terms of a decline of social structuring and social constraint. These emergent accounts hold similarities to classical economics, and to Marx's and Weber's accounts of employment, which also characterized new forms of employment relations in terms of the emptying of their social content and their replacement by market forms. We offer an alternative, moral economy, perspective which foregrounds the continued significance of social relations in the structuring of employment and employment change. We develop the argument through an analysis of gendered patterns of employment and change in family form.     

Laboring Underground: The Employment Patterns of Hispanic Immigrant Men in Durham, NC

The dramatic increase in Hispanic immigration to the United States in recent decades has been coterminous with fundamental shifts in the labor market towards heightened flexibility, instability, and informality. As a result, the low-wage labor market is increasingly occupied by Hispanic immigrants, many of whom are undocumented. While numerous studies examine the implications for natives' employment prospects, our understanding of low-wage immigrants themselves remains underdeveloped. Drawing on original data collected in Durham, North Carolina, this article provides a more holistic account of immigrant Hispanic's labor market experiences, examining not only wages but also employment instability and benefit coverage. The analysis evaluates the role of human capital and immigration characteristics, including legal status, in shaping compensation outcomes, as well as the influence of other employment characteristics. Findings highlight the salience of nonstandard work arrangements such as subcontracting and informal employment to the labor market experiences of immigrant Hispanic men, and describe the constellation of risk factors that powerfully bound immigrant employment outcomes. Keywords: Hispanic; immigration; wages; low-wage labor market; employment relations.     

Sheltered and Supported Employment in the 1990s: the experiences of disabled workers in the UK

Sheltered and supported employment are important areas of social policy provision for disabled people in the UK, but they have received little attention in the sociological literature on disability. This omission is addressed by developing a framework for understanding the state's employment policy for disabled people. It is argued that recent changes in sheltered and supported employment provision must be understood in the context of broader labour market restructuring. This argument is illustrated by an exploratory survey of workers in both programmes. The findings suggest that sheltered and supported employment tend to prioritise the needs of employers over those of disabled workers. In concluding, it is argued that an adequate approach to the employment needs of disabled people needs to go beyond micro-policy debates on the relative merits of existing employment programmes and, instead, engage at a broader level of societal change.     

Return to work for individuals with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) disease: dichotomous outcome variable or personally-constructed narrative challenge?

Advances in the management of HIV disease have increasingly focused attention on the possibilities of return to employment for individuals with HIV disease. However whilst mortality has decreased and life expectancies have lengthened, life for the individual with HIV remains both complex and unpredictable. This article explores the notion of return to work as narrative theme. A case study highlighting the narrative nature of how return to work might be conceptualised by the HIV positive individual is presented; ahead of a brief discussion as to how the lived reality of combination therapy may impact upon the individual's conceptualisation of employment in the broader context of their life story.     

Time and Work–Life Balance: The Roles of ‘Temporal Customization’ and ‘Life Temporality’

This article poses a challenge to the orthodox binary, conceptualization of work–life balance only made possible by relying on the widespread ‘clock time’ worldview, which understands employment practices in terms of the basic time = money equation. In particular, it is the balance metaphor which relies on a quantification of both work and life in order to make sense and can therefore be seen to be based on an understanding of time as a measurable and value‐able unit. This article seeks to begin the exercise of examining the concept of work–life balance through a broader concept of the temporal dimension than simply limited quantitative notions. Two temporal themes are reported from a study which identified employees who had customized their working pattern to suit the various and multi‐dimensional facets of their lifestyles and thereby successfully improved their work–life balance. Participants in this study demonstrated that an improved work–life balance is more about a mind‐set that refuses to be dominated by a work temporality and is determined to create ‘me time’ rather than e.g. simply choosing a four day week or a part‐time job. It is argued that the notion of work–life balance is more usefully conceptualized within a broader notion of ‘livingscapes’ which contain both elements of work and life and that as researchers, our challenge must be to reflect the complexity of this weave within our analyses of individuals’ work–life balance.     

Korea/Japan or Japan/Korea? The Saga of Co‐hosting the 2002 Soccer World Cup

Since Japan's defeat and enforced withdrawal from Korea in 1945, continuing acrimony from those 35 years of Japan's unwelcome domination on the Korean Peninsula has been a thorny issue affecting full normalization of relations between the two countries. The first round of post‐war talks between Japan and South Korea remained stalled for almost half a decade, and not until 1965, after 14 years of subsequent – and painfully drawn out – negotiations were diplomatic relations finally established. Today, in spite of a gradual thawing of that very icy relationship, Korean people's bitterness over Japan's militarist past and over what they regard as insufficient apologies and reparations was always going to feature as the two nations went head to head in their bid to host the 2002 World Cup. Following FIFA's decision in 1996 that Japan and South Korea would jointly stage the cup as co‐hosts – the first time in soccer World Cup history – extant animosity became increasingly problematic as South Korea, Japan and FIFA hammered out the details. In this paper I draw upon media coverage from the mid‐1990s to the present day to discuss FIFA's historic co‐hosting decision, a judgment which, in spite of the difficulties then and now, does have the potential to make a very positive impact on both countries and greater Asia. After briefly introducing the broader sports/politics conundrum, I outline the final stages of the host‐nation selection dilemma which forced FIFA into its unprecedented joint decision, locating that process within a framework of the competitive lobbying between the two political rivals and internal demands for a change of management style within FIFA itself. I will also highlight the economic, political, historical and social ramifications of a co‐hosted soccer World Cup and attempts to deal with the issues. South Korea's desire for North Korea to participate in the tournament will also be discussed as a vehicle for encouraging stability on the Korean Peninsula and for future cooperation between Japan and South Korea on their policies towards North Korea. Although the 2002 World Cup arrangements are already firmly in place, the long‐term animosity and the continuing accusations and points‐scoring between the two host‐nations suggest that we can not yet take it for granted that the co‐hosted 2002 soccer spectacular will go according to plan.     

Sociological Ambivalence and Family Ties: A Critical Perspective

We develop the concept of ambivalence as structurally created contradictions that are made manifest in interaction. We discuss how our reconceptualization enhances the relevance of ambivalence to sociological analyses of family ties. Ambivalence is a particularly useful concept when imbedded in a theoretical framework that views social structure as structured social relations, and individuals as actors who exercise agency as they negotiate relationships within the constraints of social structure. The strengths of conceptualizing ambivalence within this framework are illustrated with examples of caring for older family members and of balancing paid work and family responsibilities.     

Thinking with the Sardinian: Antonio Gramsci and social work

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who died over 70 years ago, produced a complex body of theorisation which is mostly ignored within social work. In this paper it is maintained that there are a number of obstacles presented for those reading Gramsci. Nonetheless, these obstacles should not deter us from trying to engage with Gramsci. After briefly outlining his biography, the article focuses on just two of his key thematic preoccupations. First, the related ideas of Americanism, Fordism and Taylorism; second, the concept of hegemony. Although conceding that there are problems with his work, it will be argued that these theoretical formulations continue to be of potential use and might aid our understanding of social work and related forms of activity during a period of neoliberal inspired transformations. Furthermore, thinking with Gramsci, and other social theorists, might enable the social professions to help construct counter hegemonic strategies.     

LITIGATION AND SUBTERFUGE: CHINESE IMMIGRANT MOBILIZATION DURING THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ERA

I analyze historical changes in American immigration law and the subsequent responses of Chinese immigrants during the Chinese Exclusion Era. Using the political process model's concept of “political opportunity structure,” I examine how the indeterminate nature of the Chinese Exclusion laws provided key opportunities for mobilization. I present an interactive framework that considers not only how the broader political environment enabled and constrained the Chinese, but also how they responded by actively reshaping their environment. I apply this framework to the Chinese community's initial use of litigation and their move towards tactics of subterfuge in response to changes in Chinese exclusion policies. My findings show that the anti-Chinese immigration policies basically fulfilled their purpose, but led to unintended exploitation due to problematic language and enforcement.     

Seeking Legitimacy: The Professionalization of Life Coaching

This article uses life coaching as a case study for understanding the attempts of one occupational group to define their work as a profession and themselves as professional people. Life coaches' efforts to legitimate their work are examined within the context of the economic downturn and exemplify an emerging employment trend in the American labor market: college‐educated workers pursuing non‐standard work as independent contractors in personalized service occupations. Using in‐depth interviews with life coaches, I focus on the collective and individual strategies workers use in their attempts to carve out new occupational jurisdictions for their services and bolster their professional status. I explore how gender shapes life coaches' experiences and professionalization tactics; further, I predict that these gendered processes will ultimately influence the trajectory of the life coaching industry more generally. My findings highlight the complexity of current employment relations and offer empirical insights into the study of work, occupations, and gender.     

Between sociology and the business school: critical studies of work,employment and organization in the UK

This is a paper about what happens when a form of knowledge moves to another part of the university. The author, identifying himself as an ‘ex‐sociologist’, investigates the relationship between the sociology of work, employment and organization and various ‘critical’ traditions within the business school. I argue that the contemporary divide between sociologies of work and employment, and Critical Management Studies (CMS) within the business school rests in part on developments in UK sociology in the 1960s and 70s. This means that divergent understandings of the role of sociology and its relevant theoretical resources provided the deep structure for the current tension between CMS on the one hand and research on work and employment on the other. The movement of sociologists and industrial relations academics to the business school provided the preconditions for two very different critical traditions. The paper concludes with thoughts on what it means to be an outsider inside an institution, and on the future prospects for Burawoy's ‘critical’ or ‘public’ sociologies in UK business schools.