This article investigates the power dynamics of the interview process and the connected emotional labor, drawing on examples from a recent study on workplace grievances in which most data collection was through open-ended interviews. By exploring the shifts of power and the emotional labor demands in the qualitative, open-ended interview, this article emphasizes that power shifts and emotions within the interview are, themselves, important data. A greater awareness of shifts in interviewer and interviewee power and emotional labor in the interview context helps the researcher better understand the nuances of the data, provides the researcher with more information about the interviewee and the research topic, and facilitates greater insights into the interview process, the participants, and the nature of the topics discussed.
This article examines how workers perceive the laws and rules that regulate their workplaces and how these perceptions differ depending on whether one works in an organization with a high level of worker‐manager cooperation versus one with a more conventional hierarchy. Using two cab companies as examples, this article explores how these divergent organizational structures generate different grievance cultures that in turn encourage alternate understanding of availavle choices and appropriate means for resolving such disputes.
This work expands the current sociolegal literature on legal consciousness by focusing on formal and informal workplace grievance resolution and perceptions of workplace conflict. In exploring the critical decision making regarding grievance resolution, this article begins an important discussion about workplace empowerment and legal consciousness. This study uses qualitative methods to examine 33 open‐ended interviews. The use of qualitative methods permits a vibrant dialog that illustrates the legal consciousness of the subjects, The subjects’own words reveal their comprehension of rules, regulations, and procedures as well as their individual relationships with the grievance‐resolution options in their workplaces.
This study compares workplace dispute resolution strategies (exit, voice and toleration) in matched pairs of conventional and worker-owned cooperative organizations operating in three industries -coal mining, taxicab driving and organic food distribution. Building on Hirschman's classic exit, voice and loyalty thesis, this research demonstrates how the degree of loyalty that workers hold affects how they approach workplace problems. Ifind that workers with greater loyalty are more likely to embrace "voice" as a way to address their problems. Although the "exit" patterns do not mirror the classic "exit-voice framework," the data support Hirschman's broader thesis, which incorporates examination of emotional involvement, and entry and exit costs.
While most research on workplace grievance resolution focuses on hierarchical settings, this study examines grievance resolution in a worker cooperative, a workplace mutually owned and democratically managed. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews and observations, this research explores how workers' perceptions of procedural justice influence their anticipated grievance strategies. Despite working side by side in the same organization, both men and women had very different experiences regarding procedural justice and dispute resolution. For men, working at a cooperative meant informal dispute resolution strategies, while the women cited the cooperative identity as empowering them to use formal grievance procedures.
Members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations. First, some emotions not allowed in conventional workplaces are fully permitted at worker cooperatives, including negative emotions, like anger, but also positive emotions, like enthusiasm. In contrast, other emotions must be displayed, even if insincere. Sometimes, these displays are accomplished through surface acting, like pretending to happily accept the slow pace of committee‐led change. Other times, through deep acting, members internalized new emotional reactions, such as pride, instead of resentment, when helping coworkers even after their own shifts had ended.
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