Occupational Community Research Articles

Street-level bureaucrats under new managerialism: a comparative study of agency cultures and caseworker role identities in two welfare state bureaucracies

Abstract Officials in welfare state bureaucracies face the challenge of negotiating their role identities in the context of changeable organizational priorities and managerial styles. Previous studies have found that the professional values may mediate top-down demands and enable the preservation of professional autonomy also under public management reforms. But how do street-level bureaucrats who lack a common professional or occupational training respond to shifting organizational demands? Based on comparative ethnography, the present article investigates how caseworkers’ role identities are conceived and practised in two of the largest state bureaucracies in Sweden, the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and the Public Employment Service (PES). The article identifies two radically different agency cultures, resulting in rather opposite caseworker role identities. These role identities affect how front-line staff respond to organizational demands, either by focusing externally on client-related outcomes (PES) or internally on organizational output (SIA). The analysis suggests that agency culture may shape caseworker responses to governance in patterned ways, also in the absence of joint professional training or strong occupational communities.

Negotiating Provisional Role Structures in the Shadow of Hierarchies

Emergent coordination has been studied primarily in environments where generalized role structures and occupational communities are well-established. How individuals coordinate work in less-institutionalized or more rapidly-changing environments is less understood. I use a combination of participant observation and interview data collected in a medium-sized startup, GuestInn, to develop theory about the ways that people coordinate work when roles are more ambiguous. GuestInn management uses an institution, locally referred to as

A New Look at Occupational Learning and Socialization in Contemporary Careers

As the traditional employment relationship has deteriorated in the U.S. and in much of the world, the nature of careers has been changing. Workers today need to continually navigate an external labor market, construct their careers out of a series of jobs or short-term gigs, and take responsibility for training and retraining themselves to remain employable over time. Despite the burgeoning literature examining workers’ efforts at navigating the new economy, we know relatively little about how workers attempt to reskill themselves in the course of their careers. This paper utilizes a unique setting—coding bootcamps—to examine how workers attempt to enter a skilled occupation without traditional organizations serving as the backdrop for their efforts. I argue that bootcamps resembled learning collectives where learning from peers and near-peers figured more prominently than expert instruction. Under conditions of minimal expert instruction and obstacles to legitimate peripheral participation, I show how aspiring software developers sought out an occupational community in virtual spaces, learned asynchronously from unknown others, developed their practice through mock-work among themselves and managed to get hired into junior developer roles.

Heinrich Revisited: a New Data-Driven Examination of the Safety Pyramid

Although researchers have struggled to replicate Heinrich’s safety triangle findings (Heinrich 1931) for various reasons (e.g., no access to his original database and it is unclear if the database was of a single establishment/operation or for an entire industry), the occupational safety community has continued to adopt and expand the applications of this theory (e.g., McSween 2003). Within the mining industry, the potential exists for operations and companies to use concepts from the safety triangle as a way to inform or challenge the practices employed within their health and safety management systems (HSMS) to prevent incidents (Backlund 2016). This paper considers data obtained from the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s databases and demonstrates the validity of applying the safety triangle theory at the mine level. The results support the use of this theory and demonstrate that lower severity incidents can predict fatalities in a subsequent year where significant nuances and caveats to applying the theory are identified and discussed.

COVID 19 pandemic: Mental health challenges of internal migrant workers of India.

COVID- 19, a biomedical disease has serious physical and tremendous mental health implications as the rapidly spreading pandemic. One of the most vulnerable, but neglected, an occupational community of internal migrant workers is prone for development of psychological ill-effects due to double whammy impact of COVID-19 crisis and concomitant adverse occupational scenario.Permutations and combinations of the factors viz susceptibility for new viral infections, potential to act as vectors of transmission of infection, high prevalence of pre-existing physical health morbidities such as occupational pneumoconiosis, tuberculosis, HIV infections, pre-existing psychological morbidities, adverse psychosocial factors like absence of family support and caretaker during the crisis, their limitations to follow the rules and regulations of personal safety during the COVID 19 crisis, social exclusion, and inability to timely access the psychiatric services; all give rise to the peri-traumatic psychological distress to internal migrant workers. Superadded, is the blow of financial constraints due to loss of work, absence or suspension of occupational safety and health-related basic laws with associated occupational hazards, which make this occupational group highly vulnerable for the development of psychological illnesses.We attempt to draw the attention of mental health professionals, general medical practitioners and occupational health policymakers to the various, interrelated and interdependent predisposing and causative factors for the development of psychological ill-effects amongst internal migrant workers with the interventions needed to address it, from an occupational health perspective angle.

COVID-19 Pandemic: Mental Health Challenges of Internal Migrant Workers of India

COVID-19, a biomedical disease has serious physical and tremendous mental health implications as the rapidly spreading pandemic. One of the most vulnerable, but neglected, an occupational community of internal migrant workers is prone for the development of psychological ill-effects due to double whammy impact of the COVID-19 crisis and concomitant adverse occupational scenario. Permutations and combinations of the factors viz susceptibility for new viral infections, potential to act as vectors of transmission of infection, high prevalence of pre-existing physical health morbidities such as occupational pneumoconiosis, tuberculosis, HIV infections, pre-existing psychological morbidities, adverse psychosocial factors like absence of family support and caretaker during the crisis, their limitations to follow the rules and regulations of personal safety during the crisis, social exclusion, and inability to timely access the psychiatric services; all give rise to the peri-traumatic psychological distress to internal migrant workers. Superadded, is the blow of financial constraints due to loss of work, absence or suspension of occupational safety and health-related basic laws and associated occupational hazards, which makes this occupational group highly vulnerable for the development of psychological illnesses. We attempt to draw the attention of mental health professionals, general medical practitioners and occupational health policymakers to the various, interrelated and interdependent predisposing and causative factors for the development of psychological ill-effects amongst internal migrant workers with the interventions needed to address it, from an occupational health perspective angle

Risk versus benefit: Should not audiologists assess this in the context of occupational noise-induced hearing loss in the mining industry?

BackgroundHearing conservation programmes (HCPs) are an important aspect of occupational health efforts to prevent occupational noise-induced hearing loss (ONIHL). In low- and middle income (LAMI) countries, where the incidence of ONIHL is significant, it is important to deliberate on the risk or benefit of HCPs.ObjectivesThis article is an attempt at highlighting important strategic indicators as well as important variables that the occupational health and audiology community need to consider to plan efficacious HCPs within the South African mining context.MethodThe current arguments are presented in the form of a viewpoint publication.ResultsOccupational audiology vigilance in the form of engagement with HCPs in the mining industry has been limited within the South African research and clinical communities. When occupational audiology occurs, it is conducted by mid-level workers and paraprofessionals; and it is non-systematic, non-comprehensive and non-strategic. This is compounded by the current, unclear externally enforced accountability by several bodies, including the mining industry regulating body, with silent and/or peripheral regulation by the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the Department of Health. The lack of involvement of audiologists in the risk or benefit evaluation of HCPs during their development and monitoring process, as well as their limited involvement in the development of policies and regulations concerning ear health and safety within this population are probable reasons for this.ConclusionsIncreased functioning of the regulatory body towards making the employers accountable for the elimination of ONIHL, and a more central and prominent role for audiologists in HCPs, are strongly argued for.

The emergence of nurses in the health market in Paris in the eighteenth century

At the end of the seventeenth century, the lexicographer Antoine Furetière limited the definition of nurses to those who cared for new mothers. However, in the private sphere, they cared for patients with all sorts of illnesses. It was only in 1816 that Doctor Marc proposed a precise definition of their activity. This paper examines the shift from nurses being considered as domestic healthcare workers to them being seen as skilled professionals whose role involved administering paramedical care.Because they were not part of a particular occupational community, nurses escaped the traditional categories of analysis of urban work. While the studies on health in the eighteenth century considered them to be like relations or friends of the patients, or to practice in hospitals, in the expenses lists recorded for post-mortem procedures they appear as new actors offering specific services.Nurses played a part in spreading a "culture of dependency," which was reflected in some medical texts and in some private writings by patients, making it possible to define the expectations and risks of the profession. The absence of testimonies from nurses themselves is revealing of their dependence on physicians.

Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order by Timothy D. Amos

Reviewed by: Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order by Timothy D. Amos Constantine Vaporis Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order. By Timothy D. Amos. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020. 220 pages. Hardcover, £120.00. Timothy D. Amos has been working for almost two decades on questions of marginal status, caste, and untouchability in Japanese society, publishing numerous articles and a book on the burakumin in modern Japan.1 In the volume under review here, he builds on that work and on the work of Gerald Groemer as well as that of Japanese scholars, such as Harada Tomohiko and Tsukada Takashi, to offer us a study of caste in early modern Japan. The focus is on eastern Japan, the location of the outcaste order that was the largest in the country during the early modern period and that was controlled by the institutional leader known as Danzaemon (an office title also rendered by the Tokugawa shogunate as etagashira, "chief of eta"). While asserting that his book "cannot claim to be comparative in any straightforward sense" (p. 3), Amos makes useful comparative observations that elucidate the nature of Danzaemon rule based on the work of scholars of India and other regions of the globe. [End Page 352] The book's main argument is that the order under Danzaemon "was a caste-like configuration rooted in the idea and practice of mibun [status] established in the 17th century as a result of early modern Tokugawa rulers' decisions to engage in a state-building project rooted in military logic that built on the back of pre-existing social and political structures which included manorial, kinship, and historic regional social arrangements" (p. 4). One of the things the study confirms is that despite the Tokugawa period often appearing to be so richly documented, there are serious limitations on reconstructing the seventeenth-century past. Given a documentary evidentiary base that is concentrated on issues related to governance, Amos's investigation perforce focuses on the main duties expected of outcastes, that is to say executing criminals, policing the unregistered population, and procuring and supplying leather. By examining the historical evolution of these duties and the privileges that came with their performance, he argues that "early modern outcastes clearly experienced Japan as a kind of caste society" (p. 5). Chapter 1 introduces some of the main issues involved in Amos's treatment of the status system as a form of caste. It outlines those characteristics of the outcaste order under Danzaemon that reveal similarities between caste forms in subcontinental Asia and Japan. In Japan, the "Edo Outcaste Order" (Amos borrows Groemer's term here) was composed "of social outcastes to whom a significant amount of stigma was attached," which could be "ratcheted up" at certain times (pp. 21–22). Amos argues that the element of hierarchy, though often missing or understated in discussions of status in Japan, "was an embedded feature" of the Tokugawa social system, one that "was legitimized in ways that produced a scapegoat function for Danzaemon and his subordinates" (p. 15). He presents the factual nuts and bolts that are required to understand the context of his argument, for example the statistic that a substantial population (7,720 households in 1800) lay under Danzaemon's control, three-quarters of whom were classified as eta (or chōri, the preferred term for self-identification); the institutional structure of leadership under Danzaemon; the relationship of those leaders with the shogunate via the Edo city commissioners (machi bugyō); the physical layout of the space in Edo occupied by Danzaemon and the community under his leadership; and the economic basis of his rule, which lay in control of mercantile activities related to leather procurement and handicrafts including leather, drum skins, and candlewicks. Chapter 2 outlines the construction of the Edo outcaste order, tracing its historical formation out of earlier clan-based social arrangements and pre-Tokugawa economic systems. Here Amos lays out the various theoretical debates among Japan scholars about the concepts of ritual pollution and how certain peoples in medieval society came to be regarded as polluted or of inferior caste. Organized into occupational communities, these outcaste groups were...

Workers’ Identities in Transition: Deindustrialisation and Scottish Steelworkers

Deindustrialisation is often characterised as an ending, with sentiments of intangible loss andidentity disintegration defining displaced workers’ narratives of job loss. These experiencesare important, yet workers do not cease to exist with the closure of their workplace. Despitethis, little attention has been paid to the post-redundancy employment experiences of formerheavy industry workers or the survivability of their specific occupational identities and workcultures. This article examines the post-redundancy employment of former Scottishsteelworkers. Given their previous immersion in a distinctive occupational culture, a study ofthe post-redundancy employment experiences of these workers offers a window into theafterlives of deindustrialisation. Oral history is indispensable in prioritising working-classperspectives, therefore this article draws on seventeen newly conducted oral history interviewswith former Scottish steelworkers who were made redundant in the early 1990s. In order tobetter understand the long-term impact of deindustrialisation, as well as gage the survivabilityof occupational identities and work cultures, this article examines the ways in whichsteelworkers’ post-redundancy employment contrasted with steelmaking, focusing on thefollowing thematic areas: the significance of work; trade unionism and collective values;masculinity and emasculation; occupational community and workplace culture.

The #acadv Community: Networked Practices, Professional Development, and Ongoing Knowledge Sharing in Advising

The #acadv Twitter chat is an organic, online community of higher education academic advising professionals. Using a longitudinal study, we explored the way a self-directed learning network sustains ongoing professional development and knowledge sharing by examining the archives of 203 structured online discussions. In mapping the chat topics to published core competencies, we discovered that this advising community scaffolds on-demand learning for discussion of advising approaches and strategies, distribution of resources for supporting student success, collective sharing of personal advising philosophies, and encouragement to engage in reflective assessment about advising practice. Community members are motivated to contribute to networked practice to enhance professional development activities, share open educational practices, and support advising competency development in an occupational community of practice.

Mapping Stratification: The Industry-Occupation Space Reveals the Network Structure of Inequality

Social stratification is determined not only by income, education, race, and gender, but also by an individual’s job characteristics and their position in the industrial structure. Utilizing a dataset of 76.6 million Brazilian workers and methods from network science, we map the Brazilian Industry-Occupation Space (BIOS). The BIOS measures the extent to which 600 occupations co-appear in 585 industries, resulting in a complex network that shows how industrial-occupational communities provide important information on the network segmentation of society. Gender, race, education, and income are concentrated unevenly across the core-periphery structure of the BIOS. Moreover, we identify 28 industrial occupational communities from the BIOS network structure and report their contribution to total income inequality in Brazil. Finally, we quantify the relative poverty within these communities. In sum, the BIOS reveals how the coupling of industries and occupations contributes to mapping social stratification and the network structure of inequality.

Hiring as cultural gatekeeping into occupational communities: implications for higher education and student employability

With the rising price of college and anxiety about graduates’ job prospects, the employability of graduates is a dominant narrative shaping postsecondary policy and practice around the world. Yet, completion and the acquisition of a credential alone do not guarantee employment, and research on hiring reveals its subjective aspects, particularly when cultural signals of applicants are matched to those of organizations. In this qualitative study of 42 manufacturing firms in the US state of Wisconsin, cultural capital theory is used to investigate the prevalence of hiring as “cultural matching” using thematic and social network methods to analyze interview data. Results indicate that 74% of employers hire for cultural fit, but, contrary to prior research, this matching process is not simply a matter of fitting applicant personalities to monolithic “organizational cultures” or interviewer preferences. Instead, employers match diverse applicant dispositions (e.g., personality, attitude) and competencies (e.g., cognitive, inter-personal, intra-personal) to the personalities of existing staff as well as to industry-specific norms that are dominant within specific departments. The paper explores implications of these findings for college students, faculty, and career advisors, especially in light of the potential for discriminatory practices during the job search and hiring process.

Do sources of occupational community impact corporate internal control? The case of CFOs in the high-tech industry

PurposeThe Chief Financial Officer (CFO), despite being a critical organization member responsible for ensuring quality of financial reporting, audit and compliance, is under-researched. Grouped as a member of top management teams (TMS) in studies, factors influencing decision making in this group rely on static measures of characteristics without regard for dynamic and longitudinal influences of career trajectories and industry occupational group memberships. The relationship between the high-tech industry as a site of notable reported internal control (IC) weakness and influences on CFOs requires closer examination. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws together the upper echelons theory and occupational communities (OCs) to explore the impact of shared values and behavioral norms from different sources on executive decision making. Internal and external sources of OC are proposed and their influence on activities with respect to corporate IC is tested. The sample of 1,573 firm/year observations includes high-tech firms listed on major US exchanges was developed using data from five distinct databases. Executives’ biographic information was manually collected.FindingsResults indicate that senior financial executives belong not only to their firm and its culture but also to OCs that extend beyond the firm. Membership in professional credential granting occupational groups has less impact on effective IC than experience in the high-tech industry. In combination, multiple OCs show evidence of compound and counteracting effects on IC. The OC that arises in the high-tech industry makes a measurable positive difference in the quality of IC in sample firms, in contrast with the OC among credentialed accounting and financial professionals.Research limitations/implicationsThis quantitative study of OC reveals the differential impact of different sources of OC and contributes to the literature on TMS a new framework for examining decision making. OC is typically studied through qualitative methods and, thus, potential exists to further explore the specific nature and dynamics of the OCs identified in this study.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the role of broad affiliations and networks among senior financial executives which may have bearing on their ability to effectively manage IC. The role of these networks may also partially explain instances of CFO failure and thus dismissal. Knowledge of the role of OC may help boards of directors in the selection and promotion of senior financial officers of the firm.Originality/valueThe paper offers a different perspective on professional accounting expertise in one specific industry where incidence of IC weakness is high relative to other industries. Study results expand recent research on TMS to include sociological impacts of cohort groups. Despite generally weaker IC in the high-tech sector, this study demonstrates the value of exploring group membership within the industry as an important predictor of behavior. The result is a new perspective to CFO decision making which illustrates the relevance of OCs among upper echelons. The implications of findings for CFO recruitment and promotion are borne out in recent instances of senior financial executive failure in the sector.

The Role of the Steelworker Occupational Community in the Internalization of Industrial Restructuring: The ‘Layering Up’ of Collective Proximal and Distal Experiences

This article explores the relationship between occupational community and restructuring at a UK steelworks. Through historic and contemporary experiences, restructuring has become an internalized feature of the steelworker identity. Zittoun and Gillespie’s framework of proximal and distal experiences is adapted to analyse the internalization process. The article argues that experiential resources associated with restructuring are transmitted via the occupational community, forming a part of a collective memory of workplace change. These experiences relate to the historical precedence of restructuring, the role of trade unions in accepting the inevitability of downsizing and prior personal and vicarious experiences of redundancy. The findings build on debates around the determinants of an occupational community, highlighting the role of ‘marginality’ and how experiences of restructuring bind steelworkers to a broader community of fate.

Socializing Rejection and Failure in Artistic Occupational Communities

Failure is a normal aspect of work in creative industries; even highly successful artists are subject to rejection by critics, fans, and peers. It is known that organizations such as schools and workplaces are the primary space for job-related socialization, but artistic careers are characterized by nonstandard employment relations and do not generally require formal schooling. Without the bureaucratic structures typically used to socialize novice group members, how do artistic occupational communities socialize aspirants to manage rejection and labor market failure? This article draws from 6 months of participant observation from “Song Club,” a periodic professional workshop for aspiring songwriters where aspirants present a song to publishers in the hopes of having it recorded and released to commercial audiences. During the period of study, 403 songs were presented to publishers, and 327 were rejected. During the workshops, Song Club members are socialized toward normalizing rejection, appropriately interacting with gatekeepers, and developing collaborative relationships with peers. Adopting these norms reduces the likelihood of failure and contextualizes the meaning of rejection in this occupational community.

Writing in occupational communities as a lens to study becoming, doing, and relating.

In this empirical study of diplomatic correspondence in the occupational community of French diplomats, I argue that the practice of writing, using a genres lens, is an analytical entry point to th...

Mempertahankan Eksistensi Kampung Basen Sebagai Kampung Wisata Kerajinan Perak melalui Rumah Produktif di Era Bisnis Online

Tourism Kampung is an alternative tourist destination for tourists who want to vacation in urban areas. Basen is a tourism kampung that was inaugurated since 2011. Basen Tourism Kampung has a major attraction as a kampung of silver artisans and silver sellers. The issues discussed in this paper is the existence of Basen as a tourism kampung that has the main attractions of silver handicrafts, not only silver products but also tourists can be involved in the process of making silver made in the occupancy community of Basen. Problems arise when the online media created a virtual transaction phenomenon of buyers and sellers, so without the physical showrooms the silver artisans and silver sellers can commercialize their products. The method used in this research is descriptive method with qualitative approach. Survey conducted to collect data. The survey targets are silver artisans and silver sellers. In-depth interviews were conducted on silver artisans and silver sellers to obtain the accuracy of the data. The result of the research shows that the important aspect in the existence of silver handicrafts in Basen is the existence of productive house in Kampung Basen and community of silver artisans and silver sellers. The productive house of the community in Kampung Basen is not only used as occupancy but also the activity of silver handicraft which became the main attraction in Basen Tourism Kampung.

The effect of an occupational therapy mental health day treatment centre on the use of inpatient services in the Western Cape, South Africa

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine whether attendance at an occupational therapy-led day treatment centre for mental health care users affects the use of inpatient services in South Africa.Methods: A retrospective pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental study design was used to compare admissions and days spent in hospital during the 24 months before and after attendance at the centre, using the hospital’s electronic records. Total population sampling yielded data for 44 mental health care users who made first contact with the service between July 2009 and June 2010. Data were compared using the Kruskal–Wallis test, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and Mann–Whitney U test.Results: There was a significant decrease in the number of admissions (z = −4.093, p = 0.00) and the number of days spent in hospital (z = −4.730, p = 0.00). Participants were admitted to psychiatric care 33 times less in the 24 months’ post-intervention, indicating a medium effect (r = 0.436). They also spend 2569 days less in hospital, indicating a large effect (r = 0.504).Conclusion: The findings suggest that an occupational therapy-led day treatment centre could be effective in reducing the use of inpatient mental health services in South Africa.Implications for RehabilitationAttendance at an occupational therapy-led community day treatment centre decreases the number of admissions and number of days spent in hospital and is therefore beneficial to mental health care users and service providers.The study indicates that the successful implementation of a community day treatment centre for mental health care users on the grounds of a tertiary hospital by utilising existing resources is possible.

Older Workers and Occupational Identity in the Telecommunications Industry: Navigating Employment Transitions through the Life Course

The article examines the relationship between restructuring and work-based identity among older workers, exploring occupational identity, occupational community and their roles in navigating transitions in the life course. Based on working-life biographical interviews with late career and retired telecoms engineers, the article explores the role of occupational identity in dealing with change prior to and following the end of careers at BT, the UK’s national telecommunications provider. Restructuring and perpetual organizational change undermined key aspects of the engineering occupational identity, inspiring many to seek alternative employment outside BT. For older workers, some seeking bridge employment in the transition to retirement, the occupational community not only served as a mechanism for finding work but also provided a sustained collective identity resource. Distinctively, the research points to a dialectical relationship between occupational identity and the navigation of change as opposed to the former simply facilitating the latter.