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Human resource management (HRM) practices are implemented to improve outcomes, such as reducing turnover, absenteeism, and improving performance. Using social exchange theory (SET), the purpose of this paper is to examine one HRM practice that has received less attention by researchers: employer-sponsored childcare assistance programs.

Study 1 – a field study compared three groups of hospital employees’ (n=148) attitudes and behaviors using MANCOVA/ANOVA over two time periods. Study 2 – using a field study, on-site and voucher childcare assistance programs were evaluated in terms of the cost to the organization and the relationship to attitudinal variables.

Study 1 – results indicated that employee performance was higher and absenteeism lower for employees using the on-site childcare center than employees using an off-site center or with no children. Although the attitudinal results did not align with hypotheses, they were not inconsistent with SET. Study 2 – results indicate that childcare assistance programs may be a beneficial HRM practice for organizations to implement.

One limitation of Study 1 is the small sample size. Future research should continue to examine how employee benefits like childcare programs affect employees, as well as examine how such benefits differentially employees who value and do not value the benefits. In Study 2, although the authors randomly selected the sample of on-site and voucher programs, the health care facilities self-selected themselves to participate in the program and selected the type of childcare program, a potential source of bias. Future research should examine childcare assistance programs and their impact on work-family balance and strain-based conflict in a wider variety of samples.

Implications for research and practice: Both studies offer researchers a “next step” in the evaluation of childcare assistance research. Additionally, these studies are of practical value to administrators/researchers in organizations who may be considering vouchers or on-site programs as they relate such programs to organizational outcomes.

The first study is one of the few studies on this topic to use a field design with two time points and with multiple behaviors and attitudes. The second study provides a descriptive comparison of two types of childcare assistance programs, a comparison made by few studies to date.

In the past decade or so, workplace organisation and restructuring processes, have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny. Driven by rapidly intensifying competitive pressures, work organisations sought increased flexibility, especially from labour, as they struggled to maintain market shares in an economic environment increasingly characterised by excess in labour supply. Pressures for change were probably most evident in the public sector where economic and ideological forces combined to limit the growth of government services and increase their exposure to competitive forces.

This chapter is about the politics of surveillance and more specifically about the politics of siting public closed circuit television (CCTV) systems within urban neighborhoods. Through an exploration of political contests waged around attempts by local police to install public surveillance systems in the City of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and Granville Mall districts, we argue that the success of public surveillance proposals is hardly inevitable. Instead, a combination of local factors play vital roles in variously supporting or constraining such attempts. Although this present chapter can be read as providing a useful counterpoint to the dominance of accounts about such developments in Great Britain, where public CCTV is a routine fact of daily urban life, we conclude on a cautionary note: with the current proliferation of public and private forms of surveillance throughout urban spaces, surveillance analysts risk missing the forest for the trees if we only concentrate on the fate of one surveillance tool or tactic.

Addressing occupational stress and fostering employee wellness helps meet a host of organizational stakeholder expectations including high quality of work life (employees), reasonable return on investment (investors), increased productivity (management), and competitiveness (owners). Despite being dynamic in nature, stress and wellness are often studied using a static perspective. One reason for the scarcity of dynamic empirical research is the limited knowledge and use of the tools available to assess change over time. To address this limitation, four tools used to assess change and dynamics of occupational stress and well-being are described: growth models, latent change score models, spectral analysis, and computational modeling. First, we begin by discussing growth curve models and then transition to latent change score models. We then expand into spectral analysis, a tool used to determine cycles of ups and downs that repeat regularly. Last, computational modeling is discussed, where computers and simulations are used to understand a dynamic process. For each tool, we give examples of how they have been used, make recommendations for future use, and provide readers with suggestions and references for how to complete analyses in software and programs, most of which are freely available (i.e., R, Vensim).

Airports are the portals where international air transport networks, which are increasingly important in a globalized, services-oriented economy, intersect with regional and metropolitan ground transportation networks. Our hypothesis is that, at this nexus, the degree of international connectivity at an airport and distance from the airport manifests itself in the value of commercial properties. As such airports are shaping the urban form around them and highlight the importance of integrated metropolitan and airport planning. Looking at Canada’s two largest international airports at Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, BC, and controlling for other factors, we see evidence that commercial properties decrease in value as distance to the airport increases and increase in value as the range of international frequencies and destinations available at the airport increase. We introduce a new concept of land-use at and around airports of “aviation-dependent” which would include hotels and corporate head offices, in addition to the traditional “aviation-related” and “aviation-compatible” uses. We see the effects of distance and connectivity are particularly pronounced on commercial properties occupied by aviation-dependent uses.

Having a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can cause significant professional strain for parents. Compared to parents of typically developing children or children with other types of special needs, parents of children with ASD report being underemployed, having more difficulty accomplishing important work tasks or taking on new work assignments, and being viewed less favorably by supervisors. They also may be more likely to perceive themselves as stigmatized by coworkers, negatively impacting their abilities to develop or maintain meaningful relationships with others at work. All of these factors lead to parents of children with ASD earning less annual income than other types of parents and being more likely to experience loss of workplace motivation or lower overall job satisfaction. The negative career experiences of parents of children with ASD may also impact employers. Employees experiencing lower levels of motivation are less productive and more likely to quit their jobs, resulting in increased turnover expense. Because the number of working parents of children with ASD continues to grow as ASD rates increase, organizations would benefit from supporting parents of children with ASD through adopting flexible work–life balance policies, encouraging leaders to promote values of diversity and inclusiveness, and implementing workplace programs designed to support parents and educate coworkers.