Please check out the recent publication by OOW members Andre Nickow and Sanjay Kumar. “Mobilizing for Entitlement: A Randomised Evaluation of a Homestead Land Rights Initiative in Bihar, India.” Journal of Development Studies (2020): 1-25.

Abstract

Across much of India, potentially transformative development programs are hampered by barriers to implementation. A case in point is Bihar, a province of over 100 million inhabitants, where state law guarantees each otherwise landless rural household the right to hold title over a plot of homestead land. Yet most eligible Scheduled Caste (SC) households remain untitled. This article studies a social accountability program that established, trained, and mobilised village-level community-based organisations to assist SC households in obtaining homestead title. The study employs a mixed methods design in which a survey-based field experiment estimates program impact while analysis of data from qualitative fieldwork documents ground-level processes. Results indicate that the program strongly increased land security and access to government entitlements, moderately increased asset ownership and homestead satisfaction, and had a weak positive effect on food security. However, the main impact estimates do not show statistically significant treatment effects on investment in dwellings or homestead -based livelihood activities. The qualitative analysis suggests that a key mechanism by which the program improved entitlement access was enabling target households to circumvent rent-seeking intermediaries. Results contribute to development studies research on social accountability, government service delivery, and land rights.

Please check out the recent publication by OOW members Corey Pech, Elizabeth Klainot-Hess, and Davon Norris. “Part-time by Gender, not Choice: The Gender Gap in Involuntary Part-Time Work,” Sociological Perspectives, Online First.

Abstract

Gender inequality in the labor market is a key focus of stratification research. Increasingly, variation in hours worked separates men and women’s employment experiences. Though women often voluntarily work part-time at higher rates than men, involuntary part-time work is both analytically distinct from voluntary part-time work and leaves workers economically precarious. To date, researchers have not systematically investigated gender disparities in involuntary part-time work in the United States. Utilizing Current Population Survey data, we test for a gender gap in involuntary part-time work and evaluate two potential mechanisms: occupational segregation and penalties for care work. We find that women are much more likely than men to work in involuntary part-time positions. Occupational segregation and a care work penalty partially, but not fully, explain this gap. Findings extend existing theories of gender inequality in the workforce and show how an underresearched dimension of job quality creates gender stratification in the United States.

Please check out the forthcoming publication by OOW member Margaret M. Chin. 2020. Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder. New York: NYU Press. 

The book will be released on August 11, 2020. Here is a short description:

A behind-the-scenes examination of Asian Americans in the workplace 

In the classroom, Asian Americans, often singled out as so-called “model minorities,” are expected to be top of the class. Often they are, getting straight As and gaining admission to elite colleges and universities. But the corporate world is a different story. As Margaret M. Chin reveals in this important new book, many Asian Americans get stuck on the corporate ladder, never reaching the top. 

In Stuck, Chin shows that there is a “bamboo ceiling” in the workplace, describing a corporate world where racial and ethnic inequalities prevent upward mobility. Drawing on interviews with second-generation Asian Americans, she examines why they fail to advance as fast or as high as their colleagues, showing how they lose out on leadership positions, executive roles, and entry to the coveted boardroom suite over the course of their careers. An unfair lack of trust from their coworkers, absence of role models, sponsors and mentors, and for women, sexual harassment and prejudice especially born at the intersection of race and gender are only a few of the factors that hold Asian American professionals back. 

Ultimately, Chin sheds light on the experiences of Asian Americans in the workplace, providing insight into and a framework of who is and isn’t granted access into the upper echelons of American society, and why. 

Order online from the NYU Press website. Use promo code STUCK30 at checkout for 30% off and free shipping.

Please check out the new Special Issue of Work and Occupations:

Consequences of Change in Healthcare for Organizations, Workers,
and Patients

Guest Editors: Ariel C. Avgar (Cornell University), Adrienne E. Eaton
(Rutgers University), Rebecca Kolins Givan (Rutgers University), and Adam Seth Litwin (Cornell University)

A pandemic of as yet unknown duration is changing the world. We do not know exactly how, but we can be certain this global crisis will upend governments and challenge the established social order. While the edifice of healthcare provision may well be transformed, institutions, relationships and path-dependent structures will determine precisely how this transpires and what system will emerge on the other side. While the research presented in this special issue was completed before the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, the articles all shed light on how healthcare organizations can and will respond to this unprecedented challenge. The current crisis has highlighted a host of shortcomings in existing employment models, training, incentives, use of technology, supply chains, funding and investment, and so much more. What is certain, though, is that healthcare systems and organizations must change. The articles in this special issue suggest the most appropriate direction of change. Centering the needs of employees generally and, more specifically, employee voice and professional expertise, quality care, and investment in healthcare provision itself rather than bureaucracy or administration related to payment systems will prove critical.

Menchik focuses on doctors’ (i.e., cardiologists’) adoption of a new robotic technology that mediates between the doctors’ hands and the patient. He develops a two-factor typology of individual approaches to adopting the new technology focused at one axis on the degree to which a doctor is influenced by their initial training and at the other, the influence from current colleagues. Also examining the link between work and technology, Wu compares the use of paper records to tablet computers for recording data on patient encounters by home health aides. Managers in the paper system mediated between the paper records created by direct care providers and the institutions’ official records; those in the tablet system are reduced to teaching and exhorting direct care workers to properly use their tablets. VanHeuvelen and Grace examine the move from a multi occupancy ward design to single-patient rooms. They find that occupational groups differed in their embrace or resistance to the change with some groups focused on the impact on patient care and others more on changes to working conditions. Wiedner et al. examine an explicit attempt to change occupational roles in the English National Health Service by shifting elements of budgetary responsibility from career managers to physicians. They find that tensions among occupational groups, rooted in their differing “dispositions,” can derail an attempt at change. Batt, Kallas, and
Appelbaum compare the labor relations approaches of employers in the healthcare systems in the upstate New York cities of Rochester and Buffalo. They argue that the different historical paths of industrial development in each city drove disparate labor relations approaches with one emphasizing a more positive, cooperative stance by management and the other more anti-union and hostile. In turn, they argue these approaches dictated the different paths healthcare employers in each city took in more recent restructuring.

Articles
Paying the Price for a Broken Healthcare System: Rethinking Employment, Labor, and Work in a Post-Pandemic World
Avgar, A., Eaton, A.E., Givan, R.K. and Litwin, A.S.

Occupational Heterogeneity in Healthcare Workers’ Misgivings about Organizational Change
VanHeuvelen, J.S. and Grace, M.K.

Moving From Adoption to Use: Physicians’ Mixed Commitments in Deciding to Use Robotic Technologies
Menchik, D.A.

GPs are from Mars, Administrators are from Venus: The Role of Misaligned Occupational Dispositions in Inhibiting Mandated Role Change
Wiedner, R., Nigam, A. & Bento da Silva, J.

From Timesheets to Tablets: Documentation Technology in Frontline Service Sector Managers’ Coordination of Home Healthcare Services
Wu, T.

Path Dependency Versus Social Unionism in Healthcare: Bringing Employers Back In
Batt, R., Kallas, J. & Appelbaum, E.