Search results

This paper aims to evaluate the subjective experience with associated clinical and health effects on workers subjected to persistent harassment in the workplace. The study also attempts to explore an a priori hypothesised personality/clinical effects model of workplace bullying, identifying the relationships between relevant variables using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The sample represents 100 individual psychological assessments conducted by professional psychologists at an Anti‐bullying research and resource centre. The quantitative results are based on robust psychometric inventories. The conceptual models were tested using the software LISREL 8.7.

Results indicate elevated overall psychometric scores on all psychological and physical health inventories. The constructed a priori model was conceived based on grounded theoretical literature which assessed the moderating impact of individual factors such as personality on the severity of clinical effect, thought to be as a result of workplace bullying. Using a strictly confirmatory approach, however, all tested models were not adequate fits.

Results of this study have implications for the prevention and intervention of workplace bullying both of which need to be intensified in order to minimise the physical and psychological ill effects of victimisation in the workplace. One of the key messages of this study is that the severity of the clinical effect may not relate to a person's character, but rather to the traumatic experience of bullying itself. The findings suggest that action is needed at an organizational level as explanations with regards to the intensity of psychological health outcomes may not be found in the constitution of one's personality.

This is a unique study that looks specifically at personality as a potential moderating factor of psychological and physical health in relation to workplace bullying.

The purpose of this paper is to extend awareness that workplace bullying impacts on the health of individuals both within and outside the workplace and that there are implications for workplace health management.

The paper contextualises the problem of workplace bullying and workplace health management and introduces the five articles in the special issue.

Workplace health management is becoming more prominent in some organizations and workplace health management, and a corporate culture based on partnership, trust and respect, offers considerable potential to move the agenda forward. Moreover, there appears to be a paucity of knowledge available as to how workplace health management strategies and programmes impact on organizational culture and assembling and sharing such a knowledge base could be a useful step.

Further research is required to extend the studies presented and to address workplace bullying from the perspective of workplace health management.

Research is required to explore the extent to which the potential of workplace health management programmes to impact positively on corporate approaches to bullying and harassment has been realised and how those programmes have influenced corporate culture.

A partnership approach to knowledge creation and sharing has the most potential for successful outcomes and accords closely with the inferred ideals of the Luxembourg Declaration for Workplace Health promotion.

The paper addresses a perceived gap in the literature linking workplace bullying to the impact on individual health and the implications for workplace health management.

Give the state the excuse to encroach upon your proper sphere, and you will find that the ultimate outcome will be the practical expropriation of your interest in your own business. Wise businessmen will refrain from encouraging the state to do for them in their own businesses what they ought to do for themselves.

It has been at least twenty years since I was first alerted to the notion that my interest in a research topic arises from my unconscious. More recently, feminist theorists have developed the insight by arguing that integration of experience is helpful in defining research questions, as a source of data, to test findings and, in the words of Jean Bethke Elshtain, in assisting them to be less removed from the ‘wellsprings’ of their own ‘thought and action’. My aim in this article is to reconnect my experience with constructions of teachers in Australian children’s literature and to explore ways in which they are imagined in the literature. In my initial foray into this topic, I used Maurice Saxby’s historical review of Australian children’s literature as a guide for data gathering. This linear, chronological approach, while probably a helpful place to start, is not one I can sustain with any passion. In this article, I am returning to my experience to find a starting point, acknowledging that history is a ‘process of intellectual production as well as discovery’

This paper aims to determine the reasons why patients miss clinic appointments and to ascertain patients' views on the implementation of reminder systems and penalty fees to reduce the rates of did not attend (DNAs). Overall, the paper seeks to establish novel ways to run a more efficient out‐patient department (OPD) service to improve waiting times and access for patients to limited neurology resources.

A questionnaire‐based study was approved by the audit committee and was offered to 204 out‐patients attending the neurology clinics over a three‐month period (July to September 2009). The patients' demographic details and non‐attendance records were reviewed. The paper aimed to ascertain, from the patients' perspective, why people failed to attend clinic appointments. Each participant was asked their views on how they felt their public hospital service might reduce the number of DNAs at their neurology OPD.

A total of 204 patients took part. Participants had a mean age of 31 years (range 25‐75 years) with a modal peak in the 26 to 35 age bracket. Almost 10 per cent of those surveyed admitted to missing a hospital out‐patient appointment in the past. The most common reason was that they simply “forgot” (28 per cent). DNA rates by age range were proportionally similar to the overall age profile of attenders. Over 55 per cent said they would like a pre‐appointment reminder via a mobile telephone text message, 19 per cent preferred a pre‐appointment telephone call, and 19 per cent an e‐mail. Of those surveyed, 47 per cent said they would be willing to pay a fee on booking that could be refunded on attending for their appointment. The majority of these felt €20 was the most appropriate amount (39 per cent). The rate of acceptance for various fee amounts was uniform across age ranges. Over half (52 per cent) said that they would agree to a “buddy” system whereby the appointment reminder was sent to the patient but also a nominated friend or relative.

Non‐attendance rates at the neurology clinics in our institution are high with almost 10 per cent of attendees admitting to missing an appointment. One of the main reasons why people did not attend was because they simply “forgot” that they had an appointment and the patients favoured a text messaging reminder system to help reduce non‐attendance. Almost half of the respondents said that they would be willing to pay a refundable booking fee.

Skilled migrants' careers are heterogeneous, with existing theories capturing only some of their diversity and dynamic development over time and circumstance. This paper aims to draw out the multilevel (macro, meso and micro levels) influences impacting skilled migrants' careers by using the lens of the intelligent career framework. Furthermore, structuration theory captures the agency of skilled migrants facing different social structures at and across levels and explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers.

Following an abductive approach, this paper examines the career influences for a sample of 41 skilled migrants in three different host countries. Individual career stories were collected through qualitative interviews. Important career influences from these narratives are categorised across the intelligent career competencies (knowing why, how and whom) at the macro, meso and micro levels.

Findings illustrate the lived reality for skilled migrants of these interrelated multilevel career influences and go some way in elucidating the heterogeneity of skilled migrants' careers and outcomes. The interplay of individual agency in responding to both facilitating and challenging social structures across the multilevels further explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers and how/whether they achieve satisfying career outcomes. Some potential policy implications and options arising from these findings are suggested.

By considering multilevel themes that influence skilled migrants' career capital, the authors were able to better explain the complex, relational and idiosyncratic shaping of their individual careers. As such, the framework informs and guides individuals, practitioners and organisations seeking to facilitate skilled migrants' careers.