Jane Glover

An experience sampling study of learning, affect, and the demands control support model.

The demands control support model (R. A. Karasek & T. Theorell, 1990) indicates that job control and social support enable workers to engage in problem solving. In turn, problem solving is thought to influence learning and well-being (e.g., anxious affect, activated pleasant affect). Two samples (N = 78, N = 106) provided data up to 4 times per day for up to 5 working days. The extent to which job control was used for problem solving was assessed by measuring the extent to which participants changed aspects of their work activities to solve problems. The extent to which social support was used to solve problems was assessed by measuring the extent to which participants discussed problems to solve problems. Learning mediated the relationship between changing aspects of work activities to solve problems and activated pleasant affect. Learning also mediated the relationship between discussing problems to solve problems and activated pleasant affect. The findings indicated that how individuals use control and support to respond to problem-solving demands is associated with organizational and individual phenomena, such as learning and affective well-being.

Gender, power and succession in family farm business

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to present a case example of the power struggles and gender issues one daughter faced when she became a partner, and future successor, in the family business. This paper uses an ethnographic approach in order to study a small family farm in England. The case focuses on a small family farm, these businesses are unique in terms of their values and expectations for succession (Haberman and Danes, 2007), and identified by Wang (2010) as a fruitful avenue for research on daughter succession. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical work was gathered through the use of a single site ethnographic case study involving participant observation as the researcher worked on the family farm and semi-structured interviews with family members over two years. Findings – The results shed light on some of the social complexities of small family farms and power struggles within the family exacerbated by perceived gender issues. The work also highlights the potential threat to the daug...

Occupational safety and health and smaller organisations: research challenges and opportunities

Abstract Despite the prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro organisations, comparatively little is known about how such organisations approach occupational safety and health (OSH). Research has tended to present a negative picture of OSH practices in smaller organisations. This paper discusses some of the challenges to researching OSH in SMEs and micro organisations and how these challenges can be overcome. It draws lessons and experiences from a qualitative study involving 149 structured interviews, nine short-term ethnographies and 21 semi-structured interviews with owners and employees in SMEs and micro organisations from a broad cross-section of industry sectors in the UK, including construction, retail, healthcare, logistics and agriculture. Data from the study suggest that the established boundaries between micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are less meaningful in an OSH context – OSH practices are influenced more by the culture of the organisation, the type of work being undertaken and the sector that an organisation operates in. OSH practices in SMEs and micro organisations tend to reflect more informal characteristics of such organisations, with more emphasis (than many larger organisations) on tacit knowledge, learning by doing and improvisation. Such practices should not necessarily be assumed to be unsafe or incompatible with formalised OSH.

Using capital theory to explore problem solving and innovation in small firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how small firms work at a micro-level, applying Bourdieu’s Capital Theory to give insight into the way individuals use the social and cultural capital at their disposal, to innovate and solve problems. Design/methodology/approach – The authors applied qualitative methods to explore problem solving and innovation activities at the micro-level in small firms, using interviews and thematic analysis. Findings – The findings reveal that, compared to firms with lower levels of social and cultural capital, firms which possess higher levels of social and cultural capital have a higher success rate in problem solving and are more likely to engage in innovative activity. Social and cultural capitals complement and reinforce one another in small firms, for example an enhanced ability to utilise networks (social capital) allows small firms to access a greater diversity of knowledge (cultural capital). Originality/value – Little is known about how different forms o...

Capital usage in family farm businesses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of social, cultural and symbolic capital alongside economic capital, according to Pierre Bourdieu, in small family businesses. The paper demonstrates that social, cultural and symbolic capital, play an important role in maintaining the family farm business and ensuring its survival. Design/methodology/approach – Ethnographic case studies were selected using theoretical sampling techniques and a variety of data collection tools were used, interviews and participant observation, to construct the contextual and historical elements of each case. Findings – The results, though highly case specific, indicate that: social networks (social capital) are important to farmers and their families, and these networks have been weakened over the years. Knowledge transfer is crucial to successful succession in the family business and as such cultural capital (knowledge, skills, qualifications, etc.) is retained within the business and accumulated from wider fields...

The relationship between self-employment and unemployment in the long-run: A panel cointegration approach allowing for breaks

Purpose - – Although a lot of research has been done on the link between self-employment and unemployment, often focusing on the short-run of the relationship, the long-run association between the two variables has not received adequate attention. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - – In this paper the authors examine the long-run relationship between self-employment and unemployment using panel cointegration methods allowing for structural breaks and covering a wide range of European OECD countries using the COMPENDIA data set over the period 1990-2011. Findings - – The findings indicate that a long-run relationship between self-employment and unemployment exist in the panel, but the cointegrating coefficients are unstable. Originality/value - – The estimates finds positive and statistically significant long-run association between self-employment and unemployment exists for more than 50 per cent of the countries included in the sample after the break. For the rest of the countries the authors find either negative or statistically insignificant association.

The Logic of Dairy Farming Using Bourdieu’s Social Theory of Practice to Investigate Farming Families’ Perspective

This exploratory study investigates dairy farming from a sociological perspective by applying Bourdieu’s social theory of practice. The article uses qualitative methods; interviewing farming families to investigate their perceptions of the practice of dairy farming in the United Kingdom (UK). The results indicate that the choice to exit, or enter, the field is not an easy one, and once in the field, farmers cannot necessarily play the game, as envisaged with constraining factors preventing them from furthering their position in the field. The practice of dairy farming is also bound in farming families’ social and cultural heritage, which is being challenged by powerful players in the field.

Purpose and enactment in job design: an empirical examination of the processes through which job characteristics have their effects

Abstract Job characteristics are linked with health, safety, well-being and other performance outcomes. Job characteristics are usually assessed by their presence or absence, which gives no indication of the specific purposes for which workers might use some job characteristics. We focused on job control and social support as two job characteristics embedded in the well-known Demand–Control–Support model. In Study 1, using an experience sampling methodology (N = 67) and a cross-sectional survey methodology (N = 299), we found that relationships between the execution of job control or the elicitation of social support and a range of other variables depended on the purposes for which job control was executed or social support elicited. In Study 2 (N = 28), we found that it may be feasible to improve aspects of well-being and performance through training workers on how to use job control or social support for specific purposes.

An exploratory study into everyday problem solving in the design process of medical devices

ABSTRACT We investigated accounts of how individuals in public and private organisations operating in the medical device industry use different forms of capital (social e.g. networks and cultural e.g. knowledge) to solve design based problems. We define capital as resources embedded in social networks, knowledge or economic wealth [Bourdieu 1986. “Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood]. Data were collected from interviews and written diaries from individuals involved in the design process of medical devices using interpretative analysis. Inferences made from our analyses suggested that individuals working in organisations who successfully solve problems may do so by using both social and cultural capital and so may be more likely to engage in innovative activity than others. These exploratory findings suggest workers in large organisations may have the capability to use a greater level of in-house social and cultural capital, whereas those in smaller organisations may be more reliant on high levels of social capital in order to ‘tap into’ cultural capital beyond organisational boundaries.

Book Review: Jean W Bauer and Elizabeth M Dolan (eds), Rural Families and Work: Context and Problems

home with Helen Verran’s approach to ‘Number’ as ‘a material-semiotic device’ (p. 112). For Verran, ‘the workings of numbers are deeply embedded in and constitutive of the real – they lubricate its happening’ (p. 112). There is a basis here for taking further the rapprochement of people working in qualitative and quantitative methodological traditions, by raising provocative but important questions about what numbers come to mean, although the language in which these ideas are expressed (numbers are ‘a device in the clotting of the real’; p. 122) makes few concessions to methodologists who do not have a background in social theory. Such readers will also struggle, as did this reviewer, with ideas such as there being ‘a dichotomy between the actual and the possible’ (p. 14); surely the range of things that actually exist is a subset of the range of things that have the potential to exist, rather than these two ranges being mutually exclusive. And they may wonder what the difference is between ‘per-form-ativity’ (p. 19) and performativity, or ‘all-together’ (p. 233) and altogether. Such matters of style should not be allowed to obscure the important substance of the book, which is in the tradition of ethnomethodology’s deliberately disruptive purpose. Noortje Marres in her chapter on experiments likens the experiment she is discussing to Garfinkel’s breaching experiments. All of the chapters in this book implicitly serve the same purpose, that of inviting us to think afresh about what we take for granted about the familiar features of the world of research methods and techniques. Prepare to be unsettled!