Andrew Richard Timming

Visible tattoos in the service sector: a new challenge to recruitment and selection:

Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with hiring managers and visibly tattooed respondents, this article explores the nature of prejudice surrounding body art in the service sector. It focuses on the impact of visible tattoos on employment chances. The study reveals a predominantly negative effect on selection, but the extent of employer prejudice is mitigated by: where the tattoo is located on the body; the organization or industry type; proximity of the role to customers; and the genre of the tattoo. Employer prejudice against tattoos is also driven largely by hiring managers’ perceptions of consumer expectations regarding body art in the workplace.

The ‘reach’ of employee participation in decision-making: exploring the Aristotelian roots of workplace democracy

This article examines the ‘reach’, or the distribution, of employee participation in decision-making (PDM) within organisations. It makes a unique contribution to the wider employee voice literature by asking what types of employees have a ‘say’ in strategic decision-making and, in similar vein, what types of employees are denied participation, and why. In order to answer this under-investigated research question, the article presents an Aristotelian analysis of the concept of citizenship in the ‘best regime’. In the light of this analysis, the article concludes that some groups of employees are excluded from PDM on the basis of a perceived lack of ‘excellence’.

Employee Silence and the Authoritarian Personality: A Political Psychology of Workplace Democracy

Purpose – This paper aims to, drawing from Adorno et al.’s (1950) The Authoritarian Personality, explain why some workers reject participation in decision-making on principle, preferring instead to defer to managerial authority and remain silent. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literatures on employee voice and silence and then builds a conceptual framework that can be used to explain employee silence in relation to personality structures. Findings – It is argued that some employees have personality structures that make them more susceptible to anti-democratic thoughts. Potentially fascistic personalities, as measured by the F-scale, are expected to derive pleasure in submission to the will of management. Research limitations/implications – The paper has implications for political and social psychologists, especially those seeking to understand how best to promote employee voice in the workplace. Originality/value – This study makes an original contribution to the employee voice and si...

The effect of foreign accent on employability : a study of the aural dimensions of aesthetic labour in customer-facing and non-customer-facing jobs

Using quantitative methods, this article examines the effect of foreign accents on job applicants’ employability ratings in the context of a simulated employment interview experiment conducted in the USA. It builds upon the literature on aesthetic labour, which focuses largely on the role of physical appearance in employment relations, by shifting attention to its under-investigated auditory and aural dimensions. The results suggest that the managerial respondents actively discriminate in telephone-based job interviews against applicants speaking Chinese-, Mexican- and Indian-accented English, and all three are rated higher in non-customer-facing jobs than in customer-facing jobs. Job applicants who speak British-accented English, especially men, fare as well as, and at times better than, native candidates who speak American English. The article makes a contribution to the sociological literatures surrounding aesthetic labour and discrimination and prejudice against migrant workers.

Body art as branded labour: At the intersection of employee selection and relationship marketing

Using mixed methods, this article examines the role of body art as a form of branded labour in customer-facing jobs. It brings together employee selection and relationship marketing into one framework, and uniquely conceptualizes body art as an asset in the labour market, rather than the traditional liability. In Study 1, 192 respondents with management experience participated in an online laboratory experiment in which they were asked to rate photographs of tattooed and non-tattooed job applicants in two hypothetical organizations: a fine dining restaurant and a popular nightclub. In Study 2, 20 in-depth, qualitative interviews were carried out with managers, tattooed front-line employees and potential consumers in two real-world service sector firms. The results show how body art can be strategically used to positively convey the brand of organizations, primarily those targeting a younger, ‘edgier’ demographic of customer.

WERS the validity? a critique of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey of employees

The Workplace Employment Relations Survey series is a tremendously useful source of data for industrial relations researchers. But, like all large-scale secondary datasets, it has a number of structural design problems. These have not been articulated previously in much depth. Looking at the 2004 instalment of the series, this article aims to offer a critical appraisal of the survey of employees. The structure of the questionnaire and the validity of the items are critiqued. Recommendations are offered for the next edition of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey.

Subtle Increases in BMI within a Healthy Weight Range Still Reduce Womens Employment Chances in the Service Sector.

Using mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA), this paper investigates the effects of a subtle simulated increase in adiposity on women’s employment chances in the service sector. Employing a unique simulation of altering individuals’ BMIs and the literature on “aesthetic labour”, the study suggests that, especially for women, being heavier, but still within a healthy BMI, deleteriously impacts on hireability ratings. The paper explores the gendered dimension of this prejudice by asking whether female employees at the upper end of a healthy BMI range are likely to be viewed more negatively than their overtly overweight male counterparts. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings.

An experimental study of the effects of tattoo genre on perceived trustworthiness: Not all tattoos are created equal

ABSTRACT This paper examines the effects of different genres of body art on the perceived trustworthiness of hypothetical men and women with tattoos. It argues that body art is a salient cultural signal that denotes group membership and can also lead to the perception of a potential threat of harm on the part of the truster. The research finds that tattoos depicting images of violence and nudity result in the lowest levels of perceived trustworthiness; tattoos depicting images of Christianity and natural floral settings result in the highest levels of perceived trustworthiness; and the tribal tattoo genre occupies a neutral position on the trustworthiness spectrum. Whether the truster has a tattoo and shares the Christian faith with the trustee are also significant factors, as is the gender of the tattooed trustee. This paper is the first study ever to examine the effects of different genres of tattoos, thus going beyond previous research that overwhelmingly measures body art as a simple binary variable (e.g. whether or not the respondent has a tattoo).

Employee Voice through Open-Book Accounting: The Benefits of Informational Transparency

Abstract This paper explores the concept of open-book accounting. It illustrates the benefits of open-book reporting policies in terms of their potential ability to correct informational asymmetries, and it sets out some ideas for a future research agenda centred around the concept. The discussion is grounded in large part in the experiences of employee-owned businesses (EOBs) because such organisations are at the forefront of informational transparency innovations in social accounting. But the broader principle of sharing organisational information with employees and training them to process financial and strategic information is applicable to any organisation. It is argued that open-book accounting, especially in the context of EOBs, provides an exciting alternative to mainstream accounting and financial controls and a welcome addition to the social accounting literature.

Are tattoos associated with employment and wage discrimination? Analyzing the relationships between body art and labor market outcomes:

Do job applicants and employees with tattoos suffer a penalty in the labor market because of their body art? Previous research has found that tattooed people are widely perceived by hiring managers to be less employable than people without tattoos. This is especially the case for those who have visible tattoos (particularly offensive ones) that are difficult to conceal. Given this backdrop, our research surprisingly found no empirical evidence of employment, wage or earnings discrimination against people with various types of tattoos. In our sample, and considering a variety of alternative estimation techniques, not only are the wages and annual earnings of tattooed employees in the United States statistically indistinguishable from the wages and annual earnings of employees without tattoos, but tattooed individuals are also just as likely, and in some instances even more likely, to gain employment. These results suggest that, contrary to popular opinion as well as research findings with hiring managers and customers, having a tattoo does not appear to be associated with disadvantage or discrimination in the labor market.