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This paper describes the development of a digital role play game (RPG) designed to help construction apprentices to better communicate with their supervisors about issues with the potential to impact on their physical and psychological health and safety.

A participatory approach was adopted to utilise the knowledge and insights of the target users to inform the digital RPG development. Apprentices and supervisors were interviewed to identify characteristics of effective supervisor-apprentice communication, which became the RPG’s learning objectives. The scenarios constructed in the RPG were drawn from lived experiences shared by the apprentices in the interviews. During the development process, consultations were conducted with an advisory committee comprising of apprentices and supervisors to improve the realism of the RPG scenarios.

Three scenarios were developed for the RPG. In each scenario, players are asked to make decisions at various interaction points about how the characters should respond to the unfolding and challenging situations. Scripts were developed for the game, which were acted out and motion captured to animate digital MetaHuman characters embedded in a virtual construction site. Two example situations are introduced in this paper to illustrate the development process.

To our knowledge, the RPG introduced is one of the first applications of digital game-based training in the construction industry. The adoption of a participatory design approach ensures that the game content relates to real-world experiences. The digital RPG is highly interactive and engaging in nature and presents a novel approach to developing “soft” skills in construction.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the role of the feedback environment in expatriate adjustment and subsequent performance. Based on newcomer adaptation and sensemaking theories, the authors proposed that the supervisor and coworker feedback environments would serve as informational resources, reducing the ambiguity associated with the expatriate's new setting.

This study was conducted with a broad sample of assigned expatriates (N = 95) originating from 33 different countries and currently working in 35 different host countries. Mediation analysis using a bootstrapping methodology was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The authors found that the supervisor feedback environment and coworker feedback environment were both related to expatriate adjustment through role clarity. The authors also found that the supervisor feedback environment was indirectly related to expatriate job performance and intent to leave the international assignment through both role clarity and adjustment.

This study examines the extent to which the supervisor and coworker feedback environments enable expatriates on an international assignment. Expatriates face challenges that may be ameliorated by constructive feedback practices. The authors discuss how organizations can improve expatriate sensemaking and adjustment through improved feedback practices.

Drawing on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study aims to develop a model of how work engagement mediates the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment, with religiosity moderating the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement. This study further tests a moderated-mediation model exploring the relationships between supervisor support, religiosity, work engagement and affective commitment within a unique institutional context where religious values and beliefs significantly influence and shape people management practices.

Using a survey-based approach, data were collected from 367 employees from the telecommunication sector in the context of Jordan.

Supervisor support was positively related to work engagement, which positively impacts affective commitment. Work engagement mediated the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment. In addition, religiosity amplified the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement, and the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment.

This study contributes to JD-R theory and pertinent literature by examining the moderating role of religiosity, an important yet neglected personal resource. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the interaction effect between religiosity and supervisor support in predicting work engagement. It is also the first to examine a moderated mediation model exploring the relationships between supervisor support, religiosity, work engagement and affective commitment.

With issues like increasing student dropout rates, low productivity and compromised quality, research in higher education is faced with a number of paralyzing challenges in India. This study aims to locate the role of toxic academic supervision in relation to decreased quality of research.

Following a sequential mixed method design, the research begins with a quantitative analysis, which is then followed by an in-depth qualitative exploration.

The results of mediation analysis in this study reveal that students who experience toxic research supervision have a weak sense of identification and are also poor at self-disclosure, which results in increased distress and reduced engagement and productivity. Moreover, identification and self-disclosure have also been found to partially mediate the relationship between toxic supervision and distress. Furthermore, a thematic analysis of this study provides a detailed behavioral profile of toxic academic supervisors and highlights the consequences of such supervision with regard to students' well-being and productivity.

In terms of theoretical contributions, the study provides evidence that the concept of toxic leadership has applicability outside of the organizational context; in the educational sphere as well and that the toxic leadership scale can be successfully used to assess the severity of toxic supervision within the academic domain, and corrective actions can be taken to mitigate the effect of such supervisory style on students.

The study not only highlights the repercussions of toxicity in academia and higher education but also provides a detailed and in-depth description of the personality traits and behavioral idiosyncrasies of toxic supervisors, which can help in the early identification of toxic tendencies and can enable us to mitigate and prevent toxicity from the academic space and to ensure a conducive environment for students in higher education. Overall, the present research has important implications for researchers, academicians as well as policymakers.

The study is the first of its kind in terms of both, objective and methodology.

The purpose of this research is to examine the narratives of victims of abusive supervision. We explore the meaning or “lessons” victims derive from those experiences and how they shape the victims’ views of self, work and organization in relation to navigating their subsequent jobs.

We analyzed how appraisals of supervisory abuse transform victims’ narratives and their consequent work attitudes through sensemaking processes. Semi-structured interviews with the past victims of abusive supervision generated a four-stage model of how sensemaking shapes victims’ future work attitudes. Our interpretations were guided through narrative thematic analysis based on the constructionist approach.

Victims’ lessons learned are predominantly framed by their retrospective post-event appraisal of abuse (based on its severity) once individuals are no longer subject to abusive supervision. With greater distance from the abuse, victims can process the abuse and better understand the motivation of the abuser, enabling the process of causal attributions. These attributions further shape victims’ narratives and future work attitudes through a complex interplay of retrospective and prospective sensemaking mechanisms. The victims broadly reported proactive (with higher self-awareness and endurance) and reactive (self-protection, and emotional scars) lessons. A four-stage model was proposed based on our findings.

Abusive supervision remains a persistent issue experienced by many individuals at some point in their working life. However, little is known about how victims make sense of the event post-abuse and how this sense-making guides their future work behaviors. Understanding this phenomenon provides insight into how employees navigate through adversity and construct a more positive future. The contribution of this narrative inquiry is threefold. First, it explores how individual appraisals of supervisory abuse frame their (1) mechanisms of narrative construction; and (2) future work attitudes. Second, our findings demonstrate how narrative construction is a fluid process often informed by the process of retrospective and prospective sensemaking. Finally, our research suggests two broader categories of lessons that victims internalize and carry forward to their subsequent jobs.

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

The purpose of this paper was to explore the development of the professional identity of South African intern psychologists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper – that presents a historical reflection borne from a significant moment in time – aimed to capture what the authors can learn from this specific cohort of intern psychologists and their experiences of work-based learning.

Through the lens of the interpretative phenomenological approach, the authors analysed seven semi-structured interviews. Data analysis involved a line-by-line analysis of each individual transcript, where after a thorough, in-depth analysis was conducted across all the cases.

Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings demonstrated the interns' initial uncertainties, severe exhaustion, perceived gaps in their training, and resilience despite unusual and difficult circumstances in their WBL internship.

The study was limited to seven intern psychologists in South Africa.

The findings suggest that support – during and after the COVID-19 pandemic – is crucial throughout the training of psychologists and means to facilitate and develop professional identity and resilience. This will provide the opportunity to safeguard emerging healthcare professionals from burnout while simultaneously advocating for supportive WBL and continual professional development spaces protecting healthcare professionals and the public.

With this article, we explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the professional identity development of intern psychologists (psychologists in training). The authors expand on the aforementioned original contribution, since the authors situate their research within the Global South. More specifically, the authors explored how intern psychologists' developed their professional identities against the backdrop of a largely resource-scarce context of South Africa.

The family business literature indicates that non-family employees (NFEs) working in private family firms often feel marginalized effecting their ability to flourish at work and contribute to the organization beyond their defined job roles. Therefore, this study examines whether enabling NFEs to craft their own jobs, leads them to reappraise their position in the organization, thus influencing workplace flourishing (WF) and supervisor-assessed extra-role behaviour (ERB).

Building on the Conservation of Resources theory, a set of hypotheses is posited relating the three dimensions of job crafting (resource seeking, challenge seeking and job demand reduction) to ERB, through WF as a mediator. The hypotheses are tested through matched employee–supervisor data collected from 256 individuals working in private family firms, where 232 were NFEs while 24 individuals were supervisors.

The result generated through PLS-SEM indicates that all three dimensions of job crafting have a positive influence on WF. In the case of direct effect on ERB, only the direct relationship between challenge seeking and ERB was significant. However, the relationships between all three dimensions of job crafting and ERB became positive and significant through WF as mediator.

The implications of this study is that merely empowering NFEs to craft their own jobs may not lead them to contribute to the organization beyond their routine tasks. However, if they appraise such empowerment as a resource gain sufficient enough for them to feel that there are flourishing at the workplace, and then it is likely to influence their commitment to the organization to exhibit significant ERB. The study however is limited, as other potential exogenous variables that influence ERB were not considered.

This study presents evidence for family business owners and managers to provide the pertinent resource support to their NFEs, so that they can flourish and contribute to the employer.

The current study contributes to the under-researched and fragmented literature on NFEs working in family firms. Furthermore, this appears to be among the first study that looks into workplace flourishing and ERB among NFEs in the realm of family business.

This study aims to explain how negative workplace interactions are formed by the application of a performance management system (PMS).

The study draws from unique in-depth interviews with service workers who resigned from an accounting shared service centre (SSC), discussing the reasons behind the resignations. Following an abductive approach, organisational justice theory is used to analyse the service workers' perceptions of negative interactions and to link the negative interactions to the use of the PMS.

The findings suggest that negative workplace interactions are characterised by cost consciousness, inequality and competitiveness. These interactions are attributed to the use of a PMS in the centre and are related to perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional injustice.

Managers and leaders of shared service–type organisations should not rely on PMSs as an all-encompassing solution; instead, they should acknowledge the fairness of the use of PMSs. Moreover, HR professionals should choose and train employees to apply PMSs fairly. Fairness is important in work allocation, resourcing, monitoring, giving feedback, recognising good performance, promotion and interaction between peers.

This study contributes to the literature by taking an overall perspective on PMSs to analyse and explain the unintended negative consequences of a PMS in a highly scripted and monitored work environment that is usually considered appropriate for such a system's use. Through the analysis, the study highlights pitfalls in the use of a PMS and the importance of interactional injustice not only between but also within organisational levels.