57 research outputs found
Embracing ethical fields: constructing consumption in the margins
Get PDFPurpose
Literature examining resistant consumer behaviour from an ethical consumption stance has increased over recent years. This paper argues that the conflation between ethical consumer behaviour and âanti-consumptionâ practices results in a nihilistic reading and fails to uncover the tensions of those who seek to position themselves as ethical whilst still participating in the general market.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts an exploratory approach through semi-structured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 7 ethical consumers.
Findings
The analysis reveals the process through which ethical consumption is constructed and defined in relation to the subject position of the âethical consumerâ and their interactions with the dominant market of consumption.
Research limitations/implications
This research is limited to a single country and location and focused on a specific consumer group. Expansion of the research to a wider group would be valuable.
Practical implications
The impact of ethical consumption on the wider field of consumption can be witnessed in the âmainstreamingâ of many ethical ideals. This highlights the potential movements of power between various stakeholders that occupy particular spaces of social action.
Originality/value
Understanding the analysis through Bourdieuâs concepts of field and the margins created between spaces of consumption we focus on the theoretical cross-section of practice between ethical and market-driven forms of consumption, advancing discussion by exploring how self-identified âethical consumersâ defined, legitimatised and negotiated their practices in relation to consumption acts and lifestyles.
Keywords
Anti-consumption, ethical consumption, consumer decision-making, Bourdieu
Halloween, Organization, and the Ethics of Uncanny Celebration
Get PDFThis article examines the relationship between organizational ethics, the uncanny, and the annual celebration of Halloween. We begin by exploring the traditional and contemporary organizational function of Halloween as âtension-management ritualâ (Etzioni, Sociol Theory 18(1):44â59, 2000) through which collective fears, anxieties, and fantasies are played out and given material expression. Combining the uncanny with the folkloric concept of ostension, we then examine an incident in which UK supermarket retailers made national news headlines for selling offensive Halloween costumes depicting âescaped mental patientsâ. Rather than treating this incident as a problem of moral hygieneâin which products are removed, apologies made, and lessons learnedâwe consider the value of Halloween as a unique and disruptive ethical encounter with the uncanny Other. Looking beyond its commercial appeal and controversy, we reflect on the creative, generous, and disruptive potential of Halloween as both tension-management ritual and unique organizational space of hospitality through which to receive and embrace alterity and so discover the homely within the unheimlich
The organizational gendering of adulting: negotiating age and gender in the workplace
Get PDFWhile growing up is recognized as an important transitional period that lays the foundations for future gendered expectations, behaviours and trajectories, we know little of how this process is negotiated within the context of specific organizations. This paper advances life course approaches to age and employment through developing the popular cultural concept of âadultingâ as a lens through which to understand the ongoing process of growing up in the context of work, and how ageing traverses gender in this regard and vice versa. Drawing on 31 interviews with employees from a UK hedge fund, it presents three analytical motifs to help illuminate the gendered negotiation and reproduction of adulting at work. These concern: how men and women entered the hedge fund and progressed within it; decisions around starting a family; and how parenthood is navigated in this organization. Situating our findings within relevant debates surrounding gender, age and organizational life, we argue that adulting provides a way of articulating some of the complex ways that gender manifests in the formative stages of men and womenâs career trajectories. Equally, the broader destabilizing of emerging adulthood notwithstanding, our analysis also suggests the enduring seduction and attraction of âstabilizingâ gendered ageing practices, shedding some light on why they might continue to persist
A discursive analysis of organizational age inequality and older worker identity
Get PDFThis thesis argues that whilst a critical mass of age and employment literature is developing, research has centred on the work/non-work interface, or focussed on the experience of âolder workersâ as classified through chronological markers. As a result, it has overlooked how the terms themselves that are used within policy, academia and organizations to conceptualise and refer to age inequality are interrelated and shape our understanding of this phenomenon. In order to further investigate how language and power affect the reproduction of organizational age inequality, this study takes a discursive approach to examine âageismâ, âage discriminationâ and âolder workerâ as socially constructed phenomena. The discursive approach develops the work of Pierre Bourdieu to argue that whilst action may be shaped and understood through larger collective ideological processes, power and domination are never absolute, since the constitution of the individual is created through the interaction between the self and social in different spaces and at different times. Thus, in order to understand the reproduction of age inequalities, one must not only consider what ideological discourses are drawn upon and the strategies or techniques used to legitimize them, but also analyze the relationship between these constructions and how they are related to an individualâs own identity work. Using data collected from 33 interviews with human resource managers, the findings show that whilst managers discuss their own organizations as upholding age diversity, their interpretation of what constitutes ageism and age discrimination allows for a high degree of variability in their practices. By negotiating between the margins of what constitutes equal and unequal practice, a number of ideas can be justified which may equally be construed as discriminatory. These discourses are then analysed in relation to their own ageing identity work, where the âolder workerâ is constructed through a complex negotiation between the reproduction of an âideal typeâ and the individualâs own ageing identity project.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Women, work and the menopause: releasing the potential of older professional women
Get PDFExplores the experiences of menopause for professional women as part of a broader appreciation of health and well-being in later life.
Executive summary
This report presents the key findings and recommendations of a research project entitled Women, Work and the Menopause: Releasing the Potential of Older Professional Women. Menopause is a âsilent issueâ for most organisations, and older women represent a group whose working lives, experiences and aspirations are poorly understood by employers, national governments and academic researchers alike. This is highly unfortunate given that women aged 45 years and over comprise 17% of the ageing Australian workforce, meaning that over one million working women are currently going through, or have already gone through, the menopause. The broad aim of this project was therefore to examine the occupational health and well-being of older women, with a particular emphasis on understanding womenâs experiences of menopause at work. More specifically, the project set out to generate insights on five key areas:
1. Older womenâs health and well-being;
2. The relationship between menopause-related symptoms and four specific work outcomes (work engagement, job satisfaction, organisational commitment, intention to quit);
3. Actual and desired levels of organisational support for women experiencing menopause;
4. Work-related and organisational factors that exacerbate or ameliorate womenâs experiences of menopause in the workplace; and
5. Womenâs first-hand experiences, beliefs and attitudes towards menopause at work.
Data collection took place between November 2013 and March 2014 via two parallel research studies. The first study consisted of an online survey (herein referred to as WAW â Women at Work Survey) of 839 women (age range 40-75 years; average age 51.3 years) employed in academic, administrative and executive roles at three Australian universities. The second study (herein referred to as Prime â The Prime Project) involved 48 qualitative interviews with academic and administrative staff members at two Australian universities. The study identified the following key findings:
All age groups reported average to good mental and physical health. While self-reported physical health deteriorated with age, mental health appeared to improve with age (60+ year olds reported better mental health than 40-49 and 50-59 year olds). Among administrative and executive staff, women aged 40-49 years reported greater intention to quit their jobs than their older colleagues (50-59 years and 60+ years old). The interview study was marked by an overwhelming sense that âwomen just get on with itâ. This theme captured many inter-related aspects of womenâs experiences of mid-life in general (e.g., of juggling demanding and multiple work and care-giving roles) and underlined the considerable, and often unacknowledged, resilience of older professional women.
Peri-women currently experiencing the menopause most frequently experienced the following symptoms associated with menopause (in descending order of prevalence): sleep disturbance, headaches, weakness or fatigue, loss of sexual desire, anxiety, memory loss, pain in bone joints, and hot flushes. None of the measured work outcomes differed by menstrual status. However, the more frequently women reported experiencing menopause-related symptoms and the more bothersome the symptoms were, the less engaged they felt at work, less satisfied with their job, the greater their intention to quit their job and the lower their commitment to the organisation. The interview findings, however, suggested that it is difficult to attribute many symptoms simply to menopause. Symptoms can also be associated with ageing and âthe time of lifeâ more generally, or the occupational impact of the working environment, such as stress (notably associated with organisational change and work intensification).
Negative organisational and managerial messages about older women had a significant impact on how engaged, and how included, women felt at work. There was evidence of gendered ageism, with many women only feeling able to talk informally to other close female colleagues and friends about their menopausal experiences. Organisational sub-cultures were also found to have a significant influence on womenâs experience of menopause at work, creating particular demands on women to âfit inâ and to manage expectations and workplace identities that assumed an âunproblematic bodyâ.
Work-related and organisational factors played important roles in ameliorating or exacerbating womenâs experience of menopause at work. Temperature control over their immediate environment was important, as was the exacerbating impact of the increasingly sedentary nature of work that might intensify menopausal-related symptoms. However, paid employment also held positive benefits for some women, ameliorating their symptoms and providing an environment in which to develop and blossom as strong, independent and energetic employees. The flexibility of working arrangements (notably in respect of work time) was a particular characteristic that benefited (menopausal) women.
Both the survey and the interviews pointed to a lack of menopause-specific support or information in their organisational settings. Many were unsure whether line managers were given training in awareness of the menopause in the workplace. While organisations should provide information, there were varying views about whether organisations should or could introduce menopause-specific policies, or whether that would only serve to marginalise or problematise older workers. While women did not want formal management or âinterventionâ of the menopause, organisational understanding and support was deemed to be important and part of a broader message as to whether older women were welcome in the workplace or not.
This report proposes a number of recommendations related to Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) and Human Resources (HR) Management, and emphasises the role of general organisational processes, policies and professional bodies in initiating change. To plan for improved working conditions for older women now, is to ensure that organisations will reap future rewards by acknowledging and investing in this reliable, loyal, committed and resilient segment of the workforce.
 
âGetting a gripâ? Phenomenological insights into handling work place in Londonâs Soho
Get PDFHow are working lives shaped by the demands and expectations associated with a particular workplace? And how are work identities enacted to demonstrate a capacity to cope with place-based demands, expectations, and associations? Drawing on insights from phenomenological perspectives on space, place, and situated experience, particularly Merleau-Pontyâs concept of âgripâ, and interview data drawn from longitudinal research with men and women working in Londonâs Soho, this paper shows how working lives and identities are situated within, and enacted through, practices that involve developing and demonstrating a capacity for place handling. The analysis shows how this is negotiated by those working in iconic locales in which their working lives and identities are shaped by meanings that are both evolving and enduring, and which require them to get and maintain a demonstrable grip on the setting in which they work. In contributing to a growing interest in understanding working lives as situated phenomena, the paper challenges the idea that work is increasingly place-less, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the digitalization of work accelerated by it, emphasizing how where work takes place continues to matter to how it is enacted and experienced
Womenâs health in/and work: menopause as an intersectional experience
Get PDFThis paper employs an intersectional lens to explore menopausal experiences of women working in the higher education and healthcare sectors in Australia. Open-text responses from surveys across three universities and three healthcare settings were subject to a multistage qualitative data analysis. The findings explore three aspects of menopause experience that required women to contend with a constellation of aged, gendered and ableist dynamics and normative parameters of labor market participation. Reflecting on the findings, the paper articulates the challenges of menopause as issues of workplace inequality that are rendered visible through an intersectional lens. The paper holds a range of implications for how to best support women going through menopause at work. It emphasizes the need for approaches to tackle embedded and more complex modes of inequality that impact working womenâs menopause, and ensure that workforce policy both protects and supports menopausal women experiencing intersectional disadvantage
Reflections on reflexive theorizing: the need for a little more conversation
Get PDFWe investigate the nature and impact of recent âreflexive theorizingâ in the field of Organization Studies by examining articles that critically reflect on research, practice and the profession more generally with a view to defining, refining or changing future trajectories for the field. We identify a range of discursive practices used in these articles to establish authority, describe the field and make claims about the nature of theorizing. We then present three âideal typesâ that represent particular constellations of these discursive practices. We interrogate each of these ideal types in order to demonstrate how particular combinations of discursive practices can limit the potential of reflexive theorizing by shutting down conversations. Finally, we make a number of suggestions for weaving together discursive practices in ways that help to ensure that reflexive theorizing generates new forms of knowledge through conversations which are open to a wider range of voices, and where respect and generosity are evident
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