Don’t ask or tell: Pay secrecy policies in U.S. workplaces

How widespread are workplace rules against discussing wages and salaries in the U.S.? And what are the core correlates of whether or not an employer prohibits or discourages this type of speech? Using a unique dataset that includes a measure of whether workers are prohibited or discouraged from discussing pay, this article investigates the prevalence of pay secrecy policies, and what worker- and workplace-level characteristics are associated with these rules. Key findings reveal that these policies are commonplace, despite being illegal, and that they are concentrated in more “coercive” rather than “enabling” organizations. These more coercive workplaces are disproportionately in the private sector, lack union representation, and have managers that are generally punitive in their approach and unaccommodating of employees. Findings also indicate that the greater discretion pay secrecy provides managers does not result in discriminatory application of these rules to women, racial/ethnic minorities, or immigrants. The article concludes with a call for data collection efforts that would allow researchers to analyze the consequences of this widespread managerial practice.     

Shaping emotional reactions to ethical behaviors: Proactive personality as a substitute for ethical leadership

Due to ethical lapses of leaders, interest in ethical leadership has grown, raising important questions about the responsibility of leaders in ensuring moral and ethical conduct. However, research on ethical leadership has failed to examine the active role that followers' attributes play in enhancing or minimizing the influence of ethical leadership in organizational outcomes. We applied the substitutes for leadership approach (Kerr & Jermier, 1978) to ethical leadership and predicted that proactive personality acts as substitute in the relationship between ethical leadership, workplace emotions and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Data from two distinct samples offered strong support for the hypotheses. Specifically, we found that ethical leadership was significantly and negatively related to negative workplace emotions when subordinate proactive personality was low, but not when it was high, with consequences for OCBs. These findings suggest that proactive personality constitutes an important moderator on the impact of low ethical leadership on workplace emotions, with consequences for OCBs.     

Pride in task completion and organizational citizenship behaviour: Evidence from the ethnographic literature

Abstract

Pride in task completion has been observed to be consistently important to workers, although these self-conscious emotions have received little attention as a construct worthy of investigation in the workplace. Organizational ethnographies provide a unique opportunity for an in-depth look at pride and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB), An analysis of the existing set of published book-length workplace ethnographies (n = 108) reveals that both job satisfaction and pride in task completion are significantly associated with OCB. Associations between pride and OCB appear to be stronger than associations between job satisfaction and OCB. Workers' characteristic mood states, such as the pleasurable emotions created by pride in work and unpleasant feelings of shame from perceptions of chronic failure, appear to be highly relevant to the promotion of desirable outcomes for organizations. The results of this study illustrate the value of ethnographic data in the study of workplace emotions, cognitions, and their potential behavioural sequelae     

A process evaluation of individual and organizational occupational stress and health interventions

There is reason to believe that many health and stress interventions fail due to inattention to the effects of intervention implementation processes, but evaluations of these processes are found only rarely in the literature. The objective of the present study was to explore the issue of obstacles to implementation that may occur when stress and health interventions are introduced in work organizations. The study was conducted as a process evaluation of seven different individual and organizational interventions. Interviews were conducted in 22 post offices, 12 organizational units (such as care homes and local administrative units) of a Norwegian municipality, and in 10 shops in a shopping mall. The interviews took place before and after the interventions. The following key process factors were identified: (1) the ability to learn from failure and to motivate participants; (2) multi-level participation and negotiation, and differences in organizational perception; (3) insight into tacit and informal organizational behaviour; (4) clarification of roles and responsibilities, especially the role of middle management; and (5) competing projects and reorganization. For improved studies of interventions in the future we recommend that qualitative and quantitative methods be combined, that researchers build more on natural interventions that occur naturally within the organization, and that a pilot study be undertaken in order to investigate the cultural maturity of the organization.     

Everyday inter-ethnic tensions and discomfort in a culturally diverse Australian workplace

Australian workplaces are increasingly becoming culturally diverse. As a space of involuntary encounter of racial difference, multicultural workplaces are significant sites for understanding how workers deal with cultural difference. Involuntary cross-cultural encounters are a facet of living with cultural difference which can produce discomfort, tension and conflict in the workplace. The study of workplace social relations has traditionally focused on practices of racial discrimination. In this paper, we shift the focus to examine different modes of negative inter-ethnic interactions at work through the lens of discomfort. It suggests that analysing tension and conflict arising in multicultural workplaces as racially motivated or simply racist fails to capture other factors that adversely affect inter-ethnic interaction. This paper presents findings from a research into workplace interaction in the Australian employment services providers to emphasise that changing work conditions and increasing cultural diversity have profound impact on the workers’ experiences of workplace relations.     

The Day the Economy Changed

No abstract available for this article.     

Moving beyond the employee: The role of the organizational context in leader workplace aggression

Management and psychology scholars are increasingly seeking to examine how organizational characteristics that contextualize leadership shape the occurrence, impact, and prevention of leader workplace aggression. However, a comprehensive review of this literature has not yet been conducted, so a systematic understanding is lacking regarding questions including: (1) when, why and how is such aggression more likely to occur; (2) how do contextual factors enable or constrain effects of these leader behaviors on employees; and (3) how can organizations proactively manage their internal dynamics to prevent or reduce such incidences? Drawing on Porter and McLaughlin's (2006) components of organizational context, I review existing leader aggression research that intersects with seven categories: (1) culture/climate; (2) goals/purposes; (3) people/composition; (4) processes; (5) state/condition; (6) structure; and (7) time. I then offer theoretical propositions for future work, which are grounded in the roles and responsibilities inherent to the nature of leadership and coupled with the changing nature of organizational life. As a result, I set the research agenda for the next decade of organizational context × leader workplace aggression studies.     

Assessing Experiences With LGBT Microaggressions in the Workplace: Development and Validation of the Microaggression Experiences at Work Scale

ABSTRACT

LGBT people experience microaggressions in the workplace; however, limited research exists in this area partly due to a lack of psychometrically sound instruments measuring the prevalence of LGBT microaggressions in the workplace. To address this gap, an empirical study was conducted and the LGBT-MEWS was created and tested. The LGBT-MEWS is a 27-item self-report scale comprising three subscales. Each subscale conceptually represents a different domain through which microaggressions impact LGBT employees: (1) workplace values, (2) heteronormative assumptions, and (3) cisnormative culture. The results of testing indicated that the subscales demonstrate strong reliability and validity.     

The myth of the glass ceiling: Evidence from a stock-flow analysis of authority attainment

It is apparent to even a casual observer of American society that women and minorities are underrepresented among managers, especially among top-level executives. Past studies, however, have failed to find a consistent pattern of female and minority disadvantages in actual promotions and hiring decisions to account for this underrepresentation. This study aims to resolve this incongruity. Drawing on panel data from a nationally representative sample of scientists and engineers, I analyzed transitions across authority levels for men and women of three broad racial groups: whites, Asian Americans, and underrepresented minorities. There are two main findings. First, downward mobility plays an important role in authority inequality, especially for Asian men and underrepresented minority men and women. Second, while women and minorities face lower rates of upward mobility than white men, their disadvantages are concentrated in the bottom to middle-level transitions. This pattern is inconsistent with the popular notion of a “glass ceiling,” which implies that women and minorities encounter an unbreakable obstacle in accessing top positions after they have made their way into mid-level management.