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This chapter aims to encourage and guide smart industry HRM-related research by addressing upcoming challenges developed using a job design lens.

The challenges are constructed based on a developed overview of the existing body of work related to job design and a description of smart industry.

The challenges are meant as an indication of the issues that arise within job design due to smart industry and, in so doing, suggest directions for future research in this specific field. Additionally, through laying out challenges for this particular example, the chapter encourages scholars to consider the possible impact of smart industry within other HRM areas.

To examine empathy as a trait that influences leadership behaviors, which, in turn, influence group decision-making.

This study uses an assessment center design to maximize internal validity.

The structural equation model shows that empathy strongly relates to both relationship leadership and task leadership, while cognitive ability only relates to task leadership. Both relationship leadership and task leadership exert influence over group task choice and group decisions. Thus, empathy has its major effects through influencing leader behaviors, which, in turn, have distal impacts on outcomes such as influence over decisions.

The study results should be further tested in field settings.

The findings suggest that organizations should recruit and promote leaders high in empathy.

This is the first study to test whether leader behaviors mediate the effects of leader empathy on group decision-making.

This article follows on an investigation conducted by the Unit for Library and Information Research of the Human Sciences Research Council in 1981 for the Department of National Education. The article is limited to a consideration of the aim and functions of national library services. Matters such as the organisation and management of these services, the pros and cons of centralisation and decentralisation in particular circumstances, bringing services into line with modern demands, problem areas in existing services, the raison d'être of national library and information advisory councils alongside the management councils of national library services, legislation of these services, etc. have been excluded from the discussion.

Although a substantial body of research has examined the effects of job characteristics on job attitudes, there is a paucity of work on individual difference moderators of these relationships. Based in selective optimization with compensation theory and socio-emotional selectivity theory, the purpose of this paper is to show that age moderated the relationship between task variety and two key job attitudes, job satisfaction and engagement.

Data were collected through self-report questionnaires (n=152), using a time-lagged design with two waves (two to three weeks between T ₁ and T ₂).

The authors found that task variety had a stronger relationship with job satisfaction and work engagement for younger workers compared to older workers.

Although there was good age variance in the sample, it had fewer late-career workers and more workers who are in their early and mid-career.

To have workers of all ages satisfied and engaged at work, we need to understand which work characteristics are the best for them. For example, it may be a competitive gain for organizations to challenge younger workers with different tasks, and to challenge older workers in ways that utilize their experience.

The study addresses a societal issue related to profound demographic changes in the age composition of the workforce, gaining a better knowledge of differences between workers of different ages to promote effective interventions and policies.

This is the first study to show that task variety differentially affects worker satisfaction and engagement depending on the age of the worker.

This paper is an autoethnographic account of field dilemmas encountered while undertaking research in a construction organization. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflexive account for those who undertake organizational field studies and focusses on the issue of field relationships and data collection.

Vignettes are used providing vivid accounts of field interactions between author, informants and research team members, followed by a reflection on the consequences of these. Field notes and reflective journaling were used in the construction of the vignettes.

Data collection in organizations where informants have limited time for researchers involves building relationships that need much attention, compromise and addressing of dilemmas which arise. This autoethnography highlights this and reflects on lessons learnt of how to manage dilemmas in field relationships that require attention when they hinder data collection and prove detrimental to the research project’s progress.

This study informs those undertaking research in commercial organizations about the importance of managing relationships and solving potential field dilemmas.

This autoethnography adds to the discussion about how researchers negotiate complex relationships and the dilemmas that constrain data collection. The value of being reflective of dilemmas lies in understanding that challenging organizational field studies involves careful tending to informants’ and research stakeholders’ needs whilst remaining focused on one’s own research goals.

In this chapter the relationship between job design and older workers is considered. Starting from a conceptual definition of what the concept job and work design is, we consider theoretic approaches to the study of job design over the last decades, including recent frameworks, measurement, and research. We follow this with a specific focus on the topic of job design for older workers. We argue that the rules of “good job design” are not applicable to all workers, focusing specifically on the issues of age and career stage. We next show through a theoretical model and some empirical research that some job characteristics may be more suitable or beneficial for people in older age groups or later stages of their careers (e.g., Truxillo, Cadiz, Rineer, Zaniboni, & Fraccaroli, 2012). Empirical support for the role of age in job design is considered. We conclude by defining some avenues for future research, including the identification of additional factors that may determine how age and job characteristics affect worker behavior, attitudes, and well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the field’s understanding of how to raise individual innovation. Specifically, the authors aim to contribute to an understanding of the interplay of job characteristics and intrinsic motivation for individual innovation.

The study uses time-lagged survey data of a public service organization in Belgium. The analyses are based on more than 80 jobs and more than 1,000 employees. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted to test cross-level hypotheses.

Innovation requirements influence individual innovation efforts by psychologically empowering employees, but the extent to which psychological empowerment translates into individual innovation depends on job complexity.

A more nuanced understanding is developed of when innovation requirements empower individual innovation, by acknowledging the role of job complexity in this relationship. The current findings contribute to a multilevel integrative understanding of the interplay of the job context and intrinsic motivation.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on pedagogical strategies which support the teaching of critical analysis of visual and multimodal texts in a tertiary-level course for Arts students.

The paper describes strategies which focus on developing students’ abilities to express interpretive critique, as opposed to mere description. These strategies give students strong scaffolding towards success in their interpretive writing. The course in question is a tertiary-level Arts course which teaches Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) approach to “reading images” in relation to contemporary media texts. The basic structure of the course is described, along with the macro steps which underpin the pedagogy. Examples of highly successful and less successful student writing are compared to reveal the key components of effective interpretive answers.

In addition to the normal expectations regarding essay structure and style, and in addition to mastery of the technicality of the course, successful and less successful student writing depends on their mastery of a specific set of moves within the essay. These moves integrate textual observations with clear explanations and a strong relation to interpretation.

While the course and strategies discussed are for tertiary-level students, the strategies described are adaptable to primary and secondary levels also. Multimodal texts are an integral part of the English curriculum, and all teachers need to explore strategies for enabling their students’ critical engagement with such texts.

Visual and multimodal texts are an exciting and also challenging part of English curricula, and new analytical frameworks and pedagogical strategies are needed to tackle these texts. In particular, the gap between simply describing visual resources (applying the tools) and critical analysis (using the tools) is vast, and specific pedagogical strategies are needed to help students develop the necessary interpretive language.

Global mobility remains one of the most pressing challenges of our times. Countries in the north are turning to major ‘sending’ countries in the south to secure their cooperation in controlling their borders and in repatriation processes. By explicitly linking migration to global security threats and weak governance, these migration control initiatives are justified by development goals and sometimes financed by official development assistance (ODA). By connecting criminology with international development scholarship, this chapter seeks to advance our understanding of the novel intersections between criminal justice, security and development to govern mass migration. Focusing on UK policies and the analysis of specific programmes, it interrogates what does the sustainable development goal (10.7) of facilitating ‘orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration’ concretely entail? And to what extent does the language of ‘managed migration’ legitimise restrictive border controls policies and even conflict with other global development goals?