title: How do commercial lawyers construct and negotiate their identity in the transition to retirement?

authors: Finnie, Pamela

subjects: identity negotiation

abstract: Retirement, a stable concept for much of the 20th century, is becoming more fluid as governments, organisations, and individuals seek to deal with the myriad of challenges associated with an ageing population that is living longer and is more highly educated than previous cohorts. The baby boomer cohort’s belief that they still have much to offer society is challenging static and policy-driven meanings of retirement. However, the cohort’s challenge is being made against a backdrop of an ageist society, where the close connection between retirement and chronological age, sees individuals who leave full- time employment as moving away from employment related positions of status, power, and perceived productivity. By exiting formal employment arrangements, retirees move to positions stigmatised as non-productive positions on the margins of society. The stigma and marginalisation of those retired is linked to arguments that those in occupations that are of high status, such as the professions and high-performance sport, resist retiring. The purpose of this research was to investigate the experiences of retirement for men in high status occupations. 

This qualitative study draws on social constructionism, identity, life course transitions, and professionalism. Focusing on depth rather than breadth, this research explores these complex concepts using insights from in-depth interviews with four men from the legal profession. The four research participants identify as New Zealand Europeans, high earning ex-commercial lawyers transitioning to retirement or retired. The research asks how have these participants constructed and negotiated their identity in the transaction to retirement. 

Underpinning the discussion were the three broad topic areas that emerged from the findings: the tyranny of ageism, commercial lawyers transitioning to retirement, the importance of work-related roles and non-work-related roles in the transition to retirement. Consistent with the literature, the findings demonstrate that the healthier and increased longevity of baby boomers highlights the much wider range of opportunities available in the transition stage between work and retirement. Opportunities that these four participants are embracing to different degrees. As a result, the participants’ experiences demonstrate that traditional understandings of retirement need to change. Retirement should not be seen as a fixed and one-dimensional life course transition. However, their decision-making is as much influenced by their personal attributes or essential identity as by their high-status legal professional work identity. Therefore, when considering the implications for high status professions, it is important to consider work and non-work identities influence on transitions to retirement decision making. This study highlights the insidious nature of ageism and its negative impact on the construction of identity in the transition to retirement.

text: How do commercial lawyers construct and negotiate their identity in the transition to retirement? Retirement, a stable concept for much of the 20th century, is becoming more fluid as governments, organisations, and individuals seek to deal with the myriad of challenges associated with an ageing population that is living longer and is more highly educated than previous cohorts. The baby boomer cohort’s belief that they still have much to offer society is challenging static and policy-driven meanings of retirement. However, the cohort’s challenge is being made against a backdrop of an ageist society, where the close connection between retirement and chronological age, sees individuals who leave full- time employment as moving away from employment related positions of status, power, and perceived productivity. By exiting formal employment arrangements, retirees move to positions stigmatised as non-productive positions on the margins of society. The stigma and marginalisation of those retired is linked to arguments that those in occupations that are of high status, such as the professions and high-performance sport, resist retiring. The purpose of this research was to investigate the experiences of retirement for men in high status occupations. 

This qualitative study draws on social constructionism, identity, life course transitions, and professionalism. Focusing on depth rather than breadth, this research explores these complex concepts using insights from in-depth interviews with four men from the legal profession. The four research participants identify as New Zealand Europeans, high earning ex-commercial lawyers transitioning to retirement or retired. The research asks how have these participants constructed and negotiated their identity in the transaction to retirement. 

Underpinning the discussion were the three broad topic areas that emerged from the findings: the tyranny of ageism, commercial lawyers transitioning to retirement, the importance of work-related roles and non-work-related roles in the transition to retirement. Consistent with the literature, the findings demonstrate that the healthier and increased longevity of baby boomers highlights the much wider range of opportunities available in the transition stage between work and retirement. Opportunities that these four participants are embracing to different degrees. As a result, the participants’ experiences demonstrate that traditional understandings of retirement need to change. Retirement should not be seen as a fixed and one-dimensional life course transition. However, their decision-making is as much influenced by their personal attributes or essential identity as by their high-status legal professional work identity. Therefore, when considering the implications for high status professions, it is important to consider work and non-work identities influence on transitions to retirement decision making. This study highlights the insidious nature of ageism and its negative impact on the construction of identity in the transition to retirement.

year: 2025-06-09

title: Environmental sustainability and family businesses

authors: Kariyapperuma, Kariyapperuma Athukoralage Nishanthi Renuka

subjects: Environmental sustainability

abstract: For centuries, individuals, businesses, and countries have attempted to preserve nature, yet despite their efforts, environmental issues persist. Family businesses (FBs) are a key player in the global economy, and cumulatively, their impact on environmental sustainability (ES) is significant. FBs also provide a unique organisational context to study the influence of family, founding owners, and the next generation in relation to ES in family firms. This is a thesis with publications positioned at the intersection of ES and the family business (FB). The research adopts a two-phase design. The first phase addresses the research question: How and why do family firms vary in their engagement with ES? The second phase considers how family firms can continue an environmental values legacy. 
The thesis includes three research papers. Manuscript 1 presents a structured literature review (135 research papers published during the last 20 years) that evaluates the body of knowledge at the intersection of ES and FBs.  Manuscript 2 reports on the results from a qualitative content analysis of information on ES and family narratives disclosed in the corporate websites of 72 FBs.  Manuscript 3 is based on two qualitative methods - a qualitative content analysis and multiple case studies regarding the socialisation context of the founding and the next generation family members.  The context for the empirical studies is family businesses operating in New Zealand’s wine industry. Most of the firms in the industry are owned and operated by small to medium-sized FBs. The theory of family logic and familiness was applied in the first two manuscripts, while the theory of multi-layered socialisation was used in the third manuscript.
The three manuscripts complement each other. Manuscript 1 uses the extant literature to show how family logics (e.g., socioemotional wealth) and family resources (e.g., social capital) influence ES in family firms. Manuscript 2 empirically investigates the above association and identifies family values, founding values, and nonfinancial goals of the family as dominant family logics that could influence FB engagement with ES. Manuscript 3 develops this idea further and explores how families develop an ongoing environmental values legacy in FBs. 
The results show that the family itself is the primary source of heterogeneities among FBs in their approach to ES. Family logics and familiness act as a frame of reference for the dominant coalition in their behaviour towards ES. A conceptual model was developed that linked the variables (family logic, familiness, family firms, and ES) and provided a holistic view of how and why heterogeneities exist in family firms. Three typologies of family firms were developed: Family-First, Business-First, and Upstart. 
Regarding environmental values formation and transmission in FBs, it was found that early childhood is the most critical age of developing environmental values. Early childhood exposure to FB and nature interaction has also been identified as part of the primary socialisation. Three categories of environmental values were developed related to economic, social, and emotional needs that the founding or the next generation family members attempted to satisfy through engagement with ES. There is evidence for resocialisation of values, and a dyadic transmission of environmental values exist between parents and children. Implications of the multi-layered socialisation process are discussed.
The first contribution of this thesis is to theoretically and empirically review the “family behind the family firm” to explain how variations in the family variables influence heterogeneities among family firms in their approach to ES. The second contribution of this thesis is to develop the existing knowledge in the intersection of family business and ES, regarding the continuity of environmental values in FBs.
At the conclusion of the thesis, the original contributions of the thesis are highlighted. Limitations of the research and future research directions are also outlined.

text: Environmental sustainability and family businesses For centuries, individuals, businesses, and countries have attempted to preserve nature, yet despite their efforts, environmental issues persist. Family businesses (FBs) are a key player in the global economy, and cumulatively, their impact on environmental sustainability (ES) is significant. FBs also provide a unique organisational context to study the influence of family, founding owners, and the next generation in relation to ES in family firms. This is a thesis with publications positioned at the intersection of ES and the family business (FB). The research adopts a two-phase design. The first phase addresses the research question: How and why do family firms vary in their engagement with ES? The second phase considers how family firms can continue an environmental values legacy. 
The thesis includes three research papers. Manuscript 1 presents a structured literature review (135 research papers published during the last 20 years) that evaluates the body of knowledge at the intersection of ES and FBs.  Manuscript 2 reports on the results from a qualitative content analysis of information on ES and family narratives disclosed in the corporate websites of 72 FBs.  Manuscript 3 is based on two qualitative methods - a qualitative content analysis and multiple case studies regarding the socialisation context of the founding and the next generation family members.  The context for the empirical studies is family businesses operating in New Zealand’s wine industry. Most of the firms in the industry are owned and operated by small to medium-sized FBs. The theory of family logic and familiness was applied in the first two manuscripts, while the theory of multi-layered socialisation was used in the third manuscript.
The three manuscripts complement each other. Manuscript 1 uses the extant literature to show how family logics (e.g., socioemotional wealth) and family resources (e.g., social capital) influence ES in family firms. Manuscript 2 empirically investigates the above association and identifies family values, founding values, and nonfinancial goals of the family as dominant family logics that could influence FB engagement with ES. Manuscript 3 develops this idea further and explores how families develop an ongoing environmental values legacy in FBs. 
The results show that the family itself is the primary source of heterogeneities among FBs in their approach to ES. Family logics and familiness act as a frame of reference for the dominant coalition in their behaviour towards ES. A conceptual model was developed that linked the variables (family logic, familiness, family firms, and ES) and provided a holistic view of how and why heterogeneities exist in family firms. Three typologies of family firms were developed: Family-First, Business-First, and Upstart. 
Regarding environmental values formation and transmission in FBs, it was found that early childhood is the most critical age of developing environmental values. Early childhood exposure to FB and nature interaction has also been identified as part of the primary socialisation. Three categories of environmental values were developed related to economic, social, and emotional needs that the founding or the next generation family members attempted to satisfy through engagement with ES. There is evidence for resocialisation of values, and a dyadic transmission of environmental values exist between parents and children. Implications of the multi-layered socialisation process are discussed.
The first contribution of this thesis is to theoretically and empirically review the “family behind the family firm” to explain how variations in the family variables influence heterogeneities among family firms in their approach to ES. The second contribution of this thesis is to develop the existing knowledge in the intersection of family business and ES, regarding the continuity of environmental values in FBs.
At the conclusion of the thesis, the original contributions of the thesis are highlighted. Limitations of the research and future research directions are also outlined.

year: 2021

title: Street-level bureaucracy and occupational therapy practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. A genealogical critique.

authors: Silcock, Elizabeth Mary

subjects: power

abstract: As a human science that is also part of administering and supporting bureaucracy, occupational therapy functions in multi-layered networks of power  that support many different social structures. Occupational therapists’ work often involves operationalising health, education and social services at the street-level, positioning them between the aspirations of both policy and social activism and material life outcomes. Through a genealogical critique, this thesis problematises the practice of occupational therapy through a Foucauldian lens that views everything as dangerous. By viewing occupational therapy practice as dangerous, the power relations at the street-level of the mundane and taken-for-granted have been problematised as part of much larger social structures of power and discourse. 
Several Foucauldian tools were deployed in order to ensure that a focus on occupational therapy practices was maintained; three distinct research methods were utilised to access a range of heterogeneous genealogical information.  Firstly, an historical archival analysis of the four iterations of the Competencies for Registration for occupational therapists document (1990 to the current day) produced by the regulatory authority, the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand, was carried out.  Secondly, practice observations of occupational therapists working in different practice settings were analysed as three individual case studies. Concurrently with these two methods, a critical action method using a research blog was developed to create a medium for public discussion of practice through an open engagement with the profession. The combination of these three methods enabled access to a range of elements for analysis.  Many of these elements inter-linked, overlapped and connected to historically contingent networks of dominant power that have formed through the processes of colonisation, the establishment of the health system and normalised medical practices, and economic forms of governance. The nuances of how occupational therapy is practised at the street-level offered opportunities to contest the dominance of these networks. In all three case studies there was an unspoken understanding and a normalisation of materiality as an accepted and significant element of how the profession practised.  The material regimes of knowledge and material practices in these unspoken norms were highly productive and able to contest other lines of power.  Along with this alternate network of power, the most recent version of the Competencies for Registration offers a further opportunity for occupational therapists to contest dominant power relations in a way that could capitalise on the secure position the profession has developed through its material network of power.  Opportunities for alternate pathways of practice which privilege Te Ao Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are a possibility in the legally sanctioned Competencies. The close connection of occupational therapy practices to real life material outcomes for other people, position the street-level doing of occupational therapists at a juncture where action and decision making can re-configure power relations. Re-thinking practice in terms of what the doing of occupational therapy does in relation to networks of power, is an opportunity for practitioners to enact policy at the street-level in ways that use their ability to influence power from the bottom up whilst being alert to the dangers presented by doing so.

text: Street-level bureaucracy and occupational therapy practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. A genealogical critique. As a human science that is also part of administering and supporting bureaucracy, occupational therapy functions in multi-layered networks of power  that support many different social structures. Occupational therapists’ work often involves operationalising health, education and social services at the street-level, positioning them between the aspirations of both policy and social activism and material life outcomes. Through a genealogical critique, this thesis problematises the practice of occupational therapy through a Foucauldian lens that views everything as dangerous. By viewing occupational therapy practice as dangerous, the power relations at the street-level of the mundane and taken-for-granted have been problematised as part of much larger social structures of power and discourse. 
Several Foucauldian tools were deployed in order to ensure that a focus on occupational therapy practices was maintained; three distinct research methods were utilised to access a range of heterogeneous genealogical information.  Firstly, an historical archival analysis of the four iterations of the Competencies for Registration for occupational therapists document (1990 to the current day) produced by the regulatory authority, the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand, was carried out.  Secondly, practice observations of occupational therapists working in different practice settings were analysed as three individual case studies. Concurrently with these two methods, a critical action method using a research blog was developed to create a medium for public discussion of practice through an open engagement with the profession. The combination of these three methods enabled access to a range of elements for analysis.  Many of these elements inter-linked, overlapped and connected to historically contingent networks of dominant power that have formed through the processes of colonisation, the establishment of the health system and normalised medical practices, and economic forms of governance. The nuances of how occupational therapy is practised at the street-level offered opportunities to contest the dominance of these networks. In all three case studies there was an unspoken understanding and a normalisation of materiality as an accepted and significant element of how the profession practised.  The material regimes of knowledge and material practices in these unspoken norms were highly productive and able to contest other lines of power.  Along with this alternate network of power, the most recent version of the Competencies for Registration offers a further opportunity for occupational therapists to contest dominant power relations in a way that could capitalise on the secure position the profession has developed through its material network of power.  Opportunities for alternate pathways of practice which privilege Te Ao Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi are a possibility in the legally sanctioned Competencies. The close connection of occupational therapy practices to real life material outcomes for other people, position the street-level doing of occupational therapists at a juncture where action and decision making can re-configure power relations. Re-thinking practice in terms of what the doing of occupational therapy does in relation to networks of power, is an opportunity for practitioners to enact policy at the street-level in ways that use their ability to influence power from the bottom up whilst being alert to the dangers presented by doing so.

year: 2018