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Examines the relative importance of institutional and resource dependent explanations versus managerial explanations of variations of formal and informal work‐family responsiveness. Work‐family responsiveness is defined in two ways: formal policies and practices that an organization offers, designed to assist employees to balance their work and family lives; and a work environment that is accommodating of its employees’ work‐family needs. Focuses attention on the important role that managerial attitudes have on the provision of work‐family practices and an accommodating work‐family workplace. Concludes that by integrating the insights of several theoretical perspectives, a more comprehensive model of organizational responsiveness in relation to work‐family practices is developed and a set of testable propositions that can guide future research can be made. Indicates that an additive theoretical model combining managerial and institutional factors offers the most appropriate theoretical explanation for identifying factors related to the provision of work‐family benefits and whether the workplace is accommodating of work‐family issues.

Are organizations responding to significant changes in Australian labour force demographics by providing more family‐friendly programs? This article explores whether or not variations across companies in the implementation of work‐family programs and policies relate to demands of key constituent groups. Findings of the present evaluation indicate that certain employee demographic factors, particularly employees with dependents, women, union members, and long‐serving employees are more likely to predispose an organization to offer work‐family benefits. Employers need to be able to characterise the demographics of their workforce to plan the type of policies and programs that might be most suitable and contribute to productivity outcomes.

Nursing, as a gendered occupation, is one that requires vast amounts of emotional labor to be performed. As careworkers, nurses are required to assume multiple roles at work: medical expert, companion, and personal care provider. Roles, or expected behaviors associated with different statuses, have the potential to spillover between work and home environments. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how nurses perceive their role-taking and emotional labor processes to influence experiences of work–family spillover.

Rooted in interactionist role theory, this investigation seeks to qualitatively examine how nurses assign meaning to their various roles and how they perceive their roles to influence work–family spillover. Using audio diary and interview data, this chapter proposes that nurses who practice role-person merger (Turner, 1978) and empathic role-taking (Shott 1979) will also perceive work–family spillover to be related to their caretaking roles as nurses. Three distinct themes emerged in this qualitative analysis related to how experiences of work–family spillover are influenced by the emotional labor demands of the job and the practice of empathic role-taking by nurses: (1) spillover related to required emotional labor is experienced both positively and negatively; (2) nurses actively exercise personal agency in an attempt to decrease negative spillover; and (3) nurses reported increased work–family spillover when they practiced empathic role-taking.

This analysis extends the literature in this area by demonstrating the connection between the structural influences on emotion, the individual perceptions of roles, and the subsequent experiences of work–family spillover.

This paper discusses the adoption of total quality management in seven Australian organisations based on case study research. It reports on the reasons for adopting TQM, planning and implementation issues, benefits achieved and the limitations and difficulties associated with the introduction of TQM. The analysis concludes that the effect of TQM on an organisation’s culture should not be underestimated as it is a radical change to the organisation’s strategy which is geared to changing the culture in the long term. The analysis indicates that the principles found for successful introduction of effective cultural change are also applicable when implementing TQM programs in organisations. The implementation of a five step cultural audit as a prerequisite for the successful introduction of TQM into organisations is proposed.

This paper aims to specifically focus on the challenges that human resource management (HRM) leaders and departments in contemporary organisations face due to close interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) (primarily robots) and human workers especially at the team level. It further discusses important potential strategies, which can be useful to overcome these challenges based on a conceptual review of extant research.

The current paper undertakes a conceptual work where multiple streams of literature are integrated to present a rather holistic yet critical overview of the relationship between AI (particularly robots) and HRM in contemporary organisations.

We highlight that interaction and collaboration between human workers and robots is visible in a range of industries and organisational functions, where both are working as team members. This gives rise to unique challenges for HRM function in contemporary organisations where they need to address workers' fear of working with AI, especially in relation to future job loss and difficult dynamics associated with building trust between human workers and AI-enabled robots as team members. Along with these, human workers' task fulfilment expectations with their AI-enabled robot colleagues need to be carefully communicated and managed by HRM staff to maintain the collaborative spirit, as well as future performance evaluations of employees. The authors found that organisational support mechanisms such as facilitating environment, training opportunities and ensuring a viable technological competence level before organising human workers in teams with robots are important. Finally, we found that one of the toughest challenges for HRM relates to performance evaluation in teams where both humans and AI (including robots) work side by side. We referred to the lack of existing frameworks to guide HRM managers in this concern and stressed the possibility of taking insights from the computer gaming literature, where performance evaluation models have been developed to analyse humans and AI interactions while keeping the context and limitations of both in view.

Our paper is one of the few studies that go beyond a rather general or functional analysis of AI in the HRM context. It specifically focusses on the teamwork dimension, where human workers and AI-powered machines (robots) work together and offer insights and suggestions for such teams' smooth functioning.

This paper aims to demonstrate advantages of using the photo elicitation technique from sociology, ethnography and visual anthropology to management history through reference to a study of job loss within the State Electricity Commission of Victoria in the Latrobe Valley, Australia, as it was undergoing transition and privatization in the early 1990s.

This is a methodology paper exploring photo elicitation and the theoretical perspectives of life course and identity work when applied in management history.

The use of photo elicitation encouraged interview participants to share their perspectives about the common experience of job loss in an Australian regional area which gave rise to some common themes about occupational identity and the challenges of being unemployed.

After job loss, some common experiences have been found, namely, depression; drug and alcohol addiction; domestic violence and family break down; and even suicide.

Use of photo elicitation provided the methodology and framework to undertake original research in management history in an Australian region still experiencing denidustrialization of brown coal mining and power generation.