Power In Workplace Research Articles

Race, Gender, and Workplace Power

Survey data support hypotheses regarding differential access to workplace power among women and minorities relative to white men. Specific findings indicate that, relative to white men, all groups encounter increasing inequality at higher levels of power, but only black women seem to experience this form of inequality as a result of direct discrimination. Further analysis indicates that network assistance is more a response to this form of discrimination than an indirect cause. Finally, analysis shows that most groups attain power through homosocial reproduction, but what differs is the opportunity to engage in such reproduction, wherein white men excel. These findings imply that while women and minorities face lower odds than white men of achieving higher levels of workplace power, the reasons for this disadvantage vary among respective groups and thus will likely require different remedies.

Sexual Harassment as a Gendered Expression of Power

Drawing on recent insights from the study of legal consciousness and gender relations, the authors test the generality of Catharine MacKinnon's theory of the sexual harassment of adult women. Survey and interview data from the Youth Development Study and the General Social Survey are analyzed to identify a behavioral syndrome of sexual harassment for males and females during adolescence and young adulthood and to compare the syndrome against subjective reports of sexual harassment. A clear harassment syndrome is found for all age and sex groups and MacKinnon's predictions about the influence of workplace power and gender relations are generally supported. Financially vulnerable men as well as women are most likely to experience harassing behaviors, and men pursuing more egalitarian gender relationships are most likely to identify such behaviors as sexual harassment. Nevertheless, adult women remain the most frequent targets of classic sexual harassment markers, such as unwanted touching and invasion of personal space.

News Corporation, Technology and the Workplace: Global Strategies, Local Change

Part I. Technological Innovation and Workplace Reorganisation: The Newspaper Industry: 1. Global technology and the local workplace: a theoretical debate 2. The institutional and societal context: Britain, Australia and the United States 3. The newspaper industry: historical developments in the three countries Part II. Technological Innovation and Workplace Reorganisation: News Corporation: 4. News Corporation Limited: a global media company 5. Wapping: technological change or workplace power? 6. The Adelaide Advertiser: Wapping South? 7 News Corporation in The United States: the land of opportunity? Conclusion: News Corporation: combining the global and the local.

CLASS, GENDER, AND ARREST: AN INTERGENERATIONAL ANALYSIS OF WORKPLACE POWER AND CONTROL*

Power‐control theory posits that parental workplace positions affect adolescent law violation. To date, however, no test of the theory has directly measured occupational power and control. This paper tests whether parental and adolescent workplace freedom and control affect criminal behavior and arrest as the theory predicts, using data from a prospective longitudinal survey of 1, 000 adolescents and their parents. The results suggest sex differentials in the effects of maternal authority position and parental freedom and control. In particular, daughters whose mothers hold authority positions are more likely to be arrested than are daughters whose mothers do not hold such positions. The effects of adolescent employment also differ by sex, with perceived workplace power and control reducing rates of arrest among females but increasing them among males.

When Performance Fails to Meet Expectations: Managers’ Objectives for Outsourcing

AbstractManagers may implement outsourcing for one or more of a range of reasons: to improve strategic focus, to achieve numerical or functional flexibility, to reduce costs or risk, to change their own roles, to change organisational culture or workplace power structure, and to intensify work effort. However, often there are associated costs, either unanticipated or unquantified. This paper provides evidence from two food processing companies to address the following questions: (1) Why do managers pursue outsourcing? and (2) Have managers anticipated and quantified the potential costs as well as the benefits of outsourcing? We conclude that while it seems clear that managers do begin with clear objectives for outsourcing and anticipate that benefits will flow, sometimes these objectives are not met, unexpected costs are incurred, or objectives change as new information is available or situations change. In other cases managers have been unable to objectively substantiate the outsourcing decision.

The Fractured World of the Temporary Worker: Power, Participation, and Fragmentation in the Contemporary Workplace

Prevailing explanations of power, class fragmentation, participation, and resistance in the contemporary workplace have not explicitly incorporated three factors: the decentered work systems increasingly typical in blue- and white-collar occupations; the terms of the employment contract; and exogenous variables, such as previous labor market experiences, that strengthen or weaken workers' commitments to their jobs. This paper demonstrates the significance of these three factors by investigating the empirical case of temporary workers. Using interview and observational field data, I demonstrate how a system of temporary employment in a participative workplace both exploited and shaped entry-level workers' aspirations and occupational goals. I conclude by suggesting that capacities for collective action, or a social movement that might pose a critique of the current transformation of employment relations into a system increasingly characterized by nonstandard jobs, is limited by structural features and by individual embeddedness in stratified occupational systems.

Computerization of the Workplace

Divergent conceptualizations of the recent changes in work organization that have accompanied computerization include neo-Bravermanian analyses, postindustrial analyses, and contingency analyses. To make sense of these differing views, the paper surveys sociological research on computerization and its impact on three analytically separate dimensions of the workplace: organizational restructuring, changes in worker skill, and power and authority relationships. The review reveals that computerized work organizations typically have fewer hierarchical levels, a bifurcated workforce, frequently with race and sex segregation, a less formal structure, and diminished use of internal labor markets and reliance instead on external credentialing. Variable patterns of centralization and decentralization occur, and workplace power relationships interact with technological change to produce variable political outcomes. With regard to worker skills, recent evidence suggests aggregate upskilling with some deskilling and skill bifurcation. Future research should more closely analyze the process of technological design and implementation.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the Workplace: The Politics of Production at AT&T.

Power in the workplace: the politics of production at AT&T

Power in the workplace: the politics of production at AT&T

Refashioning Industrial Relations: The Experience of a Chemical Company over the Last Decade

Uses a longitudinal case study approach to analyse changes in industrial relations in a chemical company over the last decade. The authors argue that the concept of “waves” can be used to help understand developments during this period. The first wave related to the crisis of the early 1980s and a “turnaround project”, while the second was part of a longer term and in a sense less urgent cultural change initiative. There was thus a shift in management thinking, from emphasizing compliance with short‐term imperatives, to an attempt to develop a more fully co‐operative relationship, where commitment was seen as central to the new way of working. However, underpinning this shift to a more co‐operative relationship was a considerable shift in the balance of workplace power, a fact which explains the new relationship more effectively than increased employee understanding or the growth of consensus at the workplace. At the same time, there remained ambiguity amongst the key actors in the process. Whilst senior management strongly supported the new programme of change, middle managers and supervisors were much less enthusiastic. Unions also were ambivalent in their attitudes, given the dimunition of their role. Amongst other things, the case illustrates the difficulty encountered when management attempt to change organizational culture to achieve high trust industrial relations.

Technology Training: Transferring Control to the Learner

Abstract A joint union-corporate training/upgrading program for skilled maintenance workers ai a large industrial operation had two key features: I Extensive union and union member participation shaped both curriculum design and training implementai ion; 2. Tin: curriculum was built around a method of educational discovery, allowing for training over a wider range of skill and experience backgrounds. This method assumes that the tradesperson working in the industry has a developed framework, for knowledge, respects that framework and passes to the tradesperson substantial control of the learning process. While the method enhances the participant's integration/learning of advanced technology, it also challenges traditional workplace and educational power relations.

Abuse of Power in the Workplace

Three defendants were given prison terms recently for illegal detention of people and conducting a house search without a warrant. The sentence was given out by the Dongfeng County People's Court of Jilin province at a public trial.

Workplace harassment and the victimization of women

This paper studies the interconnections of victimizations of women by comparing sexual harassment in the workplace with harassments in other settings, that is, in school, in civic work, and in public places. The frequency and serverity of the harassment, the relationship of the woman to her harasser, and characteristics of the women who were harassed, are compared for the different settings for a random regional sample of U.S. women. It is found that harassment is more frequent in the workplace setting, but in general, the harassments are similar enough across settings to conclude that harassment stems more from the confluence of sex and power which characterizes “normal” male-female relationships in U.S. society, than from specific workplace power differentials. The implications for remedying workplace harassment and other victimizations of women are discussed.

Power and decision making in the workplace: a study in the coal mining industry*

Here the author illustrates the importance of methodology in industrial relations research to an empirical study of workplace power. It is hoped to convince industrial researchers of the need for a more rigorous examination of the methods of investigation from which so many ‘interesting’ and ‘relevant’ findings result.

Dress Practices in the Workplace Power Relations, Gender Norms and Professional Saudi Women’s Tactics

“Would you accept to work in a mixed-gender place (makan mukhtalat)?” “Would you uncover your face in the presence of men?” This is a sample of the questions included in a 2008 survey questionnaire distributed to Saudi women in a job fair organized by the private sector.1 The wording of the questions – that have no equivalent in questionnaires for men – suggests that the choice is exclusively theirs. But the fact is that professional women’s dress codes are subject to many restrictions in Saudi Arabia as well as in other parts of the world with, however, some variants specific to the Saudi context.