Culture Wars in the Workplace?: Cultural Antecedents of Workers’ Job Entitlement (original) (raw)

The effects of cultural types on perceptions of justice and gender inequity in the workplace

International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2006

This study u.ses the horizontal and vertical distinction within individualism and collectivism as a theoretical framework to predict differences in employee perceptions of organizational justice and gender inequity. In this study we sui"vey 5\4 solicitors working in law firms in Hong Kong. Results of regression analysis indicated that horizontalcollectivism (HC) had a significant positive effect on procedural justice and verticalindividualism (VI) had a signiticant and positive effect on distributive justice. Verticaland htirizontal-individuatism (VI and HI) had positive and signilicant effects on both perceived gender bias and perceived gendor discrimination. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest future research directions.

Culture, Control, and the Labor Process

Annals of the International Communication Association, 1993

N his essay, Mats Alvesson addresses an element of organizations that has always been considered to be of primary importance to critical scholars, namely, organizational control. As he discusses in the first portion of the essay, traditional approaches to organizations have typically used a conception of organizational control that has been limited to an objectivist, behavioral view and centers on external and structural control mechanisms. Alvesson points out that this perspective tends to focus on the control of work behavior while neglecting the "ideational sphere" of influence in which workplace control is embedded in the culture, values, and cognitive framework of the organizational members. These cultural-ideological forms of control, he notes, are particularly important in complex, uncertain, and highly decentralized organizations, which are becoming increasingly prevalent today. Cultural-ideological control, Alvesson argues, cannot be explained adequately by either macro-level general culture theories or what he calls "the micro-level use of a single key concept" such as culture, ideology, or clan (p. 10). What he proposes instead is a "middle-range" cultural theory of organizational control that conceptualizes the control dynamic as consisting of four interrelated dimensions: collective control, performance-related control, ideological control, and perceptual control. After a brief description of each of these dimensions, Alvesson provides an elaborate case study and discussion designed to illustrate the concepts and their relationships. He concludes with a discussion of the implications of cultural-ideological modes of control and the social and organizational conditions under which they are likely to occur. Alvesson notes that he has three primary objectives in writing his essay: (a) to present a theory of new forms of cultural-ideological management

Values, Ideologies, and Frames of Reference in Industrial Relations

Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations , 2008

Employment relations -which for most of the twentieth century was called industrial relations, and what some now call human resources and industrial relations -is a multidisciplinary field studying all aspects of work and the employment relationship (Ackers and Wilkinson, 2003;. A multidisciplinary approach means that competing values and assumptions underlie the analyses, policies, and practices of employment relations scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Unfortunately, these underlying beliefs are often implicit rather than explicit, or, with the longstanding focus on how industrial relations (IR) processes work, sometimes ignored altogether. But understanding the employment relationship, corporate human resource management practices, labor union strategies, and work-related public policies and laws requires understanding how values and assumptions form the ideologies and frames of reference used by scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

Culture of the Labor Movement and Work in the United States

Sociology Compass, 2009

With the resurgence of union organizing during the 1990s, a new scholarship about the labor movement has emerged, documenting and explaining this new social movement unionism. Literature on the culture of work is well developed while, generally speaking, in the scholarship about the labor movement, culture is an underdeveloped analysis. In this article, we look at the culture of market fundamentalism as the dominant way of thinking and explaining work and labor in the United States. Market fundamentalism has emerged at the same time that women and immigrants have become much more numerous among U.S. workers, and they have brought with them new cultural emphases at work and among unions. In response to market fundamentalism and with the activism of women and immigrants among others, unions have transformed their own culture toward social movement unionism and have pushed for a new culture of work.

How organizations moderate and bound cultural processes surrounding equality

Socio-Economic Review, 12(3): 629-636., 2014

Organization scholars interested in cultural processes, such as identification and categorization, have been deeply influenced by Michèle Lamont’s work. Lamont, Beljean and Clair’s new essay (LBC) on ‘cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality’ provides yet another important contribution to this body of work, with a strong statement that we all share: cultural processes can contribute to the production and reproduction of inequality and are eminently performative. In this comment, we elaborate on how organizations may moderate cultural processes surrounding equality and examine a set of boundary conditions to the relation between cultural processes and inequality.

Managing Justly Across Cultures: The Problem of Fairness in International Business

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationships between organizational justice and the factors that characterize cultural differences. This paper begins by briefly summarizing the nature of organizational justice and by identifying how justice is perceived. Hofstede's five factors of cultural dimension model, which he developed in his seminal 1980 research on national cultures, is utilized to present characteristics of cultural differences. Ten propositions are then offered which relate to organizational justice and differences in cultural perspectives. These propositions suggest specific management approaches that organizational leaders can adopt to be more effective in dealing with employees from respective cultures. This paper concludes by identifying the importance of understanding the relationship between organizational justice and national culture and suggests research opportunities of benefit to both scholars and practitioners.

National Culture and Industrial Relations and Pay Structures

Labour, 2001

The paper develops an explanatory model of comparative industrial relations and labour market structures based on national culture. The four cultural variables derived by Hofstede (Culture's Consequences, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984) are used to investigate the relationship between national culture and various dimensions of industrial relations and pay structures. The paper finds national culture to be associated with the centralization of bargaining, the extent of corporatism, the degree of coordination in bargaining, the coverage of collective bargaining, trade union density, the extent of worker participation in decision making, and most dimensions of the pay structure. Hofstede's MAS variable, measuring cultural values representing gender social structuring, is associated with both industrial relations institutions and the pay structure. The results provide support for our cultural model.

'Workplace Inequality', In M. Bal (2024 ed.)

Encyclopaedia of Organizational Psychology, 2024

Organizations and society are confronted with fundamental socio-political, cultural, and economic challenges because of poorly construed and implemented Equality Diversity and Inclusion measures. Whilst Organizational Behavior research has adopted a traditional approach seeking to highlight the business case benefits and focused on quantifiable outcomes measurements, recent research has questioned this dominant, neoliberal capitalist-based strand, which has perpetuated managerial hegemonic power and employer-employee conflicts. Emerging Employment Relations scholarship has identified and added additional EDI categories including further neurodiverse, social and workplace groupings, and suggested further methodological tools, including intersectionality, institutional, relational, and agentic frameworks to repair the damages. Human Resource Management research has focused on how to implement standardized regulatory mechanisms related to Affirmative Action and Social Justice models on recruitment, pay and reward. However, such western-centric approaches, models, constructs, and analysis levels have exposed greater 'psychological' and workplace, individual and group inequalities, marginalized employees and highlighted the contested and contestable nature of EDI. Alternative, non-western calls intensify.

Collectivism as a Moderator of Perceived Organizational Unfairness in Diverse Workplaces.

Organizational fairness is an important field in organizational studies. It is how individuals or groups view or perceive the fairness of treatment they receive from organizations and supervisors. Perceptions of organizational justice have been found to predict significant organizational outcomes, such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intentions, employee loyalty, and absenteeism. While many studies have consistently shown that a person’s perception of justice has a significant impact on some work outcomes, far fewer have examined the affect of this relationship in cultural diverse workplaces. This study aims to examine the affects of collectivistic values as one of the main cultural constructs on perception of organizational fairness and subsequent organizational outcomes. The study attempts to answer an overarching question emanating from the fact that collectivist values are known for maintaining harmonious relationships in groups