Listen carefully: transgender voices in the workplace

Abstract

We find that only 17% of FTSE 100 company websites refer directly to transgender (‘trans’) individuals, illustrating the extent to which trans voices are unheard in the workplace. We propose that these voices are missing for a number of reasons: voluntary silence to protect oneself from adverse circumstances; the subsumption of trans voices within the larger ‘LGBT’ community; assimilation, wherein many trans voices become affiliated with those of their post-transition gender; multiple trans voices arising from diversity within the transgender community; and limited access to voice mechanisms for transgender employees. We identify the negative implications of being unheard for individual trans employees, for organizational outcomes, and for business and management scholarship, and propose ways in which organizations can listen more carefully to trans voices. Finally, we introduce an agenda for future research that tests the applicability of the theoretical framework of invisible stigma disclosure to transgender individuals, and calls for new theoretical and empirical developments to identify HRM challenges and best practices for respecting trans employees and their choices to remain silent or be heard.     

MANAGEMENT BY PANACEA: ACCOUNTING FOR TRANSIENCE

The cyclical nature of much consultant-led activity designed to improve managerial effectiveness is explored through three consultant-driven approaches to organizational improvement - management by objectives, organization development and total quality management. Such packaged programmes seem to proceed through phases of high enthusiasm and much activity followed by a period of disillusionment, to be replaced by the next stage panacea. an attempt is made to offer some explanation of the transitory nature of much managerial activity which is believed to lie fundamentally in cultural and psychodynamic phenomena. Such an analysis may provide some clues to the search for remedial steps which might be taken to find more enduring ways to bring about increased managerial effectiveness in organizations, although by the very nature of our diagnosis we remain pessimistic.     

Employment perspectives for Berlin

Employment perspectives for Berlin     

‘I could be dead for two weeks and my boss would never know’: telework and the politics of representation

This article presents data from a qualitative study of teleworking consultants in a European firm. We examine the ‘gap’ between the utopian visions produced by the consultants for the benefit of clients and the tales of isolation, disconnection, disaffection and cynicism we observed when clients were not present. The study highlights the power and politics involved in the diffusion of popular images of technology‐enabled flexibility.     

Active citizen's income, unconditional income and participation under imperfect competition: a welfare analysis

Various types of basic income schemes are considered to compensatethe allocative inefficiencies induced by unemployment benefits.A dynamic general equilibrium model of a unionised economy isdeveloped in which participation to the formal labour marketis endogenous and the budget of the State has to balance. Itis shown that basic income schemes reduce the equilibrium unemploymentrate. Assuming that job-search is costly to monitor, the normativeanalysis suggests that only the active population should beeligible to the basic income. Introducing such an ‘activecitizen’s income’ can be a Pareto-improving reform.