John M. Jermier

Substitutes for leadership: Their meaning and measurement

Abstract Current theories and models of leadership seek to explain the influence of the hierarchical superior upon the satisfaction and performance of subordinates. While disagreeing with one another in important respects, these theories and models share an implicit assumption that while the style of leadership likely to be effective may vary according to the situation, some leadership style will be effective regardless of the situation. It has been found, however, that certain individual, task, and organizational variables act as “substitutes for leadership”, negating the hierarchical superiors ability to exert either positive or negative influence over subordinate attitudes and effectiveness. This paper identifies a number of such substitutes for leadership, presents scales of questionnaire items for their measurement, and reports some preliminary tests.

Emotional Exhaustion in a High Stress Organization

This study develops the concept of emotional exhaustion, an extremely affective and chronic type of work-related strain. Sources of emotional exhaustion were investigated in a police organization t...

Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Organizational Control.

I am grateful to Steve Barley for the numerous conversations we had over the course of this project and for the detailed, helpful suggestions he provided on an earlier draft of this paper. I appreciate conversations with Henry Tosi that led, several years ago, to an initial interest in the topic of organizational control. I also thank Jeannie Gaines, Linda Forbes, and Teri Domagalski for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft and Linda Johanson for her careful editing. Finally, I thank Sheila Sheehan and other members of the ASO staff for handling the large number of special issue manuscripts so gracefully and members of the special editorial review board for their expert and timely contributions.

Autonomy at Work

Autonomy, defined herein as self-governance and freedom from excessive external control, is a primary source of human morality, growth and development, health and well-being, and effectiveness at work. This article briefly reviews two general models concerned with autonomy (the internal–external locus of control model and self-determination theory) and then focuses on four streams of research dealing more specifically with autonomy at work (the job characteristics model; the job demands–job control model; models of autonomous work groups and self-organizing teams; and theories of organizational democracy). There is considerable evidence supporting the importance of autonomy at work, which can be experienced either individually or in groups and other collective entities. More research is needed on each of the streams identified as well as research aimed at developing a general theory of autonomy at work.

The New Corporate Environmentalism and The Ecology of Commerce

This article identifies Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce (TEoC) as a foundational work for scholars interested in the greening of business, sustainable enterprise, and environmental policy. TEoC was published in the early 1990s and was instrumental in launching and amplifying a social movement we refer to as the New Corporate Environmentalism (NCE). It also influenced research on organizations and the natural environment, which today is a vibrant field addressing major themes in business strategy, organizational change and development, organizational sociology, and other timely areas of study. In addition, TEoC provokes thinking about one of the most debated environmental questions of our time: How far can we go with green capitalism? Hawken sets his sights on ending industrialism as we know it and on developing a restorative economy based on technological innovation, sweeping structural reform, and radical process redesign. Although TEoC is replete with reverence for nature, in concert with other sympathetic critics of green capitalism, we raise a question about the balance it strikes between environmental ethics and ecological economics.

Exploring Deep Subjectivity in Sociology and Organizational Studies The Contributions of William Catton and Riley Dunlap on Paradigm Change

When William Catton and Riley Dunlap began publishing their groundbreaking work on paradigms in the late 1970s, sociologists had been grappling with fundamental questions about the discipline for at least two decades. According to Catton and Dunlap, however, significant blind spots still remained, the most important falling in the shadow cast by strong anthropocentrism and a worldview that was decidedly nonecological. This anthropocentric bias also dominated the field of organizational studies until the mid-1990s. Both sociology and organizational studies benefited from scholarly analyses conducted by Catton and Dunlap (and others) that uncovered underlying paradigmatic assumptions and that proposed ecologically grounded alternatives. But both fields still tend to be limited by anthropocentrism and need more research aimed at developing theories and models centered on ecological processes and radical organizing. Revisiting Catton and Dunlaps paradigms framework is suggested as a valuable step for both sociologists and organizational studies scholars interested in addressing major gaps in their fields.

Metaphor as the Foundation of Organizational Studies Images of Organization and Beyond

This article is the first part of a Citation Classics and Foundational Works feature focused on metaphor and organizational studies. The second part of the feature is a personal reflection by Gareth Morgan on the genesis and impact of his pathbreaking book, Images of Organization (IO). In this article, we summarize the nature of the contributions made by IO, sketch ways in which the book has prompted and served as a touchstone for new research on metaphor and organization, and discuss the application of contemporary metaphorical analysis to the problems of theory development, research methods, and puzzle solving facing scholars interested in sustainability studies and research on organizations and the natural environment (ONE). We illustrate how early research that fostered ONE scholarship is marked by the use of particularly powerful metaphorical language and attention to poetic technique as well as rigorous science. We suggest how ONE research (and organizational studies in general) can benefit from studying IO and related literature on metaphorical analysis.

Metaphors, organizations and water: Generating new images for environmental sustainability

Research across the social sciences and related fields has made it clear that metaphors underwrite both scientific and everyday thinking. Gareth Morgan’s work in this area, most vividly developed in his classic book Images of Organization, illustrates how metaphors underwrite thinking about organizations and the important role they can play in generating new thinking. In this study, we use and extend Morgan’s (2006) thesis of ‘organizations as instruments of domination’ (IoD) to reflect on critical issues in organizational studies related to water and the broader natural environment. We find extending the IoD image to be helpful: (i) in deriving and elaborating a metaphor that reflects a risky trend (‘organizations as water exploiters’); and (ii) in generating and developing a new metaphor that is explicitly normative and nature-centered (‘organizations as water keepers’). The water keeper image brings needed attention to water problems and invites further research on activist organizations (businesses and others) seeking to change thinking and practice related to environmental sustainability. We illustrate the water keeper metaphor (and the significant move away from the paradigmatic assumptions of hard anthropocentrism) with examples from environmental champion Patagonia, Inc. We then take up Morgan’s challenge to move beyond the IoD metaphor to envision non-dominating forms of organization. We revisit classic nature-inclusive metaphors and the under-explored paradigm of ecocentrism to evoke and reflect on broader notions of agency, interdependence, connectedness and social relations in transformed organizations.

Paying dues to the union: A study of blue-collar workers in a right-to-work environment

Of the 39 states that permit some form of public sector collective bargaining, union security agreements are prohibited in 19. Employees may join and pay dues to the union representing them in these states but they are not required to do so. This study of 372 state government workers compares union dues-payers and non-dues-payers on a variety of personal, positional, economic, and noneconomic variables. Workers who were exposed to more physical danger and less noise were more likely to be dues-payers; higher seniority workers and skilled craftworkers were more likely to pay dues. Results suggest that union voting and union dues-paying have different antecedents. They also raise questions about the generalizability of previous dues-paying research to blue-collar settings. Holding a union card in a right-to-work environment seems to have little to do with the traditional collective pursuit of economic power.

Animal Inequality and Organizations: Introduction

Tragically, on a daily basis, there are numerous acts of cruelty and violence toward animals committed by individuals. However, the vast majority of animal mistreatment, torture, and killing comes, directly or indirectly, out of the very organizations that feed us, clothe us, clean our faces and our floors, entertain us, treat our illnesses, and provide for our livelihoods by employing us. To elaborate: What once was the family farm is now agribusiness, or factory farming. On an average day in the United States, 130,000 cows, 7,000 calves, 360,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens are killed (Williams, 1997). Enormous numbers of animals are kept in oppressively cramped conditions; injected with growth hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals; and slaughtered to provide us with filet mignon, veal marsala, and chicken cordon bleu. Equally appalling, every year millions of unanesthetized animals suffer painful procedures to test consumer goods for toxicity and irritation in order to decrease the incidence of consumer lawsuits. These include tests on cosmetics, food additives, cleaning chemicals, and pesticides. Typically, testing ends when half of the animals in the test group die; the remaining animals are subjected to additional tests until they die or are destroyed. “Animals never leave laboratories [alive]” (Williams, 1997, p. 62). Another area of concern is that animals are essentially disposable entities in the entertainment industry, which includes rodeos, circuses, zoos, aquariums, and dog and horse racing. They live in artificial conditions and are subjected to neglect, fear, pain, and untimely deaths—all for our amusement. Closely related to the entertainment industry is sport hunting and fishing, for which animals are wounded or killed for recreational purposes. Perhaps the most shocking institutional brutalization of animals occurs in the name of education and “science.” Animals are subjected to vivisection (the practice of cutting into or otherwise injuring living animals, especially for the purpose of scientific research) in settings that range from high school biology classes to military installations to pharmaceutical laboratories to prestigious medical center research laboratories.