The Transnational Project and its Implications for Migrant Civil Society in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, overseas labor migration plays a vital role in the development strategy promoted by government agencies, international donor organizations and civil society organizations. Civil society organizations facilitate the migration process, respond to exploitation facing migrants while overseas and assist migrants upon their return to Bangladesh. Organizations in Bangladesh are pursuing a ‘transnational project,’ whereby their activities, missions, and objectives are now focused around transnational work in order to assist migrants. The transnational project is driven by foreign development agencies and the legitimating actions of local migrant organizations. This paper demonstrates the different ways transnationalism has moved from a radical concept to a banal development practice, by critically analyzing contemporary development practices of migrant civil society organizations in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Also addressed are the implications of the transnational project on migrant organizations, development, and migrant political inclusion, arguing that the transnational project creates new power structures and paradoxes within organizations.     

Collecting experimental network data from interventions on critical links in workplace networks

This article describes and discusses challenges associated with interventionist network data gathering in organizational settings, with a special focus on dyadic interventions. While pointing out major risks of these approaches, we argue that collecting data in combination with dyadic network alteration methods can enable social network researchers to explore network mechanisms from a new angle and potentially benefit the members of the targeted social networks and the entire collectives, if certain research design and implementation principles are followed. We introduce a facilitated self-disclosure method for strengthening critical dyads in social networks in combination with longitudinal and retrospective network measurement. We assess the participants’ perceptions of the different stages of this process by qualitative interviews. The study illustrates that experimental network data collection includes some extra challenges in addition to the many challenges of observational network data collection but participants also reported practical benefits that would not be gained through observational network surveys alone. The results highlight the importance of early and continuous communication during the data collection process with all research participants, not just the management, and the benefits of sharing more of the preliminary results. The lessons learnt through this study can inform the design of experimental network data collection to prioritize the preferences of the participants and their benefits.     

Emotional contagion in organizational life

Leveraging the wealth of research insights generated over the past 25 years, we develop a model of emotional contagion in organizational life. We begin by defining emotional contagion, reviewing ways to assess this phenomenon, and discussing individual differences that influence susceptibility to emotional contagion. We then explore the key role of emotional contagion in organizational life across a wide range of domains, including (1) team processes and outcomes, (2) leadership, (3) employee work attitudes, (4) decision-making, and (5) customer attitudes. Across each of these domains, we present a body of organizational behavior research that finds evidence of the influence of emotional contagion on a variety of attitudinal, cognitive, and behavioral/performance outcomes as well as identify the key boundary conditions of the emotional contagion phenomenon. To support future scholarship in this domain, we identify several new frontiers of emotional contagion research, including the need to better understand the “tipping point” of positive versus negative emotional contagion, the phenomenon of counter-contagion, and the influence of computer mediated communication and technology within organizations and society on emotional contagion. In closing, we summarize our model of emotional contagion in organizations, which we hope can serve as a catalyst for future research on this important phenomenon and its myriad effects on organizational life.     

‘Doing femininity’ at work: More than just relational practice1

Workplaces constitute one of the more interesting sites where individuals ‘do gender’, while at the same time constructing their professional identities and meeting their organisation's expectations. Drawing on interactional data recorded in New Zealand professional organisations, this paper focuses in particular on how participants manage and interpret the notion of ‘femininity’ in workplace discourse. In much current usage, the concepts ‘feminine’ and ‘femininity’ typically evoke negative reactions. Our analysis suggests these notions can be reclaimed and reinterpreted positively using an approach which frames doing femininity at work as normal, unmarked, and effective workplace behaviour in many contexts. The analysis also demonstrates that multiple femininities extend beyond normative expectations, such as enacting relational practice ( Fletcher 1999 ), to embrace more contestive and parodic instantiations of femininity in workplace talk.     

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.     

Greater involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa

This study reports on a pilot project, the greater involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS Workplace Model, which places trained fieldworkers living openly with HIV/AIDS in selected partner organisations sectors, where they set up, review or enrich workplace policies and programmes. The project adds credibility to partners' HIV/AIDS programmes and creates a supportive environment for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and others to speak about HIV/AIDS. Eleven men and women living with HIV, aged between 30 and 45, and with varied life experiences and education levels, shared a willingness to speak about their HIV status in their workplace. They worked in very different environments but their collective experiences showed that PLWHA can add value to workplace HIV/AIDS programmes in a way that is relevant, effective, efficient, sustainable and ethical. They made companies and communities more aware of the intense need for HIV/AIDS policies and encouraged care and support for infected and affected people.     

Involuntary vs. voluntary flexible work: insights for scholars and stakeholders

ABSTRACT

Building on insights from the early stages of our research partnership with a U.S. Fortune 500 organization, we came to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary schedule variability and remote work. This differentiation underscores the complexity behind flexible schedules and remote work, especially among white-collar, salaried professionals. We collected survey data among the partner firm's information technology (IT) workforce to evaluate whether these forms of flexibility had different implications for workers, as part of the larger Work, Family, and Health Network Study. We find that a significant minority of these employees report working variable schedules and working at home involuntarily. Involuntary variable schedules are associated with greater work-to-family conflict, stress, burnout, turnover intentions, and lower job satisfaction in models that adjust for personal characteristics, job, work hours, family demands, and other factors. Voluntary remote work, in contrast, is protective and more common in this professional sample. Employees working at least 20% of their hours at home and reporting moderate or high choice over where they work have lower stress and intentions to leave the firm. These findings point to the importance of both stakeholders and scholars distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary forms of flexibility, even in a relatively advantaged workforce.     

Conflict and Conflict Resolution in a Cooperative: The Case of the Nir Taxi Station

What conflict resolution mechanisms dodemocratic worker cooperatives generate and to whatextent could these mechanisms be called democratic? Thiscase study tries to address these questions by examining both conflict and conflict resolution in ademocratic organization, a 66-year-old taxi cooperative.The conflicts presented stem from three main sources:ethnic origin, local division of labor, and“class” affiliation. These conflicts are resolvedthrough different processes, ranging from a joke-tellingritual to a formal tribunal composed of elected judges.Discussion centers on unique aspects of conflict resolution in a democratic worker cooperativeand their implications for studies of conflictresolution in nondemocratic firms.     

Chapter 9: Disaster Consequence Management

SUMMARY

The critical element in a workplace approach to consequence management for disaster, terrorism and other critical incidents is the integrated planning and response across numerous workplace functions including human resources, employee assistance, security and facilities, medical, occupational health, wellness and work-life. These corporate functions ensure the performance, health, safety and human continuity of the workplace. In this model, workplace professionals charged with the human capital and continuity of their organizations play new crucial roles that require an understanding of (1) the integration of mental health into a public health approach for managing the psychological and behavioral implications of terrorism; (2) the integration of operational continuity planning with human continuity resources; and (3) the integration of workplace preparedness into the larger sphere of population health interventions for the 21st century. This new role of workplace health and productivity professionals is necessary to the health and resiliency of our global community and its citizens in the workplace and at home.     

Managing workplace stress: A Canadian Delphi study among human resource managers

The human and finacial costs of stress in the workplace have been extensively documented in the literature. The present study used a two-round Delphi methodology with 17 human resource managers from 17 medium-sized and large Canadian organizations. The main purposes of the study were to predict future policy and programme directions as well as expected benefits and constraints on organizations during the 1990s. This panel of experts predicated even greater stress in the workplace in large part due to greater (global) competition and greater resource constraints on organizations for programmes and services for their employees as well as management resistance to such directions. Organization will be challenged to identify cost effective means to prevent or, at least, to amelorate stress. Several practical ideas were generated by the panel for organizations to consider.