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Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand staff experiences of cognitive analytic team formulation, within an inpatient unit for women with a diagnosis of personality disorder.

In total, 16 staff completed an online questionnaire, rating their views on how helpful formulation sessions had been in regards to ten domains. Following this, six staff participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their experiences of the process and impact of cognitive analytic team formulation. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis.

Responses from questionnaires indicated the general process of team formulation was helpful across each domain. Interviews highlighted benefits such as an increased capacity to think and work relationally. This was impacted upon by staff’s confidence in using the model and the practicalities of attending sessions.

Team formulation has been described as the facilitation of a group of professionals to create a shared understanding of service-users’ difficulties. Team formulation continues to demonstrate benefits for staff working within complex mental health. The challenges of this are considered, however overall, a cognitive analytic framework seems to offer staff the opportunity to integrate learning from a service-user’s history, and current relational difficulties, in a way that develops reflective capacity and informs intervention.

Limited research has explored the theoretical models underpinning team formulation, and the impact for staff learning and practice. The current study develops previous work by specifically focussing on the contribution of cognitive analytic theory to team formulation.

Teams are best positioned for success when certain enabling conditions are in place such as the right mix of individuals. Effective team staffing considers team members’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) as well as the configuration of team member KSAOs and their relations, called team composition. In practice, however, how to integrate team composition considerations into team staffing to facilitate outcomes such as team cohesion can seem nebulous. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how team member KSAOs and their configurations and relations affect team cohesion, and suggest how this information can inform team staffing. We frame team cohesion as an aspect of team human capital to understand when it may be an important consideration for staffing. We describe multilevel considerations in staffing cohesive teams. We summarize theories that link team composition to team cohesion via interpersonal attraction, a shared team identity, and team task commitment. Finally, we propose a six-step approach for staffing cohesive teams, and describe a few areas for future research.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of psychological case formulation meetings for staff in a secure forensic learning disability and autism service.

In total, 89 of the attendees completed a questionnaire prior to the formulation meeting and then another questionnaire following attendance at a formulation meeting.

The results indicate that staff found these to be a helpful, informative and a positive experience professionally and personally. The results suggest that the formulation meetings developed staffs’ psychological understanding about the patient and their problems, helped to increase their empathy towards the patient, increased consistency in the teams’ views, and that the staff felt listened to.

Psychological formulation meetings are established in the current service, and therefore this may be a contributing to factor to the lack of significant change found in some of the items. Therefore, it would be beneficial for future services to complete a service evaluation at a much earlier point of implementation, as this may impact the level of significance.

The findings of this service evaluation suggest that formulation is a beneficial and useful tool for teams and would be a helpful tool for psychologists to use in the clinical work with teams.

This study aims to explore the perceptions of staff in four teams regarding the implementation of psychologically informed environments (PIE) across a community service and three hostels supporting individuals facing severe and multiple disadvantage.

Using a pre-post design, the PIEs Assessment and Self-Development for Services (known as the Pizazz) was completed by staff before the implementation of PIEs and at a six-month follow-up. A narrative review of the results and thematic analysis of the qualitative data are presented.

The majority of the Pizazz elements were rated as improved following PIE implementation. Thematic analysis developed three themes influencing staff members’ ability to develop a PIE: Complexities of Our and Wider Systems; Ready-made or Baked from Scratch; and Reflective and Responsive Staff.

A planned one-year follow-up was obstructed by the coronavirus pandemic, limiting understanding of longer-term impact. Having only gathered data from staff members, the results cannot corroborate staff members’ perceptions. Further research could explore other stakeholder perspectives, as well as the impact of PIE implementation on staff perception of resources, and of a possible ceiling effect for hostels trying to develop PIE.

To the authors’ best of knowledge, this is the first UK study to use the Pizazz to evaluate the implementation of PIE.

Services for refugees and asylum seekers frequently experience gaps in delivery and access, poor coordination, and service stress. The purpose of this paper is to examine the approach to integrated care within Companion House (CH), a refugee primary care service, whose service mix includes counselling, medical care, community development, and advocacy. Like all Australian refugee and asylum seeker support services, CH operates within an uncertain policy environment, constantly adapting to funding challenges, and changing needs of patient populations.

Interviews with staff, social network analysis, group patient interviews, and service mapping.

CH has created fluid links between teams, and encouraged open dialogue with client populations. There is a high level of networking between staff, much of it informal. This is underpinned by horizontal management and staff commitment to a shared mission and an ethos of mutual respect. The clinical teams are collectively oriented towards patients but not necessarily towards each other.

Part of the service’s resilience and ongoing service orientation is due to the fostering of an emergent self-organising form of integration through a complex adaptive systems approach. The outcome of this integration is characterised through the metaphors of “home” for patients, and “family” for staff. CH’s model of integration has relevance for other services for marginalised populations with complex service needs.

This study provides new evidence on the importance of both formal and informal communication, and that limited formal integration between clinical teams is no bar to integration as an outcome for patients.

The purpose of this paper is to study how people use competing accounting numbers to make sense of and legitimize actions in a complex environment in times of crisis.

This paper analyzes the implementation of a standardized budget model at a USA intergovernmental organization, by relying on a triangulation of data sources, including face-to-face interviews, direct observations, and archival documents. The organization faces one of the greatest crises it has ever experienced. An accounting team and a human resources team make sense differently the same reality–staffing. The sensemaking perspective framework is utilized to provide a theoretical structure for the analysis.

The understudied organization undergoes constant evolution during the budgetary crisis; data reveal different forms of cues, which activate the sensemaking process, such as fading and compressed cues. Although compressed cues subsequently emerge, they play a more crucial role in managers' enactment than pre-existing fading cues. Artificializing accounting numbers refer to the social process of constructing compressed cues or artificial artifacts that are neither wrong nor right, neither soft nor hard and not useful for peoples' sensemaking but used to legitimize managers' strategic decisions.

This artificializing process explains the people's resistance to policy implementation. Furthermore, the multiplicity of cues provides useful information for regulators and managers to understand uncertainty during a crisis.

This study presents a rare case of an international third sector organization amid a budgetary crisis. Among few studies referring to numbers as sensemaking resources, this study focuses on the importance of systematic power and corporate power relative to the process of sensemaking.

A biopsychosocial case formulation is an important tool for understanding complexity and guiding treatment for people with intellectual disabilities. It has been suggested that formulation meetings develop staff understanding of individuals they support. This study aims to explore the change processes that occur as a result of professional team formulation meetings, and the mechanisms that facilitate and hinder these events.

Eight clinicians who took part in multi-disciplinary team-based formulations in an inpatient mental health service for adults with intellectual disabilities were interviewed. Interviews were examined using thematic analysis.

The key themes identified were: “gaining information”, “altered thoughts” and “focused goals”. These themes were supported by “collaborative working” and “time for reflection” and were hindered by “poor communication and interaction” and inconsistent “staff attendance”.

Multi-disciplinary team formulation meetings may have a number of change processes that affect staff knowledge and perception of the people that they support. The facilitation of these processes should be a focus for further development.

This paper reflects on the experience of an integrated multi‐disciplinary team over three years. We argue that initial anxieties about dilution of professional identity have not been realised in practice, partly because they were over‐stated in the first place, partly because of good planning and partly because the benefits of integrated working are so evident to professional staff that their confidence in their contribution is enhanced. We also suggest that new roles can make a substantial contribution to integrated working. The evidence for these conclusions is mainly the views of the staff involved. The article concludes with two individual case studies which highlight improved user outcomes.