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Recognizing the environmental changes and challenges that have impacted academics over the past 20 years, we develop a model of academic career success from a job demands-resources perspective. We ...

Accumulating evidence indicates that time spent in natural environments promotes creativity, but few researchers have considered how this occurs. We evaluate two candidate mechanisms, attention restoration and mind wandering. We compare the accounts in terms of attentional focus, brain network activation, cognitive effects, and the temporal progression of these processes across the stages of creativity. Based on this analysis, we propose that (1) gentle shifts between externally oriented soft fascination and internally oriented mind wandering can occur during nature experience; (2) this provides the basis for mutually reinforcing pathways that enhance attention control following nature experience; and (3) mind wandering might support additional benefits for creativity, including flexibility and new associations of ideas. We propose research to test the proposed pathways, including the conditions under which environments influence creativity, the ebb and flow of attention orientation during environmental experience, and the links between attentional focus, brain network activation and creativity.

Australian cities have been slow to implement green roofs. This is because there are many potential barriers to their widely acceptance as a nature based solution that can make cities more liveable and help them adapt to, and mitigate, climate change. Due to significant differences in rainfall, temperature, available substrates and suitable vegetation relying on northern hemisphere research and experience is problematic as many of the environmental and economic benefits of green roofs are location specific. This paper aims to 1. Synthesise a decade of Australian green roof research that has sought to overcome these barriers, 2. Assess the current status of the Australian green roof industry and remaining knowledge gaps, and 3. Provide a roadmap for future progress developed in multidisciplinary industry workshops. Many of these insights will be applicable to areas with similar seasonally hot and dry climates or emerging green roof markets. We identified that significant progress has been made in addressing the barriers to green roofs in Australia. Research has focused on developing green roofs for local conditions and quantifying their benefits. Substrate research has investigated the suitability of locally available materials with a focus on how water retention additives and organic waste materials can increase plant available water and therefore survival. By taking a plant physiology approach Australian researchers have gained a strong functional understanding of suitable green roof plants and the benefits they provide, considerably expanding the available palette beyond the succulents commonly used internationally. Research has quantified green roofs’ stormwater retention and building insulation and energy benefits and provided evidence that they benefit well-being and performance, important for employee productivity.

We developed and tested a model linking developmental experiences to leadership effectiveness and promotability through 2 mediating processes based on social cognitive and social capital theories. We hypothesized that a manager's exposure to 3 types of developmental experiences (formal development programs, developmental job challenges, and developmental supervision) would positively relate to supervisor's assessment of the manager's leadership effectiveness in the current job role and promotability within the organization through the manager's leadership self-efficacy and size and quality of the manager's mentor network. Results based on a sample of 235 retail managers showed that leadership self-efficacy and mentor network fully mediated the relationship between job challenges and promotability, whereas leadership self-efficacy also fully mediated the relationship between job challenges and leadership effectiveness. Developmental supervision was indirectly related to promotability through mentor network. In addition, a 3-way interaction analysis revealed that participation in formal development activities had a positive indirect relationship with leadership effectiveness and promotability mediated by leadership self-efficacy when a manager experienced either lower levels of job challenge and developmental supervision, or higher levels of both. Our findings contribute to leadership knowledge by examining how both formal and informal developmental experiences relate to leadership effectiveness and promotability through social processes.

Academia has changed over the last decades and so have academic careers. In a 2019 special issue of the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education, we have brought together a set of paper...

Based on attention restoration theory we proposed that micro-breaks spent viewing a city scene with a flowering meadow green roof would boost sustained attention. Sustained attention is crucial in daily life and underlies successful cognitive functioning. We compared the effects of 40-s views of two different city scenes on 150 university students' sustained attention. Participants completed the task at baseline, were randomly assigned to view a flowering meadow green roof or a bare concrete roof, and completed the task again at post-treatment. Participants who briefly viewed the green roof made significantly lower omission errors, and showed more consistent responding to the task compared to participants who viewed the concrete roof. We argue that this reflects boosts to sub-cortical arousal and cortical attention control. Our results extend attention restoration theory by providing direct experimental evidence for the benefits of micro-breaks and for city green roofs.

Living, or green roofs, are increasingly built in cities for their environmental benefits, however there is little evidence about how to maximise their aesthetic appeal. Because preferences for landscapes can be determined by vegetation characteristics we surveyed the preferences of 274 Australian office workers using 40 living roof images which systematically manipulated plant life-form, foliage colour, flowering, diversity and height. These preferences were compared to those for a bare concrete roof. The potential restorativeness of the most preferred living roof and the concrete roof were also assessed. Results showed that all living roofs were preferred over the concrete roof; however preferences differed according to vegetation characteristics. The most preferred and restorative living roof had taller, green, grassy and flowering vegetation, while lower-growing red succulent vegetation was least preferred. Participants preferred a productive landscape, with green foliage and flowering consistently preferred. Participants with a stronger connection to nature consistently assigned higher preferences to taller, compared to lower-growing, vegetation. Increasing diversity was associated with higher preferences overall, but decreasing preferences for highly preferred vegetation. This research makes an important contribution to understanding employee preferences in the unique context of urban living roof landscapes.

While a relatively small body of research links green roofs to psychological benefits such as aesthetic enjoyment and improved concentration, these outcomes are becoming important objectives in green roof design. Claims regarding benefits of green roofs are therefore often derived from research on psychological benefits of ground-level urban greenspaces. Compared with other urban landscapes, green roofs have limited space and accessibility, reducing the opportunity for physical exercise and the opportunity for larger masses of vegetation, particularly trees. Given these differences, there is a risk that the psychological benefits of green roofs are overstated or may only apply to a subset of green roof designs. Guidance for designing green roofs for psychological benefits may also be misleading if it fails to consider the unique green roof context. To address these challenges, we review research on psychological benefits of green roofs through a social-ecological lens on human-environment interactions. We consider how experiences of green roofs arise from an interaction between characteristics of the physical environment (including characteristics of green roof vegetation, wind patterns, and surrounding buildings), social climate (including social factors influencing access and use, and social norms for nature in cities), activities that can be undertaken on a green roof (such as exercise, socialisation, rest and relaxation), and individual resources and adaptation (for example, prior mood and opportunities to change environments to support individual needs). We explore how these factors interact with each other and with broader natural, built and socio-cultural systems that might encourage or inhibit opportunities to view, access, and enjoy green roofs. We conclude with recommendations regarding how green roofs can be designed to promote psychological benefits and identify future research needs.

Retirement involves a set of institutional arrangements combined with socio-cultural meanings to sustain a distinct retirement phase in life course and career pathways. In this Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘Reinventing Retirement: New Pathways, New Arrangements, New Meanings,’ we outline the historical development of retirement. We identify the dramatic broad-based changes that recently have shaken this established construct to its core. We describe the main organizational responses to these changes, and how they have been associated with shifting, multiple meanings of retirement. Finally, we present a model that frames two general forms of reinvention of retirement. The first involves continuation of the idea of a distinct and well-defined period of life occurring at the end of a career trajectory, but with changes in the timing, the kinds of post-retirement activities pursued, and meanings associated with this period of life. The second represents a more fundamental reinvention in which the overall concept of retirement as a distinct period in an individual’s life is challenged or rejected, whether because it is not appealing or no longer realistic. We provide examples of how both types of reinvention may manifest in individuals’ careers and lives, and suggest future research directions that follow from our model.

Grounded in ecological systems theory, this study modeled family satisfaction as a function of family-unfriendly work culture, work–family blurring, and personal mastery, examining both individual crossover effects. Analysis of data from 273 married dual-earner parents revealed that family-unfriendly work culture was negatively related to family satisfaction, whereas personal mastery was positively related to family satisfaction. Mothers' family-unfriendly work culture and work–family blurring were negatively related to their husbands' family satisfaction, but no parallel crossover findings were obtained for fathers, suggesting gender differences in crossover. Results were consistent with the notion that family life can be compromised by work cultures that create demands spanning both work and family domains. Implications for the management of work and family boundaries are discussed.

This study uses metaphor analysis to examine the meanings of retirement for a group of 35 retired Canadian executives and managers. Our analysis identified eight metaphors relating to the meanings of retirement. The findings provide us with a range of insights into the experience of retirement, from loss of purpose and identity to liberation from the constraints of work to retirement being constructed as a new beginning or renaissance. Based on the accounts given by each manager, metaphors were collated and compared across retirees to reveal four distinct configurations that conceptualize retirement as exploring new horizons, searching for meaning, contributing on your own terms and putting your feet up. We discuss the implications of these metaphor configurations for understanding the consumer and producer-oriented meanings of retirement and challenge dominant career constructions of retirement as disengagement and decline. Our findings reveal that retirement appears to be better understood by incorporating future-focused and agentic forms that contribute to different types of identity work in retirement.

This article considers the possibility that ‘high performance work system’ (HPWS) practices generate positive outcomes for employees by meeting their interests (specifically their interest in an orderly and predictable working environment). Utilising survey data on employees working in the Australian aged-care industry, statistical analysis is used to test the mediating effect of order and predictability on associations between HPWS practices and employee experience of work. The results suggest that positive outcomes arise in part because HPWS practices contribute to workplace order and predictability. In explaining this finding, the article highlights the importance of contextual factors, notably industry and employee characteristics, in shaping outcomes. The article concludes that socio-logically oriented analyses which apprehend the importance of employee interests provide a useful supplement to conventional psychologically oriented accounts of HPWS and provide a basis for continued development of labour process theory.

To address the increasing demand for mass undergraduate management education and, at the same time, a greater emphasis on student teamwork, this study outlines the development, delivery, and evaluation of a training intervention designed to build team-coaching skills in teaching assistants. Specifically, practice-centered and problem-centered techniques were used to provide teaching assistants with experiential learning opportunities to help them develop their skills. The authors evaluated the training intervention using a mixed-method multiple-data source design. Both the teaching assistants being trained as well as the student teams’ experiences and perceptions of their coaches’ performance were assessed. The evaluation showed that teaching assistants reported finding the program a positive experience. Importantly, students with trained coaches reported higher levels of coaching performance, team functioning, and productivity than those with untrained coaches. The implications of this intervention are discussed.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the development of a protean career orientation. In doing so, the paper also aims to assess how work experience, parents and peer networks co‐influence the development of a protean career orientation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses semi‐structured interviews with young adults and explores their past, present and future work and career experiences. They were also asked them to explain what career success meant to them. Interview transcripts were reviewed and coded based on two main categories representing protean orientation: self‐directed career management and the expression of personal values as a mechanism for career decisions. The paper also process mapped how a protean career orientation developed in the interviewees. Those who reported a protean career orientation were interviewed two‐and‐a‐half years later so as to further explore their career experiences and the extent to which self‐directedness and value congruence influenced career decisions.FindingsResults suggest that some reported a protean career orientation and of those that did they reported experiencing an image violation based on their personal values. Two types of personal values appeared important to the protean group, they were, making a contribution to society and maintaining work‐life balance. Those that were categorised as having a protean orientation also engaged in critical reassessment by interrogating the basis of their career values and strategies and this distinguished them from the rest of the interviewees who exhibited a more traditional career orientation. These findings are consistent with image theory's concept of a progress decision. This concept encapsulates the idea that individuals decide whether a career plan is moving them towards achievement of a career goal and if it is not, new or modified plans need to be taken up.Research limitations/implicationsThe exploratory findings have important implications for understanding the career strategies of protean careerists. Specifically, they elucidate how violations of values, goals and plans lead to career reappraisals. This paper provides important insights into reframing career choice and change in terms of image violations.Originality/valueThe paper provides a process map of the mechanisms that contribute to the development of a protean career orientation. Specifically, it focuses on image violations that appear to distinguish protean careerists from the remainder of the interviewees. Thus, the paper links protean careers with image theory as a means of understanding the underlying processes involved in early career decision making.

In spite of the growing body of research on high performance work systems (HPWS), there is little evidence on their application in the service sector. It is commonly argued, however, that occupational segmentation in services is a barrier to HPWS. Analysis of data from aged-care workers indicates that: HPWS have positive outcomes for workers; highly skilled nurses are no more likely than lowly skilled personal care workers to be subject to HPWS; and in some cases, HPWS are associated with more positive outcomes for low-skilled than high-skilled workers. These findings suggest that HPWS may well be widely applicable in service settings.

The present study examined the effects of rewarding contextual performance with career development activities on perceptions of justice. Participants (264) read vignettes which gave information regarding two colleagues in a large retail store who applied for a career development activity. Type of career development activity, level of contextual performance, and the development activity recipient was varied across the vignettes. Results indicated that participants believed there was greater justice when they themselves received the development activity, irrespective of whose performance was higher. Participants were also more satisfied and had greater interest in pursuing a career in the organization when they themselves received the development opportunity, especially for organizationally‐oriented activities. Happiness completely mediated the relationship between who received the career development activity and both procedural and distributive justice. Implications of these findings for organizational justice and careers research, as well as for managers, are discussed.

We use a two-stage process to inductively develop a framework to understand the mechanisms that influence academic research collaborations. First, we draw on the research collaboration experiences of three distinguished careers researchers to develop a process framework. The framework outlines the phases for the project from initiation through to completion, highlighting the relevant factors for each phase such as collaborator motivations, nature and scope of the project, roles and activities, as well as project outcomes. Two sets of factors emerged as affecting the phases of collaboration: (1) collaborative context and (2) interpersonal collaborative processes. Context refers to the resources, support, and climate in which the collaboration occurs, while interpersonal collaborative processes refer to communication, trust, and attraction among collaborators. The second stage of the investigation sought the collaborative experiences from another eight research collaborators. The collaborators were diverse—residing in five different countries and at different stages in their careers. Their descriptions provide some qualitative evidence for the framework. The framework provides concrete suggestions for how to build and maintain academic collaborative relationships. Implications and questions for further research into the collaborative process and context are also provided.

The effects of task and reward interdependence on perceived effort, helping behavior, and group performance were investigated in a laboratory setting. Fifty-seven groups with 3 undergraduate students in each group completed two consecutive copyediting activities. Helping behavior was highest in groups with high task interdependence. However, no support was found for the interactive effects of task and reward interdependence. Differences across time were found for perceived effort, helping behavior, and performance. The implications of these findings suggest that the increased task complexity, introduced through the presence of high levels of task interdependence, can mitigate the positive performance effects of high levels of helping behavior and effort.

Many organizations struggle with effective training interventions—in particular, the transfer of skills learned in the classroom to the workplace. The present experiential exercise allows students, who are asked to play the role of consultants, to assess training effectiveness from pretraining to posttraining. Student feedback demonstrates that this exercise provides a practical and realistic simulation that aids in the understanding of effective training interventions. This article presents the University Hospital exercise, its linkage to Goldstein's Instructional Systems Design framework, instructor notes, and questions for students. The exercise can be used for undergraduate, graduate, and professional courses.

The role of nature is rarely considered in research on work breaks. We drew on conservation of resources and attention restoration theories to examine how green micro-breaks, brief breaks spent vie...

This study examined the relation between racioethnic diversity and group efficacy (assessed as group outcome efficacy and group potency). Social cohesion was hypothesized to moderate this relationship. The authors also predicted that the interactive effect of racioethnic diversity and social cohesion on group efficacy would be mediated by task interdependence. The sample consisted of 42 student project groups. Data were gathered at the completion of the groups’ projects. The results indicate support for the hypotheses that racioethnic diversity is positively related to group efficacy and that the effect of racioethnic diversity on group outcome efficacy is enhanced by social cohesion. There was also some support for the mediating role of task interdependence.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to advance novel ways of thinking about retirement by developing new theoretical perspectives and harnessing methodologies that focus on the multiple meanings of retirement and distinctive behavioural pathways. We welcome conceptual and empirical papers that make clear contributions to this effort. These may include life course approaches, discursive or narrative methods, longitudinal assessments, or cross-cultural or generational perspectives, although they are not limited to these. We also strongly encourage works that are multidisciplinary in nature; for example, works that traverse gerontology and human resource management or demography and organizational behaviour.

This paper examines whether social support is a boundary-determining criterion in the job strain model of Karasek (1979). The particular focus is the extent to which different sources of social support, work overload and task control influence job satisfaction, depersonalization and supervisor assessments of work performance. Hypotheses are tested using prospective survey data from 80 clerical staff in a university setting. Results revealed 3-way interactions among levels of support (supervisor, co-worker, non-work), perceived task control and work overload on levels of work performance and employee adjustment (self-report). After controlling for levels of negative affect in all analyses, there was evidence that high levels of supervisor support mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jobs on levels of job satisfaction and reduced reported levels of depersonalization. Moreover, high levels of non-work support and co-worker support also mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jo...

The present study examined the effects of work control and job demands on employee adjustment and work performance using a multidimensional measure of work control (assessing levels of task control, decision control and work scheduling control). It was proposed that the negative effects of job demands and employee adjustment would be moderated by high levels of task control. It was also proposed that there would be evidence of main effects of both job demands and work control (particularly task-related levels of control) on employee adjustment. To test these predictions, a study of 135 university employees holding administrative positions was undertaken. Methodological improvements over previous research included the use of both self-reported adjustment measures and supervisor ratings of work performance as outcome variables, and the assessment of the predictor and outcome measures at different points in time (self-reported adjustment was assessed at both Times 1 and 2). The results revealed some support for the proposal that the effects of job demands would be buffered by high levels of task control, but not more peripheral aspects of work control. There were also significant main effects of task control on job satisfaction.

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine how boundary objects are produced and the role of power in this process. To do so, we investigated the use of boundary objects by managers to develop a customer oriented culture in a newly formed telecommunications company. The boundary object in question comprise an artifact – a culture toolkit that contains a brochure explaining the new culture – accompanied by a video of the CEO explaining the new culture and workshop instructions and guidance - and the workshops themselves. In addition to these sources of data, a series of follow up interviews were also conducted. Using discourse analysis, our findings suggest that an artifact can only be developed and maintained as a boundary object through the interactions of a range of actors as they negotiate its meaning. Thus, boundary objects depend upon the co-construction of meaning among actors, which, in order to be successful requires plasticity throughout the process. We also offer a framework for different ways of relating power to boundary objects, an often neglected yet critical issue.

We developed and tested a model linking organizational embeddedness with two indicators of career advancement one year later (promotions and career satisfaction), via the mediating role of firm-spe...

This qualitative study examines the patterns in human resource (HR) approaches to retirement across 24 organizations to explore innovative practices as well as gain understanding of the differences in how firms are dealing with major changes surrounding retirement and workforce demographics. Using organizational adaptation theory and carrying out a thorough analysis of in-depth interviews with HR managers, we identify three dimensions that differentiate organizations’ approaches to retirement: (1) actions and interactions of key stakeholders in the retirement process; (2) HR information gathering focus regarding workforce issues; and (3) HR posture around changes needed in retirement policies and practices. Based on organizational profiles on these dimensions, four distinct approaches to retirement emerge and are described in some detail: gatekeeping, improvising, orchestrating, and partnering. These different approaches also provide insight into how organizations differ in their adaptation to change. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Using a mixed-methods design, we developed a model of antecedents and outcomes of professional identification. Based on a sample of 1,807 academics working in the management field from a large prof...

This paper examines identity and identity work within the lived experiences of nursing home residents as well as the forms of identification residents have with their nursing homes. We challenge th...

We developed and tested a model of leadership development that integrated human and social capital theory using a sample of 141 retail managers over a two-year period. It was hypothesized that mana...