Francesca Bellesia, Elisa Mattarelli, Fabiola Bertolotti and Maurizio Sobrero
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the process of work identity construction unfolds for gig workers experiencing unstable working relationships in online labor markets…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the process of work identity construction unfolds for gig workers experiencing unstable working relationships in online labor markets. In particular, it investigates how digital platforms, intended both as providers of technological features and online environments, affect this process.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an exploratory field study and collected data from 46 interviews with freelancers working on one of the most popular online labor markets and from online documents such as public profiles, job applications and archival data.
Findings
The findings reveal that the online environment constrains the action of workers who are pushed to take advantage of the platform’s technological features to succeed. This interplay leads workers to add new characteristics to their work-self and to and to develop an entrepreneurial an entrepreneurial orientation.
Practical implications
The study offers insights to platform providers interested in improving workers’ experiences in online labor markets, highlighting mechanisms for uncertainty reduction and diversifying a platform’s services according to gig workers’ identities and orientations.
Originality/value
The study expands the authors’ knowledge on work identity construction processes of gig workers, detailing the relationship between work identity and IT, and documents previously unexplored antecedents of entrepreneurial orientation in non-standard working contexts.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to discover the relationship between the extended organizational commitment model (EOCM) and self-determination theory (SDT). The author shows that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discover the relationship between the extended organizational commitment model (EOCM) and self-determination theory (SDT). The author shows that specific dimensions of commitment can be associated with the forms of regulation and motivation.
Design/methodology/approach
Using literature analysis, the author sets the theoretical relationships between commitment and regulation (and motivation). The interrelated relationships are illustrated qualitatively by presenting case studies.
Findings
Like the regulation-based motivation scale, the dimensions of organizational commitment (OC) can be sorted and combined with regulation and motivation. The emotional-based OC dimensions (normative commitment as a sense of indebtedness (NC:HiSoI); normative commitment as a moral duty (NC:HiMD); affective commitment (AC)) are influenced by regulation and motivation. In the case of cost-based OC dimensions (deliberate commitment (DC); continuance commitment as a low perceived alternatives (CC:LoAlt); continuance commitment as high sacrifice (CC:HiSac)), the leaders’ motivational strategies are driven by their perceives of the employees’ OC. Commitment dimensions stemming from a degree of necessity are linked to lower levels of regulation, while commitment dimensions stemming from internal conviction are linked to the higher levels of regulation.
Research limitations/implications
The results also must be proved by quantitative researches later. The model presented in this study primarily supports the theoretical understanding of relationships, so its validity should be tested in different cultures, professions or employees with different qualifications and personalities in the future.
Practical implications
Significant resources can be saved for an organization if managers do not want to increase OC in general, rather only its one dimension, depending on the situation and goals, or if managers form their employees’ commitment profiles in a smaller team severally. However, in other cases, the employees’ commitment profiles set the useable motivational strategies, which call into question the suitability of universal motivation systems.
Social implications
From the point of view of employees, the synergy between regulation (and motivation) and OC contributes to the improvement of their psychological well-being and means more efficient use of resources for organizations.
Originality/value
The study shows the hierarchy of dimensions of the EOCM and its relationship with regulations in the SDT.
Details
Keywords
Susan Parker, Gillian Pascall and Julia Evetts
Banks have significantly changed their public policies about women’s access to management, to include career breaks and job sharing, with recruitment and promotion policies…
Abstract
Banks have significantly changed their public policies about women’s access to management, to include career breaks and job sharing, with recruitment and promotion policies claiming equal opportunity for men and women. But has there been a revolution on the high street? A qualitative study of 40 women in banking explored questions of change and continuity with 20 clerical workers and 20 managers. From their perspective, men’s power in higher management positions can still be used to obstruct women’s advancement, and often contradicts the public policy that career and motherhood are compatible. New forms of dual labour market and gendered career routes are taking the place of old ones. These sideline women into less powerful and rewarding posts. They also create new divisions between women, privileging graduate entrants, but further obstructing clerical workers’ career development.
Details
Keywords
Marion Crowley‐Henry and David Weir
Using narratives from four women following international careers in France, this paper seeks to offer an insight into the depth and complexity of career issues for women working…
Abstract
Purpose
Using narratives from four women following international careers in France, this paper seeks to offer an insight into the depth and complexity of career issues for women working in a foreign country.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative hermeneutic inductive research undertaking on international protean careers, using in‐depth interview data together with contextual information regarding the specificity of the location in question.
Findings
The concept of the protean career is highlighted in the findings. This concept is described as “having an ability to reform oneself” also referred to as “morphing”. The findings in this study demonstrate how the women in the sample had the proven capability of morphing their professional role over time due to circumstance.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited as they cannot be generalised to a wider population due to the small sample size. However, the aim was not to generalise, but to share an in‐depth collection of real‐life stories from women.
Practical implications
Careers are complex, even more so on an international level. Individual choices regarding career pathways require more individualised career management approaches within organisations.
Originality/value
This research adds to the limited extant European research on women and international careers from a qualitative perspective.
Details
Keywords
Richard Mayer, Kate Job and Nick Ellis
The last decade has seen much soul‐searching within the Marketing Academy as it struggles to address what Brown has described as the discipline’s “mid‐life crisis”. Magee terms…
Abstract
The last decade has seen much soul‐searching within the Marketing Academy as it struggles to address what Brown has described as the discipline’s “mid‐life crisis”. Magee terms this tendency “metanoia” and observes that no less a work than “Dante’s Inferno begins with lines that refer to it”. He notes how people reaching this point often “turn in on themselves, and perhaps turn towards religion”. It is with this “metanoid” perspective on marketing theory that the authors of this piece present two possible paths to epistemological paradise; one route representing an inward re‐evaluation and the other more of an outward exploration. Two of the authors combine to take an axiomatic approach to rediscovering the celestial citadel, whereas the third has forsaken the fundamentalist fortress. In his, the second, sermon Brother Nick implores you to reject the foregoing calls to get back to basics, and instead, to embrace a more contemporary, critical orientation to “dat ole time marketing religion”.
Details
Keywords
Jean Hertzman and Deborah Barrash
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the food safety knowledge and practices of catering employees in one city in the Southwestern United States.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the food safety knowledge and practices of catering employees in one city in the Southwestern United States.
Design/methodology/approach
The researchers administered a 20‐question food safety survey to catering employees and observed their actions while performing catering duties.
Findings
The paper finds that employees earned a mean score of 71.5 per cent on the 20‐question survey. They were most knowledgeable about personal hygiene, but did not practise proper hygiene during the catering functions. The most common food safety violations were not wearing gloves when required, not washing hands, not checking food temperatures, and not properly covering foods in warming and/or refrigeration units.
Research limitations/implications
Lack of interest and concern about bad publicity prevented many caterers from participating in the study. The presence of observers during a catering event could have affected employees' performance.
Practical implications
The results showed need for improvement in both knowledge and practice of food safety and sanitation and significant differences in knowledge between English‐ and Spanish‐speaking respondents and employees of independent versus corporate operations.
Originality/value
The paper reveals that the US Food and Drug Administration has a goal of reducing the five risk factors of food‐borne illness by 25 percent by 2010. Catering operations face great challenges in minimizing these risks.
Details
Keywords
Focuses attention upon a recent phenomenon promoted by public sector policy and government funding and adopted within the private sector as a vehicle for wealth creation, where…
Abstract
Focuses attention upon a recent phenomenon promoted by public sector policy and government funding and adopted within the private sector as a vehicle for wealth creation, where wealth can mean the development of different forms of capital such as financial, intellectual and social. Incubators and incubation programmes have established themselves across the globe as part of the enterprise landscape and are achieving substantial growth rates in numbers, with expectations for further growth in the near future. Emphasises the finding of recent studies suggesting that the nature and experience of incubator management and leadership positively affect client perceptions of the value and impact of their incubation experience. In conclusion, there is an emerging demand for greater professionalism within the sector and the role that current national incubation benchmarks may have on supporting management and leadership capability building. Suggests that focusing on management and leadership capability building across the sector is an important policy consideration for government in enhancing the overall performance and effectiveness of the industry.
Details
Keywords
Kate Pahl and Steve Pool
This article explores the processes and practices of doing participatory research with children. It explores how this process can be represented in writing. The article comes out…
Abstract
This article explores the processes and practices of doing participatory research with children. It explores how this process can be represented in writing. The article comes out of a project funded by Creative Partnerships UK, in which a creative agent, three artists and a researcher all worked within an elementary school in South Yorkshire, UK, for two years, to focus on the children’s Reasons to Write. It considers whether it is truly possible for children to enter the academic domain. Using a number of different voices, the article interrogates this. It particularly focuses on children’s role in analysing and selecting important bits of data. It engages with the lived realities of children as researchers. It considers ways in which children’s voices can be represented, and also acknowledges the limitations of this approach for adults who want to write academic peer reviewed articles. Ideas the adults thought were clever were found to be redundant in relation to children’s epistemologies. The article considers the process that is involved in taking children’s epistemologies seriously.
Details
Keywords
Ashleigh McFarlane, Kathy Hamilton and Paul Hewer
This study aims to explore passionate labour in the fashion blogosphere and addresses two research questions: How does passion animate passionate labour? How does the emotion of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore passionate labour in the fashion blogosphere and addresses two research questions: How does passion animate passionate labour? How does the emotion of passions and the discipline of labour fuse within passionate labour?
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents a three-year netnographic fieldwork of replikate fashion blogger-preneurs. Data are based on in-depth interviews, blogs, social media posts and informed by the relationships developed across these platforms.
Findings
Throughout the findings, this study unpacks the “little passions” that animate the passionate labour of blogger-preneurs. Passions include: passion for performing the royal lifestyle, the mobilisation of passion within strategic sociality and transformation and self-renewal through blogging. Lastly, the cycle of passion illustrates how passions can be recycled into new passionate projects.
Research limitations/implications
This study offers insight on how passionate labour requires the negotiation and mobilisation of emotion alongside a calculated understanding of market logics.
Practical implications
This study raises implications for aspiring blogger-preneurs, luxury brand managers and organisations beyond the blogging context.
Originality/value
The contribution of this study lies in the cultural understanding of passion as a form of labour where passion has become a way of life. The theorisation of passionate labour contributes to existing research in three ways. First, this study identifies social mimesis as a driver of passionate labour and its links to class distinction. Second, it offers insight on how passionate labour requires the negotiation and mobilisation of emotion alongside a calculated understanding of market logics. Third, it advances critical debate around exploitation and inequality within digital labour by demonstrating how passion is unequally distributed.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent service delivery in the Canadian federal government actually improved after a decade of reform efforts, and how employee…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent service delivery in the Canadian federal government actually improved after a decade of reform efforts, and how employee empowerment accounted for any improvements that arose.
Design/methodology/approach
Five focus group interviews were conducted in 2002 with federal government employees involved in service delivery. Interview transcripts were content analyzed. The employee empowerment and service quality literatures, including critical perspectives, provide the theoretical underpinnings of the study.
Findings
Productivity and service enhancement did materialize, but little empowerment occurred. Work intensification was revealed. The shortcomings of applying private sector‐style definitions of productivity to the public sector were identified.
Research limitations/implications
Study findings have limited generalizability due to small sample size. Findings must be verified through additional research. Comparative findings from countries that introduced service reforms more comprehensively than did Canada would be of interest.
Practical implications
Public sector efforts to improve service delivery should address possible material barriers affecting service delivery and pay more attention to employee needs. The efficacy of quantitative performance targets should be re‐examined.
Originality/value
The outcomes of a public service reform initiative intended to improve service quality by allegedly empowering front‐line workers are presented from an employee perspective. As there is limited empirical research done on this topic from that perspective it should be of general interest to researchers in the fields of public policy and human resources management.