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DECEMBER FREE ACCESS ARTICLE
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Free to access until 31 December 2015:
Intimate, ambivalent and erotic mentoring:
Popular culture and mentor–mentee relational processes in
Mad Men
Patrice M Buzzanell and Suzy D’Enbeau
Human Relations 2014 67(6): 695–714
Abstract
Mentoring centers on the development of another person through career, psychosocial and
role modeling support. As popular cultural portrayals and gendered critiques of mentoring
show, not all can be categorized as rational, instrumental and positive. There often are
unconscious forces that drive particular mentoring arrangements and offer entrée points
into mentorship analyses that contrast with rational approaches. Popular culture images
provide an arena to critique dominant mentoring practices. Towards this end, we critically
examine the award-winning drama Mad Men (Weiner, 2007) and uncover how non-rational
mentoring practices are depicted. We argue that characters engage in intimate, ambivalent
and erotic mentoring processes in which loyalties shift and neuroses reflect the nature of
workplace social relations. Our critique displays characters’ complicity in perpetuating
asymmetrical gendered workplace relations through practices that are seemingly
non-rational, presumably meritocratic and/or captured by archetypal mentoring
relationships.
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RECENT ONLINEFIRST PREVIEW ARTICLES
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When performativity fails: Implications for Critical
Management Studies
Peter Fleming and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
Human Relations published online before print November 27, 2015, doi:
10.1177/0018726715599241
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/11/26/0018726715599241?papetoc
Abstract
This article argues that recent calls in this journal and elsewhere for Critical Management
Studies scholars to embrace rather than reject performativity presents an overly optimistic
view of (a) the power of language to achieve emancipatory organizational change and (b)
the capability of lone Critical Management Studies researchers to resignify management
discourses. We introduce the notion of failed performatives to extend this argument and
discuss its implications for critical inquiry. If Critical Management Studies seeks to make a
practical difference in business and society, and realize its ideals of emancipation, we
suggest alternative methods of impact must be explored.
Liminal roles as a source of creative agency in management:
The case of knowledge-sharing communities
Jacky Swan, Harry Scarbrough and Monique Ziebro
Human Relations published online before print November 27, 2015, doi:
10.1177/0018726715599585
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/11/26/0018726715599585?papetoc
Abstract
Studies suggest that the experience of liminality – of being in an ambiguous, ‘betwixt and
between’ position – has creative potential for organizations. We contribute to theory on the
link between liminality and creative agency through a study of the coordinators of
‘knowledge-sharing communities’; one of the latest examples of a ‘neo-bureaucratic’
practice that seeks to elicit innovative responses from employees while intensifying control
by the organization. Through a role-centred perspective, our study found that both the
structural and interpretive aspects of coordinators’ role enactments promoted a degree of
creative agency. ‘Front-stage’ and ‘back-stage’ activities were developed to meet the
divergent expectations posed by senior management and community members, and the
ambiguity of their roles prompted an array of different role interpretations. Our findings
contribute to theory by showing how the link between liminality and creative agency is not
confined to roles and spaces (consultancy work, professional expertise) that are positioned
across organizational boundaries, or free from norms and expectations, but may also apply
to roles that are ambiguously situated within organizational contexts and that are subject to
divergent expectations. This shows how neo-bureaucratic forms may be both reproduced
and renewed through the creative responses of individual managers.
Channeling identification: How perceived regulatory focus
moderates the influence of organizational and professional
identification on professional employees’ diagnosis and
treatment behaviors
David R Hekman, Daan van Knippenberg, and Michael G Pratt
Human Relations published online before print November 27, 2015 as
doi:10.1177/0018726715599240
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/11/26/0018726715599240?papetoc
Abstract
We suggest that organizational and professional identification are two sources of motivation
that can be channeled in similar or different directions based on perceived organizational
and professional regulatory focus. Specifically, we hypothesize and find that both types of
identification-based motivation are channeled toward diagnosis behaviors when
professionals think their coworkers and colleagues value a promotion focus, and they are
channeled toward treatment behaviors when professionals think their coworkers and
colleagues value a prevention focus. Our results advance research on social identification by
helping to explain how and when organizational and professional identification influence
work performance, and also advance the organizational literature on professions by
introducing diagnosis and treatment as two theory-derived types of in-role performance for
professional employees.
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WHY PUBLISH IN HUMAN RELATIONS?
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Human Relations is an A* journal – the highest category of quality – in the Australian
Business Deans Council (ABCD) Journal Quality List 2013. It is also ranked 4 in the Chartered
Association of Business Schools (CABS) Academic Journal Guide 2015. Human Relations is a
top 5 interdisciplinary social sciences journal:
2-year impact factor: 2.398 - Ranked: 35/185 in Management and 5/95 in Social Sciences,
Interdisciplinary
5-year impact factor: 3.187 - Ranked: 37/185 in Management and 3/95 in Social Sciences,
Interdisciplinary
Source: 2014 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2015)
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DECEMBER ISSUE ARTICLES
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Proposing a culture-centered approach to career scholarship:
The example of subsistence careers in the US Arctic
Rahul Mitra
Human Relations December 68(12): 1813‒1835, doi: 10.1177/0018726715570100
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1813?etoc
Abstract
In this article, I draw from the culture-centered approach to explore contemporary
negotiations of career and work, positing career as a form of cultural practice. Rooted in
postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, the culture-centered approach examines the
active accomplishment of culture through everyday communicative practices, amidst the
structural conditions that frame lived experiences, and focusing specifically on marginalized
groups. I first trace how culture is conceptualized in extant career studies, in the
psychological, sociological and communicative streams. Identifying both key gaps and
paradoxes in the literature, I outline the culture-centered approach, suggesting four key
principles to reconceive career as cultural practice. Specifically: career draws on both
structure and action; career agency is hybridized across individuals/collectives; career
agency is layered and contested; and career is both discursive and material. The framework
is illustrated using an example from an ongoing study on the negotiation of subsistence
careers by Native Alaskans in the US Arctic.
Narrative identity construction in times of career change:
Taking note of unconscious desires
Patrizia Hoyer and Chris Steyaert
Human Relations December 68(12): 1837‒1863, doi: 10.1177/0018726715570383
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1837?etoc
Abstract
Working at the intersection of narrative and psychoanalytic theory, we present in this article
an affective conceptualization of identity dynamics during times of career change,
incorporating the notion of unconscious desires. We propose that frictions in career change
narratives, such as the paradoxical co-existence of coherence and ambiguity, allude to
unconscious subtexts that can become ‘readable’ in the narrative when applying a
psychoanalytic framework. We point to the analysis of 30 life story interviews with former
management consultants who report upon a past and/or anticipated career change for
illustration. By linking three empirically derived narrative strategies for combining coherence
and ambiguity (ignoring the change, admitting the ambiguity and depicting a wishful future)
with three conceptually informed psychoanalytic ego-defenses (denial, rationalization and
sublimation), we provide an analytic framework that helps to explain why workers in
transition may try to preserve both coherence and ambiguity when constructing a sense of
self through narrative. The analysis of unconscious subtexts reveals that, in times of career
change, people’s identity constructions are driven by conflicting unconscious desires for
self-continuity on one hand and openness on the other.
Careering through academia: Securing identities or engaging
ethical subjectivities?
Caroline A Clarke and David Knights
Human Relations December 68(12): 1865‒1888, doi: 10.1177/0018726715570978
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1865?etoc
Abstract
This article reflects upon careering, securing identities and ethical subjectivities in academia
in the context of audit, accountability and control surrounding new managerialism in UK
Business Schools. Drawing upon empirical research, we illustrate how rather than resisting
an ever-proliferating array of governmental technologies of power, academics chase the
illusive sense of a secure self through ‘careering’; a frantic and frenetic individualistic
strategy designed to moderate the pressures of excessive managerial competitive demands.
Emerging from our data was an increased portrayal of academics as subjected to
technologies of power and self, simultaneously being objects of an organizational gaze
through normalizing judgements, hierarchical observations and examinations. Still, this was
not a monolithic response, as there were those who expressed considerable disquiet as well
as a minority who reported ways to seek out a more embodied engagement with their work.
In analysing the careerism and preoccupation with securing identities that these
technologies of visibility and self-discipline produce, we draw on certain philosophical
deliberations and especially the later Foucault on ethics and active engagement to explore
how academics might refuse the ways they have been constituted as subjects through new
managerial regimes.
The longer your work hours, the worse your relationship? The
role of selective optimization with compensation in the
associations of working time with relationship satisfaction
and self-disclosure in dual-career couples
Dana Unger, Sabine Sonnentag, Cornelia Niessen, and Angela Kuonath
Human Relations December 68(12): 1889‒1912, doi: 10.1177/0018726715571188
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1889?etoc
Abstract
This two-wave panel study investigates the associations between working time, selective
optimization with compensation in private life and relationship outcomes (i.e. relationship
satisfaction and self-disclosure) in dual-career couples. We propose that one partner’s
selective optimization with compensation in private life either mediates or moderates the
association of this partner’s working time and relationship outcomes (i.e. relationship
satisfaction and self-disclosure). Moreover, we postulate the crossover (i.e. transmission) of
relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure within the couple. To test these hypotheses, we
conducted an online study with a time lag of six months, in which 285 dual-career couples
took part. We found evidence for selective optimization with compensation in private life as
a mediator: working time spent by partners in dual-career couples was associated with
selective optimization with compensation in their private life that, in turn, predicted
relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure. Results did not support the assumption that one
partner’s selective optimization with compensation in private life moderates the association
between working time and relationship satisfaction and self-disclosure. Relationship
satisfaction, but not self-disclosure, crossed over within the couples. The results challenge
the assumption that longer work hours have negative consequences for romantic
relationships.
Shadows and light: Diversity management as phantasmagoria
Christina Schwabenland and Frances Tomlinson
Human Relations December 68(12): 1913‒1936, doi: 10.1177/0018726715574587
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1913?etoc
Abstract
Within the field of critical diversity studies increasing reference is made to the need for
more critically informed research into the practice and implementation of diversity
management. This article draws on an action research project that involved diversity
practitioners from within the UK voluntary sector. In their accounts of resistance, reluctance
and a lack of effective organizational engagement, participants shared a perception of
diversity management as something difficult to concretize and envisage; and as something
that organizational members associated with fear and anxiety; and with an inability to act.
We draw on the metaphor of the phantasmagoria as a means to investigate this
representation. We conclude with some tentative suggestions for alternative ways of doing
diversity.
Reviewer of the Year Award 2015 and thanks to our reviewers
Human Relations December 68(12): 1937‒1947, doi: 10.1177/0018726715612986
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/68/12/1937?etoc
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
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Special issue: Conceptualising flexible careers across the life course – submit by 1
March 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Flexible%20careers.htm
l
Special issue: Global supply chains and social relations at work – submit by 30 April
2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Global%20supply%20ch
ains.html
Special issue: Politicization and political contests in contemporary multinational
corporations– submit by 30 September 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Politics%20and%20MNC
s.html
Special issue: Organizing feminism: Bodies, practices and ethics – submit by 30
November 2016
http://www.tavinstitute.org/humanrelations/special_issues/Organizing%20feminism
.html
Human Relations welcomes critical reviews and essays:
- Critical reviews advance a field through new theory, new methods, a novel
synthesis of extant evidence, or a combination of two or three of these elements.
Reviews that identify new research questions and that make links between
management and organizations and the wider social sciences are particularly
welcome. Surveys or overviews of a field are unlikely to meet these criteria.
- Critical essays address contemporary scholarly issues and debates within the
journal's scope. They are more controversial than conventional papers or reviews,
and can be shorter. They argue a point of view, but must meet standards of
academic rigour. Anyone with an idea for a critical essay is particularly encouraged
to discuss it at an early stage with the Editor-in-Chief.
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