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Despite significant investment in capital improvements and training, a rod mill suffered from chronically low productivity. The authors conducted a survey to measure employee satisfaction and to determine the correlation between employee satisfaction and productivity. The study found a correlation between average job satisfaction, low motivation and the resulting low productivity. A direct correlation was also found between low productiity and poor communication between management, supervisors and employees. The article offers recommendations to improve productivity by increasing employee involvement and communication.

A discipline is bound by some combination of a shared subject matter, shared theory, and shared technique. Yet modern economics is seemingly without limit to its domain. As a discipline without a shared subject matter, what is the binding force of economics today? The authors combine topic modeling and text analysis to analyze different approaches to inquiry within the discipline of economics. The authors find that the importance of theory has declined as economics has increasingly become defined by its empirical techniques. The authors question whether this trajectory is stable in the long run as the binding force of the discipline.

This study investigates whether the underrepresentation of women in executive-level roles within the supply chain management (SCM) field is justified or the result of gender injustices. The analysis examines if there is a gender compensation gap within executive-level SCM roles and whether performance differences or other observable factors explain disparities.

Publicly reported executive compensation and financial data are merged to empirically test if gender differences exist and investigate whether the underrepresentation of women in executive-level SCM roles is unjust.

Women occupy only 6.29% of the positions in the sample of 447 SCM executives. Unlike prior studies, we find that women executives receive higher compensation. The analysis does not identify observable factors explaining the limited inclusion of women in top-level roles, suggesting that gender injustices are prevalent in SCM.

This study only considers observable factors and cannot conclusively determine if discrimination is occurring. The low level of inclusion of women in executive roles suggests that gender injustice is intrinsic within the SCM profession. These findings will hopefully motivate firms to undertake transformative actions that result in outcomes that advance gender equity, ultimately leading to social justice for female SCM executives.

The use of social justice and feminist theories, a focus on SCM roles, and an empirical methodology utilizing objective measures represents a novel approach to investigating gender discrimination in SCM organizations, complementing prior survey-based studies.

A case study was conducted to identify and to dispel the current stereotypes in the workplace regarding Generation X and Baby Boomers. For the purpose of the study Generation X consisted of those born between 1961 and 1981, while Baby Boomers consisted of those born between 1943 and 1960. The purpose of this article was to use a custom designed survey based on the literature as the foundation to test congruence or lack of it, to address six commonly held myths presented by Paul and Townsend (1993). Furthermore it was intended to test empirical research gathered by a literature review of the stereotypes in the workplace, to better understand the profiles and factors that motivate the Baby Boomers and Generation X, in conjunction with the following independent variables: age, productivity, motivation, training, mentoring and job satisfaction. The hypothesis tested suggested that Generation Xers are more productive, more motivated, and easily trainable and exhibit higher job satisfaction levels as compared to Baby Boomers. It is important for or ganizations to recognize the limitations that stereotypes create in the workplace. As was demonstrated by the survey, Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are not dissimilar as employees; they possess more similarities than differences. Organizations need to foster an environment of respect/equity for both groups to create synergies between them to build and maintain a productive workforce.

The question of whether, and to what extent, Chicago price theory is Marshallian is a large one, with many aspects. The theory of individual behavior is one of these, and the treatment of altruism, or, more generally, other-regarding behavior, falls within this domain. This chapter explores the analysis of other-regarding behavior in the work of Alfred Marshall and Gary Becker with a view to drawing out the similarities and differences in their respective approaches. What emerges is sense that we find in Becker’s work important commonalities with Marshall but also significant points of departure and that the line from Marshall to modern Chicago is neither as direct as it is sometimes portrayed, nor as faint as it is sometimes claimed by Chicago critics.

This paper aims to explore how gay men and lesbians draw upon workplace friendship for developing and sustaining managerial careers and identities.

The study adopts a qualitative design, using data collected from semi‐structured interviews with four lesbians and eight gay men, all employed in managerial roles in the UK.

Data reveal the importance of workplace friendship as a resource for mentoring, climbing managerial career ladders, fitting into existing work cultures and developing gay and lesbian managerial identities. A significant finding is that participants preferred to befriend heterosexual colleagues, to that end complicating previous research that suggests gay and lesbian friendship preferences tend to be marked by similarity in regard to sexual identity. Work friends enable and constrain the development and visibility of gay and lesbian managerial identities and careers.

Although the data are not generalisable, it is of concern that gay men and lesbians continue to be disadvantaged by heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality. While gender and sexual norms can limit the visibility and embodiment of gay and lesbian managers in the workplace, the study reveals also how gay sexualities can be utilised as a resource for developing influential friendships.

This article provides insights into issues not previously covered or understudied in the organisation studies literature such as the agency of gay men and lesbians in constructing different types of workplace friendships as a resource for developing managerial identities and careers.

This chapter explores the potential for the classroom to be a space for activism and hope within the contemporary business school. Drawing on the extant literature, a reflexive account of our own teaching and learning practice, and a small number of interviews with academics using feminist material in their teaching in business schools, we explore the challenges, opportunities and joys experienced in the feminist classroom. We suggest that engaging in feminist teaching practice and theory can offer an opportunity for academics to engage in the critical management studies practice which is often said to be lacking within management research. We begin by setting out the extant positioning of Critical Management Studies, moving to an analysis of the educational context. Interwoven through this are our own perspectives. Our own reflections do not reveal the identities of students.

Purpose – To explore the contested nature of masculinity through an examination of contemporary promotional culture associated with a predominantly masculine commodity – beer. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the representations of masculinity in two New Zealand beer advertisements spanning a 25-year period.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a brief overview of the contemporary crisis of masculinity; (2) the role of the media and promotional culture in representing and reproducing crises of masculinity; (3) The Holy Trinity: Sport, Beer and Masculinity and (4) analysis of two promotional campaigns for New Zealand beer brand Speight's. Here, the original series ad from 1992 is compared and contrasted with the 2019 instalment using Strate's (1992) framework which conceptualizes beer advertisements as ‘manuals of masculinity’, in order to track potential changes over time.

Findings – The results highlight the enduring value of Strate's (1992) framework of beer advertisements as manuals of masculinity. In addition, the results reveal that while the representation of masculinity in Speight's beer advertising has changed over time, key themes related to exclusive male spaces, physical labour and the core value of ‘mateship’ remain.

Research limitations/implications – Within the context of globalization, promotional culture operating at both the global and local level can cultivate images of masculinity that represent and reproduce the existing gender order, but it can also confront and disrupt it.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.