Berufliches Handeln in Dilemmasituationen — Führungskräfte zwischen Pflichterfüllung und Eigenverantwortung

Taking decisions and acting in non-standard situations — which are not described in company guidelines and procedures — is part of a manager′s role and responsibilities. As part of an empirical study 158 managers as well as potential management candidates have been put into dilemma situations in which they have to choose between strictly following company policies or alternatively taking own initiative and choosing a self-responsible action path with more risks and conflict potential. To explain the decisions taken different background information is used such as the organizational culture, the manager′s personal goals and a scale describing self-responsibility as a part of the individual′s self-concept. The preference of organizations is described in relation to the organization′s culture: Following guidelines and ′doing one′s duty′ was the most favored solution from the organization′s point of view. Managers and management candidates choose self-responsible acting with low conflict potential when they feel in harmony with their organization. Managers only choose self-responsible acting with high conflict potential if they have a strong tendency for taking own initiative and are ready to take responsibility for their actions. The results are discussed focusing on self-responsibility levels and on consequences for organizations.     

Gendering the Management of Change in Higher Education: A Case Study

This article reports an investigation into the influence of gender at a pre-1992 UK university. Interviews with Heads of Departments and others defined as occupying ‘middle management’ positions reveal three distinct stances to the new higher education, of ‘collaboration’, ‘resistance’ and ‘transformation’ and the article explores how gender influences these stances. It attempts to move beyond a simple focus on gender differences, towards answering Bacchi's (1990) call for ‘a more useful political analysis (which) would draw attention to the way in which the current economic system encourages certain behaviours and discourages others’. It shows that women academics are taking a transformational stance, but that the stances are not gender-specific. Gender is institutionally embedded with other organizational characteristics, such as academic discipline, departmental size, compatibility with external commercial activity, and the ability or otherwise to generate funds. Questions are raised about the contribution of such stances to the future of the new educational order.     

Gender‐Related Opportunities and Turnover: The Case of Medical Sector Employees

This study examined the relationships between gender, objective and perceived work‐related opportunities, and turnover behavior. This was achieved using an interdisciplinary approach that combined the macro‐level perspective on opportunities in internal and external labor markets, with the micro‐level perspective of individual perceptions of opportunities. The results revealed that the opportunities–turnover linkage is gender‐specific rather than gender‐neutral. Women's turnover behavior was affected by their ‘perception’ of employment opportunities in the organizational and local labor markets. By contrast, men's turnover behavior was affected by ‘objective’, organizational and local labor market conditions. These findings indicate that the objective opportunities of the work market may be compatible with men’s, but not women’s, work needs and hence question existing assumptions of a ‘gender‐neutral’ effect of opportunities on turnover decisions.     

From ‘Fighting Family’ to ‘Belligerent Families’: Family–Military–Nation Interrelationships and the Forming of Israeli Public Behavior among Families of Fallen Soldiers and Families of MIAs and POWs

The army–family relationship is vital for control by a state aware that the family is the central agent influencing their son to enlist. A historically ‘affectionate’ relationship prevailed between Israel's army and families. During and after the Yom Kippur War, families of captive and missing soldiers, and bereaved families, adopted ‘new’ social behaviors. They organized in an institutionalized manner, clashing with the establishment. Our research highlights the changing behavior patterns. Previously, Israel's ‘fighting family’ had applied a ‘hegemonic behavior model’. Families could process their loss privately, or publicly – as cultural agents committed to state values. After the war, many spurned that model and entered the public space, calling senior government officials ‘enemies’, ‘guilty’ of their plight. The new behavior fell on fertile ground: the declining traditional ‘network of elites’ and the burgeoning social-civil arena. Families of captive and MIA soldiers, and of fallen soldiers, adopted the trailblazing model. We first address theoretical aspects of ties between state and society, parenthood and family. Next we explore the ‘hegemonic model’ describing the pre-Yom Kippur War relationship between families and the establishment. We describe the ‘new’ behavior of two groups: families of captive and missing soldiers, and families of fallen soldiers. The state's co-opting of the family appears to be a regressive process, and the two institutions have begun operating competitively.     

New ways of working (NWW): work space and cultural change in virtualizing organizations

ABSTRACT

This study offers a grounded theory of ‘new ways of working’ (NWW), an organizational design concept of Dutch origin with a global relevance. NWW concern business solutions for flexible workspaces enabled by digital network technologies. Theoretically, NWW are analysed with reference to Lefebvre’s theory on the ‘production of space’ and are defined along three dimensions: the spatiotemporal ‘flexibilization’ of work practices, the ‘virtualization’ of the technologically pre-defined organization, and the ‘interfacialization’ of meaning making in the lifeworld of workers. Empirically, NWW are explored in a case study of an insurance company which in 2007 radically implemented NWW. The case study consists of a longitudinal – before and after implementation – research based on ethnographic fieldwork, conducted in 2007 and 2010. The article contributes with a conceptual framework for the analysis and management of NWW, and highlights contradictions and ambiguities in the implementation and appropriation of this innovative organizational design.     

Antezedentien und Konsequenzen freiwilligen Arbeitsengagements

A literature review on the antecedents and consequences of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is given. OCB is defined as individual discretionary behavior, that fosters the productivity of organizations but is not formally required. Research has shown positive relationships between OCB and job satisfaction, fairness perceptions, organizational commitment and leadership behavior. There is also evidence that the outcome of performance appraisals reflect to a certain degree the extent to which employees demonstrate OCB and that OCB improves organizational performance.     

Towards ‘New Emotional Movements’? A Comparative Exploration into a Specific Movement Type

In this article we broaden the scope of earlier research that established a theoretical specificity for the Belgian ‘White March’ and ‘White Movement’, by comparing them to three similar movements and mobilizations that were also triggered by random violence. The comparisons suggest that we are dealing with a new type of social movement and mobilization, preliminarily referred to as ‘new emotional movements’. The three other cases under study are the ‘Snowdrop Campaign’ in the UK, the ‘Million Mom March’ in the US and the ‘Movement against Senseless Violence’ in the Netherlands. Four important features seem to characterize all cases: the central role of emotions and victimization in the mobilization and development of the movement; broad elite support; organizational weakness; and extensive media support. We distinguish two sub-types of new emotional movements: (1) an instrumental variant with clear-cut aims and demands; and (2) an identity variant with displays of solidarity and compassion as the main constitutive elements. In both cases the initiators lack prior organizational experience and the absence of mobilizing organizations is compensated for by mass media support. In the instrumental sub-type neither the victims nor their relatives take the initiative but lend support and give approval to amateur entrepreneurs. The main mobilizing emotion appears to be fear about the possibility of personal suffering, and this emotion is reflected in the formulation of clear-cut demands for the future prevention of similar events. This instrumentality results in elite support being considerably broad, yet partisan. In contrast, the victims themselves take the initiative in the identity variant, causing the movement to remain more or less without specific demands but ensuring a broad support that is not bounded by party lines.     

The Non-profit Sector is Dead,Long Live the Non-profit Sector!

This article engages the debates on the basic parameters of the study of ‘the space’ between the state and the market, including definitions of the organizations, theories, and boundaries of the space. This article divides the debates into two camps, ‘the non-profit paradigm’ and ‘the new paradigm’, and credits the contribution of both sides, respectively, delineating the sector and advanced theorization. It then distinguishes operationalization methods for the non-profit paradigm from operationalization methods for the new paradigm. The task is to develop the latter. The article then introduces an organizational identity approach from organizational ecology as a promising method.     

Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions

More and more women and men are becoming dependent on some form of small business activity for all or part of their livelihoods but there is little research offering insight into gender and working practices in small businesses. In this article we assess some theoretical approaches and discuss these against an empirical investigation of micro-firms run by women, men and mixed sex partnerships. In the ‘entrepreneurship’ literature, with its emphasis on the individual business owner, we find little guidance. We argue that in the ‘modern’ micro-business, family and work are brought into proximity as in the ‘in between’ organizational form described by Weber. The celebrated ‘flexibility’ of small firms often involves the reproduction within modernity of seemingly pre-modern practices in household organization and gender divisions of labour. This is true in the Britain of the 1990s in a growing business sector normally associated neither with tradition nor with the family. Tradition, however, is never automatic or uncontested in a ‘post-traditional society’. A minority of women and men in micro-enterprises actively resist traditional solutions and even traditional imagery of male and female behaviour. For this small group alone new economic conditions seem to bring new freedom.     

Organization as hypertext: A metaphor from visual cultures

This article argues that visual cultures exert a profound influence at the level of the metaphorical conceptions of organizational life. It investigates two metaphors of the organization which have their roots in visual cultures: the metaphor of taking a photograph of the organization, and the metaphor of the organization as a hypertext. The diversity of these two metaphors in their conceptualisation of organizational life is illustrated, as well as their shared link with the aesthetic understanding of organization. It emerges that the metaphor of the photograph highlights the organizational knowledge which is incremental, objective and ‘subject-less’. On the contrary, the metaphor of the hypertext shows that organizational knowledge ‘always has a subject’, and that this subject may be conceived as internal to the organization and not as exclusively external to it.     

Westerns,Weddings and Web‐Weavers: Reading Gender as Genre in Organizational Theory

This article focuses on the process of reading and its role in the construction of knowledge. Reading is an activity which is personal yet never singular: we bring to our reading of one text a range of knowledges, experiences and strategies derived from other texts. This ‘intertextuality’ means that ‘meaning‐making’ is a complex negotiation process between reader and text, whereby linkages are made between divergent genres. This is explored through the author's own personal experiences of reading gender/organizational theory. These readings demonstrate the way in which ‘narratives’ of other genres, such as film and fiction, spill over, infect and manipulate the construction of narratives within organizational texts. Further, the ready intertextual connections which are made help to expose some of the embedded assumptions about gender. Whilst these are, in the main, quite traditional, the consideration of the processes involved in reading helps to challenge these as ‘truths’ as well as signpost possibilities for new forms of writing gender/organizational theory.     

Global human mobility and knowledge transfer: Highly skilled return migrants as agents of transnational learning

Global human mobility constitutes a key mechanism for knowledge transfer. This study examines the micro-dynamics of knowledge transfer in the developed-developing country migratory context. It highlights the agentic role of return migrants in transforming overseas learning into relevant knowledge in their home contexts. Drawing on situated and relational theories of knowledge and learning, the study views knowledge transfer as a relevance discovery process. It looks at a group of highly skilled migrants who had returned from developed countries to Ethiopia. Despite their high skill, the focus of knowledge transfer was mostly in non-technical fields that include a broad range of organizational knowledge and work practices. These were made relevant to the local context through the returnees’ ‘work of reconciliation’, involving ‘engagement’, ‘alignment’ and ‘imagination’. The study challenges the standard assumption of a one-way linear flow of knowledge from developed to developing countries. It sheds new light on the migration-development link by highlighting the ‘aspirational’ aspect of migrant transnational learning.     

Self-Generated Motives for Not Gambling Among Young Adult Non-gamblers

Motivational models have been shown to usefully describe reasons for engaging in addictive behaviors including gambling disorder. Although most scales designed to measure motives have been derived statistically, self-generated open-ended responses have also shown utility for identifying unique motives for gambling. While the motivational structure for gambling disorder has been extensively explored, there has been a paucity of research examining motives for choosing not to gamble. This is not the case for other addictive behaviors such as alcohol use where motives for abstaining from drinking have been well defined. The primary goal of this study was to qualitatively explore and identify motives for not gambling in a sample of young adult non-gamblers using open-ended responses. A sample (N = 196) of undergraduate current non-gamblers, defined as no gambling activity over the previous 12 months, completed a series of questionnaires on demographics, gambling behavior, and alcohol consumption. Furthermore, they were asked to provide their top three reasons for not gambling in rank order. The results revealed eight specific motives for why participants chose not to gamble: ‘financial reasons and risk aversion’; ‘disinterest and other priorities’; ‘personal and religious convictions’; ‘addiction concerns’; ‘influence of others’ values’; ‘awareness of the odds’; ‘lack of access, opportunity, or skill’; and ‘emotional distress’. Personal and religious convictions reasons were also related to lifetime non-drinking, suggesting that these motives are associated with decreased addictive behaviors in general. Ultimately, these results may help to inform the design of prevention strategies for gambling disorder.     

Gender,Equality and the Culture of Organizational Assessment

In spite of years of equal opportunities legislation and guidelines, a marked gender imbalance at the apex of organizational career structures persists (Carrier 1995). The predominant liberal model of equal opportunities (EO) seeks to alleviate sex-discrimination through advocating gender-neutral or ‘same’ treatment (Meehan and Sevenhuisjen 1991; Gatens 1991; Bock and James 1992). However, the present study suggests that ostensibly gender-neutral organizational practices may exclude characteristics, values and concerns more typically associated with women. This paper draws on a study of gender in selection to corporate management and raises questions about whether and how characteristics, values, goals and concerns which have been perceived as ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ may be excluded from ostensibly gender-neutral equality practices. Findings suggest that EO theory and practice need to move beyond limited either/or debates around ‘equality’ and ‘difference’. In order to do so, it may also be necessary to challenge dichotomous thinking about gender which currently informs much of that debate. In order to facilitate the development and progress of women in organizations it is not enough for EO initiatives to treat gender as a category of difference that can be overcome through superficial changes, for example in interview procedures, which merely seek to exclude issues perceived as gendered. Instead, a longer agenda for equality must move beyond the debate about women’s ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ from men to include a deeper understanding of the gendered nature of organizational positions, structures and practices.     

Gendered Organizational Cultures: Narratives of Women Travellers in a Male World

The paper will present various self-identity narratives of women pioneers in male occupations who ‘take their place’ in a male gendered organizational culture. These narratives belong to a single discourse of what may be called ‘travellers in a male world’. This discourse presumes the existence of a territory marked out as male which is trespassed upon by females who are formally members of the same occupational community, but who, in actual practice, must stake out their positions in the field. Social structures coerce discourse positions and set up a series of expectations and social obligations, although several subject positions can be taken up for oneself, and for the ‘other’. This process has been labelled ‘positioning gender relations within an organizational culture’ and has been described as liminal work, performed discursively and in transitional spaces. Gender relations can therefore be viewed as cultural performances learned and enacted on appropriate occasions both by men and women.     

‘Belonging’ and ‘Otherness’: Sex Equality in Banking in Turkey and Britain

The struggle for sex equality at work has largely been achieved in the developed world, it is claimed. The number of well‐qualified young women entering white‐collar employment and achieving promotion to first‐line and middle management positions now matches or exceeds their male peers. Many young women have high career aspirations and argue that sex discrimination no longer exists. However, this perception is over‐optimistic. Major sex inequalities persist at senior management level in the salaries and benefits offered to female and male staff and in access to certain favoured occupations and sectors of employment. Questionnaires, interviews and documentary evidence from three Turkish and six British banks and high street financial organizations showed that their claimed commitment to equal opportunities by sex was not matched by their practices. Members of managerial elites (who were almost exclusively male) held firm views about the characteristics of ‘the ideal worker’, which informed organizational ideologies, including human resource policies and practices concerning recruitment and promotion. They also permeated organizational cultures, which affected employees’ working practices and experiences. The outcome of these internal negotiation processes was to differentiate between a favoured group of staff seen as fully committed to the companies’ values, who were promoted and rewarded, and an ‘out’ group, whose members were denied these privileges. This distinction between ‘belonging’ and ‘otherness’ is gendered not only along the traditional lines of class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross‐cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women staff seeking career development in the industry was remarkably similar.     

Jokers wild: the importance of humour in the maintenance of organizational culture

Humour may have a number of different effects within organizations, but it is usually manifested in one of two major‘joke forms’: standardized/canned or situation/spontaneous. Using examples of each from fieldwork conducted in a large manufacturing bakery, it is argued that both forms depend for their effect on their appositeness to the‘joke in the social structure’Both forms share the capacity to enable the reversal, within the humorous framework, of problematic social relations, patterns of control, or customary mystifications. Humour may be used to create ambiguity or to promote closure: its impact on the organizational culture will depend on the extent to which the symbolic transformations achieved within its boundaries can be transposed into material,‘real-world’relationships.     

What Is a Social Enterprise? Revising Old Concepts and Interviewing Social Entrepreneurs

The concept of social enterprise (SE) has been developed by an emerging and collective effort of scholars over the world. However, a comprehensive meaning of ‘SE,’ which embeds traditional knowledge of organizational management has potential to be explored further. Due to the relevance of ‘SE’ in the contemporary society, new conceptual and practical insights are desirable. This study proposes to shed light on building up a definition for ‘SE’ that is inspired by existing definitions of organization and ‘SE’ and rely on real-world evidence. Literature review and comprehensive interviews with social entrepreneurs were conducted. Data analysis defines ‘SEs’ as an autonomous organization managed in a participative way and created by and for the community, with a relatively identifiable boundary, that strives to generate social wealth, and for this, produces goods and/or services that guarantee its financial viability, consequently, its continuity. Its integration into its environment generates consequences guided by social, economic, and environmental goals.     

Information happenings: Performing reflexive organizational research 1

This article is an experiment in organizational narration. The adoption of a novel literary form enables the author to address certain contemporary themes in the reflexive presentation and reporting of organizational research. In pursuit of an alternative mode of expression, the notion of the ‘Happening’ is found to be a helpful rhetorical device. ‘Happenings’ serve as a vehicle for the theatrical reframing of important epistemological issues concerning the nature of ‘organization’, ‘research’ and ‘reporting’. This textual strategy is not, however, an end in itself. In substantive terms, it is used to explore and give voice to key thematic elements of the author's ethnographic study of a high technology project. The work of literary critic Kenneth Burke and his method of Dramatism, reflexively reframed, is employed to examine the social motives which inform ‘computer identity’, ‘information Utopias’ and ‘technicism’.