John G. Richmond and Nicola Burgess
Supporting and nurturing effective communication between healthcare professionals is vital to protect patients from harm. However, not all forms of employee voice are effective…
Abstract
Purpose
Supporting and nurturing effective communication between healthcare professionals is vital to protect patients from harm. However, not all forms of employee voice are effective. Fear can lead to defensive voice, while the role of other emotions to drive voice behaviour is less well understood. This paper aims to understand what role the broader range of emotions, including compassion and shame, experienced by healthcare professionals following patient safety incidents (PSI) play in the subsequent enactment of prosocial voice, a positive and other-oriented form of communication.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on data from a single English NHS hospital: interviews with healthcare professionals involved in PSIs (N = 40), observations at quality and risk committees and meetings (N = 26 h) and review of investigative documents (N = 33). Three recent PSIs were selected for cross-case analysis based upon organisational theory related to professional hierarchy, employee voice and literature on emotions.
Findings
Among three cases, the authors found variance in context, emotional experience and voice behaviour. Where professionals feared blame and repercussion, voice was defensive. Meanwhile where they experienced shame and compassion, prosocial voice was enacted to protect patients.
Practical implications
Healthcare organisations seeking to foster prosocial voice should: (1) be more considerate of professionals' emotional experiences post-PSI and ensure adequate support for recovery (2) establish norms for professionals to share their struggles with others (3) reward professionals who demonstrate caring behaviour (4) buffer professionals from workplace pressures.
Originality/value
The authors’ study highlights how emotional experiences, such as shame and compassion, can mediate blame and defensiveness and lead to the enactment of prosocial voice in the professional hierarchy.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of a significant group of retail employees, specifically the African‐American operations and service workers that worked…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of a significant group of retail employees, specifically the African‐American operations and service workers that worked behind the scenes in department stores during the Jim Crow era, defined here as 1890‐1965.
Design/methodology/approach
Department stores have rightly occupied a prominent place in business historiography. This wealth of scholarship can be explained partly by substantial archival resources, but especially by department stores' significance to US business, cultural, and social history. Yet, despite this rich historiography, a significant number of department store employees have been overlooked, and this omission has distorted the picture of the work culture and marketing strategies of these massive and influential retail institutions. Department stores employ a large number of operations and service staff, such as delivery people, housekeeping and maintenance workers, elevator operators, stock workers, packers, and warehouse workers. These positions make up roughly one‐fifth of all department store work. This paper presents a close study of the two most prominent department stores of early and mid‐twentieth century Richmond, Virginia – Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads – to offer insight into the work culture and workplace experiences of these employees.
Findings
Ultimately, this paper shows that African‐American employees played an important role in the maintenance and image of Richmond department stores. Store managers place high demands for “loyalty” and “faithfulness” on their black staff to demonstrate their lavish services to the buying public. For black employees, this means that the work environment can be highly stressful, as they seek to meet competing demands from customers and co‐workers. However, department store work offers opportunities, in particular, steady employment among a close network of African‐American coworkers. Finally, the presence of segregated black employees undermines managements' attempts to convey their workforce as one “happy family.”
Research limitations/implications
The research is entirely based on two high‐end department stores, Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers, both based in Richmond, Virginia. Two store archives – available at the Valentine Richmond History Center and the Virginia Historical Society – are the primary resources for this project. Because, the papers in these archives are donated by store managers, a limitation to this study is the dearth of unmediated voices of the employees themselves.
Originality/value
This research adds to the historiography of department stores by shedding light on employees who are expected by employers to remain nearly invisible in their jobs, and unfortunately, have been fairly invisible in the historical record as well.
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THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from…
Abstract
THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.
John A. James and David F. Weiman
The increased use of checks in nonlocal payments at the end of the nineteenth century presented problems for their clearing and collection. Checks were required to be paid in full…
Abstract
The increased use of checks in nonlocal payments at the end of the nineteenth century presented problems for their clearing and collection. Checks were required to be paid in full (at par) only when presented directly to the drawn-upon bank at its counter. Consequently, many, primarily rural or small-town, banks began to charge remittance fees on checks not presented for collection in person. Such fees and the alleged circuitous routing of checks in the process of collection to avoid them were widely criticized defects of the pre-Federal Reserve payments system. As the new Federal Reserve established its own system for check clearing and collection, it also took as an implicit mandate the promotion of universal par clearing and collection. The result was a bitter struggle with non-par banks, the numbers of which initially shrunk dramatically but then rebounded. A 1923 Supreme Court decision ended the Fed’s active (or coercive) pursuit of universal par clearing, and non-par banking persisted thereafter for decades. Not until the Monetary Control Act of 1980 was universal par clearing and true monetary union, in which standard means of payment are accepted at par everywhere, achieved.
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WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new…
Abstract
WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.
The US central government enactment of the 1866 Post Roads Act preempted state and municipal telegraph franchise entry barriers. Like present-day telecommunication companies…
Abstract
The US central government enactment of the 1866 Post Roads Act preempted state and municipal telegraph franchise entry barriers. Like present-day telecommunication companies, local franchise regulations were an entry barrier to US telegraph companies. These pre-1866 state and municipal telegraph laws were barriers of both entry and trade between states. Barriers that would of reduced the benefits of a common market if the barriers had not been preempted by the 1866 Post Roads Act. I document what laws were preempted by the 1866 Post Roads Act, explain how these laws increased entry barriers, provide evidence that preemption was enforced, and use two counterfactuals to calculate rough estimates of the decrease in entry costs from enforcement of the act.
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ANOTHER Annual Meeting has come and gone. It was scarcely to be expected that the meeting at Bradford would be a record in the number of members attending, seeing that it is only…
Abstract
ANOTHER Annual Meeting has come and gone. It was scarcely to be expected that the meeting at Bradford would be a record in the number of members attending, seeing that it is only three years ago since the Association met in the neighbouring city of Leeds, and that Bradford cannot boast either the historical associations or the architectural and scenic setting of many other towns. For the most part therefore the members who did attend, attended because they were interested in the serious rather than the entertainment or excursion side of the gathering, which was so far perhaps to the advantage of the meetings and discussions. Nevertheless, the actual number of those present—about two hundred—was quite satisfactory, and none, we are assured, even if the local functions were the main or an equal element of attraction, could possibly have regretted their visit to the metropolis of the worsted trade. Fortunately the weather was all that could be desired, and under the bright sunshine Bradford looked its best, many members, who expected doubtless to find a grey, depressing city of factories, being pleasingly disappointed with the fine views and width of open and green country quite close at hand.
We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special…
Abstract
We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special article, “Libraries in Birmingham,” by Mr. Walter Powell, Chief Librarian of Birmingham Public Libraries. He has endeavoured to combine in it the subject of Special Library collections, and libraries other than the Municipal Libraries in the City. Another article entitled “Some Memories of Birmingham” is by Mr. Richard W. Mould, Chief Librarian and Curator of Southwark Public Libraries and Cuming Museum. We understand that a very full programme has been arranged for the Conference, and we have already published such details as are now available in our July number.
Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).
SO much interest has been aroused by our Editorial in the July number of The Library World, that we have decided to open a discussion of the project by all librarians who may be…
Abstract
SO much interest has been aroused by our Editorial in the July number of The Library World, that we have decided to open a discussion of the project by all librarians who may be interested in the subject. As will be gathered from the communications printed below, the proposal which we made has been received with favour, namely :—That, in order to secure the full value of his magnificent endowed libraries for the public benefit, Mr. Andrew Carnegie should follow his action of creating numerous libraries to a logical conclusion by establishing a College of Librarianship, from which competent officers could be obtained to organise and manage his libraries. Indeed, it is the only practical solution of the difficulty which must presently arise, unless it is Mr. Carnegie's desire that local authorities be left as heretofore, to appoint as librarians any political or local pet who happens to be in the ascendency at the moment.