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The 2000 word essay topic is about inequality in organisations. Organizational Theory perspectives, Modernist, and Symbolic Interpretivist produce different narratives about inequality in organisations.Critically analyse the 2 readings and evaluate how their ontological and epistemological positions result in a different understanding and narrative of inequality within organisations. Your task is to de-constructing the papers and demonstrate your ability to recognise the different assumptions made by modernist and symbolic interpretivist. Do avoid explaining the concepts of ontology and epistemology. Identify their ontological assumptions and thereby identify strengths and weaknesses of their arguments in dealing with inequality. Do not use up significant parts of your essay explaining the background, but clearly identify and justify the way you have identified the classifications. Clearly identify the two perspectives in your introduction and identify the two papers associated with your chosen perspectives. Compare the different perspectives and how each deals with inequality. Conclude by critically reflecting how managers may use this to resolve organisational problems relating to inequality

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Personnel Review Spatially embedded inequality: Exploring structure, agency, and ethnic minority strategies to navigate organizational opportunity structures Lotte Holck Article information: Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) To cite this document: Lotte Holck , (2016),"Spatially embedded inequality", Personnel Review, Vol. 45 Iss 4 pp. 643 - 662 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/PR-08-2014-0182 Downloaded on: 02 June 2016, At: 16:23 (PT) References: this document contains references to 56 other documents. 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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm Spatially embedded inequality Exploring structure, agency, and ethnic minority strategies to navigate organizational opportunity structures Lotte Holck Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden Spatially embedded inequality 643 Received 23 August 2014 Revised 24 March 2015 Accepted 16 September 2015 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply a spatial approach to organizational inequality to explore why unequal opportunity structures persist in an organization despite its commitment to diversity and employing highly skilled ethnic minority employees. Design/methodology/approach – The (re)production of inequality is explored by linking research on organizational space with HRM diversity management. Data from an ethnographic study undertaken in a Danish municipal center illustrates how a substructure of inequality is spatially upheld alongside a formal diversity policy. Archer’s distinction between structure and agency informs the analysis of how minority agency not only reproduces but also challenges organizational opportunity structures. Findings – The analysis demonstrates how substructures of inequality stabilize in spatial routines enacted in an ethnic zoning of the workplace and ethnification of job categories. However, the same spatial structures allows for a variety of opposition and conciliation strategies among minority employees, even though the latter tend to prevail in a reproduction rather than a transformation of the organizational opportunity structures. Research limitations/implications – The reliance on a single case study restricts the generalizability of the findings but highlights fruitful areas for future research. Practical implications – The study sensitizes HRM practitioners to the situated quality of workplace diversity and to develop a broader scope of HRM practices to address the more subtle, spatially embedded forms of inequality. Originality/value – Theoretical and empirical connections between research on organizational space and HRM diversity management have thus far not been systematically studied. This combination might advance knowledge on the persistence of micro-inequality even in organizations formally committed to diversity. Keywords Mixed methodologies, Qualitative, Power, Action research, Critical, Diversity management, Human resource management (HRM), Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, Ethnographic methods Paper type Research paper Introduction Ethnic diversity in the Danish labor market is increasing. However, members of minorities are often employed in positions for which they are overqualified. As a result, they are overrepresented in low-skilled and provisionary jobs, underrepresented in management positions, and more likely than members of the majority ethnic group to face unemployment (e.g. Ejrnæs, 2012; Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014; Siim, 2013). These macro trends tend to reflect the micro situation in organizations, even those organizations committed to diversity and equality, as unequal opportunity structures and the inequality that accompanies them often endure (Acker, 2006, 2012; Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009; Holvino and Kamp, 2009; Risberg and Søderberg, 2008; Tomlinson et al., 2013). Inequality and the precarious, marginalized position of ethnic minority employees in organizations dominated by the ethnic majority’s norms and values are dominant themes among both critical and more mainstream HRM diversity management scholars. Personnel Review Vol. 45 No. 4, 2016 pp. 643-662 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0048-3486 DOI 10.1108/PR-08-2014-0182 PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 644 The extant research is dominated by three perspectives. First, organizational inequality is often analyzed in relation to minorities’ experiences with discrimination (e.g. Ahonen et al., 2014; Ariss et al., 2012; Klarsfeld et al., 2012; Ostendorp and Steyaert, 2009; Oswick and Noon, 2014; Siebers, 2010; Van Laer and Janssens, 2011, 2014; Verbeek and Groeneveld, 2012). Alternatively, research in this vein centers on generalized societal discourses on immigration with a focus on deconstructing the different elements of those discourses (e.g. Bendick et al., 2010; Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009; Holvino and Kamp, 2009; Muhr and Salem, 2013; Samaluk, 2014; Siim, 2013; Tomlinson and Schwabenland, 2010). Second, diversity research predominantly investigates the barriers that minority ethnic workers experience rather than the agency that they deploy (for exceptions see, e.g. Ariss et al., 2012; Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009; Ghorashi and Ponzoni, 2014; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012; Tomlinson et al., 2013; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). Third, the tenacity of unequal treatment in organizations is mainly addressed in socio-psychological terms as the effect of (majority) prejudice. This research suggests that it must be rectified through mainstream HRM practices, such as objective procedures, training, and mentoring/network activities (Ariss et al., 2012; Dobbin et al., 2011; Holck et al., 2016; Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Mamman et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2014; Williams and Mavin, 2014). This diversity research plays a vital role in documenting the persistence of status inequalities along ethnic (and gender) lines in the workplace. However, this insistent focus on cognition in a socio-psychological perspective downplays the more subtle power relations embedded in the dynamics of organizational structure and employee agency, “leaving organizational structures and routines which reproduce inequalities and normalize the privileges of the dominant group (e.g. white and male employers) unchanged” ( Janssens and Zanoni, 2014, p. 2). To address the structural embeddedness of inequality and the role of minority agency, this study advocates a spatial approach to organizational inequality. The aim is to demonstrate how spatial structures both enable and constrain minority employee agency, as spatial routines simultaneously solidify in stabilized substructures of inequality and make way for minority employee agency of micro-emancipation. I rely on a spatial-structural approach to make three contributions to current research on HRM and diversity. First, I theoretically and empirically demonstrate how a spatial approach to workplace diversity might offer valuable insights into the more subtle workings of power, privilege, and disadvantage in relation to organizational substructures of inequality (Acker, 2012; Beyes and Steyaert, 2011; Clegg and Kornberger, 2006; Ropo et al., 2013; Taylor and Spicer, 2007; Zhang and Spicer, 2014). Second, I analyze how the organizational space simultaneously constrains and enables minority agency of micro-emancipation (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). This also helps explain how organizational substructures of inequality solidify, as they are not only imposed on minorities – they are also actively reproduced and bolstered through minority employee agency. Third, I discuss how to develop a broader set of HRM practices to address the more subtle, spatially embedded forms of inequality. This adds to the diversity literature focussed on crafting more emancipative ways of organizing workplace diversity (e.g. Ariss et al., 2012; Ghorashi and Ponzoni, 2014; Ghorashi and Sabelis, 2013; Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Mamman et al., 2012). Empirically, this spatial approach on organizational inequality draws on ethnographic fieldwork in “Agency” (an alias). Agency is a municipal center renowned for its diversity profile in the Danish context due to its ethnically diverse and specialized workforce, which serves locally operating international businesses. Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) However, it is haunted by poor employee satisfaction, with almost 30 percent of its employees reporting experiences of harassment and bullying from managers and coworkers associated with issues like language, color of skin, and ethnicity (Employee Satisfaction Report, September 2014). These experiences of harassment relate to the existence of an informal parallel system that encompasses two prevalent routinized spatial practices: ethnic zoning of the workplace and ethnification of job categories. These routinized spatial practices run alongside – and partially undermine – the formal discourse on diversity and equality. Moreover, they constrain the free agency of minority employees. The minority employees spatially respond with five main strategies: a conciliatory strategy of embodying the stereotype that results in the reproduction of structural inequality; or opposition strategies of withdrawal, rebellion, passing, or deviance, all of which challenge the distribution of privilege and disadvantage in the organization. In its exploration of a spatial approach to organizational inequality, this paper is structured as follows. First, the theoretical framework is introduced, in which research streams on diversity, organizational space, and embodiment are combined. Thereafter, Archer’s analytical distinction between structure and agency is introduced to allow us to grasp the workings of substructures of inequality. Second, I present the methods used to trace the spatial dimensions of structure and agency, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in agency. Third, I offer an analysis of the findings, identify the spatial routines that constrain minority agency, and show how they intersect with minority employee strategies of conciliation or opposition. Finally, I discuss ways of sensitizing HRM practitioners to the situated quality of workplace diversity with the goal of addressing the more subtle workings of organizational inequality. Theoretical background The HR diversity management practices advanced in the scientific and management literature emphasize the importance of understanding and intervention for reducing or eliminating bias and discrimination in heterogeneous workplaces. This research is characterized by the noble intent for all organizational members to benefit from differences by maximizing inclusion, feelings of fairness, and equality (Bendick et al., 2010; Holck et al., 2016; Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014; Shore et al., 2011; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012). The field of diversity management is dominated by a social-psychological approach that stems from research on organizational behavior. This line of research assumes that negative in-group/out-group dynamics are the product of majority individuals’ biased cognitive processes and stereotyping, which can be corrected and limited through formalized HRM practices ( Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Jonsen et al., 2013; Mamman et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2014; Verbeek and Groeneveld, 2012; Williams and Mavin, 2014). Within this tradition, HRM activities include three main types of practices. The first are objective procedures and pre-specified criteria for selection, promotion, and lay-off decisions; performance appraisals; and pay structures. Objective and neutral procedures are believed to restrict ethnic majority decision makers’ discretion and prevent cognitive biases from shaping allocation and reward decisions (Kalev et al., 2006; Shore et al., 2011). The second practice is training, which aims to familiarize employees with anti-discrimination law, ensure behavioral changes, and increase cross-cultural awareness and communication (Dobbin et al., 2011; Qin et al., 2014). The third set of activities are network and mentoring, which are designed to counter the social isolation that minorities experience as a result of homogeneity ( Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Shore et al., 2011). Spatially embedded inequality 645 PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 646 However, according to critical diversity scholars, these widespread HRM practices of diversity management have generally proved insufficient. In fact, little empirical evidence supports their ability to foster workplace equality (Dobbin et al., 2011; Holvino and Kamp, 2009; Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Oswick and Noon, 2014). One line of critique is that HRM diversity practices are “premature” or based on trial-and-error processes rather than scientific knowledge. Another line of critique suggests that the inadequacy results from the targeting of cognition rather than the structural dimensions of privilege, domination, and disadvantage (Oswick and Noon, 2014; Zanoni et al., 2010). These critics suggest that such practices might even backfire, resulting in stereotyping and re-marginalization (Kalev et al., 2006). This critique of the inability of HRM practices to mitigate workplace inequality leads to my problematization of how a focus on the individual, cognitive level fails to include consideration of the spatial-structural and relational aspects of workplace inequality. A spatial-structural assessment is often either completely overlooked or conceptualized as introductory or background information (Ahonen et al., 2014; Ghorashi and Sabelis, 2013; Holvino and Kamp, 2009; Jonsen et al., 2013; Klarsfeld et al., 2012; Mamman et al., 2012; Shore et al., 2011; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012; Zanoni et al., 2010; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). By introducing a spatial approach to workplace inequality, this study contributes to research broadening the scope of HRM practices and craft more emancipative ways of organizing workplace diversity. In addition, it adds to the small but growing number of HRM studies analyzing ethnic minority agency in relation to institutional and organizational barriers (Ariss et al., 2012; Van Laer and Janssens, 2011, 2014). However, in contrast to other work, this study expands the research scope by exploring how minority employee agency paradoxically both challenges and reproduces organizational substructures of inequality. The enabling and constraining properties of the organizational space In this study, a spatial approach is used as an analytical lever to investigate the power dynamics involved in employees’ spatial production and reproduction of substructures of inequality, which occur alongside the formal values of equal opportunity. This approach draws on the tradition of focussing on the relation between organizational space and power. In this tradition, the organizational space is viewed as a political area – a powerscape – in which the employees’ spatial behaviors are implicated in the reproduction of power relations (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Clegg and Kornberger, 2006; Ropo et al., 2013; Zhang and Spicer, 2014). This involves a productive view on organizational space as produced and reproduced in interactions involving both human and non-human elements (e.g. organizational artefacts, such as architectures, furniture, dress codes, techniques, and rules) that “constitute the experience of space through their forms of occupation, activity and movements as much as they are constituted through those spaces that enable and restrict certain events” (Clegg and Kornberger, 2006, p. 144). As emphasized by Clegg and Kornberger (2006), employees constitute the workspace through countless practices in their everyday work lives as much as they are constituted through them. This productive view on the workspace draws heavily on Giddens’ (1984) view on structure and agency as mutually constituting – structures are produced and reproduced though agency, while they simultaneously enable and constrain agency. Thus, in this study, the constraining and enabling capacities of the workspace are directly linked to minority employees’ agency and their degree of freedom to shape their own chosen career paths. To be able to grasp how minority agency unfolds and navigates the organizational power-scape, I must analytically distinguish between the constraining/structuring Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) capacities and (spatial) structures and their transformative/agentic capacities, as proposed by Archer (1982, 2003). Conversely, it is impossible to talk about the stringency of structural constraints vs degrees of personal freedom. Like Giddens (1984), Archer (1982) conceptualizes structure and agency as mutually constituting. However, Archer analytically grasps structure to pre-exist agency as a point of analytical departure, and their interaction leads to either structural reproduction or structural transformation. In line with Archer, I first determine the constraining properties of the organizational space. This relates to the organization as a power-scape consisting of both formalized, explicit structures of equality (e.g. a formalized diversity policy) and more informal, tacit substructures of inequality, as coined by Acker (2012). Acker defines substructures of inequality as the often invisible processes in the ordinary life of organizations in which gendered (and ethnified) assumptions about masculinity/femininity (minority/majority) are embedded and reproduced, and inequality is perpetuated (Acker, 2012, p. 215). By zooming in on the informality of inequality substructures in conjunction with routinized spatial practices, I can uncover the tacit but routinized relational and behavioral aspects of workplace diversity. I refer to two categories of constraining properties of the workplace in the materialization of power and embodiment related to ethnification in job categories. With this spatial approach, I join Alvesson and Willmott (1992), who highlight how spatial practices “produce people” as stabilized constructions of power relations become embodied in and supported by organizational artefacts, such as rules and routines, thereby forcing employees to behave in certain ways. Archer’s (1982) analytical distinction between structure and agency also creates an opportunity to trace minority employees’ spatial strategies of navigating the organizational power-scape, which lead to either structural reproduction or transformation. In a structure-agency perspective, minority employees are “knowledgeable agents” who are free to act but simultaneously restricted by their awareness and reflexive interpretation of the structural conditions, opportunities, and constraints they face (Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014). Minority employees are viewed not merely as passive receptacles of control but as agents who reflexively act in more or less compliant ways. These actions might create partial organizational spaces for their own micro-emancipation, and potentially, lead to more emancipative ways of organizing diversity (Ghorashi and Ponzoni, 2014; Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Tatli and Özbilgin, 2012; Tomlinson and Schwabenland, 2010). Spatial constraints in the materialization of power and embodiment. The first category of constraining properties of the workspace draws on organizational space as the materialization of power relations. This is widely cited as the disciplinary gaze of the panopticon, which induces (self-) surveillance, control, and discipline. This view was formulated by Foucault and propagated by critical poststructuralist scholars of power, politics, and control (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011; Clegg and Kornberger, 2006; Ropo et al., 2013). In this perspective, the workplace design embraces a certain effect of inducing routinized employee interaction, which materialize in stable relations of dominance (Taylor and Spicer, 2007; Zhang and Spicer, 2014). This spatial effect is furthered by the disciplinary gaze of peers and managers, who impose particular rules of engagement that, to varying degrees, are internalized or more or less cynically performed by employees (Nicholson and Carroll, 2013; Scott, 2010). Of interest in this regard is that employees pick up cues – often through non-cognitive senses of social cues and feelings of (dis)comfort and awkwardness – from the atmospheric quality, and Spatially embedded inequality 647 PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 648 from coworkers’ spatial behavior and their responses to others’ spatial behavior (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011; Zhang and Spicer, 2014). These cues are then synthesized in spatial responses of what appear to be “natural” behaviors in the workspace, and solidify into spatial routines that guide future action and interaction. The second category of constraining properties of the workspace is related to embodiment and bodies at work – elements that have traditionally been critical for feminist organizational theorists in their attempts to understand inequalities at work (Acker, 2006; Ashcraft, 2013). In addition, a recent issue of Organization (2015, Vol. 22, No. 2) demonstrates an increasing interest in theories that include the body and embodiment as part of the “ontological turn” within organizational studies stressing ethics in business (e.g. Dale and Latham, 2015; Kenny and Fotaki, 2015; Pullen and Rhodes, 2015). However, inspired by feminism and Foucault’s historical analysis of the “docile body” (Ropo et al., 2013; Taylor and Spicer, 2007), I approach embodiment as an integral part of a spatial analysis. In the context of this study, the notion of embodiment refers to how “ethnified” bodies are viewed as naturally suited for performing certain jobs, so that those jobs are recognized not by their content and tasks but by who does them (e.g. “pink ghettos,” Ashcraft, 2013; Kenny and Fotaki, 2015). Thus, the organizational space offers templates for action and organizational roles through the configuration of human “equipment” (i.e. the employees), with its perceived skills and knowledge, and through job categories (Ropo et al., 2013). The ethnification of job categories is often legitimized as a matter of meritocracy in combination with a need for adequate language skills and professional training. This is especially true among majority employees (Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014). Nonetheless, the organizational powerscape becomes embodied and materialized, such that it favors the upward mobility of members of the majority to the detriment of members of the minority. Minority employees’ strategies: the enabling capacity of the workspace. The enabling properties of the organizational space relate to minority employees’ strategies of navigating the organizational opportunity structures. Power breeds resistance, and unequal power relations can always be bent, circumvented, strategically appropriated, and countered, thereby creating openings for micro-emancipatory projects (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009; Goffman, 1961; Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014; Tomlinson et al., 2013). A spatial lens sensitizes the study to the minority employee’s more covert acts of silent opposition and deviance, which supplement more overt and explicit resistance. It also allows for bodily acts of behaving differently or embodying other job categories than the (majority) norms prescribe. Therefore, the organizational space becomes a negotiated context in which minority spatial strategies sustain a certain interpretation of reality because minorities internalize the dominant rules and norms, employ methods of selfsurveillance, and conform. At the same time, these strategies reinforce the very causes of inequality (Ahonen et al., 2014; Dale and Latham, 2015; Pullen and Rhodes, 2015; Zhang and Spicer, 2014). Alternatively, minorities can engage in strategies that serve to create partial areas of resistance, but often at the cost of alienation and anxiety (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Goffman, 1961; Nicholson and Carroll, 2013; Scott, 2010; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). Figure 1 offers an outline of my spatial approach to the interplay between agency and structure. Method, research site, and data analysis To study spatial practices, the researcher must have a close relation to the setting. In practice, an ethnographic approach (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011; Zhang and Spicer, 2014) Spatially embedded inequality Ethnical zoning of the office Materialization of power Minority spatial strategies of reconciliation or opposition Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Bodies at work and embodiment Reproduction or transformation of the workspace Ethnification of job categories is required. Ethnography is defined by Van Maanen (2011) as the result of the ethnographer’s efforts to describe what he/she experiences in immersive, lengthy participant observations in the field. Furthermore, ethnography makes it possible to use several supplementary and experimental techniques, as the researcher can rely on what he or she sees, hears, and experiences in a specific social setting (see Van Maanen, 2011) while adhering to the situational pragmatism of the applied methods. This study is based on ethnographic qualitative methods with a “participatory bent,” as the participants (i.e. organizational members) and the researcher as a type of participant affect the research process. Such research is meant to prompt members to reflect on the consequences of their actions (Ashcraft, 1999; Ghorashi and Ponzoni, 2014; Ghorashi and Sabelis, 2013). The “collaborative” character of participative research has a dual aim: to generate understanding, and to encourage the assessment and transformation of widely taken-for-granted modes of organizing in the focal organization (Beyes and Steyaert, 2011). The study therefore situated in an interpretative tradition that acknowledges the constructed and relational nature of fieldwork and research (Nicholson and Carroll, 2013). Research site “Agency” was a municipal center serving the locally operating international businesses together with the municipal administration to develop the municipal business strategy. It was founded in 2008 with eight employees, but it had grown to 85 employees by the time the fieldwork was initiated in May 2012. Its size had been halved by the end of the fieldwork period (summer 2014). The composition of employees was diverse in terms of age, ethnic background, gender, culture, educational background, previous work experience, and language skills. This was evident on the company’s website, on which employees’ cultures, knowledge, and language skills were explicitly described, thereby visually stressing the center’s ambition to provide adequate service to international business. “Diversity” was not specifically mentioned on the organization’s website or in official communication, but the organization referred to the municipality’s diversity and equality policy of demographically mirroring the composition of its citizens. The formal structure entailed three units distinguished by function: advice giving and courses for entrepreneurs, registration and administration of licenses, and 649 Figure 1. Structure and agency in a spatial perspective PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 650 strategic/developmental work relating to the municipal business strategy. Agency had three middle managers (one female all with local background) and a CEO (male), and its offices were organized in a free seating, open office manner for the formal purpose of encouraging cooperative practices and informal information sharing. Data collection In order to trace the empirical data underpinning the spatial dimensions, I applied a combination of qualitative methods of contextualized ethnographic observation and interviews. My aim was to detect, comprehend, and interpret/decode the intersection between the organizational space and diversity processes. My lengthy stay in the organization and my participative fieldwork made this possible. While the fieldwork lasted for a total of 24 months, the bulk of the empirical data were collected over a nine-month period during which the researcher occupied an Agency desk twice each week for an average of six hours. Over the nine-month intensive period, three predominant methods were applied: ethnographic observations, open-ended interviews, and interventions. Ethnographic observations focussed on the ways members routinely engaged with the workspace. This required closer studies of members’ spatial practices, such as their appropriation of a desk in the morning, including their territorial demarcation of their space through the use of such elements as bags and writing utensils; their working routines, and the frequency of both professional and social meetings (with whom and how often). Together, these elements summed up to their routinized maneuvering of spatial artifacts and colleagues, which made up Agency’s organizational space. Moreover participant observations were undertaken in multiple routine meetings, including center, department, team, and management meetings. In addition, I observed job interviews, two center workshops on “identity formulation” and “an attractive workplace,” and ad hoc social gatherings. Thick-description observations, based on my notes, were recorded each day in fieldwork diaries. Open-ended interviews were guided by the initial participative observations. I undertook semi-structured interviews with 18 employees and managers, each of which lasted from 30 to 120 minutes. I asked participants to describe their perceptions of the working space in relation to the free-seating situation and the office design, the work culture, and the cooperative environment in terms of, for example, information sharing, task distribution, decision-making processes, and socializing. The interviews included visual elements, as members were asked to draw maps of their spatial routines and seating habits. A summary of the sample’s demographics is presented in Table I. Interventions were utilized in the final months of intensive fieldwork. The members took an interest in the researcher as a “cognizant outsider,” and some even used the study as grounds for action (Ashcraft, 1999). Interventions provided an opportunity to test the reliability of the data and the researchers’ presumptions through presentations, seminars facilitated by the researcher, participation in debates, informal talks and reflections in response to members’ requests, and one official written report. Data analysis Transcription and initial data analysis began shortly after the study started (Silverman, 2001). To analyze participative observations, interviews, and interventions, I applied a qualitative content analysis inspired by narrative analysis (Lieblich et al., 1998). The content analysis was carried out by splitting the data into relatively small units of Function Culture, training and sex Dates Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Spanish Internal consultant Initially in a training position but in Human science permanent position after six months Woman Section manager Local background Political science Woman Consultant and political/strategic tasks (union representative) Local background Political science Man Local background Master in arts Man Korea Business diploma Woman Local background Political science Man Local background Political science Man Local background Political science Man North African background Business diploma Man Local background Accountant Woman Local background Technical training Man Former Yugoslavia Business diploma Man 2 generation Humane science Woman Local background Graphic designer Man Chief consultant Ethnic consultant In training position CEO Section manager Chief consultant/political-strategic tasks Ethnic consultant Trainee position Chief consultant/advisor Ethnic consultant Consultant/political-strategic tasks (union representative) Consultant/advisor Four interviews: November 2012, June 2013, March 2014 and September 2014 Observation job interview December 2012 Employee development interview with section manager March 2013 Six interviews: April 2013, 2 × May 2013, June 2013, July 2013, February 2014 Mail correspondence and Skype interviews (two) August 2013-January 2014 Two interviews: November 2012 and April 2013 Spatially embedded inequality 651 Three interviews: November 2013 (Skype), April 2014 and October 2014 Observation job interview December 2013 Interview December 2013 June 2013 June 2013 November 2013 January 2014 November 2013 December 2013 December 2013 November 2013 December 2013 (continued ) Table I. Coding of interview with employees in “Agency” PR 45,4 Function Culture, training and sex Dates Chief consultant/political-strategic tasks Local background Social science Woman India Formerly self-employed Woman Local background Political science Woman 2 generation Political science Man Ethnic consultant 652 Chief consultant/political-strategic tasks Project position Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Table I. December 2013 December 2013 December 2013 February 2013 content on the basis of themes. Initially, I began by scanning the data and isolating the words and phrases connected to majority/minority distinctions in relation to “spatial zoning,” “embodiment of job categories,” and “minority employee spatial strategies” with a particular focus on strategies of conciliation and opposition. After assigning open codes to different sections of the data, the first descriptive coding revealed common patterns and themes relating to the spatial analytical categories. In the second round of coding, I paid particular attention to producing adequate themes. In this regard, I assigned content to three spatial analytical categories. First, in relation to the “materialization of power,” the emerging themes were power relations enacted in the spatial routines of zoning of the office space. These emerged from my own observations and employees’ maps of spatial routines, seating habits, and employee reflections on those maps. Second, in relation to “bodies and embodiment,” I traced employee perceptions and behavior that suggested the existence of an informal system of task distribution, advancement, and cooperative patterns, all of which gave rise to a system of majority and minority job categories. The third category – minority spatial strategies – rested on minority employees’ accounts of their own and colleagues’ attempts to navigate the organizational opportunity structures. In particular, one case of experimenting with a different task distribution in cooperation with a middle manager and the subsequent “cost of emancipation” was influential for my findings. In the analysis, I was particularly observant of not only what employees said they did, but also of actual patterns of action and interaction. My aim was to understand how the organization as a power-scape was kept in place and challenged by the myriad of employee practices, many of which ran parallel to the formal structures of rules and communicated values. Findings In this section I present the findings regarding the enabling and constraining abilities of spatial structures, their intersection with the power-related distribution of privilege and disadvantage, and minority employees’ strategies of conciliation or opposition in Agency. The first analysis explores how routinized spatial practices created durable substructures of inequality in Agency despite a formal commitment to diversity and equal opportunities. The second analysis investigates how the organizational space granted minority employees certain liberties to embark on strategies of opposition or conciliation. Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Spatial constraints in the materialization of power and embodiment Materialization of power. Agency was situated in a large municipal building. The office space was open, and it was furnished with funky, low-price design furniture in bright colors. The furnishings invoked a creative and modern impression that was not too flashy. With the exception of a central kitchen and a small two-person secluded office for writing, Agency’s physical layout was dominated by a transparent style, which signaled openness. It was predominantly made up of a shared working zone in which tables were lined up in rows along two parallel window sections. A maximum of eight people could work at each table. The Aisles were found at one end of the tables. Eight glass-walled meeting rooms were located at the ends of the shared office space, each offering either comfortable chairs or more formal meeting tables. These offices, and together with a seating area in the center of the office, were intended to support frequent meeting activities. Agency had an official free-seating policy, which was formally articulated by managers. The aims of the policy were to invoke voluntary, informal information sharing and rotating cooperation patterns to activate the employees’ diverse skills and knowledge, and to ensure an inclusive climate. However, when asked, employees were able to draw maps of the informal zoning of the office and to place most of their colleagues in fixed seats. In these maps, the administrative staff typically occupied a zone at one end of the office, while the consultants were typically located at the other end of the office. The international group occupied a third zone located between the other two, where members took advantage of the opportunity to take collective breaks and speak together in Spanish. The international group also inhabited the small secluded office within the larger office, which was officially reserved for telephone calls and writing. They referred to this office as “the cage.” As one interviewee stated, “We are very much subdivided into groups due to the way we sit. I often sit in the cage with Naya.” When asked whether the cage was reserved for those who make trouble, this interviewee stated, “Ha ha. Yes, you might say so.” Most respondents emphasized that they were seated in groups according to ethnic background: “We are very mixed and very segregated. Just watch how people sit together. Those with similar ethnic backgrounds speak together and socialize. We are even divided according to whether we are first or second generation.” Another interview mused, “We are divided between the ‘real’ Danes and the foreigners. Only a few manage to navigate between the two groups. It is a rather poisonous environment.” The relatively fixed groupings of employees according to ethnic background were evident in the physical zoning of the open office space, in the patterns of who spoke to or smoked cigarettes with whom, in the lunch patterns, and in the languages used around the office. The groups also displayed different behavioral norms. The loudness of collective breaks in the international group provided a direct contrast with the relative silence of the shared workplace. This was often met with resentment: “They just look at us when we talk in Spanish. Often we hear jokes like: ‘Do you dare tell them that they speak rubbish?’ ” Employees’ spatial practices clearly signaled patterns of inclusion and exclusion but also indicated who were able to break the unwritten rules of behavior. Agency’s organizational workspace was a contested space encompassing an ethnified hierarchy despite of its equivocality: the contrast between the signal of openness (i.e. free seating) and the visible spatial enactment (i.e. segregation and ethnic zoning). Accordingly, where an employee placed his or her body represented a political Spatially embedded inequality 653 PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 654 act that demonstrated whether that employee was privileged with a “permanent” seat that no one would (dare to) take or a provisionary employee in a low position who had to fight for a workspace everyday. The seating choices also reflected the ethnic groups with which employees identified. The power-scape became very visible in these daily seating dramas. Contrary to the official intention, the free-seating hampered social interaction and served as a type of collective shaming. Employees were very careful with regard to the kinds of signals they sent through their spatial behavior, and they paid close attention to the signals sent by their colleagues. This resulted in less frequent interaction due to fear of interrupting or annoying colleagues, which had a notable negative effect on the inclusion of newcomers with an international background. Newcomers talked about feeling lost and forgotten in the office space, and stated that they never know where to sit. They also highlighted a fear of occupying a “taken” seat and thus breaking unwritten office rules. Navigating the free-seating office space was described as one of the biggest on-boarding challenges. Apart from this frustration, the dysfunctional free seating highlighted an inclusion problem. As such, this problem became a legitimate theme, under which lied the theme of a lack of coherence and cross-ethnic cooperation, which in turn perpetuated a substructure of inequality. Bodies at work and embodiment. The ethnic zoning of the workplace was closely related to another spatial practice that reinforced a substructure of inequality. One particular spatial artefact – the employee body with its salient demographic features – was used to stabilize power relations. In line with Ashcraft’s (2013) metaphor of “the glass slipper,” this dimension captured how job categories in Agency “naturally” possessed features that fitted certain groups of employees but not others, resulting in the “ethnification” of job categories. In Agency, there were no formal rules or procedures for task distribution. Rather, tasks were distributed at the discretion of the managers, allegedly according to who was most qualified to perform the task. In addition, promotions were decided by the CEO on the basis of meritocratic principles outlined in the municipal policy. However, informally, two job categories existed: high-prestige political/strategic jobs and lowprestige representative/practical advice-giving jobs. Even though the very idea behind the organization was to help practitioners and political strategists work together to generate innovative political-strategic proposals, there was a sharp functional distinction between members performing the political/strategic work, which predominantly consisted of writing tasks and attending political meetings, and the more representational, customer-oriented functions of consultancy and advice giving. The customer-oriented tasks were officially praised as the center’s backbone. However, they were unofficially perceived as low-status tasks intended to showcase the “diversity” of the employees and their language competences. One minority employee reflected on the fact that he was pictured on Agency’s main web page but not considered “qualified” to represent the organization at municipal meetings: “We are good enough when we can be used for promotion and to look politically correct. However, when it comes to doing the exciting jobs, we are left out.” Most employees described the political-strategic work as high status and as the access point for advancement in the municipal hierarchy. Political-strategic assignments were often referred to at center meetings as victories in which Agency contributed to the city-wide business strategy. Members working with political/strategic tasks often received task assignments directly from the CEO and were asked to join him at strategically important meetings. The CEO officially praised the representativeness and the international dimension of the employees. However, employees with the “right” professional training (in political science), and native Danish speaking and writing skills were selected for almost all of the high-prestige tasks. Therefore, entrance into highprestige tasks and professional career tracks was guided by a process aimed at filtering out those employees who were “adequately skilled” to perform certain tasks, as articulated by the CEO: Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) In order to be able to mirror the municipal corporate landscape, it is important that we have language skills and ballast from other cultures. For example, if we deal with a greengrocer who speaks Arabic, then it is fine to bring Jamal. However, everything that goes up the political system is in Danish, and it is probably just easier for ethnic Danes because they fit, they know how to frame it, and the language is natural in another way. It is a matter of trust throughout the system. Even though the CEO described the issue as a matter of legitimacy and the practice as one that benefitted all concerned, the end result was that employees with international backgrounds found themselves in the representative, low-prestige job category. At a managerial meeting, the CEO even encouraged the other section managers to be “more tedious […] we must avoid signaling that we have many different backgrounds and we are ‘strange’. Instead we have to signal that we are efficient and knowledgeable.” From his perspective, difference was the same as non-professionalism, while the “tediousness” of white employees trained in political science was equated with professionalism. Most of the respondents – both employees and managers – spoke of ethnicity as a “skill” in itself. The official recruitment strategy embraced this view, as the talent pool from which Agency drew on was very diverse: “When we recruit employees for advisory tasks, we need ethnic diversity to, for example, service the pizzeria owners.” However, most of the employees with international background entered Agency through an active labor-market scheme, which aimed to move the unemployed into provisional, publicly funded positions. In other words, diversity was coupled with corporate social responsibility and newly appointed “diverse” employees were assigned a lower status, at least initially. Moreover, they had to fight to obtain a permanent position. Minority employees’ strategies of navigating opportunity structures This analysis examines how minority agents in Agency both mobilized and reinforced the constraints of the organizational space. Of key concern is how minority employees spatially navigated the power-scape while trying to manipulate events and material resources in order to turn them into opportunities, which in turn may have the potential to transform the organizational opportunity structure. Like bricoleurs, employees creatively applied five main strategies according to the situational logic, and they even vacillated among the strategies. Conciliatory strategy: embodying the stereotype. The most prevalent minority employee strategy was linked to bodies at work and embodiment, and implied what Goffman (1961) terms “colonization” – accepting and cynically demonstrating compliance. By playing the game and embodying the stereotype of doing representative work, conflicts were temporarily kept at bay. This strategy was closely related to Alvesson and Willmott’s (1992) warning about the costs of emancipation in the form of anxiety and alienation. Spatially embedded inequality 655 PR 45,4 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) 656 Hence, embodiment of the stereotype created a secure position and stability in work life, but it was accompanied by low self-esteem and a relentless need to justify the situation as organizational unfairness. This strategy was evident in the employees’ compliance with ethnically zoned seating, collaboration, and socialization patterns. Feelings of social injustice strengthened the bonds among peers with minority backgrounds, while expanding feelings of alienation from majority colleagues. However, the ethnified job categories could be turned into a strategic position of indispensability. In other words, ethnic minority employees could exclude others by stressing the valuable language and cultural skills they possessed. Paradoxically, this kept minority employees from challenging the basic cause of inequality – the stereotypical distinction between majority and minority employees in terms of skills and competencies. In fact, they reinforced this stereotypical view in order preserve their own power (Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009). This touches upon how the constraint exercised by any structure over one person is directly related to the opportunity it offers to another, which leads to an inherent paradox of inequality and opportunity along ethnically defined lines (Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014). The activation of the minority/ majority distinction granted access to advantages and disadvantages in Agency. However, taking advantage of reserved, ethnified job categories concomitantly reproduced the very structures that perpetuated marginalization. Opposition strategies of withdrawal, rebellion, passing, and deviation. The most prevalent opposition strategy was passive resistance in which the employee avoided the managerial and collegial gaze through withdrawal (Goffman, 1961; Scott, 2010), linked to the materialization of power. Agency’s free-seating setup resembled a panopticon in which surveillance and self-surveillance were parts of its members’ interactions. However, Agency also offered numerous hideaways in which members were free from direct scrutiny. These could be found in online social media, in the smoking area outside, in visits to external clients, and in working at home. Another strategy of withdrawal was to take collective breaks during which languages other than Danish were spoken. This created a space free of majority dominance, while it consolidated the language-based social and collaborative groups. The numerous reports of stress and long-term sick leave pointed to yet another withdrawal strategy. A second, more active opposition strategy was rebellion (Goffman, 1961; Scott, 2010). Rebels emphasized social-demographic categories with political ends. In systems built on the privileges and rights of certain fixed identities, the uncovering of privilege can be converted into political activities, thereby creating internal group solidarity as a point of departure for mobilizing transformational pressure (Holck et al., 2016). The rebel in Agency was motivated to fight for justice on behalf of others and often held an employee representative function in the collaborative structure. In that position, the employee would seize every opportunity to unmask unfairness in the distribution of tasks assignments for others, while maintaining his or her privileged situation as an exception to the rule. This created a strong power base for an employee known by peers for speaking the truth and viewed as untouchable by management, as the Janus face of the rebel was the martyr. The minority strategies of withdrawal and rebellion both took place within a hierarchy in which minority employees were placed in representative roles at the bottom and white majority employees trained in political science were at the top. This power-scape was reified through routinized expectations of behavior and biased interpretations of events – by the winners and losers in the spatial order. Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Among the more troublesome opposition strategies actively challenging the status quo of distribution of privilege and disadvantage, was passing (Goffman, 1961; Nicholson and Carroll, 2013). Employees trying to “pass” as members of the majority group were marked by their peers as traitors or deniers of their background: “You know Sarah? She pretends she is not a foreigner. She once asked me if Lebanese people can eat licorice, but she is a Muslim herself!” Hence, the strategy of “passing” was difficult for colleagues to tackle because it obstructed the rebel’s political struggle for social justice, invalidated the claims of unfairness made by the stereotype, and impeded the naturalized matrix of task and status distribution introduced by the privileged employees. Accordingly, few members were allowed to adopt a passing strategy with the status “second generation immigrant” as a necessity. The most problematic of the minority strategies was deviance, which aimed to create partial spaces of micro-emancipation (Scott, 2010). The deviant insisted on moving beyond patterns of inequality, and vowed to stick to his or her own chosen career path. For example, Isaac, an employee with international background persuaded a section manager that he should be assigned political-strategic tasks. This assignment was made unofficially and “at his own risk.” As no formal system of task distribution and job categories was in place, this was just a matter of distributing tasks differently than prescribed by the managerial discretionary routine. Accordingly, the Isaac was left to his own devices while trying to prove that a foreigner who had not studied political science could perform political/strategic tasks. The responses from colleagues were immediate: “The first thing [a section manager] asked me last Friday was ‘Why did you get these assignments on business policy? Why are you allowed to do this with your background?’ ” Thereafter, Isaac experienced an increase in professional and social isolation: It has become very unpleasant to be here, and I get back-stabbed every now and then […] people are constantly questioning whether “we” – the non-Danes – have the right competences, especially writing skills. I constantly have to prove that I am good enough. Remarkably, Isaac’s exclusion was reinforced by peers with minority backgrounds. Especially among the rebels and the stereotypes, Isaac was viewed as impersonating the “stranger among us” and as a threat to the spatial organizational ordering of “us versus them.” Isaac embodied an equivocal other who both unmasked the artificial character of the minority/majority distinction on which claims of social injustice were based, and demonstrated its pervasiveness by demonstrating very tangible barriers to equal opportunity. Isaac ended up being excluded and unofficially exiled from Agency: “Troublemakers like me get ‘engaged,’ or lent out to other organizations, so that we are kept out of sight.” The materialization of power relations subsequently solidified, demonstrating the mutual constitution of estrangement and solidarity (Scott, 2010). Table II provides an overview of the findings in relation to the spatial themes of materialization of power and embodiment, and minority employees’ strategies. Concluding discussion, implications for HRM practices, and limitations This study adds to the emerging field of critical diversity research by moving diversity debates away from their foundation in cognition and social psychology (Ariss et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2014; Williams and Mavin, 2014; Zanoni et al., 2010). This paper has explored the enabling and constraining capacities of Agency’s organizational space in relation to minority employees’ abilities to shape their own chosen career paths. The study demonstrates how spatial practices can detract from, distort, or even hijack Spatially embedded inequality 657 PR 45,4 Enabling and constraining capacity of space Materialization of power 658 Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) Bodies at work and embodiment Minority employee spatial strategies Table II. Overview of spatial themes and practices in “Agency” Themes Spatial practices Ethnical segregation Ethnical zoning and fixed seating in a “free seating” of the office space office Segregated patterns of socializing and cooperation The office space as a power-scape reinforced by symbolic employee spatial practices related to seating and socializing routines “Ethnification” of High-prestigious job categories are reserved for ethnic job categories majority employees legitimized by meritocracy Low-prestige job categories are reserved for ethnic minorities hampering their own choice of career paths Embodying the stereotype Strategies of Withdrawal from the gaze conciliation and Passing opposition Rebellion Counter-space of deviance formal policies on equal opportunity by spatially re-inscribing a majority/minority distinction. In Agency, the zoning of the office space along ethnic lines and the ethnification of the job hierarchy resulted in the assignment of certain job categories to either minority or majority groups. This spatial approach to organizational substructures of inequality informs current research on HRM diversity management in two ways. First, I argue that formal HRM practices – such as objective procedures, sensitivity training, and networking – often fail because they are not embedded in a situational assessment of the tacit, organizational “underbelly” of power battles related to privileges, disadvantages, and resistance. For instance, Agency relied on objective criteria in recruitment and selection – a common HRM practice. As a result, minority applicants were recruited, but only for limited number of job categories, and predominantly on a provisional basis with little potential for advancement. Hence, the diversity potential was undermined by spatial practices that produced ethnic stratification in relation to cooperation, socializing, and task-distribution routines. In addition, to be able to benefit from training and network activities, a general recognition of the existence of substructures of inequality is necessary. In Agency majority employees had the privilege not to see their privilege (Acker, 2006) persuaded by objective and neutral criteria of municipal meritocracy backed by formal diversity policies of equal opportunities. In this situation sensitivity training and networking/mentoring might even have led to re-marginalization and stereotyping, triggering negative (majority) responses in which promoted minority members were perceived as non-deserving (Kalev et al., 2006). Second, a focus on the barriers experienced by minorities, rather than the reflexive agency they deploy, cuts HRM diversity management practitioners off from an important vehicle of transformation. To facilitate change, HRM practices must provide disadvantaged minority employees with material and symbolic resources in order to empower them to fight against their marginalization (Boogaard and Roggeband, 2009). In this regard, objective criteria, networking, and mentoring are insufficient. Empowerment must include a broader set of structure-targeting HRM practices involving minority employee participation and empowerment, and a break with ethnic Downloaded by RMIT University At 16:23 02 June 2016 (PT) zoning and the ethnification of job categories. In Agency these could have included compulsory rotations in teamwork, conflict-resolution processes, access to crucial information and resources, involvement in high-prestige mainstream tasks, and providing some influence on decision-making processes ( Janssens and Zanoni, 2014; Qin et al., 2014; Van Laer and Janssens, 2011, 2014). The adoption of a spatial approach to workplace inequality also has significant implications for practice, as the empowerment of minority employees requires careful consideration of the advantages and costs of strategies related to either conciliation or opposition. Consequently, a complex and paradoxical configuration of the motivations behind minority employees’ strategies in Agency emerges. On the one hand, they worked within an organizational structure that reflected and sustained majorityenforced norms. On the other hand, they benefitted from their favorable positioning, which arose from their specific skills for dealing with international customers and representing the company. This paradoxical position may explain why conciliatory strategies tended to prevail despite the broader variety of opposition strategies and the high level of minority dissatisfaction. Notably, employees from both the ethnic majority and the ethnic minorities gained from this paradoxical minority position of privilege/ disadvantage, which in turn perpetuated a substructure of inequality. This serves to highlight the rarity of structural transformation – once minority employees have learned to play the game, the losses associated with deviations are high and the desire for reform declines (Ortlieb and Sieben, 2014; Tomlinson et al., 2013). The stakes must be shifted increasing the advantages of opposition, especially in relation to the strategy of deviation, which posed the greatest challenge to the skewed opportunity structures in Agency. The costs of micro-emancipation were too high in terms of alienation and anxiety for minority employees (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). An alternative organizational space must to be crafted in which all employees’ contributions are valued equally. This necessitates a broader definition of the competencies that constitute a qualified employee regardless of ethnic affiliation (Ghorashi and Ponzoni, 2014; Ghorashi and Sabelis, 2013; Janssens and Zanoni, 2014). This study suffers from several limitations but highlights potential areas for future research. First, there are limitations associated with focussing on a single case, as the findings cannot be generalized to the total population but can only demonstrate the power of the example (Silverman, 2001). 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(2014), “ ‘Leader, you first’: the everyday production of hierarchical space in a Chinese bureaucracy”, Human Relations, Vol. 67 No. 6, pp. 739-762. About the author Lotte Holck is a MA in Human Geography and Administration, BA in Business (Innovation and Change Management) and PhD fellow in workplace diversity with a particular focus on organizational structures and agency in conjuncture power and space. Lotte Holck can be contacted at: lho.ioa@cbs.dk For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com Scandinavian Journal of Management 32 (2016) 52–62 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Scandinavian Journal of Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scaman Reproduction of ‘Typical’ gender roles in temporary organizations—No surprise for whom? The case of cooperative behaviors and their acknowledgement$ Barbara Siebena,* , Timo Braunb , Aristides I. Ferreirac a Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chair of Human Resource Management, Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany b University of Kaiserslautern, Department of Business Studies and Economics, Germany c ISCTE—Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Business Research Unit, Portugal A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received 2 December 2014 Received in revised form 28 November 2015 Accepted 4 December 2015 Available online 16 January 2016 Temporary organizations such as projects are known to differ in various respects from permanent ones and have been argued to be more gender-neutral. Inspired by gender research in permanent organizations, we show that (in)congruency between gender and project roles evokes similar mechanisms in both permanent and temporary systems. Using the example of cooperative behavior, operationalized as project citizenship behavior (PCB), we examine how temporary organizations reward such behaviour. A cross-sectional study was conducted, with 241 project managers and workers participating. The results of seven structural equation models reveal that though the enactment of PCB does not vary by gender, the relationship of PCB with its outcomes does: men and women were clearly rewarded differently depending on the gender congruency of their project roles. ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Gender congruence Inequality OCB Organizational citizenship behavior Rewards Outcomes Projects Temporality Temporary organizations 1. Introduction Research into gender and organizations has shown up to now a persistence of gender inequality (e.g., Calás, Smircich, & Holvino, 2014). Studies for the most part have concentrated on permanent, or line, organizations. Might examining temporary organizations instead make a difference? Projects, the most prominent type of temporary organization (Turner & Müller, 2003), have unique features distinguishing them from permanent/line organizations, in particular temporality and certain termination; a team $ We wish to thank first of all the IPMA for its valuable support in the process of data collection. Moreover, we thank attendees of the EURAM 2014 conference and those of the HRM and organization section workshops of the German Academic Association for Business Research for discussions of prior versions of this paper. We also heartily thank Thorsten Reichmuth for additional data analyses and Persephone Doliner who helped us in improving language and style. Last, but not least we are grateful for the anonymous reviewers’ and the editors’ comments which finally helped to spell out the core argument of this paper. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: barbara.sieben@hsu-hh.de (B. Sieben), timo.braun@wiwi.uni-kl.de (T. Braun), aristides.ferreira@iscte.pt (A.I. Ferreira). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.12.001 0956-5221/ ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. structure; and a complex, nonrepetitive task (Bakker, 2010; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995; Söderlund, 2011). Projects are embedded in a context of organizational and social structures and relationships as well as in a historic sequence of events (Engwall, 2003; Sydow, Linkvist, & DeFillippi, 2004). Because of their flatter structures, more decentralized decision making, and higher employee autonomy, projects have been argued to be more gender-neutral than permanent organizations and to offer more employment and promotion opportunities to women (e.g., Ferguson, 1984; Fondas, 1996; Savage & Witz, 1992). Thus, for research referring to temporary organizations it would be of no surprise if the mechanisms of gender role creation and enactment were somewhat different compared to permanent organizations—not least because of distinctive mechanisms of human information processing in the face of temporality (Bakker, Boroş, Kenis, & Oerlemans, 2013). Yet still, gender oriented studies underline that men predominantly conduct and manage project-based work (e.g., Henderson, Stackman, & Koh, 2013; Legault & Chasserio, 2012; Ojiako et al., 2014). Moreover, Henderson and Stackman (2010) note that women work both as project managers and team members twice as much as men on smaller projects with lower B. Sieben et al. / Scandinavian Journal of Management 32 (2016) 52–62 budgets. Against this background, for gender researchers a reproduction of typical gender roles and relations would be less surprising than a clear break with gender roles and hierarchical relations in temporary organizations. Thus, we are facing a tension between the research streams on temporary organizations on the one hand and gender-related research on the other. To explore this tension, it is necessary to focus more on informal processes and shape our view to the more subtle characteristics of temporary organizations. This will help to expose what is actually happening instead of what is supposed to happen (per prescriptive project management approaches). In particular, it is necessary to go beyond a differentiation between men and women (i.e., a reduction to the control and dummy variable ‘sex’), but to take in a consideration of typical gender segregations in terms of gendered project roles and their effects. To dig more deeply into these relationships and potentially find opportunities to diminish gender inequalities, we focus in our study on cooperative behaviors and their impacts on potentially gendered reward structures. Thereby we do not only compare men and women and their assumed gender-(in) congruent behaviors (e.g., Triana, 2011), but also men and women in gender (in) congruent project roles. Temporary organizations and in particular projects rely on discrete cooperative behaviors of individuals (project citizenship behavior [PCB]). These behaviors are performed voluntarily, in that they are beyond the scope of a work contract, and are supposed to accomplish complex and nonrepetitive tasks. At the same time, these behaviors may be inevitable, because tasks blur organizational boundaries and in an interorganizational setting, legal agreements are not specific enough to clearly allocate all duties to individual organizations (Autry, Skinner, & Lamb, 2008; Braun, Ferreira, & Sydow, 2013; Braun, Müller-Seitz, & Sydow, 2012). The research tradition on such cooperative efforts of individuals tracks back to the 1980s when the construct of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was introduced (Organ, 1988; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). Organ (1988) defines OCB as ‘individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization’. Previous studies prove that OCB not only enhances the effectiveness of organizations (Organ, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006; Podsakoff, Ahearne, & MacKenzie, 1997), but also promotes social capital and the stability and quality of relationships, by, for instance, increasing liking and trust among coworkers (Bolino, Turnley, & Bloodgood, 2002). Corresponding studies on temporary organizations have shown that PCB may increase the effectiveness of this type of organization in analogous ways (Braun et al., 2013). OCB and PCB respectively enhance not only organizational and project outcomes, but also individual work and employment outcomes, for instance through performance evaluations and rewards (e.g., Allen & Rush, 2001; Kiker & Motowidlo,1999; Podsakoff, Whiting, & Podsakoff, 2009). Yet, as Bergeron, Shipp, Rosen, and Furst (2013) warn, the relation of OCB and individual career outcomes is not necessarily positive, but is determined by systemic features, such as performance evaluation based on organizational outcomes (which typically privileges task performance). What is more, hitherto research has rarely accounted for gender issues in the relationship of citizenship behaviors and their outcomes. Hence, inspired by Kark and Waismel-Manor (2005), who ask what gender has got to do with organizational citizenship behavior, we examine the specific gendered employment outcomes of citizenship behavior in temporary organizations. Scholars have only rarely examined the gendered enactment of OCB (Kidder, 2002; Kidder & Mac Lean Parks, 2001; Kmec & Gorman, 2010) or OCB’s gendered impact on performance evaluations (Allen & Rush, 2001; Heilman & Chen, 2005), salary, and promotion (Allen, 2006). 53 In sum, examinations of the gendered enactment and outcomes of citizenship behavior as postulated by Kark and Waismel-Manor (2005) remain rare, and we are not aware of studies focusing on citizenship behavior in temporary organizations such as projects. Against this background, we ask about the gendered outcomes of PCB and in particular how they impact workplace (in) equality and diversity. More precisely, we examine the employment consequences of project citizenship behavior for men and women in both gender-congruent and gender-incongruent project roles (i.e., men in a project manager role entailing supervision duties and budget control; women in an administrative role lacking supervision duties and budget control; and vice versa). We derive hypotheses and utilize a quantitative survey design to test them. The paper is structured as follows: first, we elaborate the theoretical background and derive hypotheses from research on OCB in temporary organizations (or PCB) and gender research on citizenship behaviors. Second, we outline our quantitative methodology, providing information about sample, data collection, measures, and methods of analysis. Third, we present the findings of our analyses. Fourth, we discuss our results against the backdrop of the previously introduced theoretical concepts of PCB and the research on gender issues. We point to theoretical implications, empirical limitations, and directions for future research. 2. Theoretical background Projects are popular with managers since they are often more flexible than line organizations and have more predictable costs. They occur in various industries, including traditional ones such as construction or pharmaceuticals, creative industries such as theatre, film making, or advertising, and service industries such as consulting and IT services (Sydow et al., 2004). Projects differ from permanent organizations in terms of time (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). Examining temporality is crucial to understanding this organizational form. Even though it seems that limited duration is often perceived as necessarily implying short duration, this does not need to be the case (Bakker, 2010). While a formal kick-off event often marks the starting point of a project, a deadline usually marks its end (Bakker, 2010). Nonetheless, there are cases in which termination is postponed or even abandoned completely (MüllerSeitz & Sydow, 2011); thus, the border between temporary and permanent can become fuzzy. This is also due to historicity of temporary organizations, i.e., the shade of past projects affects present and future organizing, thereby embedding the single occurrence into permanent structure (Engwall, 2003). What is more, the nature of temporality can lead to distinctive mechanisms of information processing that are quite different from permanent organizations. In particular, the time-limitation evokes more heuristic information processing as opposed to systematic information processing (Bakker et al., 2013). That means, in the face of temporality, individuals tend to grasp the information at hand (e.g., proven schemes, rules of thumb) instead working systematically (i.e., follow processes, analytical procedures etc.). Second, projects rely on teams, or interdependent sets of collaborating people (Goodman & Goodman, 1976). Generally, project teams that are often characterized by high levels of interdisciplinarity, cut through organizational hierarchies and cross organizational boundaries (Bakker, 2010). Research on organizational behavior and project management literatures address, for example, how to motivate, communicate, and build commitment in team environments (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). Third, projects are defined by specific tasks. The task is usually the reason why a project exists (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995), and it dominates the becoming as well as the being of this organizational form. Generally, projects appear to be more important to their members than permanent organizations appear to be to their staff 54 B. Sieben et al. / Scandinavian Journal of Management 32 (2016) 52–62 (Bakker, 2010; Katz, 1982). Project tasks can be rather complex and unique rather than simple and repetitive (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). Thereby, project structures stretch across organizational departments and hierarchies and may even cross organizational boundaries, as does an interorganizational project (Midler, 1995). Quite surprisingly, gender research has not paid much attention to temporary organizations yet, despite for a call for more critical research on projects, including a look at equality issues (Hodgson & Cicmil, 2008). Projects may distinctly differ from line organizations in regards to gender equality. In particular, projects cut through organizational hierarchies and sometimes also organizational boundaries. Thus, notions such as the ‘glass ceiling’ may not apply to projects (e.g., Fondas, 1996). Yet the few gender analyses of projects that exist point to a reproduction of the gender gap, be it via gendered biases in organizational culture (Cartwright & Gale, 1995; Gale & Cartwright, 1995), via gendered project management models and procedures (Buckle & Thomas, 2003; Henderson & Stackman, 2010; Lindgren & Packendorff, 2006; Thomas & BuckleHenning, 2007), or via other mechanisms, such as unplanned and unpaid overtime, which disadvantages women (Chasserio & Legault, 2010; Legault & Chasserio, 2012). In a recent gender-informed study on project management, Henderson et al. (2013) analyze women project managers’ advantages and disadvantages as well as their issue-selling behavior, thus coming close to our intent to analyze the gendered outcomes of citizenship behaviors. Henderson et al. (2013) find that using and developing networks, communicating, meeting challenges, and issue selling are important for women’s employment outcomes in project management roles. Yet still, networking behavior and subsequent resource acquisition might realize different outcomes for men and women, as the study of Jayawarna, Jones, & Marlow (2015) on entrepreneurial behavior shows. Consequently, we will ask if citizenship behaviors, enacted by men and women in either a gender-congruent or a genderincongruent role (i.e., as either project member or manager), make a difference for employment outcomes. 2.1. OCB in projects The concept of organizational citizenship behavior, introduced in 1983, has received increasing interest and gained increasing influence in the field of organizational behavior through today (Podsakoff et al., 2000; Braun et al., 2012). The concept’s managerial relevance and its potential effects on organizational functioning and performance account for this popularity (Organ et al., 2006). OCB is discretionary behavior that is not explicitly rewarded but is nevertheless useful for organizational functioning (Organ, 1988). The vast majority of OCB studies refer to intraorganizational settings (Organ et al., 2006; Podsakoff et al., 2000). Yet there is empirical support for the prevalence of OCB in interorganizational projects (e.g., Autry et al., 2008; Braun et al., 2012). According to this stream of research, project citizenship behavior, PCB, consists of the following dimensions (cf. Braun et al., 2012, 2013): Helping behavior is directed toward helping another individual face-to-face (Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983). This behavior solves or prevents problems among staff (e.g., Borman & Motowidlo, 1993; George & Brief, 1992; Smith et al., 1983) and it is crucial for bridging organizational boundaries in interorganizational projects (Braun et al., 2013). Project loyalty entails supporting and defending objectives of a project—analogous to organizational loyalty that has been conceived as loyalty of an individual to an organization’s objective (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). It also includes spreading goodwill, protecting organization and project, and defending them against various threats (Podsakoff et al., 2000). Project compliance is the acceptance of rules and regulations as well as various project procedures and their internalization by individuals. Compliance is directed toward the well-being of an entire organization or project rather than toward the well-being of an individual (Smith et al., 1983). A ‘good citizen’ obeys rules even when nobody is watching (Podsakoff et al., 2000). For projects, this behavior is essential since this organizational form tends to be characterized by horizontal rather than hierarchical coordination (e.g., Bechky, 2006). Individual initiative refers to task-related behaviors that extend beyond minimally expected performance to moments of creativity and innovation. Examples of individual initiative include an employee’s tackling additional tasks or motivating fellow employees to do the same (Podsakoff et al., 2000). On a project, a team member might proactively suggest improvements without being asked to. Relationship maintenance refers to behaviors such as participating at industry conferences or project management venues, simply having lunch with former project co-workers, or calling previous colleagues to catch up. Relationship maintenance occurs outside operative day-to-day work and reflects individuals’ interest in the ‘big picture’, for instance the governance of a project. Thus, the focus of these behaviors is rather strategic. Some of the above dimensions (in particular helping behavior and loyalty) are present in the vast majority of OCB studies, while others (such as initiative) are used less frequently. Furthermore, it should be noted that OCB dimensions have been re-conceptualized over and over and the application of different conceptualizations in empirical research is very common (e.g., Podsakoff et al., 2000). One distinction which is widely accepted distinguishes behaviors directed toward individuals (labeled ‘OCB-I’) from behaviors (‘OCBO’) directed toward an organization as a whole (Organ, 1997). Correspondingly, in our empirical section we distinguish between PCB-I (comprising helping behavior and relationship maintenance) and PCB-O (comprising initiative, project compliance, and project loyalty), following the corresponding distinction proposed by Braun et al. (2012, 2013). There is a broad body of research on the antecedents of citizenship behavior, which include attitudinal and dispositional conditions as well as task, leadership and work context related antecedents (for an overview: Organ et al., 2006). The OCB construct reflects explicit individual and organizational expectations that may constitute an appropriate role behavior, which in turn, is influenced by external variables. For example, the existing literature suggests that transformational and transactional leadership styles are positively related to OCB (Nahum-Shani & Somech, 2011). Different individual characteristics may reflect different needs and interests and different leadership styles influence their tendency to develop OCB (Euwema, Wendt, & van Emmerik, 2007). As for the outcomes of citizenship behavior, empirical analyses have shown that PCB may generate outcomes for temporary organizations and their members that are similar to the outcomes of OCB in line organizations. Just as OCB has been shown to impact organizational effectiveness (e.g., Organ et al., 2006; Podsakoff et al., 1997), PCB may enhance project effectiveness in terms of time, budget, and quality (Braun et al., 2013). With regard to individual outcomes for project members, PCB was shown to affect relationship quality (Braun et al., 2013), furthering related findings of OCB analyses (e.g., Bolino et al., 2002). Also, first indications of positive employment outcomes of PCB have emerged (Braun et al., 2013) analogous to OCBs’ impact on employment outcomes such as salary and career (Allen & Rush, 1998; Kiker & Motowidlo, 1999; Podsakoff et al., 2009), though these are not necessarily positive (Bergeron et al., 2013). In our analysis, we focus on these two categories of individual outcomes; we label PCB’s impact on the extent of closeness and trust in collaboration as ‘soft’ outcomes and B. Sieben et al. / Scandinavian Journal of Management 32 (2016) 52–62 label PCB’s impact on collaboration requests and career progress as ‘hard’ outcomes. Moreover, we focus on the question of how the congruence with gender roles and gendered job roles affects the relation of PCB and individual outcomes. As laid out in more detail below, according to gender role theory and findings of gender stereotype research, the PCB-I category tends to be associated with stereotypical female behavior (social, caring, emotional), while the PCB-O category is associated with stereotypical male behavior (responsible, leading) (Kidder, 2002; Kidder & Mac Lean Parks, 2001; Kmec & Gorman, 2010; Rudman & Phelan, 2008). That is not to say that women and men will necessarily behave differently, but that how they behave is evaluated according to the behaviors’ congruence with the individuals’ gender role (Rudman & Phelan, 2008). Thus, men and women may be evaluated differently for their gendered enactments of citizenship behaviors (Allen, 2006; Allen & Rush, 2001) and also rewarded differently by ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ outcomes, even more so when their enactments of citizenship behaviors correspond to or contradict their equally gendered job role—built on historical occupational and organizational gender segregations with corresponding reward structures (Acker, 1990, 2006). 2.2. Gender and project citizenship behavior As Kark and Waismel-Manor (2005) argue, the concept of citizenship behavior has a highly gendered nature, and its enactment holds different consequences for men and women, thus producing a gendered division of labor and inequality in organizations. The authors assume that it does so because of three related dynamics: ‘(1) congruence and incongruence with gendered social expectations; (2) the sex segregation of occupations; and (3) the gendered structuring of OCB’ (Kark & WaismelManor, 2005: 903). Inspired by these authors, we examine such gendered dynamics in the context of temporary organizations, looking at gendered appearances of PCB and gendered outcomes for individuals working in projects. We derived our hypotheses from the literature on gender and OCB. To begin with, the very enactment and perception of citizenship behaviors is gender-typed. According to gender role theory, behaviors directed toward the welfare and care of others (like helping behavior) or toward establishing and nurturing relationships (like relationship maintenance) correspond very much to stereotypes of femininity and the female gender role, whereas behaviors directed toward an organization (like initiative, compliance, and loyalty) relate much more to the male gender role, as they are associated with such stereotypical notions of masculinity, as assertiveness and conscientiousness (Kark & Waismel-Manor, 2005; Kidder & Mac Lean Parks, 2001; Kidder, 2002). It is important to note that we do not assume that women and men behave differently “by nature”. Rather, we claim that the (self-) perceptions of project members will differ according to gender stereotypes, corresponding status beliefs, and gendered cultural frames (Ridgeway, 2011). Consequently, we assume that women and men project members will perceive and evaluate PCB-I and PCB-O behaviors differently because of gendered expectations and ascriptions that coordinate gender relations in the workplace. Firstly, the...
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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

There is a lot of diversity in different organizations in the world today. Diversity is inevitable. Be it at the
work place, at school or at any other organization, diversity will always be dominant. People differ in
many aspects. We meet people from all walks of life every day. This cannot be avoided and this is the
reason there is diversity and hence inequality. To some extent, inequality can be said to be equality. If
you consider equality to be the nature of treating the unequal unequally, you will realize that inequality
in his case will assume the role of equality. There are four perspectives that are used to study and
understand organizational theory. They include modernism, symbolic interpretive, critical and
postmodernism. In this paper, I will concentrate on only two perspectives of the four. Modernist and
symbolic interpretive are different perspectives that have different narratives about inequality in
organizations. These two perspectives have different assumptions in regards to inequality. To
understand inequality in organization theory, there is need to have a clear understanding of oncology
and epistemology. Ontology deals with the nature of being while epistemology deals with the theory of
knowledge, more so on the scope, validity and methods that are used. From the two readings, ontology
and epistemology take toll on each of the article with the former being dominant on Lotte Holck’s
Spatially embedded inequality while Sieben, Braun and Ferreira’s Reproduction of ‘Typical’ gender

roles in temporary organizations—No surprise for whom? The case of cooperative behaviors and
their acknowledgement has epistemology as the dominant concept.

Attached.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

Inequity in organizations
Name
Institution
Date

1

ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

2

Introduction
There is a lot of diversity in different organizations in the world today. Diversity is
inevitable. Be it at the work place, at school or at any other organization, diversity will always be
dominant. People differ in many aspects. We meet people from all walks of life every day. This
cannot be avoided and this is the reason there is diversity and hence inequality. To some extent,
inequality can be said to be equality. If you consider equality to be the nature of treating the
unequal unequally, you will realize that inequality in his case will assume the role of equality.
There are four perspectives that are used to study and understand organizational theory (Hatch &
Cunliffe, 2013). They include modernism, symbolic interpretive, critical and postmodernism
(Aleazurra, n.d.). In this paper, I will concentrate on only two perspectives of the four. Modernist
and symbolic interpretive are different perspectives that have different narratives about
inequality in organizations (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2013). These two perspectives have different
assumptions in regards to inequality. To understand inequality in organization theory, there is
need to have a clear understanding of oncology and epistemology. Ontology deals with the
nature of being while epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge, more so on the scope,
validity and methods that are used. From the two readings, ontology and epistemology take toll
on each of the article with the former being dominant on Lotte Holck’s Spatially embedded
inequality while Sieben, Braun and Ferreira’s Reproduction of ‘Typical’ gender roles in
temporary organizations—No surprise for whom? The case of cooperative behaviors and their
acknowledgement has epistemology as the dominant concept. (Sieben, Braun, & Ferreira, 2016).
In Holck’s work, there are a number of inequality instances discussed that help in making
a decision on the classification of the perspective and concept that is employed. Ethnicity
inequality is the dominant type of inequality that is dominant all through. Holck acknowledges

ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

3

the fact that ethnic diversity is increasing in the Danish market (Holck, 2016). As a result,
inequality id on the rise as well. However, the argument that Holck brings on board that the
members of the minority groups are only employed in positions that they fit in by virtue of
qualification s true. In a number of instances, jobs are given not by virtue of qualification but by
virtue of ethnic groups. As a result, people tend to form groups within an organization. In return,
this will lead to one group feeling superior to the other. Consequently, the group that is superior
is not treated the same way as the group that feels inferior. This is where inequality sets in the
organization. As long as there is an ethnic divide in an organization, there will always be
inequality as one group will tend to be favored at the expense of the other. The assumption in
this case is that the inequality is brought about by a natural course; the fact that the people are
from different ethnic groups. Such an organization is objective on ethnicity and assumes that the
results will be positive despite the route followed. However, from a symbolic perspective,
ethnicity subjects the workers to harsh working conditions while at the same time gives an
interpretation of what the results could be.
In the same organization, you might find that there are inexperienced people who hold
positions that do not fit them. This is because they belong to the group with the majority and
enjoy that benefit (Mir, Willmott, & Greenwood, 2015). Their counterparts on the other hand,
the minority group, will be more experienced but still they will be ranked below their
inexperienced but members of the majority group counterparts. Some organizations, however,
have dealt with inequality in a very good manner. The managers and the top-cream workers in
some organizations harass and bully the junior employees simply because they are from a
different diverse group. However, there is also another category of senior workers who deal with
everybody the same way. Such managers contribute to the satisfaction of the employees.

ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

4

The main strength of Holck’s point on inequality brought about by ethnicity is the fact
that he categorizes the experiences into two categories. He argues that harassment at the
workplace due to ethnicity can be approached by evaluating two practices namely zoning the
workplace ethnically and ethnification of job categories. When these two practices are
undertaken, they undermine equality (Holck, 2016).
Ethnicity forces organizations to embrace the modernist perspective. This is because most
of the organizations undertakings are not based on knowledge. They are b...


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