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Collective industrial relations are crumbling. Alternatives include employee involvement and authoritarian forms of workplace governance. Uses evidence from the third workplace industrial relations survey to analyse associations between these different types of governance and workplace performance.

Political institutions and contemporary workplaces operate according to different rules. The seeming contradiction between these two spheres, one democratic and the other something else, presents an opportunity for productive speculation about the possibilities for reconciliation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for future research investigation of this perennial topic.

The discussion of whether the workplace can catch up with the democratic achievements of political life requires an understanding of the status quo, the prevailing frames or metaphors that govern our understanding of organizational life. Four metaphors are put forward to describe the prevailing spectrum of thought. In addition to metaphors, analogies are introduced as an interpretive tool to help guide the imaginative transition between political and workplace domains.

Democratic political cultures are supported by structures and institutions which encourage the expression of individual and collective voice. Workplaces, comprised of the same citizens who participate in the governance of communities, do not, with some important exceptions, offer the same opportunities for democratic participation. If a general analogy between political and workplace sphere is found persuasive, it should be possible to import and adapt democratic traditions from the former to the latter.

Discussions of workplace democracy often suffer from a certain naiveté, a bias against structure and toward informal consensus. Insofar as democratic workplaces are by definition smaller scale than political communities, this bias is defensible. This paper concludes however by asserting certain minimal “acid test” challenges to those who would promote the goal of workplace democracy.

Many sales organizations use traditional control systems such as agency theory, which entails motivating salespeople using rewards and punishments, as if they are mechanical beings that are devoid of emotions and spirit. Research shows that such control leads to dissatisfied customers, disengaged salespeople and poor organizational reputation. The purpose of this study is to present governance based on workplace spirituality as an alternative approach, wherein salespeople’s emotional and spiritual development is given primary importance. This is proposed to result in favorable performance and behaviors in alignment with organizational and customer goals.

The study builds a conceptual model from an extended literature review.

The developed conceptual model for workplace spirituality-based governance in sales organization consists of organizational structural factors, such as control and reward systems, as antecedents of psychological experiences of workplace spirituality in salespeople. These experiences are then proposed to result in salespeople’s increased customer orientation and objective performance, with organizational commitment as a mediator.

The study has implications for organizations that govern salespeople by fiddling constantly with their salespeople’s incentive plans but find that most of these changes have little effect. The study proposes that companies will have more satisfied customers and successful salespeople, if they manage their salespeople’s emotional and spiritual side.

This study is the first to devise a governance system in selling organizations that is based on workplace spirituality.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the current state of play for workplace diversity disclosures, specifically disability by investigating the recently revised Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations.

Case study methodology using documentary analysis techniques.

With gender diversity recommendations introduced in 2010 based on the business case perspective, the process of revising the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations provided an opportunity for the ASX to expand its diversity focus, with disability diversity specifically identified in the draft third edition. However, the key amendments were subsequently removed when the approved edition was released in 2014 with justification provided on the grounds that disability is a social issue, not a corporate governance issue. Through a widening of the corporate governance lens beyond the business case perspective, this paper calls for a re-imagining of corporate governance to incorporate an ethical viewpoint on diversity.

Disability diversity disclosure is merely the first step towards reform in helping to bring about deep change within organisations. Without both administrative reform and institutional reform, any future revisitation of the disability disclosure recommendations may become little more than a “tick the box” approach.

The paper is unique in reviewing the ASX Corporate Governance developmental processes towards workplace disability in its recently revised edition.

Centralised workplace and decentralised facilities management organisations combine several interacting functions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the workplace service environment from a ‘network organisation’ perspective comprising workplace knowledge‐holder roles that have both formal and informal connections. This paper proposes that the core business customers, in‐house and outsourced service providers, and the contract managers have a similar need to interact and learn from each other and presents a framework for ‘network service organisations’ to describe their changing collaborative roles. First, the customer interfaces of workplace networks are identified. Secondly, a theoretical framework for a network service organisation is presented, followed by a section on creating centres of excellence for workplace knowledge. Thirdly, a generic governance model for network collaboration is introduced. The aim of the paper is to increase knowledge about understanding and managing network relations in the new workplace environment. The paper ends with a discussion on limitations to formal cooperation and the need for further research on informal relationships within these networks.

Workplace voice is well-established and encompasses behaviors such as prosocial voice, informal complaints, grievance filing, and whistleblowing, and it focuses on interactions between the employee and supervisor or the employee and the organizational collective. In contrast, our chapter focuses on employee prosocial advocacy voice (PAV), which the authors define as prosocial voice behaviors aimed at preventing harm or promoting constructive changes by advocating on behalf of others. In the context of a healthcare organization, low quality and unsafe patient care are salient and objectionable states in which voice can motivate actions on behalf of the patient to improve information exchanges, governance, and outreach activities for safer outcomes. The authors draw from the theory and research on responsibility to intersect with theories on information processing, accountability, and stakeholders that operate through voice between the employee-patient, employee-coworker, and employee-profession, respectively, to propose a model of PAV in patient-centered healthcare. The authors complete the model by suggesting intervening influences and barriers to PAV that may affect patient-centered outcomes.

Using data from the 2013 European Company Survey, this chapter operationalizes the representation gap as the desire for greater employee involvement in decision-making expressed by the representative of the leading employee representative body at the workplace. According to this measure, there is evidence of a substantial shortfall in employee involvement in the European Union, not dissimilar to that reported for the United States. The chapter proceeds to investigate how the size of this representation gap varies by type of representative structure, information provided by management, the resource base available to the representatives, and the status of trust between the parties. Perceived deficits are found to be smaller where workplace representation is via works councils rather than union bodies. Furthermore, the desire for greater involvement is reduced where information provided the employee representative on a range of establishment issues is judged satisfactory. A higher frequency of meetings with management also appears to mitigate the expressed desire for greater involvement. Each of these results is robust to estimation over different country clusters. However, unlike the other arguments, the conclusion that shortfalls in employee involvement representation are smaller under works councils than union bodies is nullified where trust in management is lacking.

Explores a scenario for how work can be organized in a circular manner. Outlines two tendencies in work relations: a return to authoritarian governance of the workplace, and at the same time, the inevitable and necessary shift towards more participation. Subsequently, explores the possibility of a synthesis of traditional and participative work relationships by organizing work in a circular manner. Circularity implies that, although authority may continue to play an important role in the workplace, an ultimate authority is absent, and each member can participate directly or through representation in decision processes which are organized in circles.

This paper explores how legacies of past logics spawn variation in the institutional landscapes of different geographic regions in China. Of particular interest is how this variation influences the ways that actors interpret and respond to broader societal and world society pressures. Employing a cross-level comparative research design, we examine the enduring legacies of previous state logics, which have given rise to distinctive material and symbolic resource environments in different regional communities across China. To the extent that institutional contexts direct the attention of actors toward particular environmental stimuli and provide the symbolic and material resources to respond, a better understanding of how contexts differ provides more accurate causal explanations of the variability of organizational behavior. We explore this phenomenon in the context of recent government-mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in China. Our examination of public and private CSR initiatives, along with the CSR activities of a sample of 714 listed Chinese companies, suggests that legacies from past state logics become embedded in local institutional infrastructures and shape how abstract, multifaceted CSR initiatives are interpreted and implemented.

Board diversity positively impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR); however, there is limited evidence on how board diversity affects the reputation of organizations that are involved in CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect board diversity has on socially responsible firms’ corporate social responsibility reputation (CSRR). The authors specifically examine this relationship because an organization’s corporate reputation may be very different to its CSRR gained through engagement in socially responsible activities.

The authors use the CSR reputation scores for the top 100 most socially responsible global companies provided by the RepTrak Database as a measure of CSRR. Board diversity measures are calculated for gender, ethnicity and education to measure their impact on social reputation. The sample for this study consists of 146 observations for the period 2013–2017.

The authors find a significant and positive relation between having a combination of women and ethnically diverse members on the board and firms’ CSRR. The authors also find a significant positive effect on CSRR when the board is composed of women and educationally diverse members.

Board diversity characteristics continue to impact organizations’ decision-making processes and their involvement in CSR activities as public stakeholders demand greater representation of females and minorities on the board. Because research on board diversity is in its infancy, the authors urge scholars to continue to investigate the impact board diversity has on an organization’s motivation to be socially responsible as well as how it affects their CSRR.

The findings of this study highlight the importance stakeholders place on an organization’s social responsibility reputation and the positive effects of board diversity in managing their CSRR.

The findings provide evidence that the composition of the board can influence a company’s engagement in CSR activities and their CSRR as perceived by its stakeholders.

This study contributes to the CSR literature by introducing the concept of CSRR. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study also extends research in the diversity literature by examining the relationship between board diversity variables and an organization’s CSRR. The findings highlight the importance of having a diverse board composed of ethnically and educationally varied individuals and provide evidence of a link between organizations’ involvement in socially responsible activities and their CSRR.