William Finlay

Not just a paper doll : How models manage bodily capital and why they perform emotional labor

Modeling is a challenging occupation because employment is irregular, the physical demands are great, and competition is fierce. Success as a model requires the careful management of bodily capital and the performance of emotional labor. Drawing on participant observations and interviews with models in the Atlanta fashion industry, the authors examine how they do the former and why they do the latter. They manage their bodily capital by subjecting themselves to intense self-regulation. Models perform emotional labor to sell themselves to clients and agents, to create illusions for observers and the camera, and to find dignity in a job that is often degrading and humiliating.

Organizational Structure and Job Satisfaction Do Bureaucratic Organizations Produce more Satisfied Employees

Popular and social scientific critiques of the bureaucratic model of organizational behavior argue that employment in highly structured, bureaucratic work organizations adversely affects worker attitudes and behavior. In particular, these critics suggest that bureaucratic structure is associated with lower employee job satisfaction. Several empirical studies, however, have yielded an unexpected positive relationship between bureaucratic structure and satisfaction. In this research, the authors argue that this paradoxical pattern is the result of these studies having used measures of organizational structure that conflate job and organizational characteristics. The authors show that among members of an emerging profession, highly structured organizational activities have a negative effect on employee satisfaction when job characteristics are controlled.

Decisions in Organizations: A Three-Country Comparative Study.

Introduction Theoretical Considerations Design of the Research Methods and Instruments Participation in Operational Decisions Medium- and Long-Term Decision-Making Qualitative Material to Illustrate the Process of Longitudinal Decision-Making Conclusion

Duty-hour restrictions and the work of surgical faculty: results of a multi-institutional study.

Purpose To examine whether duty-hour restrictions have been consequential for various aspects of the work of surgical faculty and if those consequences differ for faculty in academic and nonacademic general surgery residency programs. Method Questionnaires were distributed in 2004 to 233 faculty members in five academic and four nonacademic U.S. residency programs in general surgery. Participation was restricted to those who had been faculty for at least one year. Ten items on the questionnaire probed faculty work experiences. Results include means, percentages, and t-tests on mean differences. Of the 146 faculty members (63%) who completed the questionnaire, 101 volunteered to be interviewed. Of these, 28 were randomly chosen for follow-up interviews that probed experiences and rationales underlying items on the questionnaire. Interview transcripts (187 single-spaced pages) were analyzed for main themes. Results Questionnaire respondents and interviewees associated duty-hour restrictions with lowered faculty expectations and standards for residents, little change in the supervision of residents, a loss of time for teaching, increased work and stress, and less satisfaction. No significant differences in these perceptions (p ≪ .05) were found for faculty in academic and nonacademic programs. Main themes from the interviews included a shift of routine work from residents to faculty, a transfer of responsibility to faculty, more frequent skill gaps at night, a loss of time for research, and the challenges of controlling residents’ hours. Conclusions Duty-hour restrictions have been consequential for the work of surgical faculty. Faculty should not be overlooked in future studies of duty-hour restrictions.

Risk, Opportunism, and Structural Holes How Headhunters Manage Clients and Earn Fees

Headhunters find candidates for jobs. They are paid by their clients—employers—when the candidates they generate accept job offers. Headhunters, therefore, resemble other third-party agents or brokers whose fortunes rest on their ability to secure a match between their clients and other interested parties. In this analysis, we examine how headhunters manage the risks of being a broker in a highly competitive industry. They pursue two strategies: They attempt to develop close ties with clients, and they are willing to be opportunistic toward these clients. These strategies reflect their lack of power compared with that of clients, their belief that clients are disloyal, and the lack of embedded ties between clients and headhunters that could create a basis for enforceable trust.

Is It the Technology or the Teacher? A Comparison of Online and Traditional English Composition Classes

Recent reviews of the literature on distance learning have reached two general conclusions. First, students are about as satisfied with the quality of their education in distance-learning (DL) classes as they are in traditional or face-to-face (FTF) classes. Second, students perform about as well in DL classes as they do in FTF classes. We examine this finding of “no significant difference” in a study of students at a public university in the Southeast who were enrolled in online and FTF versions of the same English Composition course. We looked at three student outcomes: satisfaction, learning, and participation in classroom discussion. We found that being in an online class had a positive effect on satisfaction and participation, but no effect on learning even when we controlled for instructor behaviors and classroom characteristics. We attribute the positive effect of being in an online class on student satisfaction—which directly contradicts the no-significant-difference assumption—to the way in which synchronous instruction mimics the traditional classroom. Our findings attest to the importance of both technology and instruction on student satisfaction, learning, and participation.

Fit and Skill in Employee Selection: Insights from a Study of Headhunters

We draw upon evidence from a qualitative study of headhunters to provide insights into the character and importance of candidate “fit” and skill for the selection of a broad range of white-collar employees. Headhunters suggest that the “fit” of a job candidate is assessed at two levels, one corresponding with a general compatibility with organization-level norms, culture, and strategy, the other corresponding more closely with traits and characteristics of the person or persons with whom the job candidate actually interviews. Skill—a factor which is largely neglected by those who tout the importance of fit—also plays an important and independent role in employee selection. Stalls that influence the selection of employees from a pool of candidates tend to be highly specific if not idiosyncratic, and take the form of what headhunters call “hot buttons.” We conclude by discussing the conceptualization, causes, and implications of fit; we also consider how the importance of fit and hot buttons challenges the explanatory logic of standard accounts of labor-market success.

Understanding Mills via Mill-type methods: An application of qualitative comparative analysis to a study of labor management in southern textile manufacturing

A number of recent writers have advocated a computer-based approach to the analysis of qualitative data that leans on John Stuart Mills method of agreement and the indirect method of difference. Those discussions, however, remain fairly abstract and provide little insight into how analyses based on Mill-type methods unfold and their relative costs and benefits. In this paper we describe the logic and use of one prominent Mill-type software program called QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) in the context of an analysis of evidence drawn from twenty-two interviews with managers in textile plants. Our substantive aim is to understand labor-management practices in Southern textile manufacturing plants; our methodological aim is to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the Mill-type logic in action.

Labor Management in the Southern Textile Industry Comparing Qualitative, Quantitative, and Qualitative Comparative Analyses

This article explores a method developed by Ragin called qualitative comparative analysis or QCA. QCA would appear to offer two attractive possibilities: (a) it combines a consideration of systematic and ideographic elements in a single analysis; and (b) it overcomes some notable limitations of traditional quantitative and qualitative methods. The aim of the authors is to contrast the logic and results of QCA with traditional qualitative and quantitative analyses through a consideration of labor management practices in the southern textile industry. The authors argue that QCA represents a bridge between traditional qualitative and quantitative approaches, because it draws on some aspects of each. It is not, however, without its own limitations, because it leaves out some very admirable aspects of these other methodologies. This analysis suggests that different methodological strategies should be used to complement one another, because each provides valuable insights that can be checked and augmented by the others.

Patient Age, Visit Purpose, and the Ordering of Consultations in a Primary Care Clinic

In this study we examine what factors determine whether patients seen in a Veterans Administration primary care clinic will be referred to specialty clinics. It is based on a 25% sample of all patients seen by the medical residents in one clinic over an 18-month period. Our dependent variable is whether the patient was referred for a consultation or not. We performed separate regression analyses for patients who visited the clinic with acute complaints, with chronic-flareup complaints, and with chronic-routine complaints. Within each of these three categories, we further subdivided our sample into patients under and over 65. In each of the six regression equations we controlled for the medical diagnosis and for each residents work load, residency year, and training. Work load and residency year had opposite (and unpredicted) effects for patients over the age of 65 compared to those under the age of 65. Higher work loads were associated with higher consultation rates for patients over 65 and with lower rates for those under 65. Residency year had a negative effect on referrals for patients over 65 and a positive effect for patients under 65.