Illuminating gendered organization assumptions

One key to why organizations have been less successful at integrating a work–family agenda into their organizational cultures is that workplaces have failed to consider how gender assumptions influence workplace practices, policies and cultures. This paper presents a theoretical framework for considering how gender role assumptions have prevented organizational attempts to become family friendly. Further, this paper uses an organizational case study to illustrate this point. Specifically, a theory of gendered organizations is used to frame an analysis of 30 employee interviews. Data suggest that gendered organizational assumptions inherent to several workplace policies and practices contribute to employee strain associated with negotiating the demands of life on and off the job. Further, the findings show that these gendered organizational assumptions prevent organizations from developing workplace cultures responsive to employees' work, family and personal needs. A brief review of the interdisciplinary work–family field is presented, followed by a discussion of gendered organizations. Then, using interview data collected from management and ‘front‐line’ female and male workers employed at a municipal government, this paper examines how workplace practices, presumably gender neutral, affect employees and the organizational culture in which they work.     

Gendered,Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers, employers, policymakers and sometimes even workers themselves. Although there is some indication that jobs in the restructuring social services sector can be characterized by constant demand, high stress and violence, research into the working conditions and health hazards of these types of jobs has not been a priority. Using data from a qualitative study examining work in NPOs, we trace the ways that work performed in these workplaces is both gendered and invisible. We identify three types of invisible labour. ‘Background work’ facilitates and supports more visible and recognized organizational activities. Certain organizational language obscures the full spectrum of work that takes place in the organizations and the risks it may involve. ‘Empathy work’ includes the relationship building, counselling and crisis intervention that comprise key components of social service delivery. ‘Emotional labour’ involves the management of client emotions and workers' own emotions in the process of working with clients and delivering care under conditions of scarcity and contraction. The invisibility of these activities means that much of the day‐to‐day work done in the organizations, while particularly important in the context of social service restructuring, is taken‐for‐granted and undervalued by organizational outsiders. As a result, many of the hazards present in the jobs are hidden from view and workers' health may be compromised. We argue that the invisibility and taken‐for‐grantedness of certain types of work in NPOs is reflected in, and constitutive of, particular exclusions and shortcomings of current occupational health and safety systems designed to protect the health of workers.     

Transformational leadership,organizational culture,and innovativeness in nonprofit organizations

This is an exploratory study of leadership, organizational culture, and organizational innovativeness in a sample of nonprofit human service organizations: Associations of Retarded Citizens. Although leadership has been held out as one of the most important predictors of innovation, this study found it was not correlated with organizational innovativeness. Examination of the relationships between leadership and cultural variables provided some alternative explanations for this finding. Positive relationships among transformational leadership, organizational values, and cultural consensus (degree of agreement among employees on those values) indicate that leadership practices employed in this sample created strong cultural consensus around values that may inhibit innovation. These findings suggest that examining the link between leadership and organizational culture is important for understanding how leadership and innovation are related. This article sets out practical implications, based on the results of the study, that may help nonprofit managers create workplaces supportive of innovation.     

Technological Innovation and Organizational Survival: A Population Ecology Study of Nineteenth-Century American Railroads*

The population ecology model of formal organizations is used to study how adaptive maneuvers enable organizations to maintain themselves in a distribution of like organizations and, ultimately, to understand how the process of selection leads to survival and reproduction of certain types of organization and attrition of other types of organizations. Selection is readily affected by organization innovation, whether administrative or technological. This research dealt with how the steel rail may have affected the survival of 214 railroads in a fourteen-state area of the U.S. from 1860 to 1890. The findings indicate that two organizational characteristics, age of railroad and size of a rail operation, contributed more to rail survival than did technological innovation. Several methodological and theoretical issues are discussed which surround the choice of the population ocology model and the conduct of this research.     

Restructuring Flexibility: Case Studies of Part‐Time Female Workers in Six Workplaces

The article is based on six workplace case studies within a local economy and investigates the reasons behind the different utilization of part‐time workers within these workplaces. The research examines the content and nature of part‐time work in these organizations and the experiences of the part‐time workforce. The findings suggest that we need to distinguish between three types of part‐time workers; core, peak and ancillary. It is argued that such distinctions capture the variegated utilization of part‐time workers and contribute to the debate concerning the integration or marginalization of part‐time staff within workplaces. Furthermore, workplace cultures are an important arena for contextualizing these discussions. It is contended that the different uses of part‐time workers can be explained by different sectoral and organizational contexts but that the nature of part‐time work is also influenced by existing social relations within the workplace, notably with respect to gender, class and age.     

Organizational Maintenance,Sensitivity to Clients,and Vulnerability: Some New Suggestions About a Traditional Concept*

Maintenance, an important concept in the organizational literature, is often assumed to be a key factor in the low levels of sensitivity to client needs and demands apparent in many human service organizations. This paper uses data from a national sample of juvenile courts to demonstrate, however, that maintenance may relate to other variables in ways that are at variance with the common assumption. The maintenance of internal organizational operations is bound closely to the development of ties to the community; as a result, strong emphasis on maintenance actually leads to high levels of sensitivity to clients when certain environmental forces demand it. This positive relation is especially strong when organizations are highly vulnerable to external pressures. Such results suggest a contingent view of the role of maintenance in organizations and imply some further directions for research.     

From Organizational Sexuality to Queer Organizations: Research on Homosexuality and the Workplace

Organization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the ‘sexuality in organizations’ perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers’ sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to investigate a new organizational form: the gay‐friendly workplace. We review legal and policy changes in US workplaces that have made them more accepting of gay and lesbian employees. Then we examine ethnographic studies of gay‐friendly organizations. Although they are certainly an advance over previous homophobic workplaces, the literature suggests that they may reproduce inequalities of race, class, and gender. Few studies have investigated ‘queer organizations’, which we identify as a rich area for future scholarship.     

Collectivism and reporting of organizational wrongdoing in public organizations: the case of county administration in Kenya

This paper explores dimensions of collectivism to explain patterns of reporting organizational wrongdoing in public organizations. The findings herein illustrate that responses to wrongdoing in public organizations in developing countries like Kenya are more rationalized or interpreted within communitarian or supported by parochial social ideologies, which tend to override instrumental accountability norms and structures. Accordingly, responses towards organizational wrongdoing are more informed by the logic of appropriateness, as potential and actual complainants prefer informal channels for addressing organizational wrongdoing over formal reporting mechanisms. These findings present important insights for designing accountability mechanisms or anti-corruption strategies in public organizations. With a focus on unfamiliar settings to the literature on ethical culture, the paper rides on its in-depth analysis while contributing to the current research on organizational behavior and decision-making.     

Addressing the cultural complexity of OHS in the Australian mining industry

This paper summarises the findings of the site assessments of ten pilot mine sites involved in a project entitled, Creating a world-leading OHS culture in the NSW Mining Industry which was undertaken for the New South Wales Mine Safety Advisory Council (NSW MSAC). NSW MSAC was established in 1998 in NSW Australia and aims to increase the emphasis on safety and health within the mining industry by reviewing and analyzing safety performance, setting strategic directions, providing advice and developing policy recommendations. The project itself aimed to deliver a self-sustaining method for achieving and monitoring continuous improvement in OHS culture and practice to the NSW mining industry. The pilot sites involved in the project tested a set of self-assessment tools to enable mines to assess and improve their own OHS culture and performance on key elements of an OHS management system. The tools allowed examination of the current OHS culture of the sites. Sites then used a participative planning process to develop an improvement plan. This paper provides summary data only, without identifying the individual sites that were the source of the data.     

Theoretical and Practical Imperatives for Reflective Social Work Organizations in Health and Mental Health

Summary

This article describes the common challenges to health and mental health organizations that require these agencies to become more “reflective” in their culture and structures. This necessitates integrating practice and research at all organizational levels. Schon's concept of reflective practice to health and mental health organizations is extended to develop the construct of a reflective organization, in which direct practitioners are integral to organizational learning through ongoing service evaluation and redesign. The theoretical and practical reasons why social work administrators and clinicians alike are obliged to integrate practice and research are discussed. University-based models of practice-research integration impede this process; Epstein's Practice-Based Research approach facilitates it.     

An Industry Fields Approach to Isomorphism Involving Australian Nonprofit Organizations

Structural similarity or isomorphism is expected among organizations in the same organizational field. Such a field matures with increasing interaction among the organizations in it. Using a random sample of Australian organizations, this paper compares isomorphism among nonprofit organizations regardless of industry with that among organizations in the same industry regardless of legal form. The results point to isomorphism especially in the healthcare industry, regardless of legal form. This finding adds weight to earlier research that questioned the operation of the nonprofit sector as an organizational field with enough interaction to produce isomorphism.     

A mixed-methods study of the impact of organizational culture on workforce retention in child welfare

The recruitment and retention of a stable, qualified workforce has been an on-going challenge for the child welfare system. Prior research has identified both individual and organizational factors influencing retention and turnover in child welfare. The current study uses mixed methods to examine the impact of perceived organizational culture on workers' intention to remain employed. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed that perceived organizational culture, as understood as being comprised of both relationships and values, could be related to worker retention. Based on the qualitative findings, the researchers selected quantitative measures to operationalize the various aspects of organizational culture. Results from the logistic regression indicated that intention to remain employed was significantly related to organizational culture. Implications for practice are discussed.     

The Impact of Interdisciplinary Teams on Organizational Relationships

Based upon research in an alcoholism treatment organization, the study explores the impact of interdisciplinary team treatment on organizational participants and structure. The findings suggest that alternate organizational arrangements are necessary for organizations which use the team method. The implications of team treatment for professionals were confounded because of power relationships within the organization. Role bargaining between professionals was observed to be virtually non-existent because of the dominance of a single discipline. A surprising finding was the extent to which supervisory personnel were disadvantaged in the study. Caution is suggested for those organizations most likely to adopt the team method, large public health organizations.     

Organization and Management in the Third Sector: Toward a Cross‐Cultural Research Agenda

Third sector organizations in the industrialized and the developing world—and particularly the subset of third sector organizations known as development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—are becoming more culturally diverse in internal staff composition, management styles, and working environments. Although cultural issues have been largely absent from the nonprofit and the NGO research literatures, the organizational implications of societal culture and organizational culture are widely debated within other research fields. This article proposes a closer engagement between third sector management research and the wider study of cross‐cultural organizational issues within anthropology, development studies, and management theory. It argues that such an exchange is necessary if third sector organizational research agendas are to include changing organizational landscapes effectively, and the article concludes with some ideas for future research.     

Organizational culture,climate and person-environment fit: Relationships with employment outcomes for mental health consumers

Although the effects of organizational culture, climate and person-environment fit have been widely studied in the general population, little research exists in this area regarding consumers of mental health services. This research focuses on organizational culture, climate and person-environment fit and their relationship to employment outcomes for mental health consumers. It also examines specific components of organizational culture which are both desired and perceived by mental health consumers. Thirty-six (N=36) consumers were recruited into one of two groups: individuals who were employed at the time of the study and those who had recently left their jobs. Instruments used were the Workplace Climate Questionnaire (WCQ) and the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP). Significant differences were found between groups along the dimensions of organizational culture/climate and person-environment fit. Although few differences were found between groups with regards to desired workplace characteristics, many differences in perceived characteristics were found. The findings point to the importance of assessing the organizational culture/climate and its congruence with individuals' value systems as part of the work integration process.     

The influence of flexible management practices on the sharing of experiential knowledge in the workplace: a case study of food service helpers

Previous studies have shown that the job knowledge and prudent knowledge of experienced workers constitute a wealth that needs to be shared in workplaces to promote worker integration, job retention and occupational health and safety. It appears, however, that certain management practices undermine this knowledge sharing process. This case study of food service helpers in institutional food service departments is part of a research project aimed at comparing the impact of different work organization methods on knowledge sharing in the workplace on the basis of case studies carried out in several organizations. The results of this case study reveal that by destabilizing and weakening the work teams, flexible management practices create an environment that is not conducive to experiential knowledge sharing.     

Building safety: The role of construction unions in the enforcement of OSHA

Because unionized workers are more likely to exercise their rights under OSHA, it is hypothesized that OSHA is more stringently enforced at unionized construction workplaces than at comparable nonunion workplaces. A comparison of OSHA enforcement in union and nonunion construction sites demonstrates that union sites face higher probabilities of inspection and receive greater scrutiny during inspections than do comparable nonunion sites. Further, union employers are required to correct violations of safety and health standards more quickly and bear higher overall penalty costs than their nonunion counterparts. As a result, the construction industry operates under a “two-tiered” safety and health regulatory system. The author thanks Ronald B. Mitchell of Harvard University for comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Growth and resilience of pioneering nonprofit human service organizations: a cross-case analysis of organizational histories

Knowledge of organizational history is important for recognizing patterns in effective management and understanding how organizations respond to internal and external challenges. This cross-case analysis of 12 histories of pioneering nonprofit human service organizations contributes an important longitudinal perspective on organizational history, complementing the cross-sectional case studies that dominate the existing research on nonprofit organizations. The literature on organizational growth, including lifecycle models and growth management, is reviewed, along with the literature on organizational resilience. Based on analysis of the 12 organizational histories, a conceptual model is presented that synthesizes key factors in the areas of leadership, internal operations, and external relations that influence organizational growth and resilience to enable nonprofit organizations to survive and thrive over time. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal examples from the organizational histories illustrate the conceptual map. The paper concludes with a discussion of directions for future research on nonprofit organizational history.