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In this paper we build upon previous research that examines how workers in devalued occupations transform structural conditions that threaten their dignity into resources with which to protect themselves. Through in-depth interviews and fieldwork with early childhood educators (ECE), we examine the work experiences of teachers in four distinct work contexts: daycare centers and within elementary schools, each in either the public or private sector. We find that these different school organizational contexts shape what kinds of identity challenges early childhood teachers experience. Different organizational contexts not only subject teachers to different threats to their work-related identity but also have different potential identity resources embedded within them that teachers can use on their own behalf. Thus, while all the early childhood educators in our sample struggle with being employed within a devalued occupation, the identity strategies they have developed to protect their self-worth vary across employment contexts. We show that the strategies these interactive service workers use to solve identity-related problems of dignity at work involve the creative conversion of constraints they face at work into resources that help them achieve valued work identities.

Personality research often has focused on how people change in response to the work environment, given that work constitutes a significant portion of the daily life of adults. However, most research has failed to consider the effect of the work context on purpose in life. This omission is surprising given that purpose research involves several characteristics that align well with the occupational psychology and organizational behavior literatures. The current research considers how one feature of the work context, work stress, may (or may not) facilitate the purpose development process. We put forth a Purpose and Work Stress (PAWS) model which explains why understanding whether work stress is perceived as harmful or challenging to employees can provide significant insight into whether that occupation is aligned with the individual’s purpose in life. Furthermore, the model highlights that the ability to monitor and interpret work stress may help an individual identify and cultivate their purpose. Implications of the PAWS model are described, including how it may help us understanding the roles for retirement and job crafting on purpose.

The environment in which businesses operate today is uncertain, chaotic, and changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. In this new dynamic world, current approaches to organizational design and processes are not as effective as they have been. Recent research has provided insight into organizational agility as a method to help organizations survive and thrive in these environments. A divergent body of literature is presented that explores agility, learning, and thriving. An exploratory mixed-methods study was conducted at the team level to examine the relationship between these constructs as well as their relationship to performance. Based on the results, we present a series of propositions for future research and provide an illustration of the Components of Agile and Thriving teams to be used as its foundation. The discussion serves to synthesize these initial findings and provide both implications for practice as well as theory.

This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by the contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

The chapters in the volume exemplify current research approaches to the subject matter: gender-based violence. The introduction identifies both trends and gaps that might be filled by future research.

Worldwide attention is being drawn to examples and forms of gender-based violence. These are currently major topics in the media, both factual and fictional. Public policies are under discussion and programs to deal with them are developing. However, because the discussions and the programs are often not research-based or intersectionally inclusive, gender-based violence persists and victims are sometimes ignored, blamed, or subjected to further violence.

The chapter serves as an overall introduction to the volume and the subject matter more generally.

Stress and the military go hand-in-hand, particularly in combat environments. While some personality traits or types weaken relationships between stress and performance, others, such as psychopathy, may strengthen them. In the present chapter, we consider the ramifications of individuals with high levels of psychopathy or psychopathic tendencies in the military with regard to both their own stress and performance and that of those around them. We discuss different reactions to psychological and physical stress, as well as the implications of psychopathic tendencies as they relate to current military issues, including gender, leadership, teamwork, turnover, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. By juxtaposing relevant research findings on stress and psychopathy, we conclude that psychopathic tendencies should have neither uniformly negative nor positive effects on stress and performance in the military. Rather, effects on such individuals and the peripheral others with whom they interact will likely vary greatly depending on numerous factors.

This chapter examines the role of political skill in relation to employee psychological and physiological health and well-being. First, we begin by providing a review of the current research on the relationship of political skill to stress and strain; additionally, areas in this literature that are in need of greater theoretical specification are identified. A multi-mediation organizing framework is proposed, which suggests that political skill impacts intrapsychic (i.e., constructs residing within an individual such as control, self-esteem) and interpersonal processes (i.e., authenticity, trustworthiness, affability, and humility), which subsequently influence the development and maintenance of work relationships, networks, and coalitions, and ultimately affects individual psychological and physiological health and well-being. The implications of this framework, and directions for future research, are discussed.

In 2001, the rape of “baby Tshepang” triggered a media frenzy in the small community of Louisvale, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how gender discrimination and colonial discourse framed the way the rape of Tshepang was reported in print media.

From the newspaper archives of the Cape Town National Library, the University of Cape Town Library as well as newspaper articles found online, this chapter offers a reading of articles printed between 2001 and 2004. Patterns of troping were identified from the articles examined, and a number of themes were selected to be further examined using a gender perspective. Work already done by African feminist scholars on the grammar of rape was applied to deconstruct the ways in which the media presented this specific case. This chapter works with Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thoughts on shame, Linda Alcoff’s (1991) writing on Othering, Helen Moffett (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) and Jane Bennett’s (1997) work on gender and rape, as well as Achille Mbembe’s (2001) notion of facticity within colonial discourse.

This chapter argues that the ways in which the media understood this event were through well-worn stereotypes of Africa and women. An overarching theme of shame dominated how journalists represented the event. The label “A Town of Shame” stuck onto Louisvale through the mobilization of colonial and gender discourse. Quickly the town was known for its “barbaric” and “savage” existence; a town with no future and a disgrace to the country. Essentialist thinking about women was used to condemn and blame the mother of Tshepang, concretizing the myth that rape is always the fault of women.

Through relying on palatable stereotypes that create a self and Other, we move further away from engaging in the difficult questions of understanding rape. When rape becomes a spectacle, detached from the greater global socioeconomic realities, we deny our responsibilities of difficult and multilayered engagement.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are continuing and chronic workplace problems (Quick & McFadyen, 2017) that affect the health, well-being and socio-economic future of victim/survivors (Blau & Winkler, 2018). Despite this, management and leadership education have been primarily addressing this workplace issue from a legal responsibility perspective and using preventative strategies such as promoting the value of equity, diversity, inclusion and belongingness and explaining the importance of safe, healthy and respectful workplaces. While the establishment of policies, human rights training and disciplinary procedures are undeniably important, rarely do business educators prepare future managers to engage with employees in trauma-informed, compassionate and respectful ways. The co-authors have used a collective restorying process to engage in co-designing a workshop for early career managers and students of management and leadership. The workshop includes iterative exploration of the language and authentic performativity of unbiased compassion while engaging in collective reflexivity. The basis of the workshop centres the research proposition that to support a claimant the manager must performatively lead with authentic compassion while using unbiased language in order to assure procedural justice while mitigating procedural trauma. Early career managers, and hence their organizations, are ill-equipped to deal with workplace investigations of sexual harassment and discrimination. By collectively exploring and practicing unbiased compassion, managers will not only be more prepared to respond to a claim of sexual harassment or discrimination, but they will also reduce employee's felt sense of procedural trauma and increase the organization's likelihood of due diligence.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.