High Status Employees Research Articles

When morally good employees become bad: the role of unethical requests and wrong judgments at the workplace

PurposeThis research focuses on the distinct group of high-status employees commonly referred to as workplace vigilantes, and conceptually investigates how unethical requests by these individuals impact the behavior and attitude of other employees over time using the social identity theory.Design/methodology/approachFor developing a conceptual model, literature from the domains of social identity, organizational behavior and general management was searched through Google Scholar. To search the literature, some key terms such as “unethical activities”, “Islamic work ethics” and “social identity” were searched and analyzed.FindingsUsing the social identity theory, a conceptual process model is developed which suggests that when high-status employees propose unethical requests to employees, individuals with high morality are likely to refuse those unethical requests to protect their self-categorizations. However, taking the unfair advantage of their illegitimate powers, high-status employees are likely to eventually make wrong judgments and give unnecessary punishments to moral employees. It is further argued that consistent victimization is likely to negatively impact the social identity of such employees and leads to irritability in moral employees, particularly when such individuals are unable to get the requisite social support from their leaders.Originality/valueWhile a considerable body of literature has focused on the antecedents and consequences of intense unethical business practices and the crucial role of leaders in such activities, limited attention has been given to the role of other employees and how they engage in mild unethical misconduct regularly, which is the key focus of this research. The novel conceptual framework needs to be tested in diverse contexts for further development and validation.

Obligations and feeling envied: a study of workplace status and knowledge hiding

PurposeStatus is a key in the workplace. Although status is desirable when it has positive outcomes, little is known about its negative consequences. This study investigates both the bright and dark sides of workplace status in terms of employees' feelings and behaviors.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 227 employees in various industries at two time points.FindingsWorkplace status is associated with knowledge hiding through two opposing mechanisms: felt obligation to share knowledge and feeling envied.Practical implicationsManagers may need to direct high-status employees' attention to felt obligation to share knowledge and shift their attention away from feeling envied.Originality/valueOur study enriches the understanding of workplace status by theoretically proposing and empirically testing a comprehensive framework that simultaneously considers its positive and negative impacts.

Fathers as Solo Caregivers in Spain: A Choice or a Need?

The increase in fathers’ involvement in childcare in Western societies has not translated into an equal distribution of childcare between mothers and fathers. While some couples actually succeed in “undoing gender” when the first child arrives, their characteristics that define them are not yet clear. This article provides four different explanations that contribute to understanding how parents share routine care in Spain, using a sample of dual-earner, heterosexual parents from the Spanish Time Use Survey 2010. The results show that fathers are more likely to be “equal sharers” when they earn less than their spouse; do not hold traditionally masculine jobs (e.g., managers or blue-collar workers); have time available and, more important, their spouses are not available from 5 p.m. onward. In line with previous research, this study provides evidence that dismantles the “myth” that higher status employees, and/or those with college education, are more egalitarian in practice.

Managing creativity and compliance in the pursuit of patient safety

BackgroundAre creativity and compliance mutually exclusive? In clinical settings, this question is increasingly relevant. Hospitals and clinics seek the creative input of their employees to help solve persistent patient safety issues, such as the prevention of bloodstream infections, while simultaneously striving for greater adherence to evidence-based guidelines and protocols. Extant research provides few answers about how creativity works in such contexts.MethodsCross-sectional survey data were collected from employees in 24 different U.S.-based outpatient hemodialysis clinics. Linear mixed-effects models were utilized to test study hypotheses. Professional status, clinic climate variables, and interaction terms were modeled as fixed effects, with a random effect for clinic included in all models.ResultsOur results show that high status employees contributed more creative patient safety improvement ideas compared to low status employees. However, when high status employees were part of clinics with a stronger safety climate of compliance, they contributed fewer creative ideas compared to their counterparts working in clinics with a reduced compliance orientation. We also predicted low status employees working in less punitive clinics would contribute more creative ideas, but this hypothesis was not fully supported.ConclusionsThis study suggests that in hospitals and clinics that rely on strict protocols and formal hierarchies to meet their goals, the factors that promote creativity may be distinctively context-dependent. Implications for theory, practice, as well as future directions for research examining creativity in healthcare and safety critical contexts are discussed.

Language policy and practice in multilingual production workplaces

AbstractTransnational mobility results in a diversification of languages and cultures in the workplace. A common means of managing this diversity is to introduce language policies that often privilege English or the locally dominant language(s). In contrast, managing their everyday working lives may require employees to draw on a range of multilingual and non-verbal resources. Such tensions between policy and practice in multilingual workplaces may impact structures and processes of inequality and power in the workplace. By looking at two sites within logistics and construction, this article offers a critical look at multilingual policies and practices and their consequences for speakers within the workplace. The article investigates how language is conceptualised in language policies and enacted in language practice. From this point of departure we discuss how the tensions between policies and practices impact on the daily working life and professional opportunities of the workers. Our findings suggest that even though multilingual practices are crucial for the flow of everyday work interactions on the floor, the language requirements within the workplace mirror the repertoires and practices of high-status employees, and therefore their competence is valued more highly than the more multilingual repertoires of their subordinates. A consequence of this unequal valorisation of the different linguistic repertoires is the maintenance of existing hierarchies in the workplace and the creation of new ones.

When sharing hurts: How and why self-disclosing weakness undermines the task-oriented relationships of higher status disclosers

It is generally believed that self-disclosure has positive effects, particularly for relationships; however, we predict and find negative effects in the context of task-oriented relationships. Across three laboratory experiments, we find that both task-relevant (Study 1) and task-irrelevant (Studies 2 and 3) weakness disclosures, made by a higher (versus peer) status coworker during an interdependent task, negatively affected the receiver’s perception of the discloser’s status and consequently undermined the discloser’s influence, encouraged task conflict, and led to lower relationship quality with the discloser. Peer status disclosers did not trigger these negative responses. We find support for perceived vulnerability as the proposed psychological process (Study 3). Specifically, higher (but not peer) status disclosers experience a status penalty after weakness disclosures because these disclosures signal vulnerability, which violates the expectations people have for higher (but not peer) status coworkers. These findings provide insight into the effects of self-disclosing weakness at work and the ways in which high status employees may inadvertently trigger their own status loss.

Pluralistic Ignorance and the Flexibility Bias: Understanding and Mitigating Flextime and Flexplace Bias at Work

Workers who request flexibility are routinely stigmatized. The authors experimentally tested and confirmed the hypothesis that individuals believe others view flexworkers less positively than they do. This suggests flexibility bias stems, in part, from pluralistic ignorance. The authors also found that flexplace requesters were stigmatized significantly more than flextime requesters. Given this finding, they recommend research distinguish between different types of flexwork. In a second study, they assessed whether exposure to information suggesting organizational leaders engage in flexible work reduced bias. They found that when the majority of high-status employees work flexibly, bias against flextime (but not flexplace) workers was attenuated.

Creativity for the rest of us:Examining status and creativity in a successful safety climate

This research examines how certain dimensions of safety climate influence the creativity of high and low status employees working in 21 outpatient hemodialysis clinics in the United States. Three s...

Negotiating power through communication

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of organizational power at a non‐profit organization, and demonstrate how a participation intervention can deconstruct entrenched norms that govern how influence is allocated among employees.Design/methodology/approachUsing Habermas' ideal speech context as a framework for analysis, the intervention and related outcomes were examined for their potential to create constructive conflict through which both high and low status employees could interpret and negotiate how power is discursively created and maintained in the organization.FindingsThe intervention provided employees access to a discursive situation through which they could re‐interpret power‐reifying norms that limited their ability to represent their own interests. It not only provided lower‐level employees an opportunity to influence the discussion, but it also revealed an alternative way to interpret strategic planning. Through the intervention, the employees could see that the policies and decisions that they assumed to be fixed could actually be developed through a negotiated process.Originality/valueCommunication scholars have kept employee participation within the realm of theory, rarely providing practical discursive tools for shifting systems of control and helping low status workers empower themselves. In contrast, this study describes a concrete method for decentralizing organizational power and shows how using a theory‐based intervention can help both managers and their staff to critically evaluate existing organizational power structures.

DEVELOPING UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH POTENTIAL IN PERIPHERAL REGIONS

Higher education is often seen as a panacea for disadvantaged and peripheral regions. Universities are usually typified as being large publicly-funded organisations with strong local multipliers through well paid, high status employees, having a dynamic effect on local labour markets from the human capital development of their students, and with a range of other forms of knowledge spillover in the form of knowledge transfer with local businesses, impacts on local cultural provision and wider benefits to local civic society (OECD, 2007). Therefore, it is no surprise that local and national policymakers look to the potential of new universities and campuses as vehicles for development in areas that are lagging economically (DIUS, 2008).

Marx, Globalization and Alienation: Received and Underappreciated Wisdoms

At the World Congress of Sociology in 2006, the official rationale for re-examining `alienation' within a global context was that alienating factory work has now been eradicated, humanized and/or simply compensated for by high levels of consumption in post-industrialized societies, with alienation from work having been `exported' to offices there and sweatshops in newly industrializing countries. However, alienation from work in industrially developed countries does not appear to have decreased, nor have longstanding inequalities in alienation favoring high status employees been reversed. Instead, any credible account must recognize cyclical and long-term economic crises and continued downsizing that have produced levels of un- and under-employment and job insecurity in industrially developed countries that have sometimes rivaled those in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Specifically how these trends have affected alienation is taken up in a subsequent article.

On Cyberslacking: Workplace Status and Personal Internet Use at Work

Is personal Internet use at work primarily the domain of lower-status employees, or do individuals higher up the organizational hierarchy engage in this activity at equal or even greater levels? We posit that higher workplace status is associated with significant incentives and greater opportunities for personal Internet use. We test this hypothesis using data collected via a recent national telephone survey (n = 1,024). Regression analyses demonstrate that, contrary to conventional wisdom, higher-status employees, as measured by occupation status, job autonomy, income, education, and gender, engage in significantly more frequent personal Internet use at work.

ANNA TROSBORG & POUL ERIK FLYVHOLM JøRGENSEN (EDS.), Business discourse: Texts and contexts

Anna Trosborg & Poul Erik Flyvholm Jørgensen (eds.), Business discourse: Texts and contexts. Bern: Peter Lang, 2005. Pp. 250, Pb. $55.95.This book consists of nine chapters analyzing various genres of business discourse, and an introduction written by the editors. All of the chapters in the book would be strengthened by more rigorous data analysis procedures, whether quantitative or qualitative. Nevertheless, there is much of value in the book, parts of which will be of use to a wide range of potential audiences. Okamura interviewed office workers in international businesses about the use of address terms in the workplace, both in English and in their mother tongue, comparing Japanese with Swedish, British, Canadian, American, and Dutch speakers. Interviewees' accommodation to the cultural norms of the group differed according to the power of the speaker: Higher-status employees were less likely to adopt local norms over their own country's addressing conventions. While Okamura acknowledges that his sample size is small, and that transcriptions of actual interactions would be a stronger data source than the interviews he relied on, his findings are interesting and potentially useful for courses on intercultural communication, business communication, or the sociology of language.

Revealed Parking Choices and the Value of Time

This study uses 2005–2006 University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) parking applications to model lot choice in terms of parking prices and walking distances and to determine how parkers value their walking times. UW–Madison employees apply for annual lot parking permits each year by ranking as many as four lots; the employees know that the highest ranked lot with available space will be offered to them. Parking choices are modeled as functions of walking distances, lot prices, and department priority indexes that reflect income, seniority, and status. The sample consists of 4,032 employees who work in 150 campus buildings and park in more than 60 lots. Lot prices vary from $435 to $1,025 per year, and walking distances from workplaces to lots range from a few feet to nearly 2 mi. The results are consistent across specifications. The estimated values of walking time vary from less than $4/h for low-status employees parking in low-priced lots to more than $30/h for high-status employees in high-priced lots. Choice is relatively inelastic regarding distance and more elastic regarding price. Choice models are used to estimate the effects of two price changes: ( a) a single $650 annual lot price and ( b) a $250 increase for all prices.

Identity threat and antisocial behavior in organizations: The moderating effects of individual differences, aggressive modeling, and hierarchical status

This study examines whether the experience of identity threat predicts antisocial behavior directed towards other employees. A social interactionist model is used as a theoretical framework for predicting that employees who are frequent recipients of actions that challenge or diminish their sense of competence, dignity, or self-worth will engage in higher levels of antisocial behavior. However, it is predicted that the strength of this relation will be moderated by individual (gender, age, and attitudes toward revenge) and situational (aggressive modeling, hierarchical status) factors. Data from 308 employees from three organizations supported moderating effects of age, revenge attitudes, and hierarchical status. A three-way interaction was also found showing that identity threat was more strongly related to antisocial behavior for low as compared to high status employees, but only when they were exposed to low levels of aggressive modeling.

Symbolic boundaries and the new division of labor: Engineers, workers and the restructuring of factory life

The past decade has witnessed an outpouring of theory and research on the relation among status distinctions, symbolic boundaries and the structure of social inequality. Yet remarkably little of this discussion has been brought to bear on the workplace as an arena in which symbolic boundaries are established and maintained. I seek to fill this gap by applying theories of symbolic boundaries to the restructuring of work within a small sample of manufacturing plants located in disparate regions of the United States. Using qualitative methods, the study explores how the boundary work of high-status employees has shaped the division of labor within plants undergoing the introduction of automated production systems. Contrary to claims advanced by some theorists, my analysis suggests that specifically “cultural” boundaries, based on the deployment of refined or high-status knowledge, do indeed play a salient role at work, exerting a powerful effect on the outcome of workplace change in ways that skilled production workers find difficult to contest. These findings suggest that much more attention should be paid to the varied forms that cultural boundaries can assume at work, especially in an era in which formal knowledge operates as a powerful axis of class differentiation.

Elites in the City of London: Some Methodological Considerations

In this paper I discuss some of the methodological issues that researchers face in identifying and interviewing high-status workers. Although in the course of my research on workplace cultures in merchant banks in the City of London in the early 1990s I interviewed men and women in a range of occupations from messengers and cooks to financial analysts and company directors, in this paper I want to focus in particular on my experience of interviewing high-status employees, and on selecting and representing qualitative ‘data’. I also want to address an argument about the supposed empathy and commonality between women, often asserted in discussions of feminist research methods, that apparently creates particular conditions when women are interviewing women. I was interested in implications of these arguments when the respondents are men but the interviewer is a woman.

Organizational Level as a Moderator of the Relationship between Perceived Political Climate and Employees' Work Attitudes

119 employees of a financial services firm performing a variety of jobs completed measures of perceived political climate, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Their status or level in the firm was rated by the firm's personnel manager. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that employees' level or status moderated the relationships between political climate and both commitment and satisfaction, with high status employees being less adversely affected than their low status peers in both cases, as predicted.

Occupational Status and Work-Trips: A Minimum Distance Approach

Occupational Status and Work-Trips: A Minimum Distance Approach