Search results

Despite the fact that women are increasingly reaching the highest levels of management in business organisations, negative stereotypes persist concerning their ability to handle the discourse of leadership. Drawing on a large database of recorded material collected from women in a variety of New Zealand workplaces by the Victoria University of Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, this paper illustrates the value of both qualitative and quantitative analysis in challenging such stereotypes. The analysis indicates that effective women managers adapt their style with sensitivity and skill to the specific setting and refutes misconceptions about the ability of women chairs to handle workplace humour, making them sociolinguistically very proficient communicators in the workplace.

This paper aims to examine the lives of early twentieth century opera star Louise Homer and her composer husband Sidney, and their attempts to manage two successful careers and a family of six children. Almost 100 years ago, the Homers – a rare example of a two‐career family – employed several adaptive strategies that academic researchers later suggested for twenty‐first century dual‐career couples.

Considering the work‐family literature, two modern models of managing and coping with the stresses of dual careers were examined and the Homer family were then considered to determine whether they employed similar strategies. Letters were used from the Homers and their children, other original documents and secondary research in investigating the couple's efforts to handle the challenges of dual‐careers when the concept of a woman pursuing a profession outside the home was a novelty.

Several adaptive strategies recently “discovered” to be used by upper‐income dual‐career couples with children seem just as applicable to 1911 when the Homers' fifth child was born. The findings underscore the idea that challenges perceived as unusual and unique to one generation have been dealt with successfully by past generations.

The paper provides an historical perspective on newly suggested strategies for dual‐career couples in the work‐family literature. Such strategies have been used for at least a century even though the dual‐career concept only became prominent in the last four decades. This paper is one of a few that examines dual‐career couples in an historical context, and indicates how the past can inform those who face contemporary workplace phenomena.

Kmart recently ended a nearly three‐and‐one‐halfyear long retailing venture in Eastern Europe where they were able to successfully transform existing ailing retailing enterprises into thriving examples of Western retailing. Even though Kmart's entrance into the former Communist Bloc was cut short, the endeavor adeptly illustrates a number of lessons of value to retailers involved in global activities. Specifically, this paper traces the entrance of Kmart into Eastern Europe, reviews the changes implemented by Kmart to adapt to this new environment, and identifies the lessons which can be learned.

Adolescent mental health issues are on the increase, in particular depression, which is now a major public health concern globally. Mental health education is important and young people’s awareness of mental health is potentially limited. This is one factor that creates barriers to seeking support. School nurses and educational professionals recognise that they do not necessarily have the required skill base to support emotional health concerns with young people. The purpose of this paper is to synthesise qualitative evidence related to the nurse’s role in supporting adolescents.

A literature review using a systematic approach was undertaken, predominantly through collection of primary qualitative research studies. In total, 22 published studies are included in this review, extracted from four databases – CINAHL, Embase, Medline and Scopus.

This review shows that awareness of mental health is needed early in adolescence, while at school, to encourage young people to access support and have knowledge of their own emotional health. The need for further mental health education and provision is asserted.

Young people benefit from someone who is accessible and familiar to them in schools so that they can access emotional support as and when needed. Careful involvement of families (including extended families) is noted. It is proposed that this role should be a mental health nurse role, who should be accessible within the school environment.

This paper is original and adds to existing knowledge that mental health challenges are increasing, and more needs to be done in schools to promote mental health and reduce the stigma associated with seeking support.

In Australia, the Foodbank of Western Australia (Foodbank WA) has a reputation for being at the forefront of health promotion. The purpose of this paper is to describe Foodbank WA's innovative food bank plus approach of incorporating healthy lifestyle initiatives (i.e. nutrition and physical activity education) into its core food bank business, so as to target priority issues such as food insecurity, poor food literacy, overweight, obesity, poor nutrition and physical inactivity.

A case study approach was utilised to explore Foodbank WA's Healthy Food for All® (HFFA) strategy. HFFA is a comprehensive state wide, school and community based strategy, including the School Breakfast Programme, Food Sensations® and Choose to Move initiatives, designed to promote healthy lifestyles to low socioeconomic and vulnerable groups – a major target group of food banks.

Since its inception in 2007, the delivery of food, education and resources has increased across all of Foodbank WA's HFFA initiatives. Evaluation results from feedback surveys demonstrate the success of these interventions to positively impact upon food security, health and wellbeing of participants.

HFFA is a unique, effective and novel strategy that addresses a number of health and nutrition issues. Food banks are well placed to deliver food literacy and healthy lifestyle initiatives. Foodbank WA's holistic approach and demonstrated success provides other food banks with a best practice model and knowledge base for the development of similar health promotion strategies and interventions.

This paper aims to describe the development of WorkOut, an Internet-based program designed to help young men overcome the barriers towards help-seeking and to build the skills they need to understand and manage their own mental health. Information and communication technologies (ICT) hold great potential to significantly improve mental health outcomes for hard-to-reach and traditionally underserved groups. Internet-based programs and mobile phone applications may be particularly appealing to young men due to their convenience, accessibility and privacy and they also address the strong desire for independence and autonomy held by most men.

In this paper, we describe the design process itself, and the strategies used for multi-disciplinary collaboration. The initial evaluation process and results are also described which consisted of three distinct phases: website statistics; one-on-one user testing; and pilot interviews.

The results suggest that WorkOut has the potential to attract young men. However, further work is needed to ensure that users remain engaged with the program.

The difficulties encountered and lessons learned provide an insight into the factors that should be considered in the design and evaluation of future ICT-based strategies within the mental health domain, as well as their potential applicability to clinical and educational settings.

After the 1907 collapse of the new Otago University Veterinary School, a gap of over half a century elapsed before the Massey University Veterinary Faculty was opened in 1964. This interval means linear professionalisation accounts from pre‐modern animal care by farriers and cow leeches to modern cadres of scientific veterinarians are challenged by contingent and particular features in the New Zealand setting. The educational sequence is inevitably linked with other aspects of society, economy and workforce around the veterinary ‘professional project’. Limited research into veterinary development and education in New Zealand includes accounts by veterinarians ‐ Laing’s monographs,4 Shortridge, Smith and Gardner’s history of the veterinary profession, and Burns’ historical sociology thesis.

This study aims to provide a qualitative in-depth account of the status and experience of food insecurity for Syrian refugee households in Toronto and Saskatoon, Canada. The study considers the range of geographic, socio-economic, cultural and gendered components shaping and determining the barriers and management of food insecurity.

The study included 54 semi-structured interviews with refugee families in Toronto and Saskatoon who resettled in Canada after November 2015. In addition, 15 semi-structured in-person or telephone interviews were conducted with settlement and support agencies to measure their capacity to respond to issues of food insecurity for Syrian refugees.

Syrian refugees reported experiencing food insecurity as part of the broader resettlement journey, including in the transitional phase of refuge and in each settlement context in Canada. Income status in Canada was reported as a key barrier to food security. Low-income barriers to food security were experienced and shaped by factors including food affordability, physical access and availability and the extent of familial or other support networks including sponsorship relationships. Participants also reported how managing food insecurity contributed to the intensification of gender expectations.

The analysis reveals food insecurity as both an income and non-income based concern for refugees during the process of resettlement. The study also highlights the importance of considering variations between primary barriers to food security identified by Syrian families and key informants as critical to the development of strategies designed to mitigate the impacts of resettlement on food security.

The purpose of this paper is to outline an empirical study of how professionals experience work and learning in complex adaptive organisations. The study uses a complex adaptive systems approach, which forms the basis of a specifically developed conceptual framework for explaining professionals’ experiences of work and learning.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 professionals from a variety of organisations, industry sectors and occupations in Sydney, Australia. The transcripts were subjected to an adapted phenomenographic analysis, and an analysis using the complex adaptive organisations conceptual framework (CAOCF).

The findings indicated that professionals experienced learning mainly through work, where work was experienced as fluid and influenced by varying degrees of emergence, agency, complex social networks and adaptation. Further, the greater the degree of work fluidity, the greater the impetus towards learning through work, empirically indicating that the experience of learning in contemporary organisations is entwined with work.

This study used the concept of complex adaptive organisations as a conceptual framework, coupled with an adapted phenomenographic methodology, to investigate individual professionals’ experiences of work and learning. The adoption of the concept of complex adaptive organisations provided a rigorous way to adopt a complexity approach. In particular, the concept of emergence provides insights into how organisational complexity influences work and, subsequently, learning and adaptation.

Let me begin this essay with some propositions found in the preface to this study. “(A) dynamic of contradiction…stands at the heart of Marxist theory” (p. 8). And (quoting Engels) while “men make their own history…in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the result of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effect upon the world outside that constitute history.” “What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the minds of actors?” (p. 9). Hunt's study demonstrates that Engels was certainly a most contradictory figure, alternating and sometimes conjoining a life of womanizing and carousing to one of the serious and dedicated political work to one of the capitalist manager. As to the second issue, while Hunt shows the various influences that prompted Engels to move toward, indeed, facilitate the development of what is termed Marxism, the question of motivation that caused him to honor those influences is left unanswered. That is, while many were subject to the same influences, the same historical forces, why did Engels “allow” these forces to pull him in a particular direction?