Employee Ownership: Structuring Opportunities for Racial Wealth Building and Family Well-Being

Policies and practices of the 19th and 20th centuries have had a lasting impact into this century. This is most evident when examining racialized wealth inequality between Black and White families. This study of low-income employee owners examines the following questions: (1) Does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap? (2) How does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap, and (3) To what effect does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap? Findings indicate employee ownership impacts wealth building, advancement opportunities, and family economic security among Black employees and other marginalized populations. Policy and practice implications to advance employee ownership to address racial wealth inequality are highlighted.

Job Switch From the Private Sector to the Public Sector: The Characteristics of the Switchers

While significant attention has been directed to the job switchers from the public sector to the private sector, there have been few studies about the job switchers in the opposite direction. This paper examines whether sector switchers’ characteristics from the private to the public sector are different from stayers. It is related to a broader set of questions that ask how employees’ characteristics and sector switching are related. The empirical analysis using the National Survey of College Graduates (2003, 2006, 2010, and 2013) shows the switchers’ characteristics. First, females and unmarried employees were more likely to switch their jobs from the private to the public sector from 2003 to 2006. However, these gender and marriage status differences became insignificant from 2010 to 2013. Second, black employees were more likely to move from the private to the public sector for the whole period. Third, the more educated employees seemed to have more freedom to change their private to public careers. Fourth, employees with experience in government-funded projects were more likely to switch jobs from the private to the public. Fifth, workers who showed a low satisfaction level in job security and considered PSM as an essential job principle were more likely to shift across sectors from the private to public. This paper’s findings highlight a neglected sector switch from private to public and open a window into the extent and characteristics of employees who switch their jobs from the private to the public sector.

Critical Discourse Analysis on Representation of Racism and Solidarity in Adidas's Tweets

The research aimed to analyze how Adidas uses Twitter to convey messages about racism and solidarity in its tweets. Methodologically, the research applied a descriptive qualitative study on the representation of racism in Adidas’s tweets involving (1) what are the themes of discourses that represent racism and solidarity in Adidas’s tweets? (2) What is the representation of racism and solidarity in Adidas’s tweets? And (3) What are the meanings of Adidas’s tweets? Twelve tweets from Adidas were collected, coded, analyzed, and described using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It was an effective method for deconstructing the identity of Twitter users to make arguments on the themes exposed during coding. The research findings reveal that the declarative statement and humanitarian as the most themes in Adidas’s tweets are the ones that give straightforward and positive messages to Twitter users and followers. The findings also indicate firm and meaningful tweets for Adidas to speak out against racism and spread solidarity through Twitter. However, those tweets also give the messages about their commitment to always supporting the black community, their black employees, the Asian community, and the Black Lives Matter event to embody valuable and eternal change through solidarity, unity, and commitment against racism.

Atypical Black Leader Emergence: South African Self-Perceptions

The research aimed to gain understanding of the self-perceptions of black professionals in relation to business leadership, and how these self-perceptions influenced their behaviors, aspirations and self-perceived abilities in leadership positions. The study was specifically focused on black South African professionals. Black professionals were found to exhibit signs of deep-rooted pain, anger and general emotional fatigue stemming from workplace-, socio-economic- and political triggers that evoked generational trauma and overall negative black lived experiences. The negative lived experiences could have led to racial identity dissonance and, in extreme cases, complete racial identity disassociation. Moreover, black professionals were found to display symptoms of ‘survivor guilt,’ stemming from the shared history of oppression amongst black people in South Africa. The ‘survivor guilt’ contributed toward a profound sense of shared responsibility and purpose to change the circumstances, experiences and overall perceptions about the capabilities of black professionals. Results showed that upbringing, determination, resilience, black support networks, and black leadership representation within organizational structures were important ingredients that positively contributed to the leadership aspirations and success of black professionals. The research discovered that, in some cases, black professionals leveraged white relationships to propel their careers forward, however, this practice reportedly resulted in the black professionals experiencing feelings of self-doubt in their own abilities. Self-doubt, also found to be a result of historical oppression, could have and have been shown to eventually lead to self-deselection, negatively impacting the aspirations and career advancement prospects of black professionals in organizational leadership. Furthermore, the research found that black leaders believed that their blackness, specifically, its unique texture of experiences and history in South Africa, provided them with superior empathetic leadership abilities toward other black employees. Black leaders frequently highlighted the distinctive values of ubuntu as the cornerstone of their leadership approach. In addition, it was found that black professionals also considered their blackness, particularly the shade of their skin, to detract from their leadership opportunities, as it reduced the odds of being authorized as natural leaders, thus fortifying a skewed self-perception of their own leadership capabilities.

Racialized Emotional Labour: The Weight of Blackness in White Spaces

At the age of 17, from April 2016 to September 2016, I worked part-time at a yacht club on Toronto Island as a maintenance worker. I worked alongside another individual in the maintenance department, and we were both of Afro-Jamaican descent. The club had a predominantly white membership, with few customers who were people of colour. The staff was also mostly white, and there were only five other people of colour who worked there besides us, and none of them were black either. I found that, while interacting with members, I faced racialised remarks and assumptions based on my position as a maintenance worker and as a young black woman. To remain professional and avoid validating any of their racist assumptions, I employed a high level of emotional labour and restraint. In discussions with my Jamaican colleague, I found he faced similar racialised comments; he also felt it necessary to employ emotional control to uphold a palatable image. However, I also found that the non-black employees did not employ the same level of emotional labour. This is not an isolated experience. I have also had to engage in emotional labour in other workplaces. Moreover, it is common to hear about Black employees, especially Black women, performing emotional labour for non-black customers. Black female employees must employ more emotional labour when working in predominantly white spaces, especially in racialised occupations.

Work-life balance, job satisfaction and turnover intention amongst information technology employees

Talent retention is of particular concern in the information technology (IT) sector owing to globalisation, the skills shortage and rapidly advancing technology. Employee turnover has significant costs and negative consequences for organisations. The objective of this study was to explore the association between employees’ experiences of work-life balance (as measured by the Survey Work-Home Interaction- Nijmegen), job satisfaction (as measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire) and their turnover intention (as measured by the Turnover Intention Scale). A random sample of 79 permanently employed salaried employees in a South African IT company participated in the study. The participants were represented by predominantly white and married people between the ages of 26 and 45 and people with more than 10 years’ tenure. Regression analysis showed that experiences of negative work-home interaction and positive work-home interaction significantly predicted job satisfaction and turnover intention. Job satisfaction also significantly predicted turnover intention. However, no interaction effect was observed between overall work-life balance and job satisfaction in predicting turnover intention. White employees had significantly stronger experiences of job satisfaction and negative home-work interface, while black employees had significantly stronger positive experiences of home-work interface and lower levels of job satisfaction. White and black employees, marital status and tenure groups differed significantly regarding their job satisfaction. Talent retention strategies should consider the relationships between work-life balance, job satisfaction and turnover intention.

Race Differences in Physical Activity Uptake Within a Workplace Wellness Program: A Comparison of Black and White Employees

Purpose: To examine differences in physical activity (PA) uptake between black and white employees during a financial incentive-based workplace intervention. Design: Prospective cohort study from July 2014 to June 2015 (NCT02850094). Setting: Tertiary academic medical center. Participants: Forty-three black and 182 white nonclinical employees. Intervention: Participants self-selected or were assigned to teams. Participants completed a 24-week intervention receiving rewards for meeting weekly PA goals (increasing moderate-to-vigorous PA [MVPA] by 10% from previous week or meeting Guidelines threshold of 150 minutes of MVPA). Measures: Outcomes included weekly MVPA in minutes, average daily step counts, number of weeks meeting personal goals and the Guidelines, and Fitbit adherence in days and weeks. Analysis: We performed an analysis of covariance for each outcome, with race as the primary independent variable of interest, adjusting for demographic and health-related covariates. Results: During the intervention, blacks walked 9128 steps per day while whites walked 7826 steps per day, a difference of approximately 1300 steps ( P < .05). Blacks also demonstrated a greater uptake in both steps and MVPA from baseline than did whites, resulting in similar MVPA throughout the intervention. Conclusions: Findings suggest that workplace PA interventions using financial incentives may result in similar engagement in MVPA among white and black employees, while black employees walk more steps during the intervention. Limitations include a primarily white female sample which may not generalize.