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Educators strive to develop and implement high impact educational experiences, which are critical to ensuring university courses and curricula serve as memorable and transferable learning experiences for students. It is not clear, however, which experiences are exceptional from a student perspective, or what kinds of illustrative examples exist in applied disciplines. In this chapter, we ground our discussion of high impact educational experiences in the field of program evaluation, contextualize it as organized at the University of Minnesota, describe three experiences that have been repeatedly described as impactful by students, and engage in a collective dialogue as teachers and learners.

The relationship between demographic factors and worker well-being has garnered increased attention, but empirical studies have shown to inconsistent results. This chapter addresses this issue by examining how age, gender, and race/ethnicity relate to worker well-being using large, representative samples. Data from the Gallup Healthways Index and Gallup World Poll provided information on both job and life satisfaction outcomes for full-time workers in the United States and 156 countries, respectively. In general, results indicated that increasing age was associated with more workers reporting job satisfaction and fewer people reporting stress and negative affect. Women were comparable to men in reported job satisfaction and well-being, but more women reported experiencing negative affect and stress. Less consistent well-being differences in ethnic/racial groups were found. Finally, we found strong evidence for direct and indirect national demographic effects on worker well-being showing need for considering workforce demography in future theory building. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

New developments in concepts and approaches to job stress should incorporate all relevant types of resources that promote well-being and health. The success resource model of job stress conceptualizes subjective success as causal agents for employee well-being and health (Grebner, Elfering, & Semmer, 2008a). So far, very little is known about what kinds of work experiences are perceived as success. The success resource model defines four dimensions of subjective occupational success: goal attainment, pro-social success, positive feedback, and career success. The model assumes that subjective success is a resource because it is valued in its own right, triggers positive affect and emotions (e.g., pleasure, cf., Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), helps to protect and gain other resources like self-efficacy (Hobfoll, 1998, 2001), has direct positive effects on well-being (e.g., job satisfaction, cf., Locke & Latham, 1990) and health (Carver & Scheier, 1999), facilitates learning (Frese & Zapf, 1994), and has an energizing (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002) and attention-directing effect (Carver, 2003), which can promote recovery by promoting mental detachment from work tasks in terms of absence of job-related rumination in leisure time (Sonnentag & Bayer, 2005).

The model proposes that success is promoted by other resources like job control (Frese & Zapf, 1994) while job stressors, like hindrance stressors such as performance constraints and role ambiguity (LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005), can work against success (Frese & Zapf, 1994). The model assumes reciprocal direct effects of subjective success on well-being, health, and recovery (upward spiral), and a moderator effect of success on the stressor–strain relationship. The chapter discusses research evidence, measurement of subjective occupational success, value of the model for job stress interventions, future research requirements, and methodological concerns.

Great Britain is a laboratory for new techniques of public management; it is therefore an interesting place to look at for people willing to get involved in large public organisations. The French ‘institute for local studies’, trains future professionals, selected after graduation or after a working experience, in order to take high positions in local authorities nationwide. Three pairs of trainees belonging to the 2012–2013 group spent two weeks in three local authorities in England, with the purpose of analysing the performance management in these organisations.

British and French scholars dedicated to public organisations provided the six trainees with a global view of local government and reforms in the United Kingdom. After that, each pair exchanged information with the local authority they would visit; during the two weeks they spent there, an officer followed their works. They interviewed numerous professionals, elected members and unionists, attended meetings and events. Back in France, they presented their findings in several documents. The original subject was measuring and managing performance; in fact, the three pairs went farther and looked over many aspects of the organisations’ functioning.

Local authorities are facing important budget reductions and appear fragile; they put forward the idea of resilience to express the necessity of using all their resources to deal with a difficult situation. Elected members have a role of political initiative, but they also focus a lot on control, which is much more developed in Britain than in France; managers experience a very difficult period, with a lot of threats on their jobs, teams and projects. In this context, professional networks are very important; peer review is an interesting example of the role of professional exchanges in the search for new solutions. At last, unions don’t seek conflicts but try to accompany changes, lessening their negative consequences on people.

This work is not an academic one but an approach of the reality of organisations analysed by professionals or future professionals of the public sector, in a kind of ‘peer review’ between different countries. This international dimension is interesting, seeing that few in-depth comparisons between local authorities are made, especially between France and Britain.

Research on self-regulation has tended to focus on goal-related performance, with limited attention paid to individuals’ affect and the role it plays during the goal-striving process. In this chapter we discuss three mechanisms to integrate affect within a control theory-based self-regulation framework, and how such integrations inform future research concerning employee stress and well-being. Specifically, affect can be viewed as a result of velocity made toward one’s desired states at work. Fast progress results in positive affect, which enhances employee well-being and reduces the detrimental effects associated with exposure to occupational stressors. On the other hand, slow or no progress elicits negative affect, which induces employee distress. Second, affect can also be considered an input of self-regulation, such that employees are required to regulate their emotional displays at work. Employees who perform emotional labor compare their actual emotional display against the desired display prescribed by display rules. Third, affect can function as a situational disturbance, altering employees’ perceptions or assessments of the input, comparator, and output for other self-regulatory processes.

This chapter examines regulatory experimentation in relation to gender equality and the gender pay and representation gaps. The corporate sector has long promoted a voluntarist ‘business case’ for equality as part of their wider agenda to promote CSR, an approach that fits within the second web of rules. However, slow progress prompted governments to introduce proactive legislative measures such as gender pay gap reporting and gender quotas. At the same time, the traditional web of joint regulation continues to be relevant with trade unions using equal pay litigation to challenge the historical undervaluation of work by low-paid women and negotiate new collective pay structures to deliver tangible benefits to low-paid women. Union litigation in the UK local authority sector and the New Zealand care sector are compared. The chapter argues that the three webs are more usefully understood as complements rather than substitutes.