Belgian Branch Research Articles

Inequality beneath the surface: a Belgian case study on structural discrimination in the workplace and the role of organizational structure, culture and policies

PurposeThe context of a long-standing research tradition, discrimination has emerged as a critical factor contributing to inequalities within the labor market. While existing studies have primarily focused on overt discrimination during the recruitment and selection process, influenced by biases, attitudes, or stereotypes, there remains a significant knowledge gap regarding discrimination within the workplace and its underlying structural dimensions. This article aims to address this gap by examining the impact of organizational culture, structure and policies on workplace discrimination, with a particular emphasis on women and ethnic minorities.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing a case study strategy centered around a Belgian branch of a multinational professional service agency, data was gathered through ten semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with employees representing various organizational levels.FindingsThe findings reveal that organizational culture, structure and policies may pose inherent risks in perpetuating discrimination throughout individuals' professional trajectories. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that, albeit often unconscious, these elements exhibit biases against women and ethnic minorities.Social implicationsGiven the unintentional nature of structural discrimination, it is crucial to foster increased awareness and understanding of these dynamics.Originality/valueThe originality of this research article lies in its focus on addressing a critical knowledge gap in the existing research tradition on discrimination in the labor market. While previous studies have primarily concentrated on overt discrimination during recruitment and selection, this article delves into the often overlooked area of discrimination within the workplace itself. It explores the intricate interplay of organizational culture, structure and policies in perpetuating discrimination, particularly against women and ethnic minorities. By utilizing a case study approach within a multinational professional service agency in Belgium, the research uncovers hidden biases and unconscious elements contributing to structural discrimination. This emphasis on understanding unintentional discrimination adds a novel dimension to the discourse on workplace inequalities.

Stuck between the modern and the terrestrial: the indignation of the youth for climate movement

ABSTRACT The dramatic impacts of climate change have pushed thousands of young activists to shout out their indignation. These mobilizations have become the symbol of our ‘tipping era’: a clash of worlds between attachments to modernity and attempts to become ‘terrestrial’ (Latour, 2018) to stay within ecological boundaries. In this field, there has been an increasing body of theoretical work but empirical research is still in its infancy, providing little evidence of this ongoing struggle and what we can learn from the young activists’ indignation. This article responds to this gap by exploring the case of Youth for Climate (YfC), the Belgian branch of the Fridays for Future movement. In particular, I show how their indignation, expressed in a narrative form, is pivotal to understand the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary within the movement. Based on survey data, participant observations and focus groups, I conduct a two-level analysis. First, I find that the YfC indignation produces three inter-related stories: of unworthy politics, economic abuse and human survival. Second, I reveal how the affectivity of these stories articulates the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary: from hope in the existing political institutions which anchors them in the modern imaginary, to compassion and fear which open a more terrestrial imaginary of collapse. Together, rather than mere competition, these stories reveal an ongoing oscillation and intersection between the modern and the terrestrial.

Religious Freedom, Inc: Business, Religion and the Law in the Secular Economy

Abstract This article focuses on the rise of corporate religious freedom in EU law. In general, this legal category might be associated with not only a positive dimension (corporate freedom of religion) but also with a negative one (corporate freedom from religion). The present article centres around the latter, underscoring how the CJEU has taken for granted the necessity of neutrality within the private business world in reaching a decision in the case of Achbita v G4S Secure Solutions. And, in addition, to highlight how churches (but also the Belgian branch of a provider of secure global logistic services) can discriminate on religious grounds under Directive 2000/78EC. This article explains how the judicial extension of conscience exemptions from non-discrimination laws for religious institutions to a secular for-profit corporation has signalled a new ‘religious institutionalism’ in tension with employment and human rights law. Accordingly, if that is how secular commercial businesses have become ‘religious’ under the EU Single Market, this article calls for a new approach to employer/employees conflicts through a ‘freedom of the church’ analysis.

Predicting voluntary turnover through human resources database analysis

PurposeThis paper aims to question whether the available data in the human resources (HR) system could result in reliable turnover predictions without supplementary survey information.Design/methodology/approachA decision tree approach and a logistic regression model for analysing turnover were introduced. The methodology is illustrated on a real-life data set of a Belgian branch of a private company. The model performance is evaluated by the area under the ROC curve (AUC) measure.FindingsIt was concluded that data in the personnel system indeed lead to valuable predictions of turnover.Practical implicationsThe presented approach brings determinants of voluntary turnover to the surface. The results yield useful information for HR departments. Where the logistic regression results in a turnover probability at the individual level, the decision tree makes it possible to ascertain employee groups that are at risk for turnover. With the data set-based approach, each company can, immediately, ascertain their own turnover risk.Originality/valueThe study of a data-driven approach for turnover investigation has not been done so far.

The concept of preventing negative consequences of work overload based on positive interactions between work and life, and promotion of workers’ healthy behaviors

Aim: The main aim of this article is to identify negative health consequences resulting from work overload and lack of work-life balance, as well as to present characteristics of positive healthy behaviors in the workplace as counteracting strategies. The paper is a part of the discussion on the concept of corporate wellness which forms the basis for the development of organization’s health culture.Design / Research methods: The paper is based on a review of literature concerned with the factors influencing worker welfare. Moreover, it presents two case studies on comprehensive health programs implemented by Mars Poland and the Belgian branch of Protect & Gamble.Conclusions / findings: Based on the review of foreign and domestic literature, the authors propose a model describing the relationship between individual variables impacting worker welfare. In this model, it is assumed that the interaction between work and life, and workers’ healthy behaviors such as physical activity and rest after work (sleep) are crucial to workers’ regeneration.Originality / value of the article: The value of the paper lies in the interdisciplinary approach to the development of worker well-being. Apart from the perspective of human resources management, the outlined concept also takes into account the issues relating to workers’ mental and physical health.Implications of the research: The theoretical assumptions presented in the paper will become a starting point for a research project to be conducted on Polish enterprises. Its objective will be to identify the possibilities of counteracting the negative effects of workload congestion through the promotion of healthy behaviors in the workplace and support of workers in their creation of a positive work-life interaction.

The Power of Diversity Discourses at Work: On the Interlocking Nature of Diversities and Occupations

Drawing on Fairclough’s comprehensive social theory of discourse as text, social practice and discursive practice, the paper examines how discourses of diversity are implicated in the power dynamics in the Belgian branch of an international automobile company. Our analysis shows how diversity discourses are interlocked with occupations. On the one hand, speakers’ occupational practices are conditional for the emergence of multiple, occupation-distinct discourses of diversity. On the other, in their discursive practice, speakers not only construct diversity but at once deploy it as a symbolic currency to reaffirm their own occupational practices and related subject positions warranting voice in the workplace. Our study contributes to the extant critical diversity literature and the organizational scholarship on work by showing how the power dynamics of diversity cannot be adequately conceptualized without attending to occupational discursive and non-discursive practices.

When Oyono's “Boy” Speaks Dutch: Two Readings in One Language

De Huisjongen, The dutch translation of ferdinand oyono's une vie de boy, was published in 1980 by kosmos and released in two cities: Amsterdam, where the publisher had its headquarters, and Antwerp, the site of its Belgian branch. For Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgian) readers, the Catholic and French colonial environment described in the novel represented a world that in many ways felt familiar. In the once deeply Catholic Flanders, where French used to be the language spoken by the elite and where the memories of the former colony Belgian Congo are still vivid, people could easily identify with Oyono's main character, Toundi.In the Netherlands, however, the memories of the nation's colonial history are characterized by a predominantly Protestant world-view that primarily evokes images from Southeast Asia. There, in the former Dutch East Indies, it was not the masculine “boy” but the feminine babu who took care of the household. This explains the decision by the then twenty-seven-year-old Dutch translator of Oyono's novel, today's best-selling author Herman Koch, not to use boy in the title but to opt for huisjongen (lit., “house youth”). The idea of having a “boy” as housekeeper clearly sounded strange to this Dutch translator.In view of the different associations the novel must have evoked among Dutch and Flemish readers, this article presents two separate analyses of the same translation. One reflects a Dutch perspective on De huisjongen and interprets Toundi, a child diarist doomed to die at the hands of oppressors, as an African Anne Frank. The other reads the novel from a Flemish perspective and interprets Toundi as an African variant of Manneken Pis, the roguish street boy from Brussels who derides the authorities.

Controlling Access to Pick-up and Delivery Vans: The Cost of Alternative Measures

Over the past decade - following the disastrous attacks of 9/11 - we have witnessed the introduction of a range of trans-border security programs designed to protect international supply chains against acts of terrorism. In most if not all cases, these programs comprehend the introduction of situational measures, and in many cases operators in the industry are left with limited guidance on how best to implement them. In academic literature on situational crime prevention it is argued that - when introduced without proper reflection and consideration - preventive measures can easily backfire and turn into the negative. It is argued that measures need to be carefully assessed prior to their implementation, and that this assessment should focus on various criteria. In the study reported on in this paper, these observations are illustrated by means of an ex ante consideration of alternative measures to control unauthorised access to pick-up and delivery vans. This study was conducted in 2011 in a Belgian branch of an international express operator, and is limited to the selection process of preventive measures only. The outcome illustrates that - when deciding on what measures best to implement - it may be worthwhile or even necessary not to focus on monetary costs only, but to also take a number of other cost items into consideration; and to make sure that a number of preconditions are in place in order for the introduction of a measure to be feasible and successful. It is argued that an exante consideration of alternative solutions will contribute to making the decision onwhat measures best to implement a more informed and balanced one.

Hoe literair internationalisme organiseren? - De ‘vervlochten’ geschiedenis van de Belgische PEN-club (1922-1931)

Hoe literair internationalisme organiseren? - De ‘vervlochten’ geschiedenis van de Belgische PEN-club (1922-1931)

You are the Way You Fly: On the Association between Business Travel and Business Class Travel

The objective of this Viewpoint is to scrutinize the commonsensical association between ‘business travel’ and ‘business class travel’. Indeed, in research on theory and practice in air transport, both concepts are often assumed to be almost one and the same. For instance, the number of ‘business visitors’ at an airport is often guesstimated based on the number of ‘business class’ bookings. Thus the Belgian branch of BCD Travel, a leading provider of global corporate travel management, declared in a 2007 press statement that in 2006 Belgian business travelers were primarily flying to New York, Frankfurt, Munich, London and Zurich because these cities were the most important destinations of customers booking business class tickets . It is, however, clear that in practice the business class/business travel relation depends inter alia on corporate policies and individual motives in terms of travel planning. For instance, business travelers do not necessarily travel in business class, while some (ostensibly rich) tourists may well travel in business class because of enhanced comfort . Furthermore, the analytical connection may exhibit a variegated pattern as some business travelers may well fly economy class on short-haul flights because of the short travel time (e.g. some companies have a travel policy that only allows business class travel for intercontinental travel). To our knowledge, the conceptual and empirical relations between ‘business travel’ and ‘business class travel’ have not yet been explicitly broached in research on air transportation. The starting point of this Viewpoint, therefore, is that transport researchers and policy-makers should treat this commonsensical association as an assumption that needs validation and specification rather than as a grounded truth. In our argument, we use a number of recent insights from research on the sociology, economics and geography of business travel summarized in a recent book on this topic (Beaverstock et al., 2010a) to spell these relations out in more detail.

Diversity in the lean automobile factory: doing class through gender, disability and age

This study advances a critical re-conceptualization of ‘diversity’ through class. Drawing on the case of CarCo, the Belgian branch of a North American automobile company, I show how the discursive constructions of various socio-demographic identities reflect underlying class relations between labour and capital and are, in turn, implicated in their reproduction. Reflecting the instrumental conceptualization of labour as the source of economic value in the capitalist mode of production, female, older and disabled workers were discursively constructed as unable or unwilling to perform as expected within the factory lean production system. These negative identities in turn legitimized the elimination of ‘different’ workers in the company restructuring and the outsourcing of the phases of the production process that could be carried out by them, materially reproducing class relations. The analysis unveils the ‘dark’ business case against diversity at CarCo, a company which was renowned as a ‘best’ case for diversity in Belgium. I argue that the re-conceptualization of diversity through class offers a powerful analytical tool to better understand how unequal power relations are played out in contemporary organizations.

The Indépendant, a Typeface as Period Document

[The Independant is a modish display type from 1930 which was cast in Brussels by Etablissements Plantin, the Belgian branch of the Dutch company 'Lettergieterij Amsterdam' (Amsterdam Type Foundry). The typeface was designed by G. Collette and J. Dufour, probably by using matrices that were engraved in the Netherlands. It is the only hot-metal typeface which was created in Belgium in the twentieth century and the history of this design provides an interesting point of departure for the historiography of graphic design in Belgium during the interwar period. Because nothing is known about the designer duo Collette and Dufour and there exist no other typeface creations of theirs, it is sometimes suggested that the Independant might be based on a German source of inspiration. Research has shown that sure enough it is an original design, to which Henry van de Velde also reacted enthusiastically. By referring with its name to the hundredth anniversary of the national independance, the Independant set itself up as a concept specific to Belgium. However, the typeface fits into a much larger picture and is linked up with the international predilection for reduction and standardization of the modernists. But more than anything else the Independant is an art deco typeface which sought to conquer the market by responding to a generally felt need for heavier display types which had arisen in the late twenties both in America and in Europe. The Independant was however not an innovating design, but the typographic transformation of a trendy letter form which had been in existence for a longer period of time in other contexts and disciplines. Not surprisingly, it soon passed into disuse., The Independant is a modish display type from 1930 which was cast in Brussels by Etablissements Plantin, the Belgian branch of the Dutch company 'Lettergieterij Amsterdam' (Amsterdam Type Foundry). The typeface was designed by G. Collette and J. Dufour, probably by using matrices that were engraved in the Netherlands. It is the only hot-metal typeface which was created in Belgium in the twentieth century and the history of this design provides an interesting point of departure for the historiography of graphic design in Belgium during the interwar period. Because nothing is known about the designer duo Collette and Dufour and there exist no other typeface creations of theirs, it is sometimes suggested that the Independant might be based on a German source of inspiration. Research has shown that sure enough it is an original design, to which Henry van de Velde also reacted enthusiastically. By referring with its name to the hundredth anniversary of the national independance, the Independant set itself up as a concept specific to Belgium. However, the typeface fits into a much larger picture and is linked up with the international predilection for reduction and standardization of the modernists. But more than anything else the Independant is an art deco typeface which sought to conquer the market by responding to a generally felt need for heavier display types which had arisen in the late twenties both in America and in Europe. The Independant was however not an innovating design, but the typographic transformation of a trendy letter form which had been in existence for a longer period of time in other contexts and disciplines. Not surprisingly, it soon passed into disuse.]

The Iguanodons in the Brussels Museum

WE are glad to record that the unique collee-tion of skeletons of the Wealden dinosaur Igwnodon in the Royal Museum of Natural History at Brussels has now been installed for safe preservation in two air-tight glass cases, which are probably the largest exhibition cases hitherto placed in a museum. The twelve skeletons, which are mounted in their natural position on iron framework, occupy a case which measures 18 metres in length, 11 metres in maximum width, and 7 metres in height. Part of it is shown in the accompanying photograph (Fig. 1). The skeletons which still lie attached to masses of rock are covered with a case measuring 20.5 metres in length, 13 metres in width, and 7 metres in height. The cases were made by the Belgian branch of the English firm, Messrs. Fred. Sage and Co. Ltd., which has supplied cases to the British Museum and to other English museums.