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Why do casual academic staff stay with an organization and why do they leave? Does a three factor model of organizational commitment fit their situation? This paper reports on a study of women academic staff in casual employment at an Australian Tertiary Institution. Major variables included the three factor organizational commitment scale—affective commitment, normative commitment, and continuance commitment of Allen and Meyer (1990), Burke's (1991) intention to quit scale. Results indicate that both the three and four factor models of commitment are adequate but that the four‐factor model provides a better explanation of intention to quit, which is consistent with the employment circumstances of the sample.

In Australia, globalization, together with economic and political developments internal to the country, has resulted in deregulation of the former institution‐based system of industrial relations. The labor force is now more qualified, casualised and diverse than at any previous point in history. Human resource (HR) practitioners have responded by placing greater emphasis on aligning HR strategy with corporate strategy, devoting greater effort to performance management and exploring new forms of flexible work arrangements, increasing their reliance on legal expertise, and increasing their adoption of computerized HR management systems.

Reports on the attitudes of a small sample of older women in education to the future options of either continuing to participate in their chosen profession or retiring early. Little interest was shown in early retirement, partly because it was not an attractive financial option for many of the sample and partly because the majority of the women expressed strong commitment to continued workforce participation. The study highlights how former discriminatory practices in access to superannuation membership have disadvantaged women by not providing them with comparable financial benefits when their organizations begin to downsize and offer voluntary separation packages. Concludes with the thought that organizations should re‐examine their stereotypes of older workers and implement policies which will use their talents more.

The aim of this paper is to explore flexpatriates' perceptions of work life balance (WLB) issues and identify possible adjustments of WLB programs to better meet the needs of flexpatriates. This paper investigates flexpatriates' challenges at the interface of personal and work lives and their perception of standard WLB programs and then proposes organizational adjustments to better meet the needs of flexpatriates.

This study employed a qualitative research approach and two kinds of empirical data were collected: first, through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 40 employees involved in flexpatriate assignments in multinational companies operating in Austria and, second, through a document analysis of the homepages of their employing organizations to gain information about WLB practices.

Drawing upon the study findings, the authors present a typology of flexpatriates and propose a model that considers both WLB and work life imbalance as a desirable or acceptable option and offers a new theoretical perspective for examining organization and individual dimensions in WLB.

The authors' contribution is a new contextualization of WLB initiatives that incorporates both WLB and work life imbalance as valid perspectives of employees.

Considers the implications of Australia′s ageing population for future human resource management practice. Acknowledges that downsizing practices which initially targeted older workers may have contributed to raising the profile of their vulnerability and suggests reforms will be needed in all key human resource functions to reduce bias, improve equity, and focus on the potential benefits older staff can contribute. Differences in health and safety records indicate that age alone does not differentiate between staff, and hence dismisses perceptions of older staff as more accident prone. Stereotypes which militate against hiring older staff need to be addressed and training practices will need restructuring to accommodate alternative training methods which encourage older staff to reskill. Discusses potential new mentoring roles. Proposes that performance criteria which measure contribution need to be developed for all employees so that rewards can be disentangled from length of service and ensure that jobs, not individuals, become the basis of evaluation.

Changes in internal and external labor markets through externalization of the workforce or the development of contingent and core distinctions have been intensified in Australia by globalization, competitive pressures and political changes. An extensive literature describes and analyzes these changes and empirically assessed variables influencing the extent of externalization and the strategies associated with it. Very little attention has been given to the implications of these changes for human resource management. This article reviews some reasons for the high rate of externalization in Australia and identifies some issues which face human resource management as externalization continues to rise.

This paper questions whether a decision making approach based on rational processes is appropriate considering recent developments in decision theory. The paper begins by comparing the behaviour of managerial decision makers with the expected behaviour of newly empowered employees in TQM programs. Whereas the complexity and diversity of managerial decision making is well recognised, training programs for newly empowered employees emphasise the objective use of data and rational decision strategies within a team context. This paper suggests other decision making strategies should also be included in training programs and reviews the research basis for this. The conclusion is that training for individuals which is limited to the normative models advocated within TQM ignores evidence which suggests that other decision strategies can be just as effective and that these may need to be addressed. Indeed, training in rational models may encourage newly empowered employees to discontinue their present adaptive behaviour.

This article describes the processes, problems, and results of a Writers' Workshop over its two year period. The main purpose of the Writers' Workshop was to work with authors in order to help them develop their ideas in the form of articles publishable in a top academic journal. The main results are the five articles contained in this Special Issue. This paper also includes the authors' personal evaluation of the Writers' Workshop and a thumbnail summary of each article.

In today's global business environment, international assignments have become integral part of employee's job profile. Adaptation to a different cultural environment plays a role in affecting employee's performance. In such a situation, cultural intelligence plays an important role. In order to sustain in a diverse work setting, a global organization entails managers who are sensitive to different cultural requirements. Factors affecting cultural intelligence have been a major area of study. However, studies relating short-term foreign trips and their role on four aspect of cultural intelligence are lacking. Therefore, present study was undertaken to know role of foreign visits in affecting cultural intelligence among professionals of diverse background.

The present study is a primary study conducted for a sample of 120 respondents divided into two groups. One group comprised professionals having experience of foreign visits while other group comprised professionals who had not visited a foreign country. We use Levene’s Test for equality of variances was applied to assess the difference of variation of cultural intelligence between two different groups of respondents.

The results revealed that short-term trips play a significant role in affecting metacognitive, cognitive and motivational components of cultural intelligence. However, behavior cultural intelligence is not affected by short-term trips significantly.

Outcome of present research forms basis for future studies that can be conducted linking long-term trips and culture intelligence. This study is practically useful for improving cultural intelligence of professionals to enhance their success and effectiveness in international assignments.

The study adds novelty to the field of cultural intelligence as prior studies were lacking in relating role of short-term trips on four different components of cultural intelligence.