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innovations. Thus, the paper discusses the work of three major
actors: Social entrepreneurs and NGOs promoting 100%
organic farming, the companies selling inorganic fertilizer,
and the government-sponsored agricultural instructures.
The paper also traces the ethnomethodologies of innovation
diffusion back to the American tradition of land-grant collages
and cooperative agricultural extension. It will be argued that
this view of social innovation and societal entrepreneurship,
following the work of Tarde, will lead us to new
understandings of the interface between society and economy,
and to a new way of construing the ”political” in the economy.
11:01
Implementing diversity work
Risberg, Annette
Copenhagen Business School, Intercultural Communication
and Management, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Diversity literature talks about the necessity of top management
support to successfully implement diversity management in
organizations. But what does that mean? A case study of
diversity work in a Swedish municipality reveals that top
management support can be interpreted in different ways.
The municipality puts lots of efforts in its diversity work and
almost all managers (and politicians) at top levels talk about
how successful the organization is with its diversity work.
The managers points to statistics and initiatives supporting
their claims. At the same time, the staff doing the diversity
work (diversity workers) experiences that the work they do is
not supported by the top management for different reasons.
This paper will explore further the different experiences of
top management support and possible reasons for this. It will
investigate how the diversity workers experience the situation
and what affect their experienced lack of support might have
on the diversity work. In the end, the paper will critically
discuss the meaning of top management support for successful
diversity work.
11:02
Diversity in Employment Relations – Implications for Job
Quality and Job Satisfaction
Kalleberg, Arne L. 1 ; Nesheim, Torstein 2 ; Olsen, Karen M. 3
1 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill,
United States; 2 Institute for Research in Economics and
Business Administration (SNF), Bergen, Norway; 3 Norges
Handelshøyskole (NHH), Bergen, Norway
In this paper we examine how triadic employment relations
shape job quality and job satisfaction. The use of workers from
Temporary Help Agencies (THA) introduces complications
into work arrangements by creating a triadic employment
relationship between; the THA, the client organization, and the
individual worker. The worker is employed by the THA but
works at the client organization. Employment intermediaries,
such as THAs, have a crucial role in assigning workers to jobs.
In matching individuals to jobs, employment intermediaries
may facilitate change or preserve inequalities in the labor
market. The way THAs reward and assign agency workers
to clients have been found to reinforce gender segregation
in the labor market. The data we use consist of a survey of
a representative sample of workers employed by THAs in
Norway (N=2,678). Our main purpose is to examine how
triadic employment relations, directly or indirectly through
job quality, shape job satisfaction. According to conventional
wisdom THAs provide workers with short-term, low-quality
jobs, mainly providing flexibility for the employers at the
expense of workers. However, in recent comparisons of job
satisfaction between permanent and temporary workers, one
has reported inconclusive findings, suggesting that agency
workers not only have ‘bad’ jobs. By examining job quality
and job satisfaction among employees of THAs, we aim
to improve the understanding of the role of employment
intermediaries and client organizations in the labor market.
We conceptualize triadic employment relations into four sets
of factors: (1) employees’ role in the client organization, (2)
support and time frame in client organization, (3) support and
time frame in the THA, and (4) the relations between the client
organization and the THA. We examine how these four sets of
factors, directly and indirectly through job quality, influence
job satisfaction. Measurements of job quality include skills
utilization, autonomy, pay, intrinsic rewards, insecurity, and
career opportunities. In addition we include to what extent
individuals have a preference for temporary work. Preliminary
findings show that there is a tendency for client organization
being more important in shaping the content of job quality,
whereas THAs is more important with regard to job quality
reflecting the relation to the labor market. Both of these sets of
factors are important to overall job satisfaction.
11:03
Defining and evaluating gender equality - introducing the GEI
Gender equality within production and research in a hightechnology
company
Wahl, Anna; Linghag, Sophie
KTH, Indek, Genus, organisation och ledning, Stockholm,
Sweden
What experience is there in gender equality, GE, and what
conceptions do women and men in different parts of the same
organization, namely within production and research, have
about gender equality? Ways of thinking and talking about GE
forms different prerequisites for working for change in relation
to GE policies in the company. This paper is based on six
group interviews with men and women respectively, in a large
transnational male dominated company in technical industry. A
gender equality index, a fictive scale from 1 to 10, was created
for and used during the interviews. The index was a fruitful
methodological invention as it helped participants in different
groups to both articulate and interpret GE issues. The different
ways of thinking about gender equality showed for example
in the answers to the question of whether the company should
try to recruit more women. The female research scientists have
a positive attitude to recruiting more women. They believe
that the management should lead the way by bringing in more
women at the top thus creating a symbolic value for the entire
company. The male research scientists are also positive to a
more even gender distribution. However, they often hedge
themselves by adding that this must be built from below and
that competence is important. The women in production are
very positive to more women in all types of positions and
especially amongst managers. The men in production are
positive in principle, but reserve themselves for hindrances
existing with the women themselves and with the company.
The view of GE within the company can be interpreted and
summarized in a few points: • Women see that gender equality
results in increased competence • Women in all categories are
positive to the company trying to increase the proportion of
women • Men see faults in women and therefore perceive a
risk that competence requirements will be lowered with gender
equality • Women feel guilt when faced with investments in
gender equality and are forced to prove their right to position
through performance and loyalty to the culture • There is a
divided attitude amongst men in general; in principal, they are
positive to gender equality but perceive greater competition
and a loss of opportunities, confirmation and culture. Problem
areas identified in the study, and discussed in the paper, include
gendered notions of competence, consequences of homosocial
cultures and the impact of management on GE initiatives.
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