Where is Urban Politics?

We outline the rationale for reopening the issue of the spatiality of the ‘urban’ in urban politics. There is a long tradition of arguing about the distinctive political qualities of urban sites, practices and processes. Recent work often relies on spatial concepts or metaphors that anchor various political phenomena to cities while simultaneously putting the specificity of the urban itself in question. This symposium seeks to extend debates about the relationship between the urban and the political. Instead of asking ‘what is urban politics?’, seeking a definition of the urban as a starting point we begin by asking ‘where is urban politics?’. This question orients all of the contributions to this symposium, and it allows each to trace diverse political dimensions of urban life and living beyond the confines of ‘the city’ as classically conceived. The symposium engages with ‘the urban question’ through diverse settings and objects, including infrastructures, in‐between spaces, professional cultures, transnational and postcolonial spaces and spaces of sovereignty. Contributions draw on a range of intellectual perspectives, including geography, urban studies, political science and political theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, planning and environmental studies — indicating the range of intellectual traditions that can and do inform the investigation of the urban/political nexus.     

HRM-performance research: under-theorized and lacking explanatory power

The search for a measurable link between HR practices and organizational performance is currently preoccupying HR professionals, consultants, government and academics. Empirical research on this human resource management-performance (HRM-P) link is, however, marred by a serious problem: it is under-theorized. While some (but by no means all) researchers on the HRM-P link are aware of the problem, none are prepared to face up to the scale of the implications. Without theory, research on the HRM-P link lacks explanatory power. The only ‘solution’ on offer (the assertion that theory will develop via more and/or better empirical work) has been less than successful: empirical research has multiplied with little or no theoretical development. Nor can it. The under-theorization and lack of explanatory power is rooted in the ‘scientific’ perspective that underpins empirical research. The paper draws upon critical realist philosophy to reveal exactly why the ‘scientific’ approach encourages under-theorization and lack of explanatory power and, furthermore, why the ‘solution’ on offer cannot solve the problem. The conclusion notes why the HR community should not avoid philosophical issues.     

绩效考核政治行为多层影响因素研究

绩效考核政治在组织中广泛存在,识别不同类型绩效考核政治的成因对于采取趋利避害的管控策略具有重要意义,需构建绩效考核政治成因框架。实证分析表明:利己主义、互惠规范和情境控制是理解评价者绩效考核政治行为的重要视角,参与者方面的被考核者特征和评价者特征以及情境方面的评价体系特征和组织特征对不同类型的绩效考核政治行为会产生差异性影响。组织可以从科学选拔主管、做好主管的绩效考核工作、优化考核体系、合理分配考核权力以及塑造组织伦理氛围等方面,采取有效措施管控评价者负面的绩效考核政治行为。     

Time precedence in the relationship between organizational climate and organizational performance: a cross-lagged study at the business unit level

This article presents a two-wave cross-lagged study (average interval of two years) on time precedence in the relationship between organizational climate and organizational performance in 171 branches of a financial services organization in the Netherlands. It is argued that four HR-induced organizational climate dimensions influence organizational performance. Additionally, it was also hypothesized that high organizational performance influences the four organizational climate dimensions through investments in HR practices and through signalling effects. Finally, it was reasoned that possibly both processes are present simultaneously. Results of testing a series of competing models in AMOS showed that organizational climate at time point 1 influenced organizational performance at time point 2 rather than the reverse, or both processes being present simultaneously.     

Bifurcated HR practices in family firms: Insights from the normative-adaptive approach to stepfamilies

This paper seeks to stimulate additional research on a form of workforce differentiation specific to family firms: the asymmetric treatment of family versus nonfamily employees. Argued to be manifest within differential HR practices applied to each group, little is known as yet about the nature, prevalence, origins, and consequences of this ‘bifurcation bias’. Our overarching thesis is that greater insight can be gleaned by considering family firms as analogous to stepfamilies, which we demonstrate by drawing upon work adopting a normative-adaptive approach to stepfamily research. A key contribution of our resultant interdisciplinary theory-building is a typology of different bifurcated HR practice bundles in family firms. We also develop propositions regarding (a) owning family characteristics that contribute to the various forms of bifurcation, (b) conditions under which the presumed dysfunctional consequences can be attenuated, and, (c) the functionality of a particular type that we term ‘bivalent bifurcation’.     

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

In the urban studies literature, urban politics is usually considered in two distinct locations: the city (often understood in quite conventional centralist ways) and the suburb (understood as spatially peripheral and politically at odds with the central city). At the metropolitan scale, the two types of urban politics are discussed in relation to one another. More recently, the metropolitan scale of urban politics has been expanded to regional dimensions. We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.     

A comparative study of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM on worker outcomes in Malaysia and England local government

This paper presents the findings of a cross-cultural comparison of the effects of ‘best practice’ HRM using employees from a matched sample of local government service departments in England and Malaysia (England n = 569, Malaysian n = 453). The paper tests the universal ‘best practice’ thesis, and also assesses the perceived level of up-take of HR practices in the two samples. The research also considers the effects of the psychological climate and employees' perceptions of trust on five work-related outcomes, namely job satisfaction, motivation, organizational citizenship behaviour, stress and quit intentions. The findings reveal that the Malaysian workers perceived the up-take of HR practices to be higher in comparison to their counterparts in England. A less consistent pattern emerged with regards to perceptions of climate. OLS regression revealed that consistent with the universal thesis, a bundle of HR practices significantly predicted employee outcomes in the hypothesized directions in both samples. Therefore, these findings provide strong support for the universal thesis.     

What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?

The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under‐theorized and under‐researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present ‘democracy’ as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under‐theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post‐Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all‐affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the ‘spatial turn’ in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern.     

Strategic human resource practice implementation: The critical role of line management

The implementation of effective human resource (HR) practices typically rests with line managers. This paper uses social context theory to propose that line manager HR implementation is influenced by organizational culture, climate, and political considerations. Subsequently, HR implementation is anticipated to drive employee outcomes. This model's implications and future research directions also are discussed.     

Irregular Connections: Everyday Energy Politics in Catalonia

While questions of energy and energy transition have become hotly contested, the abstract and fetishized conception of energy that dominates contemporary political debates occludes connections to everyday life. By tracing the activities of Catalan activist network Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética (Alliance against Energy Poverty or APE), this article seeks to excavate the political possibilities opened up by a more everyday energy politics. The article addresses the practice of illegal utilities connections among the urban poor of Catalonia, arguing that this constitutes a form of makeshift urbanism resonant of that conceptualized from within ‘Southern’ cities. These ‘irregular connections’ to urban infrastructure networks are then distinguished from the ‘irregular connections’ formed between people within the collectivized social infrastructure of APE. APE, I argue, translate ‘energy’ as social reproduction, framing their struggle for the right to energy around the right to sustain life with dignity. This, I suggest, is the starting point for a feminist praxis capable of creating new and unruly subjectivities, reconfiguring reproductive relations in more caring and collective directions, and ultimately challenging the violence of the commodity form.     

The onto-politics of entrepreneurial experimentation: re-reading Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s understanding of ‘experimental systems’

ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue that there is a need to theorize the relationship between entrepreneurship and the political beyond the currently dominant neo-liberal and emancipatory narrative by turning to an onto-political conception of entrepreneurship based on the processes of entrepreneurial experimentation. In entrepreneurship studies, the relevance and the potential of experimentation for shaping new organizational realities has only been explored marginally. Through re-reading the thinking on ‘experimental systems’ by the science historian Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and connecting it to Annemarie Mol’s notion of ‘ontological politics’, we develop a conceptual framework for entrepreneurial experimentation which we document with the illustration of an art enterprise. The framework that we propose focuses on the interwoven embodied, material and processual dynamics of entrepreneurial experimentation and reframes entrepreneurial world-making as a speculative process driven by material reconfigurations and bodily connections. As a consequence, we argue that this model is able to emphasize the intricate political dimension inscribed in processes of entrepreneurial experimentation through their onto-political force of reconfiguring systems of ‘self-others-things’. Furthermore, the model highlights that this capacity of ‘world-making’ cannot be realized without articulating the tensions and resistances that entrepreneurial endeavours often need to navigate and negotiate while reconfiguring and challenging dominant socio-material orders.     

A problematic transition to a strategic role: human resource management in industrial enterprises in China

The Chinese government has launched extensive reforms to encourage integration with the global economy. Our research investigates the implications for human resource management practices of the changing business environment in China, ownership of organizations, organizational strategies and strategic integration of the HR function. We conducted two surveys in major Chinese cities in 1994/5 and 2001/2, with managers of state-owned, privately owned, collectively owned and foreign-invested enterprises.

Regression analyses showed that organizational strategy and organizational ownership, in contrast with earlier research, were not found to be strong predictors of HRM practices. The changing business environment in China and participation by the HR function in strategic decision-making were the strongest predictors of HRM practices. Overall, a strategic role for the HR function and implementation of ‘Western’ HRM practices are becoming more prevalent in China, although the legacy of traditional practices endures and new challenges are emerging.     

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Apart from local monographs and normative texts on community participation, research on community leadership constitutes a blind spot in urban leadership, urban politics, social movements and urban studies. This article, based on case studies in post‐apartheid Johannesburg, contributes to theorizing community leadership, or informal local political leadership, by exploring Bourdieu's concepts of ‘political capital’ and ‘double dealings’. Considering community leaders as brokers between local residents and various institutions (in South Africa, the state and the party), we examine how leaders construct their political legitimacy, both towards ‘the bottom’ (building and maintaining their constituencies), and towards ‘the top’ (seeking and sustaining recognition from fractions of the party and the state). These legitimation processes are often in tension, pulling community leaders in contradictory directions, usefully understood under Bourdieu's concept of ‘double dealings’. Community leaders are required, more than formally elected political leaders, to constantly reassert their legitimacy in multiple local public arenas due to the informal nature of their mandate and the high level of political competition between them — with destructive consequences for local polity but also the potential for increased accountability to their followers. We finally reflect on the relevance of this theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu, beyond South African urban politics.     

Why politics needs marketing

This paper examines the survey evidence for the low standing of politics, politicians and political institutions in the mind of the British public, and discusses its consequences. Present public opinion about political parties in Britain, and about politicians in general, is predominantly negative. Politicians are distrusted, to a considerably greater extent than can be explained solely by their bad press. Nor is the public very familiar with politicians or political institutions. Yet it can be shown that in general (and not only in the political field) ‘familiarity breeds favourability, not contempt’. This may be feeding through into hostility towards the entire sector—not only the strictly ‘political’, but other institutions such as public services which the public associates with politics or government. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Conformist innovation: an institutional logics perspective on how HR executives construct business school reputations

In this paper, we explore whether Legge’s classic 1970s criticism of human resource (HR) executives as ‘conformist innovators’ is still relevant. Drawing on institutional logics, we analyse HR managers’ rationales for choosing particular university business schools to provide senior executive development. Our mixed-methods study demonstrates that senior HR managers socially construct and enact business school reputations by drawing on strategic rationales. These rationales are embedded in societal, field and organizational logics, especially the extant reputational rankings of international business schools and an ‘ideal’ template of elite business schools. We find that these rationales, and the decisions they evince, tend to confirm the traditional picture of conformist innovation among HR executives. We discuss the implications for the reputation of HR as a profession, their employers and business schools.     

Agile office work as embodied spatial practice: A spatial perspective on ‘open’ New Work environments

An increasing number of companies transform their traditional office spaces into open work environments, often as part of an effort for working relations to evolve away from rigid and hierarchical structures. Contrary to intentions, recent studies show how open office projects tend to re-produce social hierarchy and norms but say only little about how these socio-spatial structures come into being. In this study, we demonstrate how a workspace designed as ‘open’ is being (re-)produced and negotiated in everyday spatial practices. We investigate this question in an ethnographic research design using the example of office redesign at a German financial service company and from the perspective of social theories of space. First, we develop a critical perspective on the ‘new office’ by demonstrating that office work redesign is a political process. Through a focus on spatial practices of office work, we disclose movement and sound as crucial dimensions in the socio-political construction of ‘agile’ office work and of a social hierarchy in the open office. Second, based on our findings we propose that openness in organizational space, rather than being a design feature of a specific work environment, needs to be understood as a generative social process.     

Solidarity in Climate/Immigrant Justice Direct Action: Lessons from Movements in the US South

In October of 2012, youth organizers from the immigrant justice and climate change resistance movements in the southeastern US metropolitan region of Atlanta, Georgia, coordinated a direct action tactic framed by a unified narrative justifying collaboration between immigrant and climate justice activists on equal terms. In a continuing collaborative relationship, these organizers embraced mutually strategic narratives rooted in local civil rights history, but rejected common ‘global climate justice’ narratives used to frame social and environmental collaborative organizing. We examine the departure from ‘global climate justice’ narratives, which was exemplified by coalition building in Georgia, to argue that scholarship articulating ‘global climate justice’ as a new context for integrating social and environmental movements must anticipate barriers to these solidarities, especially historical, regional and racialized dynamics of power among organizations engaged in these developing alliances. Based on an investigation of strategic alliances between anti‐racist, immigrant justice organizers and climate change activists in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, we argue that climate justice narratives in both activism and scholarship would benefit from more attention to the particular political and cultural geographies in which diverse forms of climate justice organizing can take hold.     

HR and IT capabilities and complementarities in knowledge-intensive services

The main premise of this article is that human resources (HR) and information technologies (IT) are central rather than support functions in knowledge-intensive services. By building management capabilities in both HR and IT, knowledge-intensive services can transform their business processes that, in turn, enable them to provide exemplary services to the customers. Our arguments are grounded in the three related theoretical frameworks of the resource-based view, organizational capabilities, and the theory of complementarities. We suggest that the research and practice in HR and IT fields may have to focus on HR and IT capabilities rather than HR practices or IT investments as the sources of sustainable competitive advantage since capabilities better fit the definition of a ‘resource’ than HR practices or IT investments. Further, organizational capabilities in both HR and IT may enable knowledge-intensive services to transcend the inherent tradeoff between cost and responsiveness. We also discuss the role of HR and IT in knowledge management.     

Actions speak louder than words: how employees mind the implementation gap

Abstract

Integral to employees’ working lives are the HR policies and more importantly, the practices that follow those and their implementation, which employees experience directly. To date, research on HR implementation considers how HRM is ‘done to’ employees by management and therefore ignores the agency of individuals to shape how HRM is ‘done to them’. Taking the perspective of employees, in a qualitative study of female lawyers, this paper examines employees’ roles in shaping HR implementation, addressing a lack of understanding about the role of ‘others’ in the process. Drawing on the concept of social power, the article focuses on the implementation of agile working practices within UK-based law firms. It finds that despite lacking legitimate position power to influence processes, employees draw on a variety of other power sources (e.g. referent, information, coercive) and tactics (e.g. leveraging membership of professional networks) in order to influence their working environment with respect to HR policy and practice, particularly in response to perceived implementation gaps. The current study underlines that employees may be integral to bridging the gap between policy and practice and therefore to ensuring the link between HRM and organisational performance. It also proposes that behavioural responses to HR practices should be considered in future theorising of the HRM-performance relationship.