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The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of reflection as a tool of enquiry within the context of higher education work-based learning. The aim of the study is to investigate how reflection on professional practice brings about a review of the values underpinning that practice.

The data were collected from a group of undergraduate students undertaking their studies by work-based learning in the area of management in a Scottish University. An open-ended questionnaire was designed to learn about the participants’ views on their perceived freedom to reflect on their workplace practice in the university, their ability to challenge the organizational values and established practices in the workplace, and on their relationship with the workplace mentor.

Students on work-based learning programmes are subjected to demands from at least three directions: first, their own expectations, in terms of both what they want to achieve by way of their own development, second, the needs of their organization; and third, expectations of the university in ensuring that the work produced meets the standard for an academic award. These interests can sometimes coincide, but they can also conflict, and such a conflict can reveal tensions that run deeper into the culture of the organization.

This study is based on a relatively small sample of learners in one university, hence the findings are of preliminary nature. Despite the small sample size, the conclusions are indicative of a potential problem in the design of work-based learning, and a larger cross-institutional study would allow the validity of these results to be verified.

The findings emerging from this study have implications for the facilitators of work-based learning in higher education. Although university work-based learning programmes differ significantly from corporate learning and development efforts, this paper suggests that work-based learning providers should co-operate more closely with the learners’ employing organizations towards creating an environment for learning at work. More co-operation between the university and the employer might be more beneficial for all stakeholders.

The literature on work-based learning focuses in the main on the use of reflection as a tool of enquiry into workplace practice. Drawing on the study of contemporary work organizations, this paper explores the tensions arising from reflection on the learners’ practice, and possible conflict of values that reflection exposes.

This chapter provides comparative insights into the context of equality and diversity in the United States and the United Kingdom. It argues that there is a real danger that progressive initiatives in combatting racism in both countries may have stalled and indeed may be slipping backwards. The chapter focuses on one sector, the healthcare sector, where service delivery is local but where in both countries there is huge reliance on an international workforce through migration. Despite huge differences in the US and UK healthcare systems, it is found that the pattern of migration with respect to both highly qualified professional workers (e.g. physicians) and middle and lower ranked workers is similar. The resilience of racial disadvantage is exposed in the context of a range diversity management initiatives.

This paper aims to advance theoretical understanding of the concept of “critical human resource development”.

This is a conceptual paper.

Foregrounding questions of power, emotions and political dynamics within the analysis of organisational learning and development activity, critical approaches in HRD pay particular attention to the importance of context, interests and patterns of inter‐relationships amongst organisation stakeholders. It is notable that much of the work in this area operates on a theoretical plane, and is often light on practical guidance or recognition of the distinctive contexts of HRD practice, compared to other areas of critical learning.

Empirical investigations that have systematically applied critical approaches to HRD are in short supply, and their potential to enrich HRD practice has rarely been explored. This paper contributes to addressing these gaps.

Firstly, it elucidates the concept of critical HRD through illuminating the diversity of theoretical perspectives; secondly, it demonstrate some of the intricacies and discrepancies within current theorising on critical HRD; thirdly, it raises questions for the practical significance of tools and insights informed by critical HRD.

The aim of the paper is to investigate social sustainability by focussing on the stakeholder theory and by presenting specific levers and capabilities for building more socially sustainable organizations.

The paper is based on the analysis of recent academic and managerial literature. Through comparing theoretical and methodological perspectives from multiple authors, a specific theoretical and methodological viewpoint based on the stakeholder theory is proposed.

The paper discusses the idea that building socially sustainable organisations requires the management of multi-stakeholder processes that are physiologically conflicting and that often create paradoxical tensions. Participative settings of action and reflection and capabilities as reflexivity and “paradoxical thinking” are proposed as key levers for dealing with multi-stakeholders processes towards a more socially sustainable organizing.

This paper raises reflections focussed on the “social pillar” of sustainability and does not consider different types of organizations in different multi-stakeholders processes. Such a perspective does not exhaust the variety of cases and research studies that could be considered in the field and further developed.

The value of the paper is in its construction of a framework for both research and practical purposes in the domain of management and sustainability. The work also attempts to link the concepts of reflexivity and paradox to a methodological proposal for leading the organizational journey towards social sustainability.

In the previous chapter, I introduced trauma-informed care as an approach to organisational change and a shift in culture to recognise that many employees and people attending services have past trauma experiences. In this chapter, I recast servant leadership (SL) as a trauma-informed leadership model that naturally operationalises some of the principles discussed in the TIA literature. The first section of this chapter addresses the societal need for a more ethical and moral leadership approach, before briefly outlining the prevalence of trauma experienced by service users and employees. The next section provides an overview and definition of SL in a general sense, before articulating a trauma-informed model of SL and its characteristics. Finally, some of the outcomes associated with SL are discussed with a key focus on how this approach operationalises the principle of psychological safety, trust and empowerment found in trauma-informed approaches, as they relate to employees.

Published studies of the relationships between personality, affect, and organizational change have been overwhelmingly quantitative, while clinical and psychodynamic approaches have seldom dealt with the context of organizational change. We used semistructured interviews to explore the “middle ground”, by researching how participants in change believed aspects of their personalities contributed to their responses, particularly on an affective level. We found that traits such as openness to experience, resilience, pragmatism, change self-efficacy, and locus of control influenced participants' perceptions of how they reacted to organizational change. The findings point to the important role that qualitative research into personality can play in improving understanding of emotional responses to organizational change.

An ongoing debate in social exchange theory centers on the benefits and drawbacks of reciprocal versus negotiated exchange for dyadic relationships. Lawler's affect theory of social exchange argues that the interdependent nature of negotiated exchange enhances commitment to exchange relations, whereas Molm's reciprocity theory suggests that reciprocal exchange fosters more integrative bonds than the bilateral agreements of negotiation. In this chapter, we use data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with poor and working-class couples to explore the effects of both types of exchange on relationship satisfaction. Consistent with reciprocity theory, we find that couples who engage in reciprocal exchange are happier and more satisfied with their relationship than those who explicitly negotiate the division of labor in their households and that the expressive value of these exchanges play an important role in this outcome. However, reciprocity is not enough. As predicted by the affect theory, the couples with the best outcomes also perceive supporting a family as a highly interdependent task, regardless of their family structure. Our results point to the complementary nature of these two theories in a natural social setting.

The purpose of this paper is to expand understanding of how leaders can use their power to reshape macro-level structures to foster individuals' freedoms and build more democratic workplaces. The importance of freedom in work and life can hardly be argued with, yet current democracy scores are the lowest that have ever been recorded (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2019).

The authors analyzed two cases of successful democratization, Spain and Lithuania, where they conducted a total of 65 semi-structured interviews with different actors including the top leaders themselves. A combined inductive-deductive analysis of the in-depth qualitative data highlighted how using different dimensions of power (French and Raven, 1959) related to distributing power to others.

These findings extend understanding of how leaders can use their power to effectively distribute power to others and reach a democracy that fosters freedom. Information and referent power were crucial for aligning the different stakeholder groups, expert power emerged as key for building and empowering a network of support and legitimate power was essential for fostering peaceful and long-lasting changes toward democracy.

While previous research has recognized the importance of leadership and politics for instigating macro-level changes, this study specifies how leaders can utilize their different sources of power to bring greater power and freedom to individuals by unpacking the unique impacts of each type of power. This study thus provides practical insights for leaders seeking to establish more democratic workplaces.

Psychological contract breach, which represents instances when organizations fail to fulfil their side of the employment bargain, has been associated with salient concepts in strategic human resources management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate moderated mediated relationships involving breach, organizational (procedural and interactional) justice and emotional well-being.

The study draws upon quantitative data collected by means of a questionnaire that was administered to 620 full-time technical and shop-floor employees in an automobile-parts company in Malta. The questionnaire included psychometrically validated scales on breach, justice and well-being.

Breach partially mediated the relationship between justice and well-being while justice levels did not differentiate this mediating effect except for interactional justice. Finally, the interaction between procedural and interactional justice failed to explain the mediating role of breach over and above their single contributions although interactional justice seemed to make a bigger impact.

This study contributes towards a better understanding of the relationships between breach, justice and well-being. The major limitation is that because of its cross-sectional nature, causality cannot be inferred.

Given that managing the employment relationship impacts on how people feel and hence perform, understanding how breach, justice and well-being are related, is strategically important to human resources management.

To the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous research that links breach, justice and well-being in one study.

The institutional work literature has paid little attention to cognition and interests in the creation, maintenance, and disruption of institutions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the construct of interests as it relates to institutional work projects. The authors frame interests as recognitions situated within broader institutional meaning systems, with a specific focus on interest plurality.

The authors conducted an 18-month ethnography exploring institutional work projects within a rural chamber of commerce. The authors aimed to understand how projects contributed to community survival on a micro-level and institutional change on a macro-level. Rural chambers of commerce represent a unique example of emergent public-private partnerships, challenging traditional commercial logics of chambers of commerce. The research design included qualitative data collection, coding, and analysis of field notes, interviews, and archival sources.

Purposive action was grounded in the community inhabited by the rural chamber of commerce and not the institution itself. Recognized interests enabled nontraditional workers – public employees with newly founded and legitimate roles within the chamber – to pursue community-focussed projects. Change across the institution of chambers of commerce occurred because of the separated and aggregate projects spanning across rural communities.

Recognized interests are a social, plural, and malleable phenomenon supporting situated agency and the co-creation activities embodied in institutional work projects. The authors contribute to the institutional work literature by introducing the idea of interest plurality and illustrating how the work of rural chambers of commerce captures contemporary forms of community organizing.