Occupational Norms Research Articles

Overcoming Stigma: Asking for and Receiving Mental Health Support.

Overcoming Stigma: Asking for and Receiving Mental Health Support.

The Challenges to the Boundaries of Journalism Under the New Media Environment

Going back to the origin of journalism, the nature of journalism has changed dramatically, in the beginning, journalists were unlike doctors or lawyers, they did not have professional knowledge, standard of requirement, or occupational norms. During the history of journalism, they always try their best to draw boundaries, journalism has become to a professional field with its legitimacy and authority. But the change in journalism is not stop, especially at the internet society, the boundaries became more and more blurry and there are too many factors that force journalism to keep changing, like free comments and participatory news. This essay will include three main parts, in the first part, I propose to illustrate the boundaries of journalism in the past, and how legitimacy and authority was brought by the process of boundary-drawing. In the second part, I propose to give two examples to explain how the boundaries of journalism were threatened. Finally, I will state how journalism responded to challenges and how the boundaries have shifted.

Institutions, Occupations and Connectivity: The Embeddedness of Gig Work and Platform-Mediated Labour Market in Hong Kong

Informed by the economic sociology of work, this qualitative study employs a dynamic and multi-dimensional notion of embeddedness to critique the social bases of gig work and the platform-mediated labour market, with a series of embedding, disembedding and re-embedding forces. Conducting in-depth interviews with 24 gig workers, the findings reveal how gig work is incorporated into Hong Kong’s labour market and the ways in which gig work is reshaping the power of workers via digital platforms. First, gig work is institutionally embedded in a policy framework centred on weak regulation and protection, resulting in platforms’ expandable and retractable control over labour. Second, gig work is embedded in occupational norms and professional practices, in which workers practise multi-platforming and marketplace resistance when defending their interests. Finally, the embedded connectivity of gig work boosts the scalability of labour market competition but engenders algorithmic opacity. The marketplace bargaining power of gig workers is twofold: workers’ dependence on platforms and their working status. Hence, the embeddedness of gig work and platforms is far from stable but involves new tensions that challenge the gigification and platformisation of work.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONER PROFILING FOR OCCUPATIONAL PROFESSIONALISATION, SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AND CONTINUOUS QUALITY ASSURANCE

Regardless of the worldwide acknowledgement of the importance of community development, the challenge of professional occupational recognition remains, intensified by the lack of practitioner profile data. Raising practice standards through standardised, cohesive and effective movements drives professionalism, guided by a practice policy framework that describes its practitioners’ ethical code, standardised and quality-assured knowledge and skills to be measured against regulated occupational norms and standards. This article provides a broad overview of the requirements for occupational professionalisation linked to a countrywide practitioner profile survey conducted to inform the South African Community Development Practice Policy Framework that guides occupational professionalism pre- and post-professionalisation. Keywords: community development, community development practitioners, continuous professional development, practice policy framework, practitioner profiling, professionalisation

The effects of basic psychological needs satisfaction and mindfulness on solicitors’ well-being

ABSTRACT Rising reports of poor mental health and well-being in lawyers across multiple jurisdictions, notably the United States of America, Australia, and the United Kingdom (UK), have led to a growing international focus on this topic. Yet there remains a paucity of empirical data on the well-being of solicitors practising in England and Wales. Framed by self-determination theory (SDT), we undertook a cross-sectional survey of 340 trainee and qualified solicitors in England and Wales to (1) benchmark the psychological well-being of solicitors against other UK occupational groups and adult population norms; and (2) test relationships between mindfulness, satisfaction of basic psychological needs (perceived autonomy, relatedness, and competence at work) and psychological well-being. The SDT components positively and significantly related to well-being. Mindfulness partially mediated the pathway between basic psychological needs satisfaction and well-being, suggesting that satisfaction of these needs may in themselves facilitate higher mindfulness, thereby contributing to greater levels of well-being. We conceive that autonomy, relatedness, and competence at work provide the psychological space necessary for mindfulness to be cultivated, within which well-being can thrive. These findings support the importance of a systemic approach to solicitors’ well-being to safeguard basic psychological needs in the workplace.

Suffering in Silence: Work and Mental Health Experiences among Provincial Correctional Workers in Canada

ABSTRACT In the course of their duties, correctional employees face exposure to a variety of potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs). Recent research points to an array of consequences of work experiences on the psychological well-being of correctional staff, including the development of mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. Drawing on an open-ended survey response among provincial and territorial correctional employees (n = 269) in Canada, we consider the experiences of correctional employees who self-report an anxiety, mood, or other mental health disorder, with a particular focus on how such experiences are tied to work conditions and occupational environments. Findings demonstrate that, for many, mental health struggles are intimately tied to both operational and organizational factors – the former referring to job duties and the latter referring to social relations of work. How mental health status is navigated is intimately shaped by occupational norms and meanings tied to mental health, namely stigma. Despite the perceived link between work and mental health outcomes, mental health suffering is understood and responded to as a private problem – with fallout on the personal lives and welfare of staff. We discuss the implications of training paradigms and general understandings of mental health responsibility.

Unpacking How Employees Navigate Unfulfilled, Unreasonable, and Unexpected Occupational Ideals

Occupations have become stabilizing fixtures of modern-day employment, providing employees with a set of established cultural tools, norms, values, and beliefs that offer meaning to employees and guide their workplace interpretations and action. Yet, as employees perform their occupations “on the ground”, they frequently encounter situations that challenge these occupational meaning systems. This symposium showcases four papers that develop novel theory about how individuals respond to incongruities between situational demands, environmental constraints, and audiences’ expectations, on the one hand, and occupational norms, values, and beliefs, on the other hand. More specifically, we examine (1) how workers counter harmful occupational cultures, (2) how women in male-dominated occupations transcend their status as female “tokens”; (3) how employees respond to labels (e.g., “hero”) cast upon their occupation by external audiences; and (4) how employees manage frequent exposure to tasks that conflict with their occupational ideologies extolling the nature and necessity of the work. Taken together, our papers and discussion endeavor to contribute to and generate future research on contemporary occupational dynamics, as well as deliver actionable insights for managers. Meaning Detachment and Deviation from Invincibility Cultural Scripts among Stunt Performers Presenter: Winnie Jiang; INSEAD Presenter: Karim Ginena; U. of Virginia Darden School of Business Transcending Tokenism: How Women in Male-Dominated Occupations Can Challenge Gendered Work Norms Presenter: Julia DiBenigno; Yale School of Management Heroes from Above and from Below: Workers’ Reactions to the Moralizing of their Work Presenter: Lindsey Cameron; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Michel Anteby; Boston U. Questrom School of Business The Music Between the Notes: How Employees Manage Unforeseen Work Realities Presenter: Pascale Fricke; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Natalya Alonso; Haskayne School of Business, U. of Calgary Presenter: Patrick Reilly; U. of British Columbia

Evaluating materiality in food waste reduction interventions

This paper assesses how interventions utilising material apparatus can drive food waste reduction in professional kitchens. Using non-participant observation and interviews, this study evaluated work-based experiments to cut waste in luxury hotels. The paper focuses on the impacts of one specific intervention: the introduction of small, transparent food waste bins, positioned at each food preparation station. The findings examine how the material properties of these apparatus, including size, calibration and transparency, coupled with their location, shaped chefs' food waste related practices. Moreover, the findings show how chefs' organisational and occupational norms interact with the influence exerted by utensils to create new meanings and assign value to food, waste and the craft skills used to reduce it.

Language, affect, and carnivalesque: tourism encounters and transgressive narratives on a party island

ABSTRACT Party island tourism is construed as a type of tourism that heavily relies on sensory and intimate encounters that evince structures of inequality. In this paper, I investigate how the notion of the party influences the negotiation of sociolinguistic relations on party islands. By employing a linguistic ethnographic approach, this paper attempts to examine the affective dimensions of the narratives of “tourism frontliners” about their tourism encounters in Boracay from the perspective of the party. The party dynamics in Boracay can be described as carnivalesque, which shows “ … life turned inside out … the reverse side of the world” (Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated and edited by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 122). I argue that the coalescence of different participants, emotions, and linguistic practices in the Boracay party enables tourism frontliners to subvert various forms of inequality (e.g. occupational norms, precarity, and discrimination) through their accounts of getting even and getting by. This results in a suspension of reality – a space where transgressive behavior can potentially disrupt or reconfigure unequal sociolinguistic relations. This paper argues that while carnivalesque behaviors are inherently suspensions of reality, their iterability can lead to the establishment of sustainabile transgressive spaces.

Working Class CEOs: Formation of Occupational Norms and Corporate Labor Policies

We examine the relation between the CEO’s childhood socioeconomic class and corporate labor policies. We find that CEOs raised in low socioeconomic class families are less likely to invest in employee friendly firm policies measured by several types of labor and employment litigation, including litigation by unions, and occupational safety measures. These results are confirmed by crowdsourced employee firm reviews across several workplace dimensions. Our findings are supported by the studies of within-family transmission of occupational knowledge and formation of occupational norms as well as development of empathy and altruistic behaviors in children.

Upscale hotel employees’ surface acting: The roles of perceived individualized consideration and emotional intelligence

Emotional labor is considered as part of occupational norms, especially in the upscale hotel industry that offers high-end customer services. This study focuses on the positive effects of surface acting and examines how hotel employees' surface acting, or the masking of real feelings and the corresponding display of desirable emotions is related to job satisfaction. The study tests the moderating role of emotional intelligence and the mediating role of perceived individualized consideration in the relationship between surface acting and job satisfaction. The current study highlights the role of supervisors’ individualized consideration as a moderated mediator of the surface acting–job satisfaction relationship. This research contributes to the literature by adding evidence in support of the bright side of emotional labor.

The Determinants of Employee Commitment to CSR: A Qualitative Study in a Temporary Work Company

This paper sheds light on the determinant of employees’ commitment in responsible practices requested by companies. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the means for European Union and, more particularly, France to foster social inclusion at the work place. For decades, reaching this goal has led to operational difficulties. However, human resource management has gradually become CSR-proof. Employees are simultaneously the recipients of CSR-policies and their actors. CSR induces changes in the psychological contract, i.e. the employees’ mental schema (Rousseau, 1995, 2001) of the employment relationship. Our research is rooted into ethnography in a major French temporary work company. We led 23 interviews to delimit socially responsible behaviors and took part to a 12-month (mainly) non-participant observation. Meanwhile, we also interviewed 11 managers and their 23 recruiters to analyze their mental schemas. Our findings, based on a structural analysis of content (Mucchielli, 1998), show that recruiters and agency managers justify their commitment based on legal rules, company standards and occupational norms. Moreover, operational employees’ commitment depends on the management of their role and self-identification.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Journalism Students’ Interpretive Repertoires for a Changing Occupation

ABSTRACTAmid ongoing disruption, discourse about journalism increasingly emphasizes innovation within the newsroom and the rise of entrepreneurial initiatives outside it. This article uses the concept of interpretive repertoires to explore how students enrolled in journalism programmes in Britain and the Netherlands understand innovation and entrepreneurialism in relation to changing industry circumstances and long-standing conceptualizations of occupational norms and behaviours. We find shared repertoires that embrace technological change, but generally within an acceptance of traditional normative practice.

Feeling Blue: Officer Perceptions of Public Antipathy Predict Police Occupational Norms

Recent protests against law enforcement have spurred claims by practitioners and editorialists that public antipathy toward the police may influence police occupational norms. A number of classic police ethnographies also suggest a link between perceived public antipathy and police culture, but limited empirical research has examined this claim. Using a sample of 12,376 sworn law enforcement officers who participated in the National Police Research Platform, and a series of ordinary least squares regressions, this study examines whether officers’ perceptions of public support predict their cultural orientations. Results reveal that officers perceiving greater public antipathy report higher levels of social isolation, work-group solidarity, cynicism toward the public, and coercive attitudes. We identify practical implications and potential organizational remedies to address these perceptions, and situate these findings within theoretical arguments of early police ethnographers and contemporary claims of the “Ferguson Effect.”

From Contract to Speculation: New Relations of Work and Production in Freelance Travel Journalism

This qualitative case study of travel journalism in the USA explores how freelancers produce on speculation because publications do not contractually guarantee pay or advanced resources for travel. Freelance travel journalists therefore experience their work as an investment into an uncertain return in an undefined future. This article shows how such speculation manifests itself as a new productive process and relations of organisational externalisation in lean capitalism. Examining the changing obligations between freelancers and publications without assignment-contracts, this study argues that speculation presents the obfuscation of production. It externalises the risks of production onto the freelancer; reduces organisational control over production; and changes occupational norms and practices.

Occupational Invocation: Managing Experts through Community Norms

Using data from a 16-month ethnographic study of a pharmaceutical company research unit, we examine how managers can successfully manage expert contractors. These expert scientists perform essential work in advancing drug development projects. However, they often complete work late, refuse to perform requested work, and act in other ways that managers believe impedes project progress. Although the literature on expert management suggests that these challenges can be overcome by rewarding, punishing, and socializing experts, these practices are difficult to implement when expert workers are contracted from outside of the organization. We show how managers can manage expert contractors through a process we label occupational invocation. In this process, managers first publicly highlight experts’ breaches of shared occupational norms. Managers then reintegrate experts by providing them with an opportunity to display a correction of their actions such that they align with the community’s expectations as well as the contracting organization’s interests. By referencing common norms, occupational invocation helps enable the management of expert contractors.

Shintarou MATSUNAGA, Occupational Norms and Labor Problems: Sociological Investigation of Animators’ Work

Shintarou MATSUNAGA, Occupational Norms and Labor Problems: Sociological Investigation of Animators’ Work

The gendered health workforce: mixed methods analysis from four fragile and post-conflict contexts.

It is well known that the health workforce composition is influenced by gender relations. However, little research has been done which examines the experiences of health workers through a gender lens, especially in fragile and post-conflict states. In these contexts, there may not only be opportunities to (re)shape occupational norms and responsibilities in the light of challenges in the health workforce, but also threats that put pressure on resources and undermine gender balance, diversity and gender responsive human resources for health (HRH). We present mixed method research on HRH in four fragile and post-conflict contexts (Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, northern Uganda and Cambodia) with different histories to understand how gender influences the health workforce. We apply a gender analysis framework to explore access to resources, occupations, values, decision-making and power. We draw largely on life histories with male and female health workers to explore their lived experiences, but complement the analysis with evidence from surveys, document reviews, key informant interviews, human resource data and stakeholder mapping. Our findings shed light on patterns of employment: in all contexts women predominate in nursing and midwifery cadres, are under-represented in management positions and are clustered in lower paying positions. Gendered power relations shaped by caring responsibilities at the household level, affect attitudes to rural deployment and women in all contexts face challenges in accessing both pre- and in-service training. Coping strategies within conflict emerged as a key theme, with experiences here shaped by gender, poverty and household structure. Most HRH regulatory frameworks did not sufficiently address gender concerns. Unless these are proactively addressed post-crisis, health workforces will remain too few, poorly distributed and unable to meet the health needs of vulnerable populations. Practical steps need to be taken to identify gender barriers proactively and engage staff and communities on best approaches for change.

Work-related wellbeing in UK prison officers: a benchmarking approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the well-being of UK prison officers by utilising a benchmarking approach.Design/methodology/approachThe Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Stress Indicator Tool is widely used in the UK to assess key psychosocial hazards in the workplace encompassing demands, control, support from managers and co-workers, relationship quality, role and change management. This study utilises this approach to examine the extent to which a sample of UK prison officers meets the HSE recommended minimum standards for the management of work-related well-being. Levels of mental health and job satisfaction in the sector are also assessed using measures with extensive occupational norms. The psychosocial hazards that make the strongest contribution to mental health and job satisfaction are also considered.FindingsRespondents reported lower levels of well-being for all of the hazard categories than recommended. Moreover, mental health and job satisfaction were considerably poorer among prison officers than other occupational groups within the emergency and security services in the UK. Considerable variation was found in the psychosocial hazards that predicted mental health and job satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe high levels of stressors and strains experienced by UK prison officers gives serious cause for concern. Priority areas for interventions to enhance well-being in the sector are considered and areas for future research discussed.Originality/valueThis study highlights the wide-ranging benefits of a benchmarking approach to investigate work-related stressors and strains at the sector level.

"Bound to Be Free: Occupational Norms, Sensemaking and the Appropriation of Social Media at Work"

In this study of a European Publishing house, we describe the ways members of two different occupations mobilize social media in order to achieve control over work. Prior studies have shown that ne...