When Working Hard Is Not Enough for Female and Racial/Ethnic Minority Apprentices in the Highway Trades

Drawing on employment records, qualitative interviews, and a survey, we explore the experiences of apprentices in the highway trades in Oregon. We demonstrate that female and racial/ethnic minority apprentices have lower rates of recruitment and retention and disproportionately face challenges with interpersonal interactions, hiring practices, and supervisory practices. Yet, we find a pervasive narrative that attributes apprentices' success to “hard work,” which contributes to the legitimacy of these inequalities. Consistent with the conceptualization of work organizations as inequality regimes, we argue that the apprenticeship system has policies, practices, and ideologies that are on the surface gender and race/ethnicity neutral, yet lead to the perpetuation of inequalities.     

Doing Gender unto the Other: Fiction as a Mode of Studying Gender Discrimination in Organizations

Although ‘doing gender’ has been recently defined as an accomplishment, an element of social practice, this understanding of the concept needs to be extended to coercive action such as subtle workplace discrimination. Even though great effort has been invested in revealing the dynamic of such social practices, the researcher's task is not easy for a variety of reasons. This type of study is difficult to conduct by following traditional research design and many alternative approaches have been tried. This article presents the possibility of using fiction as one possible and relatively unexploited venue of research.     

Book Reviews

Book reviews: Rosemary Crompton (ed), Restructuring Gender Relations and Employment: The Decline of the Male Breadwinner Susan Eisenberg, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working in Construction Fiona M. Wilson, Organizational Behaviour: A Critical Introduction Rohan Collier, Equality in Managing Service Delivery Joyce K. Fletcher, Disappearing Acts: Gender, Power and Relational Practice at Work Miriam Glucksmann, Cottons and Casuals : The Gendered Organisation of Labour in Time and Space     

美国农业保护政策简介

农业是美国所有产业中竞争最激烈的产业之一 ,农业的激烈竞争主要是由进入“门槛”低所致。在 1981到 1990年期间 ,美国联邦政府花在农业上的补贴超过 2 50 0亿美元。价格补贴是美国农业保护政策的基础 ,成本补贴又使因价格补贴导致的市场过剩更加严重。对农民采取直接收入补贴政策的好处在于 :该政策能在不引起市场价格和农业产出扭曲的情况下 ,保证农民收入能达到一定水平     

职场孤独感对员工帮助行为的影响 ——基于资源保存理论视角

基于资源保存理论视角,构建了一个有调节的中介模型,实证研究了职场孤独感对员工帮助行为的影响。结果显示：职场孤独感对员工帮助行为具有负向影响,关系认同在职场孤独感与员工帮助行为之间起中介作用,自我控制资源损耗负向调节了关系认同与员工帮助行为之间的关系,自我控制资源损耗调节了关系认同在职场孤独感和员工帮助行为之间发挥的中介作用。基于此,企业应重视员工的职场孤独感并加强管理,采取相应激励措施鼓励员工提高关系认同感,补充自我控制资源,从而降低职场孤独感对企业组织的不利影响。     

Fit and Skill in Employee Selection: Insights from a Study of Headhunters

We draw upon evidence from a qualitative study of headhunters to provide insights into the character and importance of candidate fit and skill for the selection of a broad range of white-collar employees. Headhunters suggest that the fit of a job candidate is assessed at two levels, one corresponding with a general compatibility with organization-level norms, culture, and strategy, the other corresponding more closely with traits and characteristics of the person or persons with whom the job candidate actually interviews. Skill—a factor which is largely neglected by those who tout the importance of fit—also plays an important and independent role in employee selection. Stalls that influence the selection of employees from a pool of candidates tend to be highly specific if not idiosyncratic, and take the form of what headhunters call hot buttons. We conclude by discussing the conceptualization, causes, and implications of fit; we also consider how the importance of fit and hot buttons challenges the explanatory logic of standard accounts of labor-market success.     

Work-related drinking and processes of social integration and marginalization in two Norwegian workplaces

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of drinking in two Norwegian workplaces, focusing on how the drinking may contribute to both social integration and marginalization of employees. The two workplaces were a division of a multinational oil company and a public library both located in one of Norway's larger cities. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork, including using participant observation, qualitative interviews, and brief surveys. Work-related drinking was found to be common in both workplaces and played a significant role in a wide range of social situations in the twilight zone between normal working hours and leisure. Drinking was regulated by dominant workplace alcohol cultural ideals, but also involved opposition to these ideals. The results of this study have demonstrated that different forms of drinking (and non-drinking) may lead to both social integration and marginalization – or even exclusion of groups of employees or individual employees.     

Conceptualizing reflection in experience-based workplace learning

This paper seeks to understand key dimensions of reflection in experience-based workplace learning for research being collaboratively undertaken by scholars in Dutch and US research institutions. We systematically explore and compare Tara Fenwick’s analysis of five perspectives on cognition to distinguish among constructivist, psychoanalytic, situative, critical-cultural, and enactivist perspectives on reflection. Our aim is to examine how to conceptualize reflection so that one or more perspectives can complement our understanding of learning through experience at work. We position reflection not only from a practical but also from a theoretical perspective that moves beyond the individual focus of the constructivist perspective. Fenwick’s five perspectives are described in terms of whether and how reflection is utilized, key activities in the process of reflection, relative focus on the individual and/or the context, triggers for reflection, role of power and positionality, role of emotions, and reflection outcomes. We conclude that adding other lenses to the dominant constructivist perspective helps expand our understanding of reflection as well as identify and attend to other tools, people, and factors in the work situation that influence reflection processes and learning outcomes. The paper closes with a discussion of promising new approaches that have emerged since Fenwick’s analysis.     

The Effect of Occupational Sex Composition on the Gender Gap in Workplace Authority

This article compares women and men's attainment of workplace authority in female-dominated, mixed, and male-dominated occupations. It is based on a representative mobility study of Jewish women in the Israeli labor force conducted in 1991–1992. Two sets of hypotheses are offered based on two competing theories. The first theory predicts that in female occupations women have more influence and mutual support than in male occupations, and, hence, they will have more access to authority. The opposing perspective argues that in male-dominated occupations the competition between women and men is weaker, and therefore men have a smaller incentive to discriminate against women. Our findings support the second argument. The gender gap in authority is larger in female-dominated occupations, and women have the highest chances to have authority when they work in male occupations; men have similar chances, no matter in which type of occupation they are employed.     

Doing gender,modestly: Conceptualizing workplace experiences of Pakistani women doctors

Using the theoretical framework of inequality regimes, this article offers a reconceptualization of purdah as it is practised, lived and experienced by women doctors of Pakistan. Based on an ethnographic study of Pakistani women doctors, this research indicates that practising purdah in the workplace is perceived as doing femininity within the hegemonic masculine workplace culture of Pakistan. In Pakistani organizations, individual and institutionalized practices of purdah create a gendered substructure which marginalizes women doctors by dictating the norms of conduct, international ethics, organization of physical space and work allocation. Patriarchal interpretations of religious doctrines of modesty provide legitimacy to the existence of these inequality regimes. Based on this, the article argues for a system‐level theorization of purdah that accounts for both individual and institutional norms of veil. Such conceptualization contributes to our understanding of how religion intersects with gender, class and race to create complex systemic inequities in organizational structure.