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Twice in the 1940s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) banned recording by its members. According to the union, the use of records on radio and in jukeboxes was replacing five performers, thus eliminating work for musicians. In an era of shifting federal policies and changing modalities of labor, the bans put sound at the center of a struggle between labor and corporate interests. The bans provide a case through which to explore the significance and multidimensionality of music as labor. As a case that is integral to, yet distinct from, histories of audio technology and intellectual property, the bans are an important yet overlooked moment in the formation of current configurations of sonic value. [Keywords: Music, labor, audio technology, radio, liberalism, United States] [Palavras chave: Musica, trabalho, tecnologia audio, radio, liberalismo, Estados Unidos da America], In the 1940s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) organized two recording bans, during which no recordings were made by union musicians on major record labels. The bans occurred at [...]

Byline: Nina Cole (1) Keywords: Organizational justice; Workplace romance; Employee discipline; Workplace romance policies; Management of workplace romance Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of several variables on coworker perceptions of fairness regarding workplace romance (WR) management practices. Design/Methodology/Approach Data on actual real-life WRs were obtained through personal interviews with part-time and full-time employees who were also pursuing university studies (n = 100). Findings The results of the study indicate that most coworkers perceive managerial inaction regarding WRs to be fair unless (1) the WR is having a negative effect on the workplace, (2) the WR parties work in the same department, or (3) the organization has a WR policy. Managerial action was taken in only 11 of the 100 cases reported. None of the participants reported any positive effect of WRs. Implications In general, coworkers consider it fair for WRs to be accepted as a fact of organizational life and for no action to be taken unless there are negative ramifications of the WR. Contextual factors are important to coworkers who are assessing the fairness of managerial action regarding a WR, and managers can increase the chance of WR management being perceived as fair by taking these contextual factors into account when determining their actions in situations involving WR. Originality/Value Unlike a number of previous studies on WR, this research was based on real-life WRs, rather than scenarios. This study addressed a gap in the literature with respect to variables affecting coworker perceptions of fairness regarding WRs. Author Affiliation: (1) Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada Article History: Registration Date: 16/05/2009 Online Date: 07/06/2009 Article note: Received and reviewed by former editor, George Neuman.

The consequences of the labor model imposed by the state and its impact on working conditions and social mobility are studied. An attempt is made to dispel the myth of the U.S.' boundless capacity to generate employment, indicating an increasing tendency toward precarious employment opportunities, social inequality and poverty.

The study of worker resistance has tended to focus either on organizational attributes that may alter actors' capacity to respond or on influential shop-floor social relations. This divide, partially driven by analytical and methodological preference, is also a function of different theoretical traditions. In this article, we suggest that organizational attributes and interpersonal relations in the workplace, in concert with union presence and collective action history, may be simultaneously but also conditionally meaningful for workers and their potential resistance strategies. Findings, derived from analyses of unique data on 82 workplace ethnographies and that merge Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques and more conventional quantitative methods, largely support these expectations. Most notably, the impact of workplace organization and even union presence on worker resistance varies depending on social relations on the shop floor. Where there is union presence and significant interpersonal conflict with supervisors, the likelihood of collective resistance in the form of strike action is heightened. This pattern also holds for certain more individualized forms of worker resistance (i.e., social sabotage, work avoidance, and absenteeism). More central to individual resistance, however, are workplace contexts characterized by poor organization and a lack of collective action legacy. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for future analyses of workplace social relations, workplace structure, and collective and individual resistance-oriented actions.

The purpose of this study was to identify a variety of employment relationships based upon an economy-wide, representative sample. We turn to psychological contract studies examining different types of psychological contracts. We expand two existing typologies by incorporating multiple features of underlying dimensions of psychological contracts. Such a feature-oriented approach allows us to construct a meaningful conceptualization of employer and employee obligations across different settings and to identify multiple types of psychological contracts in which combinations of different dimensions are prevalent. Cluster analysis indicates the existence of six types of psychological contracts, all having different patterns of mutual expectations: instrumental, weak, loyal, unattached, investing and strong psychological contract. To validate the six-cluster solution, we develop cluster profiles based upon individual, job, formal contract and organizational characteristics and further differentiate between the clusters by examining their outcomes in terms of affective commitment and employability. KEYWORDS commitment and employability * employee obligations * employer obligations * feature-oriented approach * typology of psychological contracts

This article describes an embedded framework for analyzing workplace relations. The author argues that the contemporary workplace is embedded to varying degrees in three force-fields: the macro field of globalization and new technology, the meso field of transnational production networks, and the micro field of local political and labor market institutions and organization structure and culture. The article explores the effect of these influences on management, particularly the way flexibility and cost reduction are prioritized, and the consequences of this for workplace structures and relations. This analysis provides a relevant and shared context for the issues explored in the following five articles. These are briefly introduced in the final section of this article. Keywords: embeddedness; labor flexibility; globalization; workplace relations

Workplace democracy has been advocated by labor as a means of worker empowerment and by management as an effort to improve productivity and quality. This article seeks to clarify this contradictory support through an analysis of American managers' and workers' attitudes. Class ideology and class experience are tested as factors that underlie attitudes toward three different forms of workplace democracy. Ordinary least squares regression and path analysis are employed in an analysis of national survey data from 1991. Class location is found to be a weak predictor, whereas class experience is a strong determinant. The findings indicate that American workers want more control once they get some influence over workplace decision making, highlighting a paradox behind the often narrow goals of managers. Implications are discussed vis-a-vis the labor movement and contemporary corporate participation programs. Keywords: workplace democracy; worker participation; social class; political attitudes; class consciousness

There are encouraging developments in the retail and public service sectors that indicate business is increasingly understanding that it depends for its success on recognising and accommodating the diverse needs [...]

We study how the social capital and closure properties of family- and ethnic-based social networks influence the incorporation of immigrants into their host society. In so doing, we examine the relationship between immigrants' reliance on social ties and their employment. Data collected through ethnographic depth interviews of Asian immigrants in Los Angeles indicate that reliance on social ties usually operates informally, as when job seekers consult their more experienced and better-connected friends, relatives, and acquaintances and ask them to serve as intermediaries. These networks provide group-based resources that assist immigrants in making headway in their new society Yet reliance on social ties is most common for moves into jobs of low occupational prestige that have low human capital requirements. Because of linguistic and cultural competence, immigrants who seek jobs from coethnic employers are often more self reliant in the job search than those who seek work more broadly In this way, ethnolingui stic closure encourages ethnic segmentation in the labor market. By contrast, reliance on social ties, another form of closure, facilitates job hunting in the wider domain of the labor market, where prospective employers may be of any ethnicity Reliance on social ties thereby provides a mechanism by which immigrants gain employment throughout the multiethnic metropolitan labor market., Social networks play a role in the matching and sorting of immigrants to jobs in the host society (Bailey & Waldinger 1991) and in establishing the basis for mutual trust [...]

Abstract space as conceptualized by Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre is explored through coffee plantations of Ceylon during the 1800s. Abstract space, or the bureaucratization and commodification of daily life, is evident in the technologies and controls used by British planters, and in the corresponding resistance of the workers.

Change, by definition, alters the status quo and disrupts established patterns of behavior and relationships. Change is particularly disturbing if it occurs rapidly--so that those affected must adjust quickly--and if [...]

This article reports a comparative analysis of reactions to organizational politics (OP) in two substantially different cultures, Israel and Britain. Two resembling samples of public personnel (nl = 303 and n2 = 149 in Israel and Britain, respectively) were used to examine employees' perceptions of organizational politics as well as several possible work outcomes (e.g. intentions of exit, voice, loyalty, neglect, job satisfaction, met expectations, and absenteeism). No differences were found between employees' levels of politics perception in the two samples. However, a between-sample analysis supported the hypotheses of differences in reactions to OP across cultures. Generally, perceptions of organizational politics affected British employees more strongly than Israeli. The former responded with higher intentions of exit and neglect and lower levels of loyalty, job satisfaction, and met expectations. From these results, our main speculation is that reactions to OP may depend on cultural variants relevant to the organizational environment. Our findings are interpreted mainly in light of the idea of cultural differences in perceptions of conflict and politics. Accordingly, this study's chief merit is its indication that culture-oriented constructs may be useful determinants of reactions to OP. Other implications of the study are also discussed, as well as suggestions for further inquiry into the cultural investigation of OP. Keywords: absenteeism, cross-cultural study, employees' reactions and performance, exit, job satisfaction, loyalty, met expectations, neglect, organizational politics (OP), voice

Francis J. Flynn [coauthor, 'Getting to Know You: The Influence of Personality on Impressions and Performance of Demographically Different People in Organizations'] is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Columbia Business School, 3022 Broadway, 720 Uris Hall, New York, NY 10027 (e-mail: ff144@columbia.edu). His research focuses on issues of social exchange and demography in organizations. Recent publications include 'No News is Good News: The Relationship between Media Attention and Strike Duration' (Industrial Relations, 39: 139-160) and 'The Influence of Demographic Heterogeneity on the Emergence and Consequences of Cooperative Norms in Work Teams,' with J. Chatman (Academy of Management Journal, 44: 956-974). He received his Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Jennifer A. Chatman [coauthor, 'Getting to Know You: The Influence of Personality on Impressions and Performance of Demographically Different People in Organizations'] is the Harold Furst Professor of Management Philosophy and Values at the Haas School of Business, 545 Student Services Building, #1900, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (e-mail: chatman@haas.berkeley.edu). Her current research interests include organization culture, cooperation, person-culture fit, and demography. Recent papers include 'Managerial Personality and Early Career Success: A Semi-idiographic Approach,' with D. Caldwell and C. O'Reilly (Journal of Research in Personality, 33: 514-545), and 'Reconceptualizing Conflict: Proportional and Relational Conflict,' with K. Jehn (International Journal of Conflict Management, 11: 51-69). She received her Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Sandra E. Spataro [coauthor, 'Getting to Know You: The Influence of Personality on Impressions and Performance of Demographically Different People in Organizations'] is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, P.O. Box 208200, New Haven, CT 06511 (e-mail: snadra.spataro@yale.edu). Her research interests center around demographic diversity in organizations, with particular interest in status and identification processes; current projects investigate the different status implications of demographic characteristics across organizations and how strong identification with particular characteristics affects status management and self-presentation strategies. Recent publications include 'When Differences Do (and Do Not) Make a Difference: How Individual Identities Influence Reactions to Diversity,' in J. Polzer, M. Neale, and B. Mannix (eds.), Research on Managing in Groups and Teams, vol. 4. She received her Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at the University of Calif ornia, Berkeley., ********** This paper extends social categorization theory to understand how personality traits related to information sharing may correspond with positive perceptions of demographically different people, thereby enhancing their experience and [...]

Elliot Jaques theories of individualism and corporate power structures has influenced management to try to weaken support for labor unions among employees. Jaques theories propose that strong leadership and well defined roles are important to corporate structure. He also encourages negotiating with the individual rather that collectives.

Corporate reorganizations are examined within a social framework, focusing on consent, negotiation and resistance between employers and employees. A case study from the petroleum industry is used for illustration.

Issues concerning deregulation in the Australian economy since 1980 are examined, focusing on how the rationale of economic efficiency compares with the reality of corporate monopoly and the compromise of citizen rights. Topics include the financial services industry, telecommunications services industry, and industrial relations.

Impurity and Social Order Geoffrey Hodgson [1995] has proposed that capitalist economies can be distinguished by how the 'impurity principle' works and by the extent to which a capitalist economic [...]

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of individual characteristics and organizational justice on employee benefit satisfaction, and to explore the role of flexible benefit plans. Employees from three Canadian organizations were surveyed. A total of 285 usuable questionnaires were returned, for a response rate of 42%. The variables in the model accounted for more than 40% of the variance in benefit satisfaction. The findings showed that while distributive and procedural justice were useful in predicting benefit satisfaction, the concept of process justice had the greatest effect on satisfaction. Among the variables, communication had the greatest impact. The effect of flexibility, although significant, was ambiguous. Sociodemographic factors had a very limited effect when perceptual variables were introduced into the equation. The paper also sets out the limitations of the study and its practical implications, and makes some suggestions for future research. KEY WORDS: benefits; satisfaction; flexibility; communication; organizational justice.

This article discusses the social, economic, and political aspects of the sugar industry in Cuba. Topics include racism, anti-imperialism, national identity, labor mobilization, and class conflict.

Studies on African labour and working-class history have been dominated by the migrant labour and transition from slave to wage labour model. This model does not capture the multiplicity of worker experiences on the continent and lends itself to an essentialist reading of class formation. The material from Sierra Leone underscores the inadequacy of this approach. By examining the experiences of a group of working men who formed a union together with a benefit fund in nineteenth-century Freetown, established a journal, The Artisan, which they published intermittently, and employed a radical language of class, informed by Enlightenment notions of equality and justice, this article suggests an alternative reading - artisan origin - of working-class experience in Africa. For the experiences which African workers brought to the workplace were shaped by the society in which they lived and worked: different historical circumstances produced different working-class experiences.

Until recently, debates over labour relations in German heavy industry have focused on the role of objective social structures, the economic imperatives of capitalist industrialization and the 'backwardness' and continuity of the authoritarian paternalist factory regime predominant in regions like the Ruhr and the Saar from the 1850s to 1945. By contrast, this article examines the representations and institutions which gave meaning and shape to the factory workplace in the heavy industrial Saar during the Wilhelmine period. In this way, it identifies a crucial socio-cultural transformation - resulting from political struggles between unions, reformers and employers - in the early twentieth-century Saar: the incipient shift from the moralizing intentions and gendered imagery of the paternalist factory regime toward new scientific and bio-racial representations of work and labour relations and forms of company social policy that focused on the worker's body, the physical health and reproduction of the working-class family and the racial fitness of the 'social body'. These changes in the Saar anticipated the ideological linkages between work, gender and race in Germany in the later 1920s and 1930s.

It is commonly argued that unions regularize workplace conflict by substituting formal strikes and grievance procedures for informal forms of resistance. This transformation is interpreted as part of a trade-off under business unionism in which unions help discipline workers and keep them on the job in exchange for the right to bargain collectively in their name. Tests of this thesis have focused on the trades-off between collective voice and exit and have ignored the subtle forms of worker resistance that are central to the argument. I test the hypothesized trade-off between union voice and informal resistance by systematically analyzing evidence from the population of English language workplace ethnographies (N = 95). Craft and industrial unions increase organized conflict with management. Industrial unions reduce some aspects of informal resistance and some aspects of organizational loyalty. The majority of individual reactions to the workplace, however, are relatively uninfluenced by union presence. As unclaimed terrain, these individual reactions continue as a source of frustration for management and may represent an underutilized resource for unionization., Even in large bureaucratized enterprises, much day-to-day working behavior occurs outside the institutional control of the workplace (Jermier, Knights & Nord 1995; Mechanic 1962). The unregulated activities in question include [...]

While internet technologies continue plying economic and social change, academic inquiry into the net's influences on specific disciplines and related professional practices has only weakly materialized. Intended as broadly descriptive, this article reports on a sample of internet discussion lists which reflect the potential to modify intellectual pursuits and practices akin to employee relations. New electronic blends inferred include international and practitioner/academic co-mingling. Research in this area is doubly important because of the emerging similarities in the evolution of the remote electronic acquisition and delivery systems for knowledge and for work. Index Terms: Computers; Labor Studies, distance learning., Traditionally, the pooling of expertise for the expression and exchange of ideas and knowledge has been accomplished in the context of close physical proximity (e.g., academic institutions, committees, or work [...]

Current trends in organizational processes in workplace and inter-firm relations show that spatial and value contradictions have prevented the shift to stable and flexible accumulation, and social production. The relations between firms, and relations of production between capital and labor are more diverse, contradictory and unstable, and matches with those of the epoch of Fordism. While scholars of economic geography have focused on organizational and technical processes, they have neglected value relations in capitalism and spatial-economic change.

The paper reports the development of a scale to measure the quality of interaction between leaders and members in line with the leader member exchange/vertical dyad linkage theorization of Dansereau, Graen, and Haga (1975), incorporating the suggestions of Dienesch and Liden (1986). Construct definitions were developed and items were generated and evaluated for content validity. A varimax rotated factor analysis of the data yielded only 2 of the proposed 3 factors - perceived contribution and affect. The two subscales documented factor stability and high reliability coefficients. Within- and between-groups analysis found support for dyadic nature of interaction. The implications of the results are discussed and conclusions are drawn about the new scale.

This study addresses the impact of race on the supervisor-subordinate relationship. The purpose is to examine this relationship with minority subordinates reporting to both majority and minority group members. Using the subordinates needs framework identified by Baird and Kram (1983), 5 areas were addressed: supervisory support, developmental opportunities, procedural justice, acceptance or assimilation, and discrimination. The results indicated that African American subordinates with White supervisors experience less supervisory support, developmental opportunities, procedural justice, assimilation, and more discrimination than African American subordinates with African American supervisors.

Informal hiring methods deprive potentially competent workers from employment in Khartoum, Sudan. Large private enterprises tend to hire workers due to social connections rather than on training and ability. It has been found that employers and employees usually share the same birthplace. Businesses rarely resort to advertisements in recruiting workers, preferring instead factory-gate recruitment and family or employee referrals; hence, the dearth of job opportunities.