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Being Mangaged (Week 9 topic Critical Perspectives on Management and…
Being Mangaged
Week 9 topic
Critical Perspectives on Management and Organisations
Who is an 'Ideal worker'?
Due to a move towards a 24/7/365 work cycle, employees today are expected to prioritise work ahead of family, personal needs, and even health, presenteeism
Therefore, an ‘ideal worker’ is one who is totally committed to and always available to fulfil his or her work duties
Employees who embrace this expectation is richly rewarded, especially those performing professional or managerial jobs
How do organisations control employees’ professional identity?
Organisational mechanisms of identity control
Performance evaluations
Reinforcing the above structure of work by rewarding (e.g. promotions, salary increments, non monetary rewards - stars) those who fulfil such ‘expected’ professional identity requirements
Structure of work
The successful performance of the professional role been contingent upon always prioritising work demands over all other life demands and therefore always being available to the employer
What is a professional identity?
Role identities comprise of goals, values, beliefs, norms, interaction styles, and time horizons associated with a given role
Organisations employing professionals (e.g. surgeons, consultants, lawyers, academics) expect their workers to conform to the ideal worker image
Two main forms of professional identities:
– Expected: employer expectations and beliefs
– Experienced: own expectations and beliefs
When a worker’s experienced professional identity does not meet the ideal worker image (i.e. expected professional identity) conflict arises
This expectation has lead to persisting gender inequality in the workplace
Integrated identity management strategies for multiple audiences
Combining passing and revealing
Factors influencing the use of passing and/or revealing when interacting with audiences
Perceived access to formal accommodations: Reveal if having access to formal accommodations (e.g. parental leave) and pass if not
Audience status: Pass to high-status while revealing to same status audience
Closeness of relationship: Pass to those distant while revealing to close friends (colleagues) and mentors
Extremity of the conflict experienced: When faced with extreme circumstances in work (e.g.excessively demanding project) or personal life (e.g. death of a close family member) reveal while passing on all other circumstances
Efforts to pass or reveal to one audience (e.g. high-status) can spillover and influence the perceptions held of the professional by other audiences
Passing to high-status audiences tends to facilitate passing to equal- or low-status audiences
Revealing to close colleagues often results in informal re-structuring of work which enables one to pass to wider high-status audiences
Revealing to high-status audiences often results in revealing to broader audiences across the organisation
Consequences of using integrated identity
management strategies for professionals
Gender differences
On average:
– Women less likely to engage to identity management strategies that allows passing to high-status audiences and more likely to reveal
– Men are equally likely to use passing as well as revealing identity management strategies
The reasons for the above patterns are complex – often attributed to women being more likely to utilise formal accommodations (e.g. parental leave) provided by employer than men
Senior audience perceptions of professionals dictate the performance evaluation system
External perceptions and performance evaluation
High performance rating results in stable and straightforward career paths and at times accelerated advancement while low performance ratings results in missing out on promotions and/or unstable career trajectories
High performance ratings given to:
– Those who embrace the expected professional identity (i.e. congruent with their experienced professional identity)
– Those who use passing (especially to senior-status audiences) identity management strategies to cope with conflict
Low performance rating given to those who use revealing (especially to senior-status audiences) identity management strategies to cope with conflict
How do employees cope with conflicting
professional identities?
Congruence vs. conflict
Historically, researchers and practitioners focused on women (based on popular gender norms), especially those with young children as being the main cohort of professionals who would experience conflict, recent research indicates that conflict is not only restricted to them
If an employee’s expected and experienced professional identities are in sync and congruent they are unlikely to experience conflict
However, a large percentage of professionals experience conflict between the two identities
How do professionals cope with conflict?
Professionals cope with conflicting identities by ‘straying’ from the expected identity (i.e. ideal worker image)
Passing: intentional or accidental misrepresentation of membership in the favoured group (i.e. expected professional identity)
Revealing: intentional or accidental disclosure of non-membership in the favoured group (i.e. expected professional identity)
Week 10 topic
The Changing Concept of
Career
How to develop tri sector leadership skills?
Need to overcome systemic barriers across sectors
Necessary to take a life-cycle approach
– Mid-career
Attending conferences where mentors (across sector) could be found
Undertaking fellowships
Media training and establishing connections with media
– Towards the end of career
Incorporating tri-sector leadership development and training as
part of organisational succession planning
Mentoring budding tri-sector leaders
– At the beginning of career:
Undertaking joint-degree programs (not purely technical ones)
Undergoing training and mentoring programs that incorporate cross-sector concerns
Who are tri-sector leaders?
Many of the world’s most difficult problems – resource scarcity, training future workforces, making healthcare affordable and accessible – require collaboration between government, business, and not-for-profit sectors
Tri-sector leaders are individuals who are able to bridge the differences that separate the three sectors and thus develop more holistic and sustainable solutions
The paths to tri-sector leaderships varies, some begin in government and then move into the private sector (e.g. Sheryl Sandberg) while others start in the not-for-profit sector prior to moving into government (Barack Obama)
Strategies to develop an employer-employee
compact as allies
Establishing a ‘Tour of Duty’:
Entering into fixed-term (e.g. 4 years) projects with employer/employee with provision for discussion at mid-point of tour
Purposeofrelationshipisstipulatedattheforefront and each part is aware of expected benefits and when relationship will be terminated
Although transactional in design, relationship must be based on trust and investment from both parties
If done well, can act as an employee retention tool – reaching agreement on another ‘tour’
Employer’s can attract highly networked individuals if network intelligence is valued and therefore supporte
When considering employment investigate whether network intelligence is a top priority of potential employers
Important to construct personalised, mutually beneficial tours to truly be effective as a strategy of employment (for the employee) and recruitment (for the employer)
Engaging beyond the employer’s boundaries
Networking, especially with those those are different to one has been found to significantly increase an individual’s ability to be creative and innovative
Networks should be established both within the confinements of one’s current employment as well as beyond
Compact should allow employees time to develop networks on ‘company time’ – in exchange, employee’s must leverage the network established for employer’s benefit
Networks should include all stakeholders linked to employer and/or employee’s profession
Becoming a part of alumni networks
Great source to expand one’s network and therefore, access to diverse information
Can lead to future employment opportunities
The purpose of the new compact is not to deliver lifetime
loyalty in reciprocation for lifetime employment
It is to build ‘lifelong affiliation’ through a network of allies (i.e. employers)
Can lead to new business opportunities or collaborators, especially across sectors (i.e. government, not-for-profit)
One should not become part of alumni networks purely for personal gain - need to approach it as a reciprocal relationship where both parties would benefit, even if there is a time lag
Characteristics of tri-sector
leaders
What successful tri-sector leaders do well
Balancing competing motives
Have a strong desire to create 'public value', however, this is not at expense of their on motives of their on motives for wealth creation, power, and strong sense of mission.
Combine idealism (often found in the not-for-profit sector) and pragmatism (found in government and business) to serve a wide array of people
Acquiring transferable skills
Government must bring competing interest together to
create regulatory environments that benefits the public
Not-for-profit organisations have limited resources, focus on the long-term , and look for creative ways to further social good.
In business one must use scare resource to exploit market
opportunities
Evolution of the employer- employee compact
Traditional
– Low employee turnover
– Life-time employment and loyalty
– Predictable career trajectories
– Stable
Contemporary
– However, the most adaptable and entrepreneurial talent constantly seek greener pastures elsewhere, making employee retention extremely difficult
– Winner take all mentality
– Employees encouraged to think as ‘free agents’ in charge of their own destiny and therefore, employability
– Lack of job security and performance-driven culture results in more adaptable and entrepreneurial employees
The need for a new compact
From an employer point of view, the focus should be on how to develop a win-win relationship (i.e. an alliance) with employees, even if it means that they will inevitably leave for opportunities elsewhere
Need to acknowledge that life-time employment nor loyalty are realistic in the 21st century
From an employee point of view, the focus should be on improving adaptability and entrepreneurial thinking
Both employers and employees should seek to be ‘allies’ – An employee invests in the employer’s adaptability, the employer invest in the employee’s employability
Week 11 topic
Week 12 topic