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This research aimed to explore the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and related factors among subcontracted cleaners in a teaching hospital in Thailand.

A cross-sectional study was conducted of 393 subcontracted cleaners in a teaching hospital, from May to June 2020. Face-to-face interviews were carried out using a standard questionnaire, consisting of four parts: (1) participant characteristics, (2) stress test, (3) work characteristics and (4) standardized Nordic questionnaire, Thai version, for MSDs outcome. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the association between MSDs and related factors.

The prevalence of MSDs was 81.9%, involving mostly the lower back (57.7%), followed by the shoulder (52.6%). Factors significantly associated with MSDs were as follows: male gender (OR = 3.06, 95% CI [1.19, 7.87]), severe stress (OR = 2.72, 95% CI [1.13, 6.54]), history of injuries (OR = 4.37, 95% CI [1.27, 15.11]), mopping posture (OR = 2.81, 95% CI [1.43, 5.50]) and task duration (OR = 1.90, 95% CI [1.01, 3.57] for 2–4 h and OR = 3.39, 95% CI [1.17, 9.86] for more than 4 h). Sick leave due to MSDs was associated with history of injuries, Thai nationality and having another part-time job.

The study findings about MSDs in terms of prevalence and related factors contributed to limited pool of the knowledge among subcontracted hospital cleaners in Thailand and middle-income country settings. With growing popularity in outsourcing cleaning services among hospitals in these countries, the study findings could raise a concern and inform policymakers and hospital administrators the importance of the magnitude and risk factors for MSDs necessitating design of preventive strategies.

This study aims to analyse the role of tacit knowledge in fulfilling employees’ side of the psychological contract in blue-collar work.

The research questions are as follows: How is tacit knowledge acquired in blue-collar work and how do blue-collar workers use tacit knowledge to fulfil their obligations within the psychological contract? This qualitative study comprising 30 interviews uses theory-led content analysis.

Blue-collar workers need time and experience to acquire tacit knowledge. An important aspect of tacit knowledge is knowing the ways in which the work is best done in practice and seeking better ways of doing the job. Workers use their tacit knowledge to perform their work well and efficiently, even in problematic situations, and to improve their work to fulfil their side of the psychological contract.

Organisations should see the value of the tacit knowledge blue-collar workers possess and develop actions that involve the workers in sharing their tacit knowledge and also in planning the actions related to this knowledge sharing.

This study adds to the limited body of studies on the relationship between tacit knowledge and the psychological contract.

The Internet has changed consumer decision-making and influenced business behaviour. User-generated product information is abundant and readily available. This paper argues that user-generated content can be efficiently utilised for business intelligence using data science and develops an approach to demonstrate the methods and benefits of the different techniques.

Using Python Selenium, Beautiful Soup and various text mining approaches in R to access, retrieve and analyse user-generated content, we argue that (1) companies can extract information about the product attributes that matter most to consumers and (2) user-generated reviews enable the use of text mining results in combination with other demographic and statistical information (e.g. ratings) as an efficient input for competitive analysis.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The paper shows that combining different types of data (textual and numerical data) and applying and combining different methods can provide organisations with important business information and improve business performance.

The study makes several contributions to the marketing and management literature, mainly by illustrating the methodological advantages of text mining and accompanying statistical analysis, the different types of distilled information and their use in decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate different approaches to effective campaigning in support of the Living Wage and so this paper contributes to the broader debate over the nature of the union movement’s engagement with community groups in pursuit of workplace and social issues.

The paper presents a systematic comparison of a union-led and a community-led campaign, drawing primarily upon interview and survey data.

Though different, both campaigns met with a measure of success in improving employee pay and in increasing union membership suggesting a pragmatic approach to the building of union-community relationships.

The paper shows the need for campaigners to adopt a strategic approach in identifying the target for their campaign, and also the importance of shaping a persuasive argument.

The paper reaffirms the importance of traditional union-led campaigning alongside campaigning through engagement with community groups and so offers a broader framework for exploring the relationships between union and community groups.

Data science promises new opportunities for organizational decision-making. Data scientists arguably play an important role in this regard and one can even observe a certain “buzz” around this nascent occupation. This paper enquires into how data scientists construct their occupational identity and the challenges they experience when enacting it.

Based on semi-structured interviews with data scientists working in different industries, the authors explore how these actors draw on their educational background, work experiences and perception of the contemporary digitalization discourse to craft their occupational identities.

The authors identify three main components of data scientists’ occupational identity: a scientific mindset, an interest in sophisticated forms of data work and a problem-solving attitude. The authors demonstrate how enacting this identity is sometimes challenged through what data scientists perceive as either too low or too high expectations that managers form towards them. To address those expectations, they engage in outward-facing identity work by carrying out educational work within the organization and (paradoxically) stressing both prestigious and non-prestigious parts of their work to “tame” the ambiguity and hype they perceive in managers’ expectations. In addition, they act upon themselves to better appreciate managers’ perspectives and expectations.

This study contributes to research on data scientists as well as the accounting literature that often refers to data scientists as new competitors for accountants. It cautions scholars and practitioners alike to be careful when discussing the possibilities and limitations of data science concerning advancements in accounting and control.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

The purpose of this paper is to use the case of an international luxury hotel chain in Hong Kong to illustrate general environmentally-friendly practices in housekeeping. Six in-depth interviews were conducted with the housekeeping department staff to evaluate the effectiveness of the Hotel’s environmental sustainability practices by analysing their benefits and limitations. Results reveal that all informants acknowledged the environmental sustainability strategies adopted by the Hotel, which can benefit stakeholders. Despite multiple green practices in hotel housekeeping, several strategies may not be as significant as expected with misaligned expectations from the management and the actual practices may create excessive workload for frontline room attendants with a lack of policy enforcement and supportive policies. Therefore, hotels should keep a mutual communication between the management and frontline employees prior to conducting environmentally- and employee-friendly practices. Given the labour-intensive nature of the hotel industry, the housekeeping department should ensure employment equality policy is in place with adequate environmentally friendly support for employees.

Although essential to social welfare, unpaid domestic and care work is an increasingly scarce resource in modern societies. Despite the growing need, many households refrain from outsourcing their domestic chores to the market. Simultaneously, the household service sector is mostly characterised by low-qualification, informal jobs lacking quality and professional standards. Drawing on transaction cost theory, the present study aims to examine how trust problems deriving from the quality and professionalisation of domestic services can be overcome by also exploring the role of state subsidies in this context.

A factorial survey experiment in Germany (N = 4024) causally explores the effect of state-subsidised service vouchers, quality signals and professionalisation on preferences and willingness-to-pay for domestic services. The data were analysed using multilevel modelling techniques.

Hypotheses are mostly confirmed: strong quality signals help overcome trust problems, thus facilitating the demand for household services. Further, service vouchers can generate better pay for domestic workers while simultaneously reducing the costs for households.

The relevance of professionalisation and quality of service as important determinants of domestic service demand is revealed. However, the experimental survey design involves hypothetical scenarios.

The analysis offers insights into how to stimulate demand for household services and increase formal employment in a sector currently largely characterised by informal arrangements. It further shows how social policies can help secure quality and foster professionalisation by shifting paid domestic work from the informal to the formal economy.

This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms of knowledge brokering and role crafting structures that promote the active engagement of older workers at work.

The respondents were workers in Japan aged 55–64 years. A two-wave panel survey was conducted. The first and second survey waves included 1,527 and 1,467 respondents, respectively.

The results showed that knowledge brokering positively influenced work engagement directly and indirectly. In the three dimensions of role crafting, cognitive and task crafting had a positive effect on work engagement.

This study focused on older workers in Japan. Therefore, it is necessary to verify whether the same effect is observed in countries other than Japan or among younger workers.

On an individual level, older workers should aim to keep acquiring new information inside and outside the organisation. On an organisational level, it is effective to increase opportunities for older workers to craft their work according to the socioemotional selectivity and selection optimisation and compensation theories.

This study reveals that knowledge brokering and cognitive crafting in role crafting have an important influence on the work engagement of older workers. Additionally, this study clarifies the impact of job crafting on older workers not only from the perspective of resource crafting to achieve person-job fit but also from the perspective of reframing perceptions through cognitive crafting in role crafting. These findings enable a clearer understanding of the relationship between role crafting and knowledge brokering, as well as the socioemotional selectivity and selection optimisation and compensation theories.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of part-time work on absolute wages. The empirical focus is wages and working hours in three selected sectors within private services in the Danish labour market – industrial cleaning, retail, hotels and restaurants – and their agreement-based regulation of working time and wages. Theoretically, this analysis is inspired by the concept of living hours, which addresses the interaction between working hours and living wages, but adds a new layer to the concept in that the authors also consider the importance of working time regulations for securing a living wage.

The paper builds on desk research of collective agreements and analysis of monthly administrative register data on wages and working hours of Danish employees from the period 2008-2014.

This analysis shows that the de facto hourly wages have increased since the global financial crisis in all three sectors. This is in accordance with increasing minimum wage levels in the sector-level agreements. The majority of workers in all three sectors work part-time. Marginal part-timers – 15 hours or less per week – make up the largest group of workers. The de facto hourly wage for part-timers, including marginal part-timers, is relatively close to the sector average. However, the yearly job-related income is much lower for part-time than for full-time workers and much lower than the poverty threshold. Whereas the collective agreement in industrial cleaning includes a minimum floor of 15 weekly working hours – this is not the case in retail, hotels and restaurants. This creates a loophole in the latter two sectors that can be exploited by employers to gain wage flexibility through part-time work.

The living wage literature usually focusses on hourly wages (including minimum wages via collective agreements or legislation). This analysis demonstrates that studies of low-wage work must include the number of working hours and working time regulations, as this aspect can have a dramatic influence on absolute wages – even in cases of hourly wages at relatively high levels. Part-time work and especially marginal part-time work can be associated with very low yearly income levels – even in cases like Denmark – if regulations do not include minimum working time floors. The authors suggest that future studies include the perspective of living hours to draw attention to the effect of low number of weekly hours on absolute income levels.