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Please find below details of recent Human Relations content that may be of interest to you
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FEATURED ARTICLE AND VIDEO FOR JULY ‒ FREE ACCESS
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Enjoy free access until 31 July – just click on the URL below:
Who gets to lead the multinational team? An updated status characteristics perspective
Minna Paunova
Human Relations 70(7): 883–907
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716678469
Abstract
This article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams. Building on and extending status characteristics theory, the article proposes and tests a model that describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, and accounts for who gets to lead these teams. It is argued that an individual's language (i.e. a specific status characteristic) and nationality (i.e. a diffuse status characteristic) predict deference received from peers (i.e. leadership status). However, individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics by virtue of their core self-evaluations. A study of over 230 individuals from 46 nationalities working in 36 self-managing teams generally supports the expected main and moderation effects. Individual core self-evaluations enhance an otherwise weak effect of English proficiency, but compensate for low levels of national development. The article concludes with implications for practice, and linking micro- and macro-level theories of status and global inequality.
Keywords: core self-evaluation, English proficiency, language, leadership emergence, leadership perception, leadership status, multinational teams, national development, nationality, status characteristics
View accompanying video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsenHBQ7Huo
Minna Paunova discusses her article 'Who gets to lead the multinational team? An updated status characteristics perspective' published in Human Relations. The article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams and describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, accounting for who gets to lead these teams. An individual's language and nationality predict deference received from peers, but individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics through their core self-evaluations.
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SPECIAL ISSUE: Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational corporations
Guest edited by Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
Volume 71(6), June 2018
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FREE ACCESS: Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational corporations: An introduction
Stewart Clegg, Mike Geppert and Graham Hollinshead
Human Relations 71(6): 745‒765. First Published April 13, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718755880
Abstract
This article looks at core arguments in international business, organization studies and surrounding academic fields that focus on the study of politicization and political contests in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). Two evident streams of debate are identified. Equally evident is that these streams hardly connect. One stream is mainly interested in studying politicization from the outside, whereas the other is mainly interested in politicization from within. As a way of connecting both streams, we introduce the circuits of power framework. Next, we introduce the contributions of our Special Issue, followed by concluding comments which distinguish five emergent themes. First, we show how the application of the circuits of power framework sheds new light on the study of political contests of MNCs. Second, we highlight that the role of nation states has not lost its significance as, for example, political corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches would have us believe. Third, dominant ideologies play an important role in establishing and controlling circuits of power in and around MNCs. Fourth, it is vital to take labour issues into account in this field of study. Fifth, there is increasing evidence that asymmetric and hierarchical forms of organizing do not disappear in new MNC network forms.
Keywords: circuits of power, employment and labour relations, political contests within and around multinational corporations, politicization of multinational corporations, transnational social spaces
Political ideology and the discursive construction of the multinational hotel industry
Mairi Maclean, Charles Harvey, Roy Suddaby and Kevin O'Gorman
Human Relations 71(6): 766‒795. First Published September 8, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717718919
Abstract
How might political ideology help to shape an organizational field? We explore the discursive construction of the multinational hotel industry through analysis of one of its leading actors, Hilton International (HI), conceived by Conrad Hilton as a means of combatting communism by facilitating world peace through international trade and travel. While the politicized rhetoric employed at hotel openings reflected institutional diversity, it resonated in parallel with a strong anti-communist discourse. We show that through astute political sensemaking and sensegiving, macro-political discourse that is ideological and universalizing may be allied to micro-political practices in strategic action fields. Our study illuminates the processes of early-stage post-war globalization and its accompanying discourses, demonstrating that the foundation of a global industry may be ideologically inspired. Our primary contribution to theory is specific acknowledgement of the importance of political ideology as a particular 'social skill', helping to determine how international business has been 'won'.
Keywords: discourse, global hotel industry, macro-politics, micro-politics, power, rhetoric
Transnational power and translocal governance: The politics of corporate responsibility
Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
Human Relations 71(6): 796‒821 First Published September 19, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717726586
Abstract
In this article, I provide a critical analysis of the politics of corporate social responsibility. I argue that corporate social responsibility is a strategy that enables multinational corporations to exercise power in the global political economy. Using the global extractive industries as a context, I focus on conflicts between communities, the state and multinational corporations that arise owing to the negative social and environmental impacts of mining and extraction. In particular, I analyse the role of political corporate social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives in managing conflicts and argue that these initiatives cannot take into account the needs of vulnerable stakeholders. Power asymmetries between key actors in the political economy can diminish the welfare of communities impacted by extraction. Several governance challenges arise as a result of these power asymmetries and I develop a translocal governance framework from the perspective of vulnerable stakeholders that can enable a more progressive approach to societal governance of multinational corporations.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, governance, marginalized stakeholders, multinational corporations, power
Competition for control over the labour process as a driver of relocation of activities to a shared services centre
Petr Mezihorak
Human Relations 71(6): 822‒844. First Published September 18, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717727047
Abstract
New approaches to studying multinational corporations sensitive to issues of power and politics often neglect the way power and politics in corporations shape workplaces, specifically labour processes and modes of their control. The article presents a case study of a firm's relocation of activities to a shared services centre. The relationships among the shared services centre, its client departments and the headquarters involve an ongoing combination of cooperation and competition, resulting in increased managerial control over labour processes and changes in corporate governance. The shared services centre established as a support unit aims to strengthen its position in the organizational structure by gaining control over labour processes and their modification. Competition with client departments for control over labour processes leads to the introduction of controlling mechanisms, norms and standards both in the centre and in client departments. These rules, on the one hand, limit uncertainty; on the other hand, they drive the fragmentation of labour processes, rendering them more codifiable and less complex. These effects make labour processes easier to control and, eventually, to relocate, which is advantageous for the headquarters. Changes in labour processes thus shape the relationships within the corporation and the space for power struggles and politics.
Keywords: competition, control, global value chain, labour, labour process, multinational corporation, outsourcing, power, shared services, work
Dynamisms of financialization: Circuits of power in globalized production networks
Isabel Pedraza-Acosta and Jan Mouritsen
Human Relations 71(6): 845‒866. First Published April 17, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717751612
Abstract
This article analyses the dominant ideological mode of rationality of financialization, its operationalization via accounting devices and deployments in political intra- and inter-organizational processes, and its dynamisms in global production networks. It asks how are political processes informed and conditioned by calculative devices that mediate financialization processes? Drawing on a study of a French multinational corporation whose accounting devices – one concerning performance that requires suppliers to be 'poor' and another concerning risk that requires suppliers to be 'rich' – the article focuses on the dynamic of circuits of power. Accounting devices provide one-sided incentives by categorizing suppliers as costs, silencing the industrial rationality of the network where suppliers are the capabilities and skills needed by the multinational corporation. Such tensions put the network at risk, as when the suppliers went bankrupt, the multinational corporation was devoid of its industrial competencies. Financialization is ambiguous. Its devices are not inherently facilitative of systemic powers but reflect an ideological mode of rationality and political processes that produce overflows. The associated circuits of power show that systemic power is never eternal but dynamic. Circuits of power develop ambiguous political processes that push disruptive dynamisms of financialization processes in global production networks. Financialization produces costly tensions.
Keywords: accounting, calculative devices, dominant ideological modes of rationality, financialization, global production network, multinational corporations, MNC, political processes, risk
The politics of cultural capital: Social hierarchy and organizational architecture in the multinational corporation
Orly Levy and B Sebastian Reiche
Human Relations 71(6): 867‒894. First Published October 9, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717729208
Abstract
How is social hierarchy in multinational corporations (MNCs) culturally produced, contested and reproduced? Although the international business literature has acknowledged the importance of culture, it gives little consideration to its role in constructing social hierarchies and symbolic boundaries between individuals and groups within MNCs. We take a Bourdieusian approach to understanding the role of cultural capital in structuring the social hierarchy in the MNC under two contrasting organizational architectures: hierarchical and network architecture. We argue that cultural capital serves as an instrument of power and status within the MNC, influencing access to valuable resources such as jobs, rewards and opportunities. Our framework further suggests that the transition from hierarchical towards network architecture sets in motion a high-stakes political struggle between headquarters and subsidiary actors over the relative value of their cultural capital in a bid to preserve or gain dominance and to determine the 'rules of the game' that order the social hierarchy in the MNC. We elaborate on this political struggle by theorizing about the relative dominance of cultural versus social capital, the content and relative value of firm-specific and cosmopolitan cultural capital, and the convertibility of cultural capital into other forms of capital under hierarchical and network architectures.
Keywords: Bourdieu, cultural capital MNC, multinational corporation, organizational architecture, social capital, social hierarchy
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SPECIAL ISSUE: Global supply chains and social relations at work
Guest edited by Juliane Reinecke, Jimmy Donaghey, Adrian Wilkinson and Geoffrey Wood
Volume 71 (4), April 2018
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FREE ACCESS: Global supply chains and social relations at work: Brokering across boundaries
Juliane Reinecke, Jimmy Donaghey, Adrian Wilkinson and Geoffrey Wood
Human Relations 71(4): 459–480 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718756497
Abstract
Global supply chains are not just instruments for the exchange of economic goods and flow of capital across borders. They also connect people in unprecedented ways across social and cultural boundaries and have created new, interrelated webs of social relationships that are socially embedded. However, most of the existing theories of work are mainly based at the level of the corporation, not on the network of relations that interlink them, and how this may impact on work and employment relations. We argue that this web of relations should not just be seen in economic, but also social terms, and that the former are embedded and enabled by the latter. This article argues for the value of focusing on the role of brokers and boundary workers in mediating social relations across global supply chains. It develops four approaches that lie on a spectrum from structural perspectives focused on brokers who link otherwise unconnected actors to more constructivist ones focused on boundary workers performing translation work between domains.
Keywords: boundary work, global governance, global production networks, GSC, global value chains, socio-economics
Beyond brokering: Sourcing agents, boundary work and working conditions in global supply chains
Vivek Soundararajan, Zaheer Khan and Shlomo Yedidia Tarba
Human Relations 71(4): 481–509 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716684200
Abstract
The role that sourcing agents, autonomous peripheral actors located in developing economies, play in the governance of working conditions in global supply chains has been greatly underexplored in the literature. The present article reports on an in-depth qualitative study of garment supply chains that examined the boundary work of Indian sourcing agents aimed at dismantling or bridging the boundaries that affect the interaction between western buyers and local suppliers, in order to facilitate development and implementation of meaningful working conditions or social relations at work. We identify four types of boundary work that sourcing agents used to manage combinations of accommodative and non-accommodative buyers and suppliers in order to work through boundaries created by buyers' liability of foreignness: reinforcing, flexing (type 1 and 2) and restoring. We also found four essential conditions for a sourcing agent to become an effective boundary spanner in practice: acquiring knowledge about the relevant fields and actors, gaining legitimacy in the relevant fields and in the opinion of the parties involved, effectively translating the expectations of each party to the other, and benefiting from satisfying incentives. We contribute to the literature on governance for working conditions in global supply chains, boundary theory and liability of foreignness.
Keywords: boundary spanners, garment industry, India, liability of foreignness, social relations
Global supply chains, institutional constraints and firm level adaptations:
A comparative study of Chinese service outsourcing firms
Jingqi Zhu and Glenn Morgan
Human Relations 71(4): 510–535 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717713830
Abstract
The focus on inter-firm governance relations within global supply chains analysis has left social relations at workplaces as a 'black box' and relatively underdiscussed. Through an in-depth, comparative study of two Chinese IT service providers for Japanese clients, this article explores how the work and employment relations in the supplier firm are shaped by the institutional contexts of both the supplier firm and the lead firm as well as by the nature of the global supply chain in which they are located. The article shows how the intersection of global supply chains and local institutional environments creates potential gaps between what is required by the lead firms and what is feasible within the supplier firms. Therefore, managers in the supplier firm have to negotiate ways of managing these expectations in the light of their own institutional constraints and possibilities. We identify three forms of adaptation made by the suppliers that we describe as wholesale adaptation, ceremonial adaptation and minimal adaptation to lead firms' expectations. We argue that these interactions and forms of adaptation can be extended and explored more generally in global supply chains and provide the basis for a fruitful integration of institutional approaches with global supply chain analysis.
Keywords: comparative case study, global supply chain, institutional analysis, service outsourcing, strategic choice, workplace relations
From horizontal to vertical labour governance:
The International Labour Organization (ILO) and decent work in global supply chains
Huw Thomas and Peter Turnbull
Human Relations 71(4): 536–559 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717719994
Abstract
The role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the governance of global supply chains is typically neglected or simply dismissed as ineffective. This is understandable as global supply chains have undermined the traditional nation state (horizontal) paradigm of global labour governance, most notably the international Conventions agreed by the tripartite constituents (governments, employers and workers' representatives) of the ILO. But this simply poses the question of whether, and if so how, the ILO can reframe the system of global labour governance to include the (vertical) global supply chains that all too often fail to deliver 'decent work for all'. Based on an extended ethnographic study, we demonstrate how policy entrepreneurs (international civil servants) within the ILO can play a pivotal role in not only reframing the discourse in a way that resonates with the 'lived experiences' of constituents but also 'orchestrate' the social partners in order to secure majority support for a process that might ultimately lead to a new standard (Convention) for decent work in global supply chains. A new approach to employment relationships in global supply chains is 'in the making', with the potential to improve working conditions and rights at work for millions across the globe.
Keywords: decent work, discursive institutionalism, global labour governance, global supply chains, international labour standards, strategic framing
The role of intermediaries in governance of global production networks:
Restructuring work relations in Pakistan's apparel industry
Kamal Munir, Muhammad Ayaz, David L Levy and Hugh Willmott
Human Relations 71(4): 560–583 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717722395
Abstract
This article locates the reorganization of work relations in the apparel sector in Pakistan, after the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quota regime, within the context of a global production network (GPN). We examine the role of a network of corporate, state, multilateral and civil society actors who serve as intermediaries in GPN governance. These intermediaries transmit and translate competitive pressures and invoke varied, sometimes contradictory, imaginaries in their efforts to realign and stabilize the GPN. We analyse the post-MFA restructuring of Pakistan's apparel sector, which dramatically increased price competition and precipitated a contested adjustment process among Pakistani and global actors with divergent priorities and resources. These intermediaries converged on a 'solution' that combined and enacted imaginaries of modernization, competitiveness, professional management and female empowerment, while also emphasizing low costs and female docility. We highlight the intersection of economic, political and cultural dynamics of GPNs, and reveal the gendered dimensions of GPN restructuring. We theorize the role of these actors as a transnational managerial elite in GPN governance, who led a restructuring process that preserved the hegemonic stability of the GPN and protected the interests of western branded apparel companies and consumers, but did not necessarily serve the interests of workers.
Keywords: cultural political economy, development, employment, gender in organizations, global governance, Gramsci
Mind the gap: Grass roots 'brokering' to improve labour standards in global supply chains
Sarah J Kaine and Emmanuel Josserand
Human Relations 71(4): 584‒609 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726717727046
Abstract
While governance and regulation are a first step in addressing worsening working conditions in global supply chains, improving implementation is also key to reversing this trend. In this article, after examining the nature of the existing governance and implementation gaps in labour standards in global supply chains, we explore how Viet Labor, an emerging grass-roots organization, has developed practices to help close them. This involves playing brokering roles between different workers and between workers and existing governance mechanisms. We identify an initial typology of six such roles: educating, organizing, supporting, collective action, whistle-blowing and documenting. This marks a significant shift in the way action to improve labour standards along the supply chain is analysed. Our case explores how predominantly top-down approaches can be supplemented by bottom-up ones centred on workers' agency.
Keywords: governance, implementation gap, labour standards, migrant labour, supply chains
You might also be interested in...
How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?
Markus Helfen, Elke Schüßler and Jörg Sydow
Human Relations. First Published March 26, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718757060
Abstract
Ensuring social responsibility is a continued challenge in value creation processes that are globally dispersed among multiple organizations. We use the literature on interorganizational network management to shed new light on the question of how employment relations can be managed more responsibly in global value networks (GVNs). In contrast to the structure-oriented global value chain perspective, a network management perspective highlights the practices by which employment relations can be addressed in the context of plural forms of network governance. Using examples of GVNs in the automotive and garment industries, we illustrate how the network management practices of selecting, allocating, regulating and evaluating can enable lead firms and suppliers to effectively deal with social responsibility challenges on the level of whole networks. We also discuss how network management practices can handle field-level and firm-level constraints for the management of multi-employer relations in GVNs.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, labour standards, multi-employer relations, network governance, network management
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2017 IMPACT FACTORS
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2-year impact factor: 3.043
4 out of 98 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary; 55 out of 209 in Management
5-year impact factor: 4.349
1 out of 98 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary; 49 out of 209 in Management
Source: Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product
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JULY 2018 ISSUE
A new issue of Human Relations is available online:
http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/huma/71/7
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ONLINE FIRST PREVIEW ARTICLES
You can access all our OnlineFirst articles here:
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays:
- Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements. Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria.
- Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the journal's scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews, and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief.
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
Human Relations is included in the FT50 list of journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the FT Research rank, included in the Global MBA, EMBA and Online MBA rankings.
It is an A* journal – the highest category of quality – in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABCD) Journal Quality List 2013.
It is also ranked 4 in the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide 2015.
Read the journal's mission statement.
Best wishes,
Claire Castle, Managing Editor, Human Relations, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org Telephone: +44 (0)7432740583 Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
Human Relations is one of 50 Journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the FT Research rank, included in the Global MBA, EMBA and Online MBA rankings.
2-year impact factor: 3.043 Ranked: 4/98 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 55/209 in Management
5-year impact factor: 4.349 Ranked: 1/98 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 49/209 in Management
Source: Journal Citation Reports®, 2018 release, a Clarivate Analytics product