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Prospettive critiche in psicologia del lavoro e delle organizzazioni: temi, questioni e direzioni future
Abstract
In psicologia del lavoro e delle organizzazioni (Work, Organization, and Personnel Psychology, WOP), si assiste ad un sempre maggior proliferare di contributi scientifici rientranti nella cosiddetta formula delle prospettive critiche. In mancanza di una lettura dettagliata di questo orientamento in Italia, l’intervento intende proporne un quadro e provare ad esplicitare cosa rappresentino oggi queste prospettive critiche in WOP. Partendo con una disambiguazione della formula prospettive critiche, l’articolo traccia le tendenze tematico-concettuali e le implicazioni teorico-metodologiche dell’orientamento. L’articolo si conclude con un breve commento al contributo delle prospettive critiche per la WOP in Italia.
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Sustainable career development is a great priority for organizations, governments and individuals alike. Facing the grand challenges of our global world, careers and their development have to be re-designed to incorporate more sustainable ways of living and working. However, most work around sustainable careers is centered around neoliberal modes of organizing, amplifying individual responsibility of individuals for their careers, while treating careers merely as an instrumental ‘tool’ towards organizational performance and viability. Hence, sustainable careers are a hypernormalized ideology. In the current paper, a psychology of sustainable career development is introduced that deviates from earlier, more conservative models, of career development towards a more radical interpretation and recognition of truly sustainable ways of organizing and developing careers. Anchored in an interpretation of sustainable careers as promoting dignity and capabilities of people, this conceptual paper formulates a new psychology of the sustainable career, towards integration rather than individualization.
In this editorial, we tell the story of how the Special Issue on Critical Perspectives in Work and Organizational Psychology (CWOP) came about, how it fits within the broader agenda of building a critical community within Work and Organizational Psychology, and how future research and thought may be inspired by the collection of critical papers related to work and organizational psychology. We introduce the term “criticalizing” as a key concept in how the Special Issue was developed by the editorial team and the authors. Criticalizing moves beyond fixed static notions of “critical” scholarship toward a process of engaging in more fluid, expansive, and creative perspectives on the scholarship within work and organizational psychology. We illustrate how the set of papers within the Special Issue engages in such criticalizing of the field and offer new ways of thinking about and researching relevant topics in work and organizational psychology.
To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Technology, Megatrends and Work. Of all the profound changes in business, technology is perhaps the most ubiquitous. There is not a facet of our lives unaffected by internet technologies and artificial intelligence. The Journal of Business Ethics established a dedicated section that focuses on Technology and Business Ethics, yet issues related to this phenomenon run right through all the sections. Kirsten Martin, editor of the Technology and Business Ethics section, joins our interim social media editor, Hannah Trittin-UIbrich, to advance a human-centric approach to the development and application of digital technologies that places Business Ethics at centre of the analysis. For Shuili Du, technology is the defining condition for a new era of Corporate Social Responsibility—CSR 3.0—which she defines as “a company’s socially responsible strategies and practices that deal with key ethical and socio-technical issues associated with AI and related technologies on the one hand and leverage the power of AI and related technologies to tackle social and environmental problems on the other hand.” It is not just technologies that are a determining feature of our lives but technology companies, an argument made by Glen Whelan as he examines Big Business and the need for a Big Business Ethics as we try to understand the impact of Big Tech on our post-work world. Indeed, as noted by Ernesto Noronha and Premilla D’Cruz, megatrends in addition to advancement in technologies, namely globalization, the greening of economies, and changes in demographics and migration, are shaping the future for workers in ways previously unimaginable. Contributing to this important debate, Praveen Parboteeah considers the influence of another longstanding but oft overlooked megatrend, the role of religion in the workplace. Given the enormity of the influence of technology and other megatrends in our world, it is not surprising that this essay introduces ground-breaking ideas that speak to the future of business ethics research.
Job insecurity is a widespread workplace stressor that has been extensively investigated using quantitative approaches. Using a critical organizational psychology framework, we conducted a meta‐synthesis of 20 qualitative studies to investigate the experience of job insecurity among vulnerable employee groups (i.e., women and immigrants). The qualitative meta‐synthesis results suggest that there are meaningful differences. Specifically, whereas women were more concerned with and exposed to deteriorating working conditions, men experienced job insecurity as a threat to their identity. Among immigrants, the experience of job insecurity is viewed as largely intersecting with the legal system, impacting their ability to remain in country, and making them feel powerless. Thematic evidence also emerged regarding individual actions that participants use to attain security in contrast to corporate strategies that enhance job insecurity. We contribute to the critical organizational psychology literature by discussing how these results test common academic theories and neoliberal assumptions pervasive within the job insecurity literature: we highlight how organizations manufacture job insecurity, question the existence of harmonious social exchanges, discuss the use of job insecurity as a form of worker control, consider the role of the legal context in aiding worker exploitation, and argue for an intersectional view of job insecurity.
Work and organizational psychology (WOP) research has to date mostly focused on people privileged to have the choice between several attractive job options and less on people who are restricted in their job choice (e.g., due to their qualification or personal contingencies) and have to choose from fewer and often less‐than‐optimal jobs. Often, the jobs available to the latter are characterized by precarious employment and hazardous working conditions which can put them in the difficult situation of having to choose between a health‐threatening job and possible unemployment. Building on interdisciplinary literature, we propose the employment‐health dilemma (E‐H dilemma) as a framework for analyzing this intrapersonal conflict of having to choose between employment (incurring health threats) and health (incurring economic threats) and discussing potential antecedents and consequences of the E‐H dilemma at the societal, organizational, and individual level. We outline the implications of the E‐H dilemma and make a case for examining the full spectrum of job choice situations in WOP research. In doing so, we demonstrate what WOP can gain by embracing a more inclusive and multidisciplinary approach: Uncovering processes in their entirety (e.g., job choice decisions of all people) and strengthening the role and legitimacy of WOP in society.
In this paper, we argue that psychological capital is unequally distributed among people from different social classes, ethnic backgrounds and genders. Confronting the limitations of the current, individualistic perspective on psychological capital, we offer a re‐conceptualization of the construct from a critical, interdisciplinary perspective, placing it at the intersection of sociology and psychology. We discuss the various mechanisms through which social inequalities may cause differential access to psychological capital for members of low‐ and high‐status social groups and show how this differential access to psychological capital results in and exacerbates social inequalities. By doing this, we postulate a recursive theory on psychological capital that both recognizes the formative effect of socio‐organizational structures on one’s psychology and vice versa.
This paper situates the burgeoning movement of critical work and organizational psychology (CWOP) within a broader and ongoing effort to rehabilitate work in a broken society. Drawing upon Loren Baritz’s seminal critique of the field, The Servants of Power, the argument is made that while CWOP scholars clearly militate against pandering to the “power elite,” they nonetheless risk becoming servants of work, defined as the propensity to perpetuate work’s outsized psychological significance. To support such an argument, a core yet neglected theme in Baritz’s book is revisited, that of the role of the critic, to demonstrate how CWOP scholars might navigate their own entanglements with servitude while at the same time contest work’s symbolic power. The paper also addresses the charge of intellectual elitism that can result from holding such a position of “critical distance” not just from mainstream scholarship, but from work itself. Implications for the future of CWOP are discussed.
This paper argues that critical perspectives have constituted a marginal yet continued presence in work and organizational (W-O) psychology and calls for a reflexive taking stock of these perspectives to ground a critical research agenda. We argue that critical W-O psychology has been positioned between a psychology literature with limited development of critical perspectives, and an emergent critical management literature that has allowed their selective development. This in-between position has allowed critical W-O psychology to persist, albeit in a fragmented form, while limiting its potential for theoretical and applied impact. We use this diagnosis to reflect on how critical perspectives can best develop from within W-O psychology. We end with a call for developing a critical movement unique to the current historical moment, drawing upon without repeating the experiences of its home disciplines, in a future oriented and reflexive psychology research agenda.
Informal and precarious work remains an enduring reality across the Global South and is growing fast in the North. A recognition that this form of work is the norm globally rather than the exception has ignited debates around analytical frames, activist strategies and development interventions. Engaging with Southern realities, as this special issue aims to do, helps contribute to a better understanding of this rising form of work globally while also providing insights into workers' resistance and development policy limitations. Through detailed case studies from across the Global South, this special issue argues that informal and precarious work needs to be studied as embedded in concrete, historical, political and social contexts. It highlights the heterogeneity and complexity of intersecting social and material relations that underpin informal and precarious work which has crucial implications for class dynamics and political agency of labour.
• Purpose: Scholarly and general interest in sustainable careers is flourishing. Sustainable careers are focused on the long-term opportunities and experiences of workers across dynamic employment situations, and are characterized by flexibility, meaning, and individual agency. The current paper analyzes and challenges the underlying ideological assumptions of how sustainable careers are conceptualized and advocates the inclusion of the ecological meaning of sustainability and the notion of dignity into the sustainable careers concept.
• Design/methodology/approach: Using Slavoj Žižek’s (1989, 2001) conceptualization of ideology as fantasy-construction, we explore how the use of sustainable careers is influenced by fantasies about the contemporary workplace and the role of the individual in the workplace. This is a conceptual method.
• Findings: We argue that the concept of sustainable careers is grounded in the neoliberal fantasy of the individual. The paper concludes by presenting an alternative concept of sustainable careers grounded in a collective dignity-perspective on sustainability, which offers an alternative theoretical understanding of sustainable careers in the contemporary workplace, sharpening its contours and usefulness in theorizing careers.
• Originality: This paper is the first to systematically analyze the use and conceptualization of sustainable careers in the literature and to expose the ideological underpinnings of the concept. Propositions are developed to be explored by future research.
In this essay, I argue that work and organizational psychology needs to move beyond measuring performance and well-being as the only outcomes relevant to our research. I outline the main difficulties with a narrow focus on performance and well-being, and argue that we need to broaden our scope of outcomes to stay relevant in a rapidly changing society. One example includes a dignity-paradigm, which postulates that there may be other outcomes in work and organizational psychology research which are relevant for both researchers, practitioners and society.
The title of this focal article (unashamedly paraphrased from Edwin Starr’s classic 1970 antiwar song) is only partly intended to be tongue in cheek; work is a strange thing with a very checkered history. For the most part, it is something we take for granted. Most able-bodied adults work. Working hard is taken as a sign of being an upstanding citizen. Right wing politicians even insist that “government handouts” only be made available in exchange for participation in “workfare” programs. Moreover, work is not just something we do; over the last 100 years or so, it has become a defining, constitutive feature of who we are as human beings. Our very sense of identity and well-being is tied up with our relationship to work. It is no accident, after all, that the first question we ask a stranger is, “What do you do?” (and we are not asking about their hobbies); we see this question as a way of taking the measure of that person.
In this article, we present some preliminary thoughts regarding the development of a distinctively critical perspective on research and practice of workplace flexibility. We thus aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of some of the observed tensions, contradictions, and antagonisms, and, described as the “Janus-faced character”, the “double-edged sword” or the “paradox” of workplace flexibility. At the core of our perspective is a conceptualization of workplace flexibility as an inherently dialectical societal phenomenon, which simultaneously reflects and promises humanistic ideals regarding individual autonomy, self-actualization and self-determination, but at the same time, is also outgrowth and embodiment of neoliberal ideology, serving particular interest of employers and capital owners to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of human resource utilization. First, we will address the humanistic potential of workplace flexibility in terms of employee-oriented individual flexibility – in contrast to employer-oriented organizational flexibility. Second, we will argue that workplace flexibility, its manifestation in organizational and individual practices, as well as the entirety of academic and public discourses on the topic, are deeply contaminated by neoliberal ideology. Finally, we will integrate these two perspectives into a dialectical conceptualization of workplace flexibility and discuss some implications, usefulness, and prospects of the flexibility concept for the project of a radically humanistic and emancipatory work and organizational psychology.
In this commentary on Mumby (2019, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice), I suggest that “critical organizational scholars” should be more critical with regard to the underlying reasons for and outcomes of their self-categorization as “critical scholars,” and their distinction from colleagues in the field who are (implicitly) assumed to be “uncritical” and often labeled “mainstream.” In addition, I think that “critical organizational scholars” should move beyond theoretical analysis only and explicitly lay out their alternative ideas for organizing (paid) work in organizations and society. Morever, they should critically reflect on the validity of their assumptions (e.g., levels of analysis) and support their claims with empirical evidence based on rigorous research methods. Finally, I suggest that “critical organizational scholars” reconsider the use of sweeping generalizations and dramatization in their writing to facilitate good scientific discourse on work and organizations.
This paper outlines some of the approaches that are constructing a critical psychology of work, in, for and from Latin America. These approaches reveal that there is not just one body of knowledge in the region; on the contrary, there are multiple conceptual frameworks and tools used to consider the local-global world of work. This wide range of possibilities indicates the variety of appropriations, and hybridisations of knowledge which are available in Latin America for researching, teaching and intervention in critical psychology of work. The non-exhaustive examination of some of the main trends in academic production serves as an invitation for those interested in furthering these perspectives. The studies that were examined can be grouped in three categories. The first group of studies, in varied ways, points to geopolitics of knowledge about psychological objects. The second group considers the problems of importation of psycho-technology to be applied in working conditions for which they were not specifically designed, and the last group brings the category "work" to the centre of analysis.
Arguing that psychology and business ethics are best brought together through a multi-level, broad-based agenda, this essay articulates a vision of psychology and business ethics to frame a future research agenda. The essay draws upon work published in JBE, but also identifies gaps where published research is needed, to build upon psychological conceptions of business ethics. Psychological concepts, notably, are not restricted to phenomena “in the head”, but are discussed at the intra-psychic, relational, and contextual levels of analysis. On the basis of this presentation, I discuss future directions for development in psychology and business ethics, including but not limited to studies of personality, emotion, decision making, motivation, and the biological bases of psychology and business ethics. An inclusive approach to these and related areas, it is argued, will both bring about depth of understanding on the psychological bases of business ethics, and allow dialogue across disciplinary areas within JBE.
In this response to Bal and Doci's (2018) commentary on neoliberal ideology in work and organizational psychology, we argue that neoliberalism can only be a distal exogenous influence on psychological processes. It remains unclear which mechanisms might translate this ideology into work and organizational psychology science and practice. Researchers need to move beyond black box explanations and provide clarity about the nature of concepts, how they manifest, and the mechanisms that translate ideology into psychological phenomena.
This paper explores the role of neoliberal ideology in workplace practices and in work and organizational psychology (WOP) research. It analyses how neoliberal ideology manifests in these two domains by using a prominent framework from the field of political theory to understand ideology through three different logics: political, social and fantasmatic logics. We explore the main neoliberal assumptions underlying existing practices in the workplace as well as in WOP research, how individuals are gripped by such practices, and how the status quo is maintained. The paper analyses how individuals in the contemporary workplace are henceforth influenced by neoliberalism, and how this is reflected in the practices and dominant paradigms within WOP. In particular, we focus on three ways neoliberalism affects workplaces and individual experiences of the workplace: through instrumentality, individualism and competition. The paper finishes with practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners alike on how to devote more attention to the, often implicit, role of neoliberal ideology in their work and research. The discussion elaborates on how alternative paradigms in the workplace can be developed which address the downsides of neoliberalism.
Over the past decade, critical scholarship in the field of management has experienced a veritable explosion. In this paper, I introduce the critical scholarly tradition to scholars and practitioners of I-O psychology in the hopes of stimulating dialogue. I begin with an account of the critical tradition’s intellectual history in relation to two better-known traditions in the social sciences. I then go on to demonstrate how a critical vantage cultivated from the critical scholarly tradition can offer 1) new approaches to theory-building, 2) new methodologies for research, and 3) new frameworks for practice. The result is a preliminary outline for a new sub-field of study called “critical I-O psychology.”
This editorial offers new ways to ethically practice, evaluate, and use quantitative research (QR). Our central claim is that ready-made formulas for QR, including ‘best practices’ and common notions of ‘validity’ or ‘objectivity,’ are often divorced from the ethical and practical implications of doing, evaluating, and using QR for specific purposes. To focus on these implications, we critique common theoretical foundations for QR and then recommend approaches to QR that are ‘built for purpose,’ by which we mean designed to ethically address specific problems or situations on terms that are contextually relevant. For this, we propose a new tool for evaluating the quality of QR, which we call ‘relational validity.’ Studies, including their methods and results, are relationally valid when they ethically connect researchers’ purposes with the way that QR is oriented and the ways that it is done—including the concepts and units of analysis invoked, as well as what its ‘methods’ imply more generally. This new way of doing QR can provide the liberty required to address serious worldly problems on terms that are both practical and ethically informed in relation to the problems themselves rather than the confines of existing QR logics and practices.
Why the need for a new theory on workplace dignity? Currently, there is not a theory of
workplace dignity, which could help to understand the issues and challenges of the
contemporary workplace. Hence, the need for a new theory must be resulting from an
observation that current models, paradigms and theories are insufficient to explain the current
economic situation. More importantly, there are hardly any new theoretical developments
taking place regarding how the future workplace should and could be structured, organized and
developed. This book is not by far not the first which claims that our current economic-political
paradigms are insufficient to help us through the 21st century, and that contemporary society is
in desperate need of new ideas to shape the workplace of the future (Bauman et al. 2015).
What is social psychology? The kind of answer you will get to this question will depend on who you ask, the epistemological and theoretical perspective they hold, and it will, to a large extent, also depend on the region of the world they live in and the university or faculty they work in. Social psychology is not a unified discipline; there is not one social psychology, but many social psychologies. However, despite the diversity of the field today, the positivistic approach is more pervasive and dominant than other approaches. This is the perspective which is usually taught in standard psychology courses and textbooks in most parts of the world and it is this version of social psychology that informs various applied fields, of which organizational behaviour is one of the most popular. Organizational social psychology involves the application of social psychological theories and methods to understand, inform and ultimately improve organizational practices. Organizations are ubiquitous to everyday life and they are the main instruments of capitalism. As long as social psychology is deployed to solve management problems, a critique of social psychology must include a solid critique of organizational social psychology.
This chapter will begin with a short historical overview, showing that social psychology was born out of an early interest in crowds or groups (Stainton Rogers 2011). It will then review the critiques made against mainstream social psychology, concentrating on the social identity perspective. The final part of the chapter will expand on the critical agenda by focusing on the applied field of organizational social psychology. The chapter will end by suggesting that organizational social psychology should renounce its fixation with groups within organizations and pay serious attention to critical management scholars who point to the relationship between broader societal ideologies and organizational life.
Critical psychology has become a generative and international movement in the last 5 decades, with self-identifying critical psychologists emerging from around the globe with publications and contributions, both theoretical and practical, in many areas of psychology. This article provides an overview of current trends in critical psychology and elucidates historical sources and theoretical tenets. Presented are the relationship between individual subjectivity and society, the role of power in the discipline, the problem of subjectification, the importance of reflexivity and intersubjectivity in the context of research practices, methodologies of change for different contexts, and the ethical-political positions from which critical psychologists operate. Challenges to critical psychology, which include engagements with indigenous psychologies, new forms of internationalization, and advancing transdisciplinary work, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
He had me go through the gamut of outdated tests, the Rorschach blots and blobs, squiggles and various I.Q. examinations. Naturally I was never informed about any of his deductions. I was the guinea pig. These perverted practitioners of the spurious science of psychology do not have as their first priority to help the prisoner who may be in need of it. They are the lackeys of the system. Their task very clearly is to be the psychological component of the general strategy of unbalancing and disorienting the political prisoner. (Breytenbach, 1984, p. 90) The above quotation is drawn from an account by the well-known South African poet and artist, Breyten Breytenbach, of his seven-year incarceration as a political prisoner under the apartheid regime. What makes it interesting in this context is that Breytenbach articulates precisely the institutional and political entanglements, along with the subsequent abuse of power, that mainstream psychology is so often accused of – and which it so glibly evades by declaring itself scientifically and thus politically neutral. But what is perhaps even more telling about Breytenbach"s account is that, even though his experience is steeped in the particular history of apartheid South Africa, it will be immediately recognisable to psychologists and the public almost anywhere around the world. Like the vocabularies and practices of marketing and public relations, psychology in some form or other has achieved an almost global reach over the last century. Psychology in South Africa is certainly more similar to than it is different from psychology elsewhere in the world – and this is, and indeed should be, true of critical psychology also. Here (as elsewhere) psychology is a product and producer of global capitalism, and here (as elsewhere) critical psychology is part of a global agenda of resistance. Drawing attention to local specificities – as one might see, for example, in an American Psychological Association (APA) Monitor "country report" on South Africa (e.g. Murray, 2000) – may therefore run the risk of indulging in superficial exoticism at the expense of confronting psychology in its enmeshment with, as one author describes it, the "global network of neo-capitalism, developmentalism and post-colonial cultural hegemony" (Macleod, 2006, p. 368). To focus exclusively on the "local" may thus render invisible the hierarchical, transnational relations of power in which psychology operate. It may also limit the ability of critical psychology to be articulated as a more-than-local form of resistance and so curtail the way "mainstream psychology" and its categories remain the nodal points around which accounts of subjectivity, experience and human activity are articulated. As long as we define ourselves only as local opposition to an industry that in itself knows no borders, we will not create more optimal conditions for a different psychology, nor add to the conceptual and institutional infrastructures required for different forms of political solidarity.
Orientation: For a long time, employees have been viewed as passive performers of their assigned job tasks. Recently, several scholars have argued that job design theory needs to address the influence of employees on their job designs.
Research purpose: The purpose of the study was to fit job crafting in job design theory.
Motivation for the study: The study was an attempt to shed more light on the types of proactive behaviours of individual employees at work. Moreover, we explored the concept of job crafting and its antecedents and consequences.
Research design, approach and method: A literature study was conducted in which the focus was first on proactive behaviour of the employee and then on job crafting.
Main findings: Job crafting can be seen as a specific form of proactive behaviour in which the employee initiates changes in the level of job demands and job resources. Job crafting may be facilitated by job and individual characteristics and may enable employees to fit their jobs to their personal knowledge, skills and abilities on the one hand and to their preferences and needs on the other hand.
Practical/managerial implications: Job crafting may be a good way for employees to improve their work motivation and other positive work outcomes. Employees could be encouraged to exert more influence on their job characteristics.
Contribution/value-add: This article describes a relatively new perspective on active job redesign by the individual, called job crafting, which has important implications for job design theories.
The values of organizational psychology are criticized as (a) having supplanted psychology's humanist tradition and societal responsibilities with corporate economic objectives; (b) being “scientistic” in perpetuating the notion of value-free science while ignoring that it is business values that largely drive our research and practice; (c) failing to include normative perspectives of what organizations ought to be like in moral terms; (d) having a pro-management bias; and (e) having allowed ourselves to be defined largely by technocratic competence, almost to the exclusion of considering desirable societal goods. Illustrations of some adverse consequences of these values are presented. It is suggested we expand our self-image to encompass a scientist–practitioner–humanist (S-P-H) model that includes consideration of different values, advocacy of employee rights and a normative characterization of how organizations ought to be—reflecting the broader societal responsibilities of a true profession. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This conceptual essay situates the study of dehumanization processes in the workplace and working objectification within the study of neoliberal influences on the institutions of work and employment. The paper links studies from social psychology and critical perspectives in work and organizational psychology to argue that working objectification is one of the implications of the neoliberalization of work and employment. Furthermore, dehumanization processes in the workplace can be better understood through a macro-social lens, that is, an ideological perspective. Thanks to this diagnosis, the essay positions dehu-manization processes and working objectification into an ideological perspective which has the potential for theoretical impact in psychology. Finally, the essay reflects on how this approach can best develop within psychology for responsible research that cares for humanistic institutions of work and employment.
This work suggests that researchers in work and organizational psychology (WOP) and WOP as a discipline would benefit from a critical perspective on their own research and practice. We highlight the value of critical reflection and critical reflexivity on contexts of research and practice in order to increase the practical impact of WOP for everyone. First, we outline how WOP currently fails to address pressing global issues, such as precarious employment, by focusing on work‐related phenomena in affluent societies and neglecting issues relevant to the majority of the world’s working population. Second, we present a heuristic framework of four fundamental contextual components that are important to consider when engaging in a continuous process of critical reflection and critical reflexivity: history; economy and politics; society and culture; and personal background. Third, we illustrate why these contexts are important for WOP with the example of precarious employment. Considering context more explicitly is important for future WOP research because context not only co‐determines the experiences of the working people under investigation but also the subjectivity of researchers themselves. We hope to encourage WOP researchers to engage in critical reflection and critical reflexivity to promote a more critical WOP.
An ever-expanding literature now exists critiquing the theory and philosophy of positive psychology, however, research has yet to provide a critical analysis of its practical application. The current study extends on these critiques by exploring how positive psychology is applied to the workplace by investigating practitioner-based sources including interviews with workplace coaches who use positive psychological interventions and applied published texts. The study draws on Michel Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge and discourse as a theoretical and methodological framework. Three dominant discourses were identified which illustrate the ways in which positive psychology is applied to the workplace. These include the promotion of its scientific credentials, employing a strength-based approach and using goal-setting and behavioral reinforcement interventions. When applied to the workplace, these discourses psychologize workplace problems, resulting in potentially negative outcomes for employees. However, interviews with some of the workplace coaches indicate they practice a degree of reflexivity, providing a salutary lesson for the science of positive psychology.
The goal of the current study was to examine longitudinal relations among predictors of decent work within Psychology of Working Theory (PWT). Data were collected from a large group of employed adults (N = 1540) at three-time points over six months. Multilevel modeling was used to test for the between and within-person effects of four predictor variables (economic constraints, marginalization experiences, work volition, career adaptability) on decent work. Significant between and within-person effects on decent work existed for all four predictor variables. However, within-person effects of economic constraints and marginalization on work volition and career adaptability were nonsignificant. These findings indicate that when considering sample level averages (between-person effects), theory consistent effects were found in connecting these variables across time. Work volition, in particular, was the most robust predictor of decent work and was the most robust mediator connecting economic constraints and marginalization experiences to decent work. When considering individual participant variability across time (within-person effects), it appears that changes from mean scores in structural and psychological factors both predict fluctuations in decent work. However, psychological factors do not mediate the effects of structural factors. Implications for research, practice, and theory are discussed.
Public significance statement
This is the first known study to examine how specific variables may relate to the securement of decent work over time. Findings suggest that feeling a sense of choice in one's career is most predictive of viewing one's job as decent. However, changes in an individual's perception of economic constraints and marginalization may also affect perceptions of decent work.
Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on the ethical-political subject, accountability, vulnerability, and the assembly, this chapter advances current debates on performative critical scholarship. We do so by reflecting on accounts of our heterogeneous praxis as diversity scholars from the research collective SEIN. We specifically plead for re-conceptualizing critical performativity as a collective performance carried out in every-day practices in the multiple relations of accountability towards different fora, such as societal stakeholders, students, and the academic community, rather than privileging an individualized academic subject’s performativity in relation to managers. We further argue that performing ourselves as part of a collective enables us to transcend some of the vulnerabilities that emerge through these multiple relations of accountability. We can more forcefully mobilize for social change, (micro-)challenge the field of power, and push the norms that make us intelligible. This increases our ability to make our own and others’ lives more livable.
Being social entrepreneurship (SE) the closest to Economy for the Common Good (ECG) principles, our work proposes to analyze the contribution of ECG model to SE. It is also intended to establish the relationship that exists between both concepts. Therefore, our specific objectives are to (1) identify the specific contributions of ECG principles to SE as well as their overlaps, (2) perform a literature review to analyze and quantify the number of research papers on SE and ECG, and (3) identify the possible existing gap. Through a double methodology, we (1) determine the potential contributions of the ECG model to SE, we propose to analyze the Common Good (CG) matrix and (2) empirical analysis on the existing literature body on SE and ECG. SE and ECG model share a number of principles and features which may be translated into some important overlaps in relation to both research bodies. So CG matrix can help to successfully launch and manage social ventures. This fact is mainly due to the fact that there is not a sufficiently large body of literature that relates models. In future research, it would be interesting to extend the bibliographic search to other databases.
As well as presenting the first empirical study on workplace bullying in the context of child labour, this chapter extends the substantive area through its focus on the agricultural sector, the rural economy and non-standard employment. Drawing on a larger multi-focus, multisource and mixed-method study, the chapter details the exploitation and abuse encountered by Indian child workers below the age of 18 years migrating from Rajasthan to undertake manual cross-pollination on Bt cottonseed farms in Gujarat. Despite international conventions and Indian regulations on child rights and child labour, child workers were found to perform the worst kinds of child labour and hazardous work. Against a backdrop of exploitation based on substandard working conditions, child workers face physical violence, bullying and sexual harassment. Class and caste/tribal identities (as well as gender), alongside corruption, inadequate oversight of the agricultural and informal sectors and successful resistance of perpetrators and their allies against concerted efforts to curb child labour play an important role. The chapter’s seminal contributions include redefining age within the field of workplace bullying whose focus is on adult workers and reconceptualizing the manifestations of workplace bullying to incorporate Eastern and developing country perspectives, in addition to speaking to the issues of bystanders, boundarylessness, power, workplace friendship, social support and dignity.
Building on an inductive, qualitative study of independent workers—people not affiliated with an organization or established profession—this paper develops a theory about the management of precarious and personalized work identities. We find that in the absence of organizational or professional membership, workers experience stark emotional tensions encompassing both the anxiety and fulfillment of working in precarious and personal conditions. Lacking the holding environment provided by an organization, the workers we studied endeavored to create one for themselves through cultivating connections to routines, places, people, and a broader purpose. These personal holding environments helped them manage the broad range of emotions stirred up by their precarious working lives and focus on producing work that let them define, express, and develop their selves. Thus holding environments transformed workers’ precariousness into a tolerable and even generative predicament. By clarifying the process through which people manage emotions associated with precarious and personalized work identities, and thereby render their work identities viable and their selves vital, this paper advances theorizing on the emotional underpinnings of identity work and the systems psychodynamics of independent work.
It has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners. However, there is a lack of systematic inquiry into how such engagement might be undertaken, which this article redresses. We propose activist ethnography as a suitable methodological framework for critical organizational scholarship, drawing on organizational ethnography, militant ethnography, and participatory action research, to construct a theoretical framework which we use to analyze four ethnographic vignettes of our own experiences of research with activists. Our contribution is to (a), assess the methodological challenges and opportunities of engagement with activism, (b) give an account of our own experiences as activist ethnographers for others to learn from, and (c) propose strategies whereby the challenges of academic activism might be negotiated and the opportunities maximized.
Although research on human and social sustainability has flourished in the past decade, the role that human resource management departments play (or should play) in facilitating more socially responsible and sustainable organizations remains unclear. In practice, this lack of clarity is due to the multiple features and dimensions of potential HR contributions to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability (CS), as well as widespread failure to integrate HR and CSR functions. Theoretically, the absence of a framework that articulates the HR role in CSR and CS and the substantial separation between HRM and CSR/CS studies among academics act as a reinforcing mechanism. The present study contributes to the growing research on this topic, presenting a framework and a typology to classify the potential HR roles in CSR and CS and comprehensively reviewing the literature at the intersection of HR with CSR and CS. The results of the review provide a broader perspective on the role HR might play in CSR and CS as well as its impact beyond organizational boundaries.
This paper provides a historical review of the conceptualization and measurement of organizational justice. We demonstrate how, over time, a dominant norm for conceptualizing and measuring justice has emerged. We posit that although consistent conceptualization and measurement across justice studies can enable the accumulation of knowledge, if the dominant approach is incomplete, this can impede the accumulation of knowledge and risk construct reification. We suggest that these risks are high given that: (a) contemporary approaches to measuring fairness perceptions fail to capture the full domain of organizational justice as it was initially conceptualized by early scholars; (b) despite a foundation of "classic" theories, our field has yet to systematically map the justice domain; and (c) the normative operationalizations of organizational justice are based on observations that predate the 21st century workplace. We offer suggestions for future research and new approaches to assessing workplace fairness. Our paper's goal, ultimately, is to reconsider how justice is conceptualized and measured so that the findings obtained from future empirical justice studies can go beyond the constraints of the current paradigm.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to give a state‐of‐the art overview of the Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) model
Design/methodology/approach
– The strengths and weaknesses of the demand‐control model and the effort‐reward imbalance model regarding their predictive value for employee well being are discussed. The paper then introduces the more flexible JD‐R model and discusses its basic premises.
Findings
– The paper provides an overview of the studies that have been conducted with the JD‐R model. It discusses evidence for each of the model's main propositions. The JD‐R model can be used as a tool for human resource management. A two‐stage approach can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, work groups, departments, and organizations at large.
Originality/value
– This paper challenges existing stress models, and focuses on both negative and positive indicators of employee well being. In addition, it outlines how the JD‐R model can be applied to a wide range of occupations, and be used to improve employee well being and performance.
An exploration of how business schools came to dismiss judgment and praise quantitative methods over all overs.
In this editorial we suggest that work and organizational psychology has tended to overlook the insights to be gained from ‘alternative’ perspectives such as interpretivism, critical theory and postmodernism, in favour of a focus on more normative and positivist studies of organizational life. While paradigmatic conformity is argued by some to have the benefit of providing a coherent knowledge base, we argue that it may also lead to an overly restrictive viewpoint and constrained practices. In any case, such a focus may be partly a default option rather than a conscious choice, fostered by assumptions of what constitutes ‘good’ research which may not be appropriate to (and even discriminate against) other perspectives. As a consequence, this special section aims to illustrate the insights to be gained from adopting such ‘alternative’ perspectives on topics of contemporary interest to work and organizational psychologists, such as retention of women in the workforce, collaborative (cross-agency) work, advanced technological change and stress at work.