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Nursing staff display symptoms of psychological stress more frequently than members of other professions. The subjective experience of embitterment also takes on a greater significance. This paper seeks to determine if level of education has an impact on the degree of embitterment as a function of educational status.

A between subjects design was used with academic status as the independent variable and self‐report embitterment, using the German version of the Bern Embitterment Inventory, as the primary dependent variable. A random sample of 212 German nurses with academic and non‐academic education participated in the study.

The comparison between academic and non‐academic nursing staff revealed a statistically significant difference indicating that an academic education has a positive effect on the subjective perception of embitterment (p=0.001).

Considering the current situation of academic nurses within the German health care system and the everyday nursing routine, psychological stress potential of unique dimensions such as embitterment have important ramifications in terms of understanding the relationship between the mental health and academic status of nurses within this system. The findings suggest the merit and value of further implementation of academic nursing study courses in Germany.

Anger responding to government-imposed COVID-19 pandemic mandates is examined in relation to 2021 international reports of street protests in cities, with a focus on Perth, Western Australia. Angry protestors displayed a variety of signs and symbols, united under banners demanding freedom. A multi-disciplinary analysis attends to distrust in public health mandates in the global context of an insecure biosphere. Mandates can signify symbolic death, and anger an ‘immune’ response to lifeworld constraints. Anger among nurses and vaccine-hesitant protestors signifies ethical rejection of super-imposed mandates, and fear of alleged vaccine harms. Official pandemic communications are held to be ill-timed, lacking information meaningful to diverse citizens' needs, and offset by poorly contextualised data and unreliable pre-packaged interpretations communicated via digital technologies. A novel hypothesis proposes semiotic misrecognition of the global nature of communications from intersecting ecosocial crises may underlie protestors' anger. Modelling of a management system to validate broad contextual knowledges may restore meaningful balance and public solidarity, to creatively respond to future human crises.

This study investigates how employees' experience of resource-depleting workplace loneliness may steer them away from performance-enhancing work efforts as informed by their propensity to engage in negative work rumination. It also addresses whether and how religiosity might serve as a buffer of this harmful dynamic.

The hypotheses tests rely on three-round survey data collected among employees who work in various organizations in Pakistan – a relevant country context, considering the importance of people's religious faith for their professional functioning and its high-uncertainty avoidance and collectivism, which likely make workplace loneliness a particularly upsetting experience.

An important channel through which a sense of being abandoned at work compromises job performance is that employees cannot “switch off” and stop thinking about work, even after hours. The role of this explanatory mechanism is mitigated, however, when employees can draw from their religious beliefs.

For human resource (HR) managers, this study pinpoints a notable intrusion into the personal realm, namely, repetitive thinking about work-related issues, through which perceptions of work-related loneliness translate into a reluctance to contribute to organizational effectiveness with productive work activities. It also showcases how this translation can be subdued with personal resources that enable employees to contain the hardships they have experienced.

This study helps unpack the connection between workplace loneliness and job performance by detailing the unexplored roles of two important factors (negative work rumination and religiosity) in this connection.

South African scholars, like most scholars in the developing world, have sold the idea that social constructivism is the gold standard of qualitative management research. In this chapter, we caution against this subordination to unquestioned conventions and offer a process relational ontology as an alternative to social constructivism that is often punted by most qualitative research programmes and textbooks. We also debunk the idea that ‘grounded theory’ exists by delving into epistemology and showing how science is ‘self-correcting’ rather than ‘tabula rasa’. Instead of boxing business ethics knowledge, as has been done by the case study gurus, we encourage business and organisational ethicists to own their indigenous heritage through storytelling science based on the self-correcting method underpinned by Popperian and Peircian epistemological thought. This chapter encourages business management researchers to move towards more profound ethical knowledge by refuting and falsifying false assumptions in each phase of the study, in a sequence of self-correcting storytelling phases. This is what Karl Popper called trial and error, and what C.S. Peirce called self-correcting by the triadic of Abduction–Induction–Deduction. We offer a novel method for accomplishing this aim that we call ‘Conversational Interviews’ that are based on antenarrative storytelling sciences. Our chapter aims to evoking the transformative power of indigenous ontological antenarratives in authentic conversation in order to solve immediate local problems ad fill the many institutional voids that plague the South(ern)-/African context.

The pain of discrimination is real for those who experience it. To overcome isolation and being treated as if limited in intelligence and worth, perseverance is the only solution to survive and continue on. Anguish emerges despite efforts to self-protect with anger and verbalized frustrations. The affected person must make the decision to forgive, give themselves permission to have a voice, or cower in anguish that eventually translates into clinical depression as multiple traumas, and microaggressions cloud logical thinking and actions. The subtle evolution of anguish that has existed for several years is observed in persons who have not dealt with their sustained maltreatment from others. The key to overcoming anguish is to intentionally forgive those who have intended harm, thereby relinquishing one's own anger and frustration.

A high percentage of managers, teachers and administrators are plateaued — they are at a point in their career when the likelihood of additional hierarchical promotion is probably zero. Basically, such plateauing arises for two reasons:

A prescriptive model for announcing layoffs is presented. The model is based on a thorough literature review and indepth case analysis of eight companies which announced layoffs. Based on the model, ten recommendations for effective layoff announcements are presented and discussed. Because the cases′ analysis revealed that most strategies relating to the announcements were superficial, the major recommendation is to develop a thorough strategy. This model should help to develop an appropriate strategy. The nature of the layoff and organizational dynamics are first considered in this model. Other variables considered are the source of the announcement, the channel used to present the message, the timing of the announcement and the message itself.

The National Examinations Board in Supervisory Studies (NEBSS) was established in June 1964 on the initiative of the Department of Education and Science and was supported by all the major organizations concerned with supervisory education and training. It was charged with the task of providing examinations and national qualifications in the field of foremanship and supervisory studies. The Board, which is an independent autonomous body administered by the City and Guilds of London Institute, has laid down that its objectives are to stimulate and co‐ordinate the provision of suitable courses for supervision at all levels over the whole range of industry, trade and commerce, and, by the provision and control of nationally accepted examination standards, to establish a general recognition of the cardinal need for supervisors to be properly qualified to enable them to discharge their responsibilities with maximum effectiveness. To achieve its objectives the Board has established a flexible structure which assists the development of local initiative by encouraging technical colleges and industrial or commercial organizations to co‐operate in devising suitable courses and examinations to meet specific needs whilst, at the same time, establishing and maintaining national standards in supervisory studies. Such courses are approved by the Board for the award of the Certificate, Supplementary Certificate and Advanced Certificate in Supervisory Studies on the basis of internal examinations externally assessed by the Board.