Alexandra Budjanovcanin

Bounded or boundaryless? An empirical investigation of career boundaries and boundary crossing

The article argues that the long-running debate between organizationally bounded and boundaryless careers has been too narrow and neglects the variety and distinctive characteristics of career boundaries. Drawing on boundary theory, it investigates the main career-relevant domains and boundaries, and the motivations and structural conditions that influence boundary crossing or having a career within a specific domain among a sample of professional pharmacists. The qualitative study shows that careers are enacted within a number of relevant domains and are shaped by a range of boundaries such that boundarylessness and embeddedness are co-existing career dimensions. It also reveals how even within a professional population careers are embedded within diverse social and cultural contexts that impose differing constraints on career mobility. The article therefore provides a fuller, more nuanced understanding of career boundaries and contemporary careers.

An overview of the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal decisions in sexual harassment cases 1995‐2005

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present research conducted with legal cases of sexual harassment (SH) in Great Britain over the past ten years. The paper contributes to the equal opportunities literature since it offers a rare interpretation of longitudinal case data with important implications for law, policy, social science and, indeed, for the management of equal opportunities within organizations. The paper approaches SH both as an evolving legal issue and as a type of organizational conflict, with particular power influences and effects.Design/methodology/approach – The population of individual case records with a SH component was accessed via the BALII database for the period 1995‐2005. These case records were content‐analyzed using a framework of variables developed for the study. Variables of interest initially were identified from a review of the social science, law and policy‐related literaturesFindings – The vast majority (96 per cent) of workers bringing appeals of SH were female. Th...

A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Harassment Claims 1995-2005

This article explores the organisational and legal context in which parties involved in claims relating to sexual harassment operate, and presents an analysis of the population of sexual harassment cases heard by Employment Tribunals between 1995 and 2005.

Actions speak louder than words: how employees mind the implementation gap

Abstract Integral to employees’ working lives are the HR policies and more importantly, the practices that follow those and their implementation, which employees experience directly. To date, research on HR implementation considers how HRM is ‘done to’ employees by management and therefore ignores the agency of individuals to shape how HRM is ‘done to them’. Taking the perspective of employees, in a qualitative study of female lawyers, this paper examines employees’ roles in shaping HR implementation, addressing a lack of understanding about the role of ‘others’ in the process. Drawing on the concept of social power, the article focuses on the implementation of agile working practices within UK-based law firms. It finds that despite lacking legitimate position power to influence processes, employees draw on a variety of other power sources (e.g. referent, information, coercive) and tactics (e.g. leveraging membership of professional networks) in order to influence their working environment with respect to HR policy and practice, particularly in response to perceived implementation gaps. The current study underlines that employees may be integral to bridging the gap between policy and practice and therefore to ensuring the link between HRM and organisational performance. It also proposes that behavioural responses to HR practices should be considered in future theorising of the HRM-performance relationship.

Sexual Harassment Judgments by British Employment Tribunals 1995–2005: Implications for Claimants and Their Advocates

This article reports on the first large-scale study of sexual harassment litigation in Britain based on analysis of official case records. Its aim is to identify key factors distinguishing successful and unsuccessful claims. Five themes drive the analysis: credibility and its construction, the various types of sexual harassment, power resources, the time period in which the case was heard, and the gender composition of the tribunal. Hypotheses are tested on a random sample of 183 cases heard between 1995 and 2005. Some important disconnections between workplace realities and the operation of the tribunal system were revealed. Credibility of claimants turns importantly on how they initially reacted to the harassment of which they later complained and on the number of complementary claims they bring. Workers in elementary occupations experience a lower success rate before tribunals. Power resources in the form of legal representation significantly affect case outcomes. Implications for claimants and their advocates are discussed.