Ethnography in Organization Research

Classic organizational theory was built on ethnographic studies. These studies, which rely on immersion in everyday organizational life, adopting the native’s perspective, and an openness to emergent phenomena, have helped illuminate the complexities and nuances of organizations that were otherwise invisible to outsiders. Today, organizational scholarship boasts of drawing on a wide range of theoretical traditions and diverse methodologies, particularly in quantitative methods that lend generalizability and scientific precision to organizational theory. As such, the role of ethnography has also evolved over the years; its validity has been criticized and defended, its ontological and epistemological foundations reflected on, and its place among other traditions clarified. Besides its critical role in establishing organizational study as a discipline in its own right, ethnographic work is now generally recognized and appreciated in the scholarly community, in what has been termed its Golden Age, for its contributions to new intellectual territories across multiple subfields of organizational theory.

Comparative influence of gender, age, industry and management level on communication

The protracted COVID-19 pandemic repeatedly demonstrates the necessity of effective communication inside and outside organizations. However, a deficient comprehensive study of factors able to affect managerial communication limit further progress in the improvement of such business interactions. The research fills in the knowledge gap about the comparative influence of various factors on managerial communication and particularly the impact of individual and organizational characteristics of managers on communication. The paper aims to determine the significance of the relationships between managerial communication and age, genders, managerial levels, and industries in private companies from the energy, education, trade, service, extraction, construction, and production sectors. Within the organizational study, 224 subordinates from Kazakhstan firms reflected on their supervisors’ communications through a multivariate closed questionnaire. The obtained data was further processed and examined through correlation coefficients and dispersion analysis. The research results identified the considerable relationship between communication practices and managers’ age (R2=0.9637), managerial level (R2=0.9640), and industry (R2=0.9653). The study reveals the weak relationship between manager’s gender and communication practices (R2=0.1535): women insignificantly outperform men in this linking process. The research postulates that effectiveness of managerial communication considerably varies by managers’ age, managerial level, and industry, and insignificantly by gender. The paper lays the groundwork for gender-unbiased practices of human resource management and contributes to the idea of building diverse management teams.

Crimes against information security of minors committed through information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet)

The article analyzes crimes against information security of minors, committed through information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet), infringing upon such rights and interests of children as the right to life, health, sexual integrity, normal sexual, physical development and moral education, honor, and dignity. The increasing number of infringements on the information security of minors leads to the fact that the legislator formulates additional articles in the Criminal Code, or makes changes to the wording of existing ones. The authors note that there is a negative tendency in such activity, when the legislator focuses his activity only on the prompt counteraction to the emerging risks. This approach is not sufficient in order to effectively combat cybercrime, it requires complex cross-sectoral solutions. The information security of a person will not be fully ensured only by supplementing the already existing articles of the criminal law with the qualifying feature “committed through information and telecommunication networks (including the Internet). The types of information crimes, including against the interests of minors, have a steady tendency to increase. Given the importance of the problems posed in the article, it is necessary to talk about the need for a thorough scientific, technical, organizational study of the problems of cybercrimes against minors. The time has come to unify criminal and information legislation. The article concludes that there is a need to introduce into the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the article “Dissemination of information that is harmful to the health and (or) development of children”.

Time, Temporality, and History in Process Organization Studies

Time and history have emerged as prominent subjects of interest in organization studies. This volume stands testament to the recent foregrounding of time and history as focal objects of organizational study and scholarship. The precise relationship of temporality and history to processes of change remains under-theorized, and we lack a coherent set of conceptual tools that can be applied to ongoing research directed to addressing the puzzle. The chapters in this volume, devoted to understanding temporality and history as a central element of process, offer a glimpse of both a defining puzzle and a set of emergent conceptual tools that might be useful for scholars engaged in historical and temporally sensitive organizational research. Before elaborating their contribution to the emergent theoretical scaffolding of historical and temporal organizational scholarship, this chapter presents the puzzle and its evolution in prior literature.

Examination of college student achievement within an ecological framework

This study examined the extent to which variance in college student achievement was explained by self-efficacy, motivation, study habits, extracurricular activity involvement, perceptions of social support and perceptions of support from faculty, as well as perceptions of university support. Participants were 195 college students from a large, urban university. Self-efficacy and organizational study habits played a significant role in college student achievement. Implications to help improve student outcomes are discussed.

(Inter)subjectivity in the research pair: Countertransference and radical reflexivity in organizational research

Destabilizing what we know, a central tenet of critical reflexive research, is difficult without making unconscious assumptions, beliefs, and emotions available for thought, articulation, and questioning. Articulating countertransference, a technique borrowed from psychoanalysis, informs our efforts to raise awareness of the unconscious dimensions of field experiences and thus foster radical reflexivity. Bridging the literatures on reflexivity and relational psychoanalysis, we develop a new four-dimension method of writing and analyzing fieldnotes— observing, capturing the story, articulating countertransference, and developing interpretations—that foregrounds unconscious dimensions of experience. We make visible the fieldnotes we generated during an organizational study. In doing so, we demonstrate how a research pair working together in real time can become aware of their intersubjective processes, fold together multiple dimensions of experience (conscious and unconscious), and co-construct a shared understanding of organizational dynamics. This article is valuable because it demonstrates how psychoanalytic concepts can be mobilized by psychoanalytically informed, but not formally trained, organizational researchers.

Whistleblowing in Norwegian Municipalities—Can Offers of Reward Influence Employees’ Willingness and Motivation to Report Wrongdoings?

This organizational study aims to explore whistleblowing in Norwegian Municipalities. The purpose is to explore whether employees perceive that their workplace has a well-functioning reporting system, to investigate what kind of rewards, if any, the employees considered most desirable, and to map, if any, the relationship between all types of compensation and the willingness to notify within one’s own organization. This study reports on 2018 interview data from a medium-sized Norwegian municipality. The main findings indicated that the municipally exhibits little perceived every-day focus on fighting corruption and that the employees have limited knowledge of the systems and routines available to them. Further, results showed that multiple factors influenced the employee’s willingness to report and receive compensation. Especially was increased management recognition and a more clearly formalized reporting processes perceived as important motivation factors. This study contributes to organization and leadership studies and identifies problem areas, possibly helping managers and organizers focus further on the importance of anti-corruption work and whistleblowing processes within organizations. Further studies are recommended to increase the field of knowledge related to employees’ willingness and motivation to notify when they witness workplace corruption.

Negotiating Transgender Identity at Work: A Movement to Theorize a Transgender Standpoint Epistemology

The status of transgender rights presents a national crisis, and organizational communication scholars must mobilize activist scholarship in which the “T” in “LGBT” (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) matters in the argument presented and changes proposed. The purpose of this study was (a) to acknowledge transgender members as worthy of focused organizational study and (b) to theorize a transgender standpoint epistemology in an organizational context—an epistemology rooted in a standpoint marginalized at the societal level, within the LGBT community, and in communication scholarship. I discuss my collaboration with a community organization called Trans*Spectrum, where I conducted 10 in-depth interviews with transgender employees. The study illustrates how gender identity, performativities, and presentation, as well as agency and privilege, coalesce within the bounds of organizational rules and norms to permit only certain bodies to navigate the workplace in particular, uniform ways. The results show how organizations could better curate spaces for acknowledgment, accommodation, and acceptance.

HOW TO FORM VALUE RELATION TO HEALTH IN FUTURE PEDAGOGUES

The article looks at basic formation mechanisms for value health relation in future pedagogues. It considers the necessity of pedagogues’ conscious and value relation to the issue of children’s health establishment. Effectiveness of implementing various physical education and health means into the educational process depends on prioritizing health supporting activities, appropriate application of various physical education and health means. Basic forming mechanism of future pedagogues’ value relation to health is defined as student’s learning activity activation. The article defines tasks of future pedagogues’ value relation to health. Important condition of students’ learning activity organization is practical and professional focus of different organizational study forms, students’ self-working, creative projects etc., provided by a professor. Students’ qualitative professional preparation is generally defined by organization of research and experimental educational and learning activity. The article proves importance of using business and role-play, analytical and constructional tasks (pedagogical situations), discussions, which help students gain their own pedagogical experience. An important condition in students’ forming value relation to health issue is defined as psychological and pedagogical support in self-development and self-establishment process.