Search results
1 – 10 of 11The idea that worker co‐operatives offer the possibility of increasing productivity without sacrificing workers' safety and health is investigated. Ten worker co‐operatives and…
Abstract
The idea that worker co‐operatives offer the possibility of increasing productivity without sacrificing workers' safety and health is investigated. Ten worker co‐operatives and four conventional capitalist firms in the Pacific Northwest plywood industry are studied. Co‐operatives have worse productivity and safety records than conventional firms. Lower productivity is due to the unexpected behaviour that emerges in co‐operatives relying heavily on hired labour. Higher levels of accidents are due to different reporting practices arising from different social relations in production. Co‐operatives tend to over‐report their accidents whereas conventional firms under‐report accidents.
Details
Keywords
Sarah Moore, Leon Grunberg and Edward Greenberg
Aims to investigate managers’ reports of their job experiences, wellbeing, and health outcomes as a function of whether they had either a male or a female supervisor.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to investigate managers’ reports of their job experiences, wellbeing, and health outcomes as a function of whether they had either a male or a female supervisor.
Design/methodology/approach
Self‐report survey data were collected from male (n =328) and female (n =222) managers; these managers, in turn, had either a male or a female supervisor.
Findings
Consistent with the hypothesis, two (gender of participant) by two (gender of supervisor) analyses of covariance revealed that all managers with female supervisors reported significantly higher levels of mastery and social support at work, and lower levels of work to family conflict and depression. Women with female supervisors also reported significantly higher levels of job autonomy and work absences than did women with male supervisors or men with either male or female supervisors. In an effort to explain these outcomes, the mediational role of work‐based social support was explored as well as the gender ratio of the subordinate's work environment. Findings suggest that, for both men and women, there are some modest benefits associated with having a female supervisor and with working in a more female‐dominated environment.
Originality/value
The study is one of the few to focus on possible work‐related outcomes associated with the gender of the supervisor and the first to examine if there are any associated health and well‐being effects for their subordinates.
Details
Keywords
Sarah Moore, Patricia Sikora, Leon Grunberg and Edward Greenberg
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether empirical support exists for two commonly held beliefs about the work‐home interface: women, and particularly managerial women, are…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether empirical support exists for two commonly held beliefs about the work‐home interface: women, and particularly managerial women, are prone to “super‐mother” or “super‐manage” in an effort to balance both career and child‐rearing, and these demands diminish markedly when children reach school age.
Design/methodology/approach
Via a survey mailed to their home, 1,103 managerial and non‐managerial men and women completed measures of work‐home and home‐work conflict, work‐related stress and strain, and reported their number of work, domestic, and leisure hours per week.
Findings
Somewhat consistent with the popular beliefs, the authors found that managerial women reported working significantly more in the home; measures of conflict and strain, however, while showing some effect were not impacted to the degree that managerial women's combined number of work and home hours per week might suggest. The authors also found that measures of hours, conflict, and strain did not diminish abruptly when children entered school, due perhaps in part to manager's increased work hours and managerial women's renewed work emphasis when children entered school. Measures of hours, conflict, and strain did show some reduction for parents of teenaged children, although they were still significantly higher than those of nonparents.
Originality/value
Aside from being one of the few empirical papers to examine the impact of child rearing on managerial women, our data show how these demands are not confined to working parents of preschoolers.
Details
Keywords
This study examines the impact of bureaucratic structure on morale among hospital staff. Hypotheses are drawn from Hage's axiomatic theory of organizations, including the…
Abstract
This study examines the impact of bureaucratic structure on morale among hospital staff. Hypotheses are drawn from Hage's axiomatic theory of organizations, including the predicted negative impact on morale of formalization, centralization and stratification, and the positive impact on morale of task complexity. Contingency hypotheses involving structure and task complexity are also examined. Results indicate morale is either positively affected or unaffected by structure, and negatively affected by process. Some evidence of contingent effects are found. The findings are discussed within the broader context of Weber's theory of bureaucracy. This paper addresses the relationship between several structural features of bureaucracy and workers' morale in a hospital setting. It examines these relationships from broadly defined theoretical perspectives. In this connection, Weber's theory of bureaucracy is treated, as was the case in his original, as part of his general theory of rationalization in modern western society. The study considers the relationship between: 1) Formalization and morale, 2) Centralization and morale, 3) Stratification and morale, 4) Complexity and morale. These structural features of bureaucracy—formalization, centralization, stratification and complexity‐are treated as the means at the command of management for attaining organizational objectives. Worker morale is often referred to as the “level of feeling” about themselves among workers or about the work they perform (Revans, 1964; Veninga, 1982; Simendinger and Moore, 1985; Zucker, 1988). In effect, the term is used in stating that morale is high or low to suggest that something is right or wrong about the organization. Surprisingly, many of these studies do not explain why they are suggesting a particular state of morale, but only that the state of morale is crucial to the performance of the organization. In essence, morale is the level of confidence of the employees. It can vary from one department to the other due to specific or overall structural conditions of the organizations; without giving it routine consideration, performance will degenerate (Nelson, 1989).
Over the last two decades concern has increased in many countries over health and safety in the workplace. Research into these issues has attracted little attention from the…
Abstract
Over the last two decades concern has increased in many countries over health and safety in the workplace. Research into these issues has attracted little attention from the medical profession, unions, government or industry. Sociologists have only recently begun to study the relationship between work and health, but the results so far raise important questions. This special issue reflects the diversity of perspectives and the potential contribution that sociology can make.
Details
Keywords
Reinhard Schumacher and Scott Scheall
During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger…
Abstract
During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to construct a genealogy of therapeutic communities (TCs), with the espoused commitment to flattened hierarchies and democratic ideologies, the paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to construct a genealogy of therapeutic communities (TCs), with the espoused commitment to flattened hierarchies and democratic ideologies, the paper considers the lineage of the Frankfurt School of Social Research and its influence in setting a frame for TC ideology, with a particular focus on Herbert Marcuse and Eric Fromm. This genealogy provides further context to the contribution of two other key Frankfurters, Karl Mannheim and Michael Foulkes, who progressed therapeutic democracy in the UK and shaped the early days of the TC as a group-based treatment paradigm.
Design/methodology/approach
Discourse analysis and collective biography based on biographical details, texts and witness accounts.
Findings
The works of Marcuse and Fromm provide a hybrid psychosocial post-Freudian schemas that beckoned philosophic reconciliation between the state and the personal psyche culminating in new left psychoanalytic academic sectors. Eric Fromm's contribution is situated squarely in the clinical sphere in the USA dating from the 1930s after he fled from Germany and settled in the USA where he became a well-known lecturer at Chestnut Lodge during a time when it was developing its approach under the rubric of “milieu therapy”. Marcuse's influence on psychiatry is tracked through the development of ideas and writings emerging from his reading of Freud, finally intersecting with the emergence of TCs and anti-psychiatry when he delivered the keynote address at the Dialectics of Liberation Conference in London in 1967. Held at the height of the first generation of TCs, Joe Berke, R.D. Laing and colleagues considered Marcuse as someone to headline the Dialectics Conference because; “Marcuse was the Grandpapa of Flower Power” (Joe Berke said).
Originality/value
A rapprochement between milieu therapy in the USA, influenced by Fromm and Marcuse and the European tradition of TCs, influenced by Mannheim and Foulkes is demonstrated. The Frankfurt Institute of Social Research can be seen as an ideological corner that transcends Atlantic divides, and provides a sturdy and lasting intellectual cornerstone for the history of ideas in the field of social psychiatry.
Details
Keywords
Liliana María Gutiérrez Vargas, Joaquin Alegre and Susana Pasamar
This study analyses the relationship between the use of work–family benefits and job satisfaction (JS). Furthermore, it proposes that work-to-family conflict (WFC) and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study analyses the relationship between the use of work–family benefits and job satisfaction (JS). Furthermore, it proposes that work-to-family conflict (WFC) and work-to-family enrichment (WFE) play a mediating role in this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Data are gathered from 1,051 employees of Colombian organisations. Partial least squares path modelling is used.
Findings
The results show that the perception of WFE to a greater extent and the WFC perception, to a lesser extent, are significant mediators in the relationship between the use of benefits and JS.
Practical implications
This study justifies investments and initiatives on the adoption and promotion of work–family benefits. Moreover, it provides practical clues on how to boost JS: WFC and WFE are variables to be considered.
Originality/value
This study proposes a multiple mediation model to analyse the relationship between the actual use of work–family benefits and JS from a family perspective. It contributes to the literature in examining antecedents of JS, highlighting the role of WFE.
Details
Keywords
Alexandre Coussa, Philippe Gugler and Jonathan Reidy
The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive overview of green innovation (GI) in China, which is carried out by reviewing the evolution of GI from 2000 to 2019, and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive overview of green innovation (GI) in China, which is carried out by reviewing the evolution of GI from 2000 to 2019, and the main type of technology, actors and localizations. When appropriate, GI is compared to non-GI.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses patent data from the European Patent Office database (PATSTAT); these data are processed to map trends and identify the main contributors to GI and the location of such innovation. The findings are then discussed and complemented with academic literature.
Findings
Key findings reveal an increasing divergence between GI and nongreen innovation after the 2008 crisis. It is also observed that solar energy appears to be the main component of GI in China, with a shift from photovoltaic thermal energy to solar photovoltaic energy after 2008. Other areas, such as waste management, greenhouse gases capture and climate change adaptation, are less innovative. Companies play an essential role in the development of all types of innovation. In terms of location, green patents are mainly filed in China’s three main megacities. The study also highlights the significant role of the Chinese state, which led policies shaping the trajectories and forms of GI.
Originality/value
This study expands knowledge on GI in China, highlighting its main specificities and the role of key actors. It provides to the reader a comprehensive picture of China’s green policies and innovation realities. The results can therefore be used to improve the understanding of GI evolution in China and facilitate the formulation of new research questions.
Details