Please find below details of our latest OnlineFirst preview articles, published online before print in Human Relations between 6 and 27 October 2014. We hope you enjoy reading them.
All Human Relations OnlineFirst articles can be viewed here: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent.
The impact of China's new Labour Contract Law on socioeconomic outcomes for migrant and urban workers
Zhiming Cheng, Russell Smyth, and Fei Guo
Published online before print in Human Relations October 27, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714543480
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/23/0018726714543480?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
This article examines the effect of having a labour contract on a range of employee outcomes (wages, hours worked, social insurance coverage and subjective well-being) for a sample of urban and migrant workers in China using data from the Rural-Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) project. Using different methods, we find that the Labour Contract Law has larger effects for urban workers than for migrant workers on receipt of social benefits, subjective well-being and wages, but not for hours worked.
The role of relational resources in the knowledge management capability and innovation of professional service firms
Na Fu
Published online before print in Human Relations, October 16, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714543479
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/16/0018726714543479.full.pdf+html
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
Adopting a relational perspective, this article investigates whether organizational relationship-building routines and relational coordination influence organizational knowledge management capability and ultimately innovation in professional service firms (PSFs). Using data collected from 120 accounting firms in Ireland, support is found for an inter-mediation model where both relational coordination and knowledge management capability intervene in the relationship between relational routines and innovation. Thus, a linkage model is supported whereby relational routines facilitate relational coordination, which enhances knowledge management capability, leading to innovation. This article provides evidence of the importance of relational routines and relational coordination in promoting a firm's knowledge management capability and in fostering innovation. Results highlight the value of relational resources in PSFs and suggest a novel and easy-to-implement approach for knowledge and innovation management.
Global ends, local means: Cross-national homogeneity in professional service firms
Crawford Spence, Claire Dambrin, Chris Carter, Javier Husillos, and Pablo Archel
Published online before print in Human Relations, October 16, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714541489
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/16/0018726714541489?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
An expanding institutionalist literature on professional service firms (PSFs) emphasizes that these are ridden by contradictions, paradoxes and conflicting logics. More specifically, literature looking at PSFs in a global context has highlighted how these contradictions prevent firms from becoming truly global in nature. What it takes to make partner in the Big 4 is at the core of such interrogations because partners belong to global firms yet are promoted at the national level. We undertake a cross-country comparison of partner promotion processes in Big 4 PSFs in Canada, France, Spain and the UK. Synthesizing existing institutionalist work with Bourdieusian theory, our results suggest that PSFs in different countries resemble each other very closely in terms of the requirements demanded of their partners. Although heterogeneity can be observed in the way in which different forms of capital are converted into each other, we show there is an overall homogeneity in that economic capital hurdles are the most significant, if not the sole, set of criteria upon which considerations of partnership admissions are based.
Smell organization: Bodies and corporeal porosity in office work
Kathleen Riach and Samantha Warren
Published online before print in Human Relations October 9, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714545387
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/09/0018726714545387?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
This article contributes to a sensory equilibrium in studies of workplace life through a qualitative study of everyday smells in UK offices. Drawing on Csordas' (2008) phenomenology of intercorporeality, we develop the concept of corporeal porosity as a way of articulating the negotiation of bodily integrity in organizational experience. We explore the corporeal porosity of workplace life through smell-orientated interview and diary-based methods and our findings highlight the interdependence of shared, personal, local and cultural elementals when experiencing smell in office-based work. Our analysis explores three elements of bodily integrity: 'cultural permeability'; 'locating smell in-between'; and 'sensual signifiers'. This suggests that while the senses are part of the ephemeral, affective 'glue' that floats between and around working bodies, they also foreground the constantly active character of relationality in organizational life. Corporeal porosity, therefore, captures the entanglement of embodied traces and fragments – corporeal seeping and secretion that has hitherto taken a backseat in organizational studies of the body at work.
Humanized management? Capital and labour in a time of labour shortage in South China
Susanne YP Choi and Yinni Peng
Published online before print in Human Relations October 9, 2014, DOI: 0018726714541162
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/09/0018726714541162?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
This article explores changing strategies of managerial control in a labour-intensive factory in South China at a time of labour shortage. It describes power relationships between capital and migrant labour under changing labour market conditions, migrant cohorts and global business environment, and analyses a new paternalist managerial strategy named 'humanized management' and workers' reactions to it. Although 'humanized management', as part of East Asian paternalism, advocates mutual respect, care and reciprocity between management and labour, it constructs workers as irresponsible, spoiled children needing to be led, moved, touched, taught and ruled. Its human focus notwithstanding, the new strategy did not result in substantial reforms of managerial despotism, nor did the factory institute any welfare programs for workers. Because of these discrepancies between the ideological avowals and practical application of 'humanized management', the new approach was disregarded by workers, who preferred to rely on individual measures such as threats to quit, or collective action, to win concessions from management. The study provides new insight into the changing relationship between capital and migrant workers in South China and informs the debate in industrial sociology and human resource management research about the efficacy of East Asian paternalist management in improving capital–labour relationships.
Liminality, space and the importance of 'transitory dwelling places' at work
Harriet Shortt
Published online before print in Human Relations October 6, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714536938
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/06/0018726714536938?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
This article draws attention to the spaces in-between and employees' lived experiences of liminal spaces at work. It illustrates how and why liminal spaces are used and made meaningful by workers, in contrast to the dominant spaces that surround them. Consequently, the article extends the concept of liminality and argues that when liminal spaces are constructed, by workers, as vital and meaningful to their everyday lives they cease to be liminal spaces and instead become 'transitory dwelling places'. In order to examine this shift from ambiguous space to meaningful place, the works of Casey (1993), amongst others, are used to make further sense of the space/materiality/work nexus in organizational life. This article is based on empirical data gathered from a nine-month study of hairdressers working in hair salons and explores the function and meaning of liminal spaces used by hairdressers in their everyday lives. The contribution of this article is three-fold; it argues that space is not just about dominant spaces; it extends the concept of liminality; and in connection with the latter, it demonstrates how transitory dwelling places offer fertile ground in which we might further develop our knowledge of the lived experiences of space at work.
Family interference and employee dissatisfaction: Do agreeable employees better cope with stress?
Smriti Anand, Prajya Vidyarthi, Satvir Singh, and Seungeui Ryu
Published online before print in Human Relations October 6, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714539714
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/01/0018726714539714?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
Extending work–family conflict research, we draw on role theory and conservation of resources theory to propose a moderated-mediation model of the relationship between family interference with work, job stress, agreeableness and employee attitudes. We examined the moderating effect of employee agreeableness on the relationship between family interference with work and job and life satisfaction mediated by job stress. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 756 employees from 15 industries. Results showed a negative association between family interference with work and job satisfaction and life satisfaction through perceived job stress. Further, this mediated relationship was moderated by employee agreeableness, such that job stress and decrease in job and life satisfaction were perceived only by employees low in agreeableness.
Surface acting in service: A two-context examination of customer power and politeness
Jennifer L Wessel and Dirk D Steiner
Published online before print October 6, 2014, doi: 10.1177/0018726714540731
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/01/0018726714540731?papetoc
(If you would like to cite this article before it is published in print, please use the DOI number listed above.)
Abstract
To date, the role of employee perceptions of customers has largely been overlooked in the emotional labor literature, particularly in the area of customer power. In two studies, we first examined the relationships between perceptions of the customer (i.e. power and politeness), surface acting and job-related outcomes in a typical service context (a department store; Study 1) and then explored the generalizability of these findings to a health care service context (a nursing home; Study 2), in which customer–employee relationships, the emotional climate and customer behavior norms differ substantially. Survey results indicate that for department store employees, perceiving customers as having higher power was associated with more reported surface acting and that certain negative effects of surface acting were exacerbated by interacting with impolite customers. These results were not replicated in our sample of nursing home employees. Our research suggests that customer-related variables have an impact on surface acting strategies, both in terms of usage and its relationship to job-related outcomes in certain service contexts. Divergent findings across our two studies suggest that different service contexts may require different assumptions regarding surface acting, customer perceptions and outcomes.
Best regards,
Claire Castle
Managing Editor, Human Relations
Email: c.castle@tavinstitute.org
Website: www.humanrelationsjournal.org
OnlineFirst forthcoming articles: http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/recent
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