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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of pay diversity between groups, for example, across competing workplace teams.

In Study I, 60 future managers from Newcastle, Australia, were paid either $1 or $2 to work on an identical intrinsically motivating task, either on an individual basis or as members of pay‐diverse groups. In Study II, with 84 future managers in Darwin, Australia, the $1/$2 group pay dichotomy was made more realistic, by positioning the pay either at the bottom ($1) or top ($2) rungs of a pay ladder, or embedding it within a wider pay scale ($1 at a first, and $2 at the second tertile).

In Study I, between individually paid workers, both below‐ and above‐average payment were linked to low intrinsic motivation, whereas between groups, those in the higher pay bracket remained more motivated compared to their lower‐paid group counterparts. In Study II, when pay was polarised, intrinsic motivation was higher in the higher‐paid compared to lower‐paid groups; but when pay was embedded, this comparative advantage dissipated.

Taken together, Studies I and II suggest that pay diversity across groups will de‐motivate both lower‐ and higher‐paid groups, except perhaps when a group tops the pay ladder.

A “living” wage (LW) is conventionally defined as enabling meaningful participation in society above subsistence through, for example, recreation, supporting a family, and savings. There is increasing debate over LWs due to growing inequality, rising living costs and welfare reform but this remains largely framed by the econometric cost-benefit parameters that apply to minimum wage regulation. The capabilities approach advocated by Sen (1999) offers a different perspective that is inclusive of choice, contingencies and the inter-connections between quality of (paid) work and private life. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper adopts this framework and utilises a qualitative exploration of the narratives of 606 New Zealand employees to understand perceived wage effectiveness. The results suggest that a focus on a specific LW rate might be conceptually limiting, in comparison to a LW range.

First, the findings indicate that there is a pivot range in which people move from self-assessed “survival” to “decent” income. Second, a LW may have more than a simply monetary effect in better meeting employees’ living costs; it can also improve well-being through subjective perceptions of valued freedoms to do with job satisfaction, equity and security.

The results thus draw attention to a wider notion of a LW in terms of personal and family well-being, utilising a capabilities approach, with implications for organisational practice, policy and theory concerning sustainable livelihood and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Social enterprises can be found across Vietnam. However, little is known about how these organizations contribute to the country’s broader efforts to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper aims to explore whether and to what extent differences in social impacts by social enterprises may be explained by the psychological characteristics of social entrepreneurs and cross-sector “ecosystem” partnerships in training, networking, consultation and funding.

A survey of N ≈ 352 Vietnamese social entrepreneurs explored relationships between individual entrepreneurial orientation (EO), social identity, self-construal and personality, with elements of ecosystem partnerships (access to training, networking, consultation and funding) and social impacts over the previous three years (growth/jobs created and people helped, termed efficiency and generosity, respectively).

Ecosystem partnerships factored into frequency and quality of partnerships. Frequency predicted social enterprise efficiency (p < 0.05) and quality predicted generosity (p < 0.01). Frequency of partnerships further moderated (boosted) significant links between EO (risk innovation, p < 0.05) and efficiency; and between social identity (communitarianism, p < 0.01) to efficiency; plus, quality of partnerships moderated a link between EO (risk innovation) and efficiency (p < 0.05).

Ecosystem partnerships may foster social enterprise development through at least two pathways (equifinality), i.e. frequency and quality. The former is linked to efficiency and the latter to generosity, signaling interrelates but distinguishable outcomes. Direct links between EO and communitarian social identity leading to social enterprise development were additionally boosted (p < 0.05) by the frequency and quality of partnerships. Thus, ecosystem partnerships brought about both direct and indirect benefits to social enterprises in Vietnam.

Social impacts of efficiency and generosity support both decent work (SDG-8) and poverty eradication (SDG-1), through ecosystem partnerships in development (SDG-17).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to show that social enterprises in Vietnam may enhance social impacts through a combination of effects from social entrepreneurs and ecosystem partnerships. Current models of social enterprises in low-income countries like Vietnam can be expanded to include ecosystem partnerships and social outcomes relating to SDGs 1 and 8, and especially the multiple path benefits that ecosystem partnerships (under SDG-17) bring to social enterprise development.

The guest editorial seeks to introduce the papers in this special issue, which focus on the contribution which industrial and organizational psychology can make towards poverty reduction. It also aims to suggest future research directions.

The paper begins by offering a broad conceptualization of how industrial and organizational psychology can frame an approach towards poverty reduction. The second part gives a brief outline of each paper in the special issue.

This special issue brings together studies which generally focus on aspects of the aid worker experience, addressing adjustment issues for international aid workers, relationships between workers, and the value of self‐organizing and social support.

Factors, which could hinder aid workers from achieving their goals, are a common theme across the papers. Variables, which need to be considered, scales, which could be adopted for measuring key issues, and policy issues, which aid organizations need to consider, are discussed.

The paper highlights how industrial and organizational psychology can contribute to poverty reduction.

In Australia, market‐oriented studies involving overseas students have not kept pace with the regional economic development that has freed prospective students from relying on aid money and contributed towards the commercialisation of international education. A sample of 336 Asian and Pacific Island students from a range of faculties at the University of Wollongong reported their perceptions of prejudice in the local and university communities, their attitudes towards the quality of service provided by the university, and their intentions to recommend Australia on returning home. Compared to aid‐funded students (N = 57), the self‐financing majority were more likely to discern prejudice and inferior service, but ratings on these two factors, for both groups, sharply differentiated those who later intended to recommend Australia from those who did not. Today’s business ethos suggests that techniques from managerial psychology could be applied to improve the quality of delivery of our higher educational services, thereby preventing further erosion of international social capital.

Despite a growing body of findings that individualistic achievers incur punitive social costs in the workplaces of collectivistic and equalitarian cultures, little attention has so far been paid to measuring such motivational gravity in psychometrically appropriate ways. From egalitarian Australia, reports psychometric data from two organizational surveys, evaluating the 20‐item “Tall Poppy Scale” (TPS), a Likert instrument which measures attitudes towards high achievers in society, and the twin‐item “Motivational Gravity Scenario Scale” (MGSS), which focuses instead on behavioural intentions towards high achievers in one’s own workplace. In Study I, involving 80 employees of a retail chain, scores on the TPS were significantly and positively associated with social desirability effects on the Marlowe‐Crowne Scale, whereas the MGSS remained free of such confounding. In Study II, 47 employees of a major service organization rated the MGSS as significantly more satisfactory than did 49 university undergraduates, who preferred the TPS. Workplace scenarios may be more appropriate than the conventional Likert TPS for describing organizational cultures, but recommends the development of multiple‐item instruments for assessing individual differences in motivational gravity.

International development policy proposes that reducing poverty depends on alignment of international aid projects with local priorities, which would imply a role for local as well as expatriate job experts in job selection processes. This paper aims to explore whether person‐job “fit” with both local and expatriate job specification relates to work performance indicators.

Mission organizations and their individual workers play an influential role in poverty reduction projects. In Study I, N=70 host nation missionaries, i.e. local job experts (n=22), expatriate mission leaders (n=25) and expatriate mission workers (n=23) provided mean panel ratings of the importance of SHL's Universal Competencies, alongside religious values, for mission jobs. In Study II, N=130 individual expatriate mission workers also provided ratings of the same set of competencies for mission jobs and rated themselves on these competencies. Each individual worker's profile was assessed for “fit” with competencies identified by the panels in Study I. Individuals were also measured on the criteria of job satisfaction, work engagement and satisfaction with life.

From Study I, we learned that local and expatriate ratings differed significantly, indicating different job criteria, as policy suggests. In Study II, degree of fit with local and expatriate priorities each predicted significant amounts of variance in job satisfaction, engagement and life satisfaction. Hence at an everyday behavioural level, alignment with local job experts' perspectives on required competencies played a role in aid worker motivation.

Whilst recognising the limits of self‐report, this paper applies fit theory to poverty reduction projects. Discussed are the findings' relevance for psychological theory, methods and interventions in poverty reduction work.

The paper seeks to determine whether different aspects of migrant pre‐migration characteristics (human capital and motivation to migrate) and post‐migration behaviour (social integration and career self‐management) predict migrants' post‐migration career success.

The research employed a survey questionnaire applied to a sample of 210 migrants who had migrated from Sri Lanka to New Zealand. Twenty‐three independent and three dependent (career success – objective and subjective) variables were measured. Sequential multiple regression analysis was applied, mirroring the time‐sequenced theory of career development.

Overall, migrants' occupational status had declined markedly following migration. Variables representing human capital, social integration and career self‐management perspectives all contributed substantially to explaining variances in career success, especially objective career success, but motivation to migrate did not. Human capital variables were especially influential in determining pre‐migration success, acculturation in the host country and education in the host country in post‐migration success. Effects of career self‐management behaviours on success were relatively small.

A limitation is the cross‐sectional design, and possible non‐generalisability beyond a single migrant group and host country.

The paper discusses implications for migrants, policy makers and future research.

Migration, and interest in research on migrants' careers, is growing. This paper applies a wide range of predictor variables and a logical causal model to predicting migrant career success, indicates significant effects, and points to positive actions that may be taken by government, organisations and migrants.

Although substantial evidence is now accumulating that some African peoples readily accept advice and help about health from both modern medical and traditional sources, this has not yet happened with – what is arguably the major health problem in many parts of Africa – AIDS. We asked 175 of Malawi′s undergraduates what sources they judged to be credible with regard to information on preventing and clinically managing AIDS. While traditional healers were seen on average to be less credible than modern health professionals (doctors and nurses), there was no correspondence between credibility of traditional healers and modern health professionals. Thus a strong belief in the credibility of modern health professionals was not associated with low credibility ratings for traditional healers. Our findings provide further support for “tropical tolerance”, especially as regards a pluralistic (modern and traditional together) approach to the prevention of AIDS. Given the over‐stretched health services in Malawi and many other African countries, a pluralistic approach to AIDS prevention could be a credible and economic use of indigenous human resources.

States that there has been a trend for publications in the Asia‐Pacific region to move to a combined print and electronic medium, in an effort to achieve the goals of social equity and increased exposure to the worldwide community through the World Wide Web (WWW). Reviews some of the mechanisms by which this transition can be evaluated with respect to these two goals, both economically, but more importantly, in terms of user‐behaviour recorded WWW server access logs. The auditing of these logs facilitates new forms of market research which are impossible to conduct on traditional paper publications, as objective, quantitative information about usage patterns can be measured directly from key variables such as country of origin, most popular content pages, and typical access errors. It is argued that these audits can be used effectively for future planning, developing popular content areas, and creating publicity policy for electronic publications. The transition to a joint paper and electronic format for the South Pacific Journal of Psychology is presented in a three‐month case study, with important issues, such as the importance of indigenous contributions, being resolved using statistics computed from the server access logs.