No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Silence of Women: A Research on Public Schools
Abstract
The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of gender on the silence behavior. In the scope of this research, a half-constructed survey was conducted over 50 female teachers in eight public elementary schools in a district. The reason for choosing teachers as sample group is that although the higher positions of teaching profession are occupied by men, teaching is a profession highly performed by women, and in the eye of the society, it is the most suitable profession for a woman. The analyses conducted have indicated that more than half of the teachers believe that behavior of silence is affected by gender. The difficulties caused by higher percentage of male administrators, the pressure of society and the prejudices against women are the mostly mentioned statements by teachers about the relationship between gender and behaviors.
Even though psychological capital has been identified as an important issue in the workplace, little research has focused on it through organizational support. Drawing on leadership theory and conservation of resources theory, this article examines the mediating role of organizational support in the relationship between leadership behavior and psychological capital in insurance companies in Jordan. The questionnaires were distributed randomly. Out of 350 questionnaires, 335 questionnaires were effective for analysis, after analyzing the data using the statistical program SmartPLS version 3.2.6. Based on the theories, a significant impact of organizational support on the relationship between leadership behavior and psychological capital of employees was found. Thus, the study recommended maintaining the interest of senior management in the insurance companies operating in Jordan to identify and educate the managers of these companies in choosing the appropriate leadership behavior in accordance with the company’s data and the circumstances surrounding it at the right time and place.
Osama
Even though psychological capital has been identified as an important issue in the
workplace, little research has focused on it through organizational support. Drawing
on leadership theory and conservation of resources theory, this article examines the
mediating role of organizational support in the relationship between leadership behavior and psychological capital in insurance companies in Jordan. The questionnaires
were distributed randomly. Out of 350 questionnaires, 335 questionnaires were effective for analysis, after analyzing the data using the statistical program SmartPLS version 3.2.6. Based on the theories, a significant impact of organizational support on the
relationship between leadership behavior and psychological capital of employees was
found. Thus, the study recommended maintaining the interest of senior management
in the insurance companies operating in Jordan to identify and educate the managers
of these companies in choosing the appropriate leadership behavior in accordance with
the company’s data and the circumstances surrounding it at the right time and place
Saglam, A. C., Yorulmaz, Y. I., Anasiz, B. T., Colak, I., & Dumlu, N. N. (2018). Prediction of Academic Staffs’ Organizational Silence through their Power Distance Perceptions. Üniversitepark Bülten, 7(2), 143-166.
This research aimed to determine the role of power distance perceptions of academic
staff working in faculties of education on their organizational silence. The population
of the study consisted of 8,978 academic staff working at education faculties of
universities in seven geographical regions of Turkey during the 2016-2017 academic
year. Simple random sampling technique was employed in the study. The data of the
study were collected through online questionnaires. The “Organizational Power
Distance Scale” and “Organizational Silence Scale” were used as the data collection
instruments in the research. Within the scope of this study, Organizational Silence
Scale were adapted to Turkish language. The analyses were conducted with 481
eligible returned questionnaires. According to the regression analysis results, the
dimensions of power distance perceptions of academic staff as a whole gave a medium
positive and significant relationship with acquiescent silence and defensive silence,
with a low positive and significant relationship with prosocial silence. Acceptance of
power, instrumental use of power, and acquiescence of power were seen to be
predictors of acquiescent silence and defensive silence, whereas only acceptance of
power was found to be a significant predictor of prosocial silence. Academic staffs’
justification of power had no significant effect on their organizational silence. The
power distance perceptions of the academic staff explained 24.4% of the total variance
of their acquiescent silence, 35% of their defensive silence, and 2.3% of their prosocial
silence.
The past three decades have been characterized by dramatic labour market developments including the mass entry of women to exclusively male domains. Professional work is particularly indicative of this trend where growth in female membership has fuelled optimistic predictions of shattered glass ceilings and gender equality. This article seeks to challenge these predictions and to explore the associated assumptions linked with the feminization of work in the UK. It does so by focusing on three professional groups: law, teaching and management which, despite some substantial differences, present a common and recurrent theme in the gendered processes of professional projects that marginalize, downgrade and exploit women and women's work. It is argued that the fluidity of such processes lead to a series of paradoxes as the professions are increasingly dependent on the contribution of their female members and yet numerical feminization, without truly including women, serves to undermine and even reverse professional projects.
This paper presents a review of the literature on gender and organizations through the twin concepts of ‘voice’ and ‘visibility’. In gender studies, as in other areas, the concepts have been used at different levels of abstraction to analyse inequality and exclusion. However, we argue that their potential richness has not been fully exploited and we accordingly produce a ‘framework’ which is based on ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ conceptualisations. These conform broadly to liberal feminist and post-structuralist interpretations respectively. With ‘voice’, we therefore distinguish between the ‘surface’ act of speaking/being heard as discussed within ‘women’s voice’ literature and, at a deeper level, the power of silence as discursive practices eliminate certain issues from arenas of speech and sound. Similarly, we can see visibility as a ‘surface’ state of exclusion and difference while, at a deeper level, conceptualisations can usefully explore the power of ‘invisibility’ and the battle for the (male) norm. Through the concepts of voice and visibility, and through exploring commonalities and tensions between and within the two conceptual levels, we throw new light on the increasingly diverse field of gender and organizational studies.
Although problems of reliability and validity have been explored thoroughly by experimenters and other quantitative researchers, their treatment by ethnographers has been sporadic and haphazard. This article analyzes these constructs as defined and addressed by ethnographers. Issues of reliability and validity in ethnographic design are compared to their counterparts in experimental design. Threats to the credibility of ethnographic research are summarized and categorized from field study methodology. Strategies intended to enhance credibility are incorporated throughout the investigative process: study design, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings. Common approaches to resolving various categories of contamination are illustrated from the current literature in educational ethnography.
This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations.
In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference.
Considerable attention has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations. Unfortunately, the gendered-organizations approach remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped, as there have as yet been few clear answers to the question central to the perspective: What does it really mean to say that an organization itself, or a policy, practice, or slot in the hierarchy, is “gendered”? Reviewing literature in the gendered-organizations tradition, the author discusses three of the most common ways the perspective has been applied and argues that all of these definitions pose potential problems for the project of meaningful social and organizational change. The article concludes with some suggestions about how a more useful conception of the gendered organization might be built.
ABSTRACT There is evidence from a variety of sources that employees often do not feel comfortable speaking to their bosses about organizational problems or issues that concern them. The purpose of this study was to shed light on the types of issues that employees are reluctant to raise, and identify why employees sometimes decide to remain silent rather than voice their concerns. We interviewed 40 employees and found that most had been in situations where they were concerned about an issue but did not raise it to a supervisor. Silence spanned a range of organizational issues, with several of our respondents indicating that they did not feel comfortable speaking to those above them about any issues or concerns. The most frequently mentioned reason for remaining silent was the fear of being viewed or labeled negatively, and as a consequence, damaging valued relationships. From our data, we develop a model of how the perceived consequences of voice contribute to silence, and a model of how the social and relational implications of speaking up can take away employees’ ability to have influence within an organizational setting.
ABSTRACT When will individuals speak up about organizational issues, and when will they remain silent? We suggest that organizational voice will be significantly influenced by individuals’ perceptions of the attitudes towards an issue within their workgroup. In particular, individuals will be more likely to speak up when they believe that their position is supported by others, and remain silent when they believe that it is not. We explain this using the ‘spiral of silence’ proposed by Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1985, 1991) and widely used in public opinion research, which explains how majority opinions become dominant over time and minority opinions weakened.
Spirals of silence within groups can restrict the open and honest discussion that is essential to organizational improvement. Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence emphasizes the horizontal pressures that the threat of isolation and corresponding fear of isolation exert to keep people from being open and honest about their opinions. We argue in this paper that the fear and threat of isolation are particularly powerful for members of invisible minorities such as gay and lesbian employees. We propose a second, vertical ‘spiral of silence’ may develop through processes at a more micro level within the workgroup and organization. This second spiral begins with the inability to fully express one's personal identity within the workgroup because of a negative climate of opinion towards a particular aspect of one's identity. This may be especially true for ‘invisible’ sources of diversity such as sexual orientation. Revealing a potentially disruptive identity might impair social cohesion: concealing it, however, can inhibit social exchange and task exchange and reduce self-efficacy, leading to organizational silence. However, an alternate virtuous spiral can result in which individuals will feel empowered to express organizational voice.