Elizabeth Flanagan, Janis Tondora, Annie Harper, Patricia Benedict, Julienne Giard, Billy Bromage, Bridgett Williamson, Paul Acker, Cheri Bragg, Virginia Adams and Michael Rowe
This paper aims to describe the Recovering Citizenship Learning Collaborative (RCLC), a training, consultation and implementation effort for 13 local mental health authorities and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe the Recovering Citizenship Learning Collaborative (RCLC), a training, consultation and implementation effort for 13 local mental health authorities and two state hospitals.
Design/methodology/approach
The learning collaborative used a Recovering Citizenship approach, which holds that recovery occurs in the context of people’s lives in their communities and society, that is, their citizenship. The RCLC was implemented by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) in the USA and the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health along with lived experience leaders. The RCLC supported system change through training DMHAS staff on concepts of recovery and citizenship and developing agency action plans, with the long-term goal of improving citizenship-oriented care at the agency-level and recovery and citizenship-related outcomes for people receiving services.
Findings
Lessons learned include the importance of assessing organizational readiness for change, addressing leadership investment and attention to systemic barrier, and offering tools to promote structure and accountability. Next steps are supporting agency action plans through technical assistance, state-wide educational offerings and a resource library.
Research limitations/implications
Systemic barriers are considerable and must be addressed before system transformation is possible.
Practical implications
The authors are hopeful that the RCLC has been part of overcoming those challenges and can be a tool for building foundations for improving citizen practices and people’s citizenship-related outcomes.
Social implications
Next steps are sustaining agency action plans, ongoing agency-specific technical assistance, ongoing state-wide educational offerings and a resource library.
Originality/value
The RCLC has provided tools and supports to build the foundation for improved citizenship practices and client outcomes at the multiagency system level.
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Donna Boone Parsons, Kathy Sanderson, Jean Helms Mills and Albert J. Mills
Joan Acker proposed her gendered theory of organization as a framework to analyze organizations and to understand how gender underlies organizational structure in such a way as to…
Abstract
Purpose
Joan Acker proposed her gendered theory of organization as a framework to analyze organizations and to understand how gender underlies organizational structure in such a way as to subordinate women. Much of the previous work that has utilized this framework has examined highly (male‐) gendered organizations. This archival case study aims to use Acker's framework to examine a purportedly female‐gendered organization – the 1970s feminist organization, Stewardesses for Women's Rights (SFWR).
Design/methodology/approach
Using these archived materials, this paper uses a critical hermeneutic approach across Acker's framework of gendered organization to make sense of the rise and fall of SFWR. The paper discusses lessons learned from this short‐lived organization.
Findings
The paper finds that societal pressure and organizing women's understanding of what is “real” and valued in an organization pushed them to create an organization that was as highly (male) gendered as the organizations from which they were escaping. Many in the organization never saw SFWR as a “real” organization because of the underlying organizational logic that was directing what the organization should be. Even if the organization did, on the surface, look different than other explicitly male‐gendered organizations, the same underlying organizational logic manifested itself in similar organizational structure.
Originality/value
This archival case study uses Acker's framework to examine a purportedly female‐gendered organization – the 1970s feminist organization SFWR and reveals lessons learned.
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Paul Blyton, Edmund Heery and Peter Turnbull
Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing…
Abstract
Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.
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This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.
Design/methodology/approach
An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.
Findings
Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.
Originality/value
Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.
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Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and…
Abstract
Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.
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Hector Viveros, Senia Kalfa and Paul J. Gollan
The purpose of this chapter is to examine voice as an empowerment practice in a manufacturing company. The case study follows a qualitative approach to analyse employee voice and…
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to examine voice as an empowerment practice in a manufacturing company. The case study follows a qualitative approach to analyse employee voice and types of empowerment from a structural perspective. Findings suggest a variety of voice arrangements to empowering employees such as voice surveys, meetings, e-suggestions, opinion boxes and informal means such as casual meetings and walkarounds. In addition, employee voice is linked to types of empowerment such as information sharing, upward problem solving, task autonomy and attitudinal shaping. Further research would benefit from an exploration of employees’ feelings regarding voice mechanisms to examine the psychological perspective of empowerment.
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Nceba Ndzwayiba and Melissa Steyn
The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the discourses of gender empowerment in South African organisations to determine the extent to which they reify or resist the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the discourses of gender empowerment in South African organisations to determine the extent to which they reify or resist the entrenched oppressive gender binaries.
Design/methodology/approach
Multiple case studies design and critical discourse analysis were employed to collect and analyse the data. Research entailed critical analysis of 36 published documents containing information on gender and gender empowerment. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with six transformation managers as change agents who are tasked with the responsibility of driving gender empowerment in the selected organisations.
Findings
The authors found that gender in studied organisations was insularly defined within the confines of the male–female gender binaries. Consequently, designed gender empowerment strategies and ensuing initiatives mainly focussed on promoting the inclusion of heterosexual women in and on protecting these women from heterosexual men. Thus, gender empowerment systematised heteropatriachy in organisational culture and processes while invisibilising and annihilating the possibility of existence of alternative genders outside these naturalised binaries. Transformation managers, as change agents, fell short of acknowledging, challenging and changing these entrenched ideologies of patriotic heterosexuality.
Research limitations/implications
The paper uses Galting’s (1960) and Paul Farmer’s (2009) concept of structural violence and Rich’s (1980) notion of “deadly elasticity of heterosexual assumptions”, to theorise these gender empowerment discourses as constituting and perpetuating violence against queer bodies and subjectivities.
Practical implications
The paper recommends that corporates need to broaden their conceptions of gender and to design and entrench gender discourses that promote gender justice and equality.
Social implications
This inquiry proves Joan Acker’s (2006) and Baker’s (2012) views that inequality and injustice are produced and entrenched in a reciprocal relationship between society and the workplace.
Originality/value
This paper focusses on constructions of gender in organisations. By doing so, it links the observed violence against women and gender binary non-conforming people in society with organisational discourses of gender that perpetuate such violence instead of challenging and changing it so that democracy can be realised for all.
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Tony Dundon, Adrian Wilkinson, Mick Marchington and Peter Ackers
Given the emergence of new legal initiatives for union recognition, declining levels of union membership and the growth of alternative forms of employee representation, this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the emergence of new legal initiatives for union recognition, declining levels of union membership and the growth of alternative forms of employee representation, this paper aims to examine the management of employee voice in non‐union firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts a case study approach in seven non‐union organisations from different sectors of economic activity in the UK. Several themes guided the design of the research instruments. Interviews were conducted with managerial respondents responsible for the design and implementation of employee voice at each case study, including non‐personnel practitioners.
Findings
Provides information on: the meaning of non‐union voice; the range of practices adopted; the potential outcomes; and apparent barriers to the implementation of non‐union voice arrangements.
Research limitations/implications
The research collected data from managerial respondents only, and this limitation is noted. Further research in this area is suggested, particularly from employee stakeholders involved in the processes of employee involvement.
Originality/value
The paper addresses a gap on employee voice in non‐union settings. It suggests that it is too simple to dismiss voice in non‐union organisations as ineffective and inconsequential.