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The purpose of this paper is to examine “black box” links between HRM innovations and organizational performance by investigating the perspective of a workforce often excluded from the HR realm. Professional Independent Contractors (IPros) play a vital role in achieving workforce flexibility and innovation. While the use of such arrangements has been examined often using a compliance-oriented lens, the authors explore the value of adding a commitment aspect.

In total, 375 IPros working in Australian organizations completed an online questionnaire distributed by a national business support services provider.

Results show organizational support significantly predicted work engagement and affective commitment. Self-efficacy, age and gender were also significant predictors.

The cross-sectional nature of this study and reliance on self-reported data limit the reliability of the findings. In addition, the findings may be specific to the Australian labor market.

The study present the views of a difficult to reach population and the findings suggest by adopting an innovative hybrid commitment-compliance HR configuration, practitioners may positively increase desirable contractor outcomes.

Concerns that organizational imperatives for efficiency, quality and high performance will be compromised by considering the human side of non-employee work arrangements are not supported. Indeed, as previously outlined, much of the concern with the employee/non-employee dichotomy is legally based and an artefact of a system of labor law that in many settings has failed to move with the times.

Few investigations of the impact of high commitment HRM practices have incorporated the perspective of professional, non-employees. While IPros are recipients of compliance focused contractor management practices, carefully integrated commitment-based HRM aspects have the potential to deliver positive outcomes for both individuals and organizations.

The notion of worker vulnerability is often seen as synonymous with disadvantage in discussions of nonstandard work. The purpose of this paper is to separate and examine these two notions by considering economic, social and psychological perspectives and exploring the reality as experienced by agency workers.

In total, 178 Australian clerical agency workers employed by eight agencies completed a mail questionnaire. Personalised responses were subjected to computer-assisted template analysis.

Sample characteristics revealed a gendered and heterogeneous workforce. Findings showed evidence of economic, psychological and social vulnerabilities although favourable features were also reported. This apparent contradiction suggests linkages between the features of nonstandard work, worker preferences, individual characteristics and the experience of worker vulnerability.

The notion of varying degrees of worker vulnerability offers a new lens to investigate agency work. The relatively small sample size, focus on clerical work and features of the Australian context may limit generalisability.

Findings demonstrate the nature and extent of agency worker vulnerability which allows us to offer policy interventions for governments, agencies and user organisations and insights for prospective agency workers.

The widespread use of agency workers provides an imperative for frameworks to assess the nuances of the agency work experience. This study presents the reality of agency work as experienced by the workers and reveals the good and bad aspects of agency work.

This chapter looks at how work on emotions, particularly positive emotional states and perceptions of work, has provided the basis for gleaning new insights and understanding the work the engagement of independent professionals. We present the first set of results of the Entity Solutions11Independent Professional (IPro) is a contemporary term used to describe white collar contractors. IPro Index (ESII), the leading benchmark survey for identifying trends, issues and attitudes of IPros in Australia. Prior research indicates the important role that personality traits such as positive affectivity, self-efficacy and internal locus of control can have in determining a positive emotional state at work. These findings lead to the identification of five key areas of lifestyle (overall job satisfaction), well-being (engagement, psychological and emotional aspects), commitment to current client (workplace), perceived support from current client (workplace) and trends (current issues) which underlie the ESII. We use this research as a foundation for developing further understanding of the emotional experiences of those working outside of the traditional employer–employee relationship and in doing so, focus specifically on four of the key areas: job satisfaction, well-being, commitment and perceived organizational support. The descriptive results are derived from 365 responses gathered in an online survey conducted during June and July 2010 from IPros working in Australian organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between professional contractor (PC) wellbeing and organisational support as one of mutual benefit for both parties.

Four hypotheses were tested via hierarchical regression techniques using survey data gathered from a sample of 375 PCs working in a range of Australian organisations. Content analysis techniques were used to examine PC responses to a related open‐ended question.

The results demonstrate a positive relationship between self‐efficacy, organisational support, work engagement and knowledge sharing with wellbeing. Adding the PCs’ individualised perspectives provides further insight into the value that PCs bring to an organisation.

The study is limited to PCs within Australia and examines PCs rather than professionals generally. The authors limit the analysis approach to regression techniques rather than structural equation modelling.

First, demonstration of the importance of organisational support to PCs is an important finding for organisations in itself. Second, this finding allows us to suggest specific interventions and guidelines for organisations seeking to efficiently engender contractor engagement and knowledge sharing.

The role of contractor management has become important as organisations increasingly rely on outsourced and contracted work arrangements. The authors consider how organisations and PCs can benefit from organisational practices perceived as being supportive. It is important for both organisations and PCs to be able to identify and develop the key factors which shape the contractual exchange prior to, and throughout, contracted work assignments.

In this overview, the editors trace the history of 10 books they have helmed in what has become the legacy of the Emonet conferences. From the seeds planted in 1998 by a small group of international scholars assembled together at the first Emonet conference, the shift of the study of emotions in organizational studies from the almost “undiscussable” to mainstream scholarship is traced. Following this historical analysis, the story of “What have we learned? Ten years on,” the latest volume in the Emonet book series, is given. In a brief summary of each chapter in the current edition, the editors draw attention to eight topic areas to showcase the remarkable and broad-ranging advances in the field of organization studies that have been enabled by attention to the role of emotions in theory and practice in 10 years since the first publication in the book series. From advances in our knowledge and understanding of work, workers and consumers, to team behavior, leader-member exchange, and In Extremis work contexts, and methodological contributions in the assessment of noncognitive traits through to advances in knowledge of positive work environments, the reader is left in no doubt that organizational scholarship and practice has been deeply enriched through bringing emotions center stage.

This paper aims to determine whether a single session of a motivational interview (MI) reduces smoking relapse amongst people released from smoke-free prisons.

This study sought to recruit 824 ex-smokers from 2 smoke-free prisons in the Northern Territory, Australia. Participants were randomised to receive either one session (45–60 min) face-to-face MI intervention 4–6 weeks prior to release or usual care (UC) without smoking advice. The primary outcome was continuous smoking abstinence verified by exhaled carbon monoxide test (<5 ppm) at three months post-release. Secondary outcomes included seven-day point-prevalence, time to the first cigarette and the daily number of cigarettes smoked after release.

From April 2017 to March 2018, a total of 557 participants were randomised to receive the MI (n = 266) or UC (n = 291), with 75% and 77% being followed up, respectively. There was no significant between-group difference in continuous abstinence (MI 8.6% vs UC 7.4%, risk ratio = 1.16, 95%CI 0.67∼2.03). Of all participants, 66.9% relapsed on the day of release and 90.2% relapsed within three months. On average, participants in the MI group smoked one less cigarette daily than those in the UC within the three months after release (p < 0.01).

A single-session of MI is insufficient to reduce relapse after release from a smoke-free prison. However, prison release remains an appealing time window to build on the public health benefit of smoke-free prisons. Further research is needed to develop both pre- and post-release interventions that provide continuity of care for relapse prevention.

This study is the first Australian randomised controlled trial to evaluate a pre-release MI intervention on smoking relapse prevention amongst people released from smoke-free prisons.

This study examined changes in work precarity (i.e., job insecurity and income insecurity) and involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession in 2007 among people with and without disabilities. Using five waves of nationally representative data from the Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) panel study, the findings demonstrated that people with disabilities who had early experiences of income insecurity were more likely to experience later income insecurity than people without disabilities. Those who had a functional disability and experienced job insecurity and income insecurity at W1, in 1986, were also significantly more likely to experience involuntary job loss following the start of the Great Recession. These findings highlight the disproportionate impact of early work precarity for people with disabilities and are discussed as an application of the life-course concept of cumulative disadvantage.

Integrated care is gaining popularity in Australian public policy as an acceptable means to address the needs of the unwell aged. The purpose of this paper is to investigate contemporary models of integrated care for community dwelling older persons in Australia and discuss how public policy has been interpreted at the service delivery level to improve the quality of care for the older person.

A scoping review was conducted for peer-reviewed and grey literature on integrated care for the older person in Australia. Publications from 2007 to present that described community-based enablement models were included.

Care co-ordination is popular in assisting the older person to bridge the gap between existing, disparate health and social care services. The role of primary care is respected but communication with the general practitioner and introduction of new roles into an existing system is challenging. Older persons value the role of the care co-ordinator and while robust model evaluation is rare, there is evidence of integrated care reducing emergency department presentations and stabilising quality of life of participants. Technology is an underutilised facilitator of integration in Australia. Innovative funding solutions and a long-term commitment to health system redesign is required for integrated care to extend beyond care co-ordination.

This scoping review summarises the contemporary evidence base for integrated care for the community dwelling older person in Australia and proposes the barriers and enablers for consideration of implementation of any such model within this health system.

There is strong and growing evidence of the importance of leadership and management factors influence on employee engagement and discretionary effort. However, the problem is that there has been limited recent effort to review where research gaps exit and provide a direction to guide future research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated perspective on the influence of leadership and management factors on employee engagement and discretionary effort.

The review of the literature includes empirical research and case studies related to employee engagement and discretionary effort from various databases such as Business Premier, Cambridge University Press, JSTOR, Springer, Emerald, Wiley, ProQuest and ISI Web of Science. Supporting material was also accessed from reference books regarding similar concepts and theories.

The review provides a current view of the key topics, identifies three key research gaps, suggests a refined, up-to-date definition of both employee engagement and discretionary effort, and proposes a conceptual framework to inform future research. In doing so, it offers new directions for progressing studies on these critical workplace practices and behaviours particularly the inclusion of national culture as a moderating variable when investigating or implementing employee engagement and discretionary effort strategies.

Findings are based on existing literature and require empirical testing. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research and this review aims to organise, describe and appraise the current literature with a view to gaining a critical perspective for the benefit of researchers.