Inequality and Organizational Practice

This chapter aims to discuss the key elements of the earlier volumes and highlight the main areas for exploration. It provides an evaluation of the meaning of hidden inequalities in modern organisations with particular emphasis on issues around employment practices. It seeks to debate current organisational practices and provide a new thinking as to how hidden inequalities could be addressed to improve the quality of work and employment practices in the workplace. This volume shows that more needs to be done to improve employment practices in order to remove hidden inequalities from the workplace. The chapter provides a review of the volume’s structure, objectives and context with the scope to enable the reader to briefly assess the main issues covered in the first volume.

This chapter provides a critical evaluation of the key issues in diversity and equality through the exploration of the historical developments in the subject. It attempts to assess the current issues that modern organisations face in relation to managing a diverse workforce. To achieve that the chapter offers a critical discussion on how the concept of equal opportunities have evolved at social and organisational level and evaluates the role of diversity management in addressing contemporary issues related to managing differences in the workplace. The scope is to enable the reader to assess key academic and professional developments in the field and provide useful critical insights as to whether current philosophical arguments could generate any sources of hidden inequalities. Finally, the chapter offers useful operational and strategic recommendations to organisations, academics and individuals.

This chapter provides a discussion of key theoretical contributions on diversity training and assesses the role of learning in changing individual attitudes. It offers a critical insight into the current literature on diversity training and learning and examines how organisations respond to addressing discriminatory behaviours and attitudes in the workplace. The scope of the chapter is to evaluate the discourse on diversity training and assess the extent to which diversity training interventions could generate ‘hidden’ inequalities towards individual attitudes.

Age discrimination is multifaceted and complex, and policy interventions have only partial effects (Urwin, Age Matters: A Review of Existing Survey Evidence. Employment Relations. Research Series 24. London: Department of Trade and Industry, 2004). Given the deeply rooted nature of age discrimination in society, coupled with the fact that perceived discriminatory treatment may lead to negative affective and calculative responses (Gutek et al., Human Relations 49:791–813, 1996), it is important to understand how age discrimination is at play and unfair treatment results. In contrast to an accelerating rise in studies into unfavourable treatment experienced by older employees in a wake of tackling an ageing society in particular among the developed world (OECD, Live Longer, Work Longer—Ageing and Employment Policies. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2006), there are a limited number of studies investigating younger workers. Since age discrimination can happen to any age group, this chapter sets out to review the literature of ageism, particularly engaging with young and old workers, and to discuss the hidden inequalities associated with age at work. Findings from the literature review of age discrimination will inform management practice and feed into policy development in relation to both developing new talent pool and retaining valued and experienced workers of various ages.

The UK has an ageing population; people are not only living longer but doing so with health problems, and the government has been investing less in adult social care (Petrie and Kirkup, Caring for carers: The lives of family carers in the UK. http://​www.​smf.​co.​uk/​wp-content/​uploads/​2018/​07/​Caring-for-Carers.​pdf. Accessed 6 May 2018; Grierson, 928 carers in England quit a day as social care system ‘starts to collapse’. https://​www.​theguardian.​com/​society/​2017/​apr/​11/​900-carers-in-england-quit-a-day-as-social-care-system-starts-to-collapse. Accessed 6 May 2018, 2017; Pickard, Informal care for older people provided by their adult children: Projections of supply and demand to 2041. Personal Social Services Research Unit (PRSSU), London. Discussion paper 2515, 2008). This has resulted in an ever-increasing, and unrecognised, reliance on care provided on an informal basis, by friends and family. The highest provision of this care is provided by mid-life women (aged 50–64) (ONS, Census. https://​www.​ons.​gov.​uk/​census/​2011census. Accessed 6 May 2018, 2011). Furthermore, 13.3 per cent of employed women overall combine work and care (ONS, Census. https://​www.​ons.​gov.​uk/​census/​2011census. Accessed 6 May 2018, 2011). Previous research has demonstrated that carers reduce the number of hours they work and level of responsibility or even leave their jobs (Carers UK 2019; Yeandle et al., Managing caring and employment. University of Leeds: Carers UK, 2, 2007). This chapter offers an examination of existing legislation and literature on supporting working carers. It reviews findings from interviews conducted in 2016 with 30 women aged 45–65 across Leicestershire who combined work and care, with reference to their careers, and organisational and line manager support. This is particularly significant given the large number of mid-life women caring, alongside careers commentary referring to women of this age being at their professional peak, and the government keen to encourage older workers to remain active in the labour market (Kirton and Greene, The dynamics of managing diversity: A critical approach. 4th ed. Oxon: Routledge, 2016). The chapter is relevant to both academic and practitioner audiences and concludes that current practices provide insufficient support and contribute to the ongoing factor of caring being a hidden inequality in workplaces. As a result, it closes with recommendations for employers and policymakers.

This chapter advances understanding of men’s use of part-time work and the quality of the part-time work they encounter. Using UK data from wave 4 (2012–2013) of Understanding Society, plus extracts from WERS 2011, analysis is conducted to consider the association between part-time work and job quality measures, and wider measures of subjective well-being, notably men’s satisfaction with leisure time and life overall. We find that men working part-time appear to fall into one of three clusters—older men who often report good jobs, high satisfaction, and pay; men (average age of 40), constrained by a complex array of personal, familial, and labour market factors into working in low-quality part-time jobs; and young men who work short hours in low-skilled occupations, receive poor pay, yet do not appear as dissatisfied. These findings demonstrate that men work part-time for a variety of both voluntary and involuntary reasons, not restricted to the career-start and career-end strategies most commonly depicted. In analysing and exposing men’s uptake of part-time work, we reveal certain patterns of disadvantage within male employment that are largely hidden from the mainstream, shrouded by the myth that men, as a group, occupy privileged positions in the labour market. For a proportion of men, part-time work is an unsatisfactory arrangement, borne from not being able to secure full-time work. The insight the chapter offers is likely to be of interest to organisations seeking to recruit and retain part-time workers, especially those operating in sectors where part-time working is an embedded work pattern or a growing phenomenon. The findings support calls for improved quality of part-time jobs for both men and women.

Recent studies in science and technology organisations reveal how a complex set of hidden factors of different nature and depth interact in the workplace, producing negative effects on gender equality, and underline the complexity in addressing hidden gender inequality in the workplace of research organisations. However, effectively addressing hidden, deeply rooted structural and cultural gender inequalities in scientific organisations remains an understudied area. Insights into concrete actions aimed at successfully addressing hidden structural barriers are highly necessary to avoid marginalising inequality issues. Based on two studies of gender disparity in science and technology organisations in Europe and worldwide, this chapter points to the subtle and difficult to grasp structural and cultural features and offers an insight into organisational practices to mitigate exclusion, targeting resistances to change and discrimination of women in the workplace. This chapter contributes to the limited literature on cultural and structural challenges in the workplace by mapping the currently known hidden, deeply rooted systematic inequalities and suggesting how to address them in complex organisations. It offers insights into structural change practices for policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Several recommendations are presented in broad strategic areas, namely in the fields of (1) organisational management and communication, (2) culture and environment and (3) visibility, networking and women empowerment.

This chapter explores the role of employee silence and voice in addressing hidden inequalities at work. The concepts of ‘employee silence’ and ‘employee voice’ are used as they can facilitate an understanding of the way in which employees respond to workplace problems, as well as their capacity to respond (Good and Cooper, Labour and Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work 24: 302–316, 2014). In this chapter we examine when and how employees in organisational settings exercise voice and when and how they opt for silence (Milliken et al., Journal of Management Studies 40: 1453–1476, 2003). Under what conditions would employees articulate voice, revealing issues of hidden inequalities at work and under what conditions will they opt for silence? Why would employees make the decision to be silent and what types of issues would they be most likely to be silent about? How could organisations overcome this problem? Management, through practices and institutional structures, can perpetuate silence over a range of issues, thereby organising employees out of the voice process (Donaghey et al., Work, Employment and Society 25: 51–67, 2011). Any inequality in the workplace can lead to separation and isolation from the mainstream workforce, and this can influence affected employees’ voice and silence in the workplace (McFadden and Crowley-Henry, The International Journal of Human Resource Management Early View 1–26, 2017). On the other hand, opportunities to exercise voice, with transparent and fair mechanisms, can reveal a range of issues at work, from sexual harassment to any non-declared physical or psychological condition that otherwise can remain hidden. This can be a first step in addressing inequality in the workplace. Implications for theory and practice are discussed in this chapter.

Professionalised human resource management (HRM) research ignores hidden inequalities such as work that is non-compliant with prevailing employment regulation; accordingly it is necessary to extend the reach of HRM research to recognise this omission. Firstly, both compliant informalisation, frequently referred to as casualisation and non-compliant informalisation, centre on in-work exploitation, precariousness and vulnerability. Secondly, these hidden inequalities enable a re-skilled human resource function to deliver value to business owners and investors. These arguments on hidden inequalities are important to HRM research because the socio-economic origins of informal work practices and associated hidden inequalities lie in formalised practice often under the label of best way strategic HRM.

This chapter focuses on low-status expatriates who have been largely hidden from managerial scholarship. They are hidden because they are ignored by the migrant literature which looks at people trying to remain in their new society and gain citizenship and ignored by the expatriation literature which is mainly concerned with high-status ‘top’ talent. These hidden expatriates are typically maids, drivers, security guards, and construction workers—low status and low paid, unable to obtain citizenship, and liable to be sent home, unemployed, at the whim of their employer. If we, as scholars, are to contribute to the betterment of society by elevating the health and well-being of those who live in it, then we must recognise the existence of and address management issues and concerns of those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. We use the Organisational Justice theory and draw on examples from Turkey, Singapore, and the Middle East to examine the position, the concerns, and the issues of such workers and their often-unequal place in the workforce.

International migration has gained increasing importance for organizations as they expand globally. At the organizational level, skilled migrants are considered an important part of the global talent pool, contributing to the competitive advantage of multinational organizations (Guo et al., The International Journal of Human Resource Management 26: 1287–1297, 2015). Despite the importance of international migrants for organizations and host countries, the challenges of inequality, both visible and hidden, that this group of individuals might face could affect their employment and development. Research has examined inequality of working conditions to the benefit of expatriates (in comparison to host country nationals’ working conditions) (Oltra et al., Journal of Business Ethics 115: 291–310, 2013); however, an examination of inequalities faced by expatriates is rarer, with some exceptions (e.g. (Ridgway, Hidden inequalities in the workplace: A guide to the current challenges, issues and business solutions. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). This chapter discusses how culture and trust can influence perceptions of inequality as experienced by expatriates. Notions of culture and the nature of exchange relationships are used to explore the potential effects of trust perceptions on expatriates’ attitudes and behaviors. For example, what kind of managerial and organizational practices would expatriates identify as trustworthy in terms of addressing potential social exclusion, cross-cultural discrimination and any other anticipated inequalities at the host country? We posit that the more trustworthy equal opportunities and diversity management policies are in the host country and the more a culture is characterized as inclusive, the more inclined expatriates will be in accepting international work opportunities. We follow Howe-Walsh and Schyns (The International Journal of Human Resource Management 21: 260–273, 2010) in arguing that organizations, in order to appear trustworthy, should evaluate whether equal opportunities and diversity management practices address social exclusion and cultural discrimination in the host country, thus enhancing (or hindering) expatriates’ successful employment. Implications for future research are also discussed.