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In this chapter, we outline the evidence regarding the status effects of physical attractiveness in the workplace. We frame the effects of attractiveness as power and status dynamics shaped by the context of the workplace. Attractiveness serves as a social status that mostly provides benefits in the workplace, although the results are not uniformly positive. We first explain attractiveness as a status characteristic and how it operates in general social interactions. We then examine these effects across three typical yet significant career development milestones in a worker's life: (1) the selection and hiring process of employment, (2) day-to-day interactions with colleagues and co-workers and (3) in leadership roles and positions.

The existing literature on abusive supervision, defined as a perception by subordinates that their supervisor displays hostility toward them (but falling short of physical abuse), is deficient insofar as it fails to account for workgroup differences in employees' perceptions of abusive supervision. We therefore sought to study such differences, which refer to as “abusive supervision dispersion (ASD).”

We interviewed 40 employees from a variety of organizations in Australia, focusing on the role of affective events in ASD dynamics, with a view to understanding how this phenomenon relates to individual and team processes.

We found that ASD stimulates employees to harbor negative emotions and resentment toward their supervisor, causing them to perceive even positive events negatively. We found further that, while low ASD facilitates team-member exchange by forcing abused members to band together resulting in low team conflict, high dispersion facilitates formation of subgroups and high team conflict.

These findings illuminate the paradoxical nature of ASD and suggest that employees experience dispersion through three paradoxes: (1) dispersion paradox, (2) resentment paradox, and (3) team paradox. Overall, these findings suggest that subordinates' perceptions of high ASD are associated with detrimental impacts on team performance.

Purpose: Because past research has investigated nonverbal behaviors in clusters, it is unclear what status value is ascribed to individual nonverbal behaviors. I test status cues theory to investigate whether response latency functions as a status cue. I explore whether it affects behavioral influence or if it only signals assertiveness and does not have status value. I also explore how one's interpretation of response latency impacts behavioral influence.

Methodology: In a two-condition laboratory experiment, I isolate response latency and test its strength independently, and then I measure behavioral influence, participants' response latency, and perceptions of assertiveness. I also conduct interviews to investigate how participants interpret their partner's response latency to understand how people ascribe different meanings to the same nonverbal behavior.

Findings: I find that response latency alone does not affect behavioral influence, in part because how people interpret it varies. However, response latency does significantly impact participants' own response latency and their perceptions of their partner's assertiveness.

Practical Implications: This research demonstrates the intricacies of nonverbal behavior and status. More specifically, this work underscores important conceptual differences between assertiveness and status, and demonstrates how the interpretation of nonverbal behavior can impact behavioral influence.

My title comes from Blanche Geer's (1964) famous paper ‘First days in the field’. When she was about to do the preliminary fieldwork for the project that became Becker, Geer, and Hughes (1968) on liberal arts undergraduates, she reflected on her own student ‘self’. That young woman had a taste for ‘milkshakes and convertibles’ (p. 379), which to Geer as an adult woman seemed incomprehensible and foreign. Being British, my life has never included any enthusiasm for milkshakes or convertibles which do not figure in UK culture, but the phrase has always enchanted me, and I have always wanted to use it as a title. This autobiographical reflection is in two main parts. The first half is a reflexive examination of my current life and scholarly work. In some ways that will seem to be the self-portrait of a somewhat uni-dimensional workaholic with an uneasy relationship with the symbolic interactionist intellectual tradition. The second part of the piece is an account of my family history, childhood and adolescence spent with my eccentric mother, and the reader is invited to understand the choices made in adulthood as largely contrastive: designed to ensure my life was as unlike my mother's as possible. Just as Geer looked back to her college years and found her youthful self strange, I look back to my childhood and see a very different person.

This multiple case study investigates the impact of technology on organizational change in public libraries. Over the past 12–15 years, public access computers (PACs) have been introduced into public libraries. Once these PACs were connected to the Internet, they attracted patrons who had not previously used public library services. The main themes around which this study was organized relate to the implementation of technology with facilities and services, city government, and people. The main research questions were following: (1) How has public library culture changed since the introduction of computers for patron use? (2) What adjustments were necessary to deal with the influx of computers and other technology in public libraries? (3) Have PACs changed the way the libraries are organized and how they are staffed? The findings of the study included how technology influenced changes in staffing in the public libraries. Each of the libraries has undergone a culture shift due to the introduction of technology. One of the shifts is the change of the reference desk from general reference to the addition of a help desk with reference responsibilities. Another concern of the directors was constantly funding the upgrades necessary for software and hardware that technology requires. As not all of the directors have supportive city government, this can be problematic. Finally, the facilities where the public libraries were housed had undergone changes either through renovations or through new buildings to accommodate technology and the infrastructure needed to support it.

In this chapter, I outline the key tenets of institutional ethnography (IE) as a framework for interpretivist social research. Through drawing not only on the key tenets of IE but also on the key findings and conclusions of the different chapters – empirical and conceptual – that make up the present volume, I argue for a critical reappraisal of IE. Through turning the IE lens of enquiry onto IE itself, I foreground the problematic within IE, and also the need to attend to the standpoint of IE. Finally, I consider the position of IE in terms of theory more broadly, as well as social theory more specifically, through focussing on the ways in which IE can be augmented through the use of other, compatible, theoretical, and/or methodological perspectives such as critical discourse analysis, actor-network theory, semiotics, and participatory and community models of research.

This chapter draws from research on aesthetic labour, gender, management and organisation studies and research on women's careers. We base our analysis on two empirical data sets, namely interviews with women mid-managers in Finland and Scotland, and interviews with highly positioned expert women in Finland in knowledge work. Women in different phases of their careers and life experience manifold pressures on appearances, and are increasingly aware of the demands to ‘look good and sound right’. We address how these pressures impact on women managers' and experts' well-being and career plans.

This case study shows how Osklen, a 30-year-old fashion brand in Brazil that focuses on Brazilianness and sustainability, has been facing challenges in the last 10 years pioneering the adoption of recycled cotton in its products. By taking the lens of biomimicry and supply networks that encompass vertical, horizontal, and diagonal ties, the case exposes how the weak links in the transition to circular fashion limit advancements. In a field such as sustainability where lack of transparency prevails and there is decoupling between practices and communication, consumers are often unaware of what is being done behind the scenes, and pioneer fashion brands may not benefit from sustainable and circular fashions. Besides the challenges at the consumer front, the shift to circular fashion is hindered by having scavengers as the weak link in the supply network given the lack of financial incentives, excessive informality, and misguided marketing from larger brands.