Organizational Supporting by Human Empowerment

A discussion about a review on Human Resources System (HRS) in workplace has received relatively little attention from organizational behavior researchers. The first of the themes to be addressed concerns the relationship between emotion and rationality. There has been a longstanding bifurcation between the two with emotions labeled in pejorative terms and devalued in matters concerning the workplace. The form and structure of an organization's human resources system can affect employee motivation levels in several ways. Organizations can adopt various Human Empowerment (HE) practices to enhance employee satisfaction. Recognizing the importance of human empowerment in achieving flexibility in an international context expands the types of research questions related to the role of human empowerment functions in organizational performance, such as selection of human resources, training, and compensation and performance appraisal. This paper considers the value of workers as an important intangible asset of an organization. The strategic importance of workers is discussed and their interaction, as an asset, with other important organization assets. The basic methodologies for valuing workers are then explained and their limitations are considered. A significant finding from this study and own experience is that many issues remain unrecognized for far too long after they are first identified. Valuing intangible assets, in particular workers-related intangibles, is clearly not a straightforward exercise. These values are not as robust as we would hope, it is certainly better to attempt to attribute value to intangible assets than classifying everything as goodwill. Keywords: human empowerment, organizational performance, managemen

Ethical Sensemaking in Childcare Practice:Applying care ethics and practice theory to early years provision in the UK

The UK early years sector is facing an ongoing ethical challenge of balancing quality with affordability and accessibility, with a workforce that is underqualified, undervalued and underpaid. The purpose of my research is to identify the factors which facilitate or deter ethical practice, from macro to micro levels. The feminist ethics of care perspective provides insights into the historic underappreciation of the practice of childcare, and the valorisation of education over care, and I combine this with practice theory to examine the phenomenological experience of providing childcare, providing insights into the nature of ethical childcare practice.Using data from interviews of a purposive sample of leaders and practitioners from early years organisations across England, and supplemented with field notes and diary entries, I examine the facilitating factors, or barriers, for embedding ethical practice in early years settings. Key findings of the research are, firstly, that ethical childcare practice is inhibited by the current underfunding and marketisation of the sector, and that organisational purpose affects the inclusivity of childcare provision. An ethics of care evaluative framework exposes the unintended consequences of political or business decisions. Secondly, using practice theory, I evaluate the agency of individuals, highlight the importance of routine dynamics and sociomateriality and demonstrate the embodied nature of childcare practice. Thirdly, by combining the ethics of care and practice theory I develop the concept of ethical sensemaking to create a model of embodied ethical sensemaking, demonstrating how ethical sensegiving can be used by leaders and practitioners to raise awareness of ethical issues in childcare settings, and how these can then be embedded in embodied ethical practice.My argument is that an ethics of care perspective is needed throughout the early years sector, from government and organisational policies through to care routines and practices within early years settings. Ethical sensemaking and sensegiving can provide a way to evaluate and instil high quality care in daily routines and practices, and embodied ethical sensemaking can help to embed ethical childcare practice in early years settings. <br/

Transforming Habit: Revolution, Routine and Social Change

Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context – while side-stepping the challenge of how to evaluate progress itself in the current socio-political and economic landscape. Drawing on the work of Eve Sedgwick, John Dewey, Felix Ravaisson and others, this article asks whether critical work on habit can provide different, and potentially generative, analytical tools for understanding the contemporary ethical and material complexities of social transformation. I suggest that it habit’s double nature – its enabling of both compulsive repetition and creative becoming – that makes it a rich concept for addressing the propensity of harmful socio-political patterns to persist in the face of efforts to generate greater awareness of their damaging effects, as well as the material forms of automation and coordination on which meaningful societal transformation may depend. I also explore how bringing affect and habit together might productively refigure our understandings of ‘the present’ and ‘social progress’, as well as the available modes of sensing, instigating and responding to change. In turning to habit, then, the primary aim of this article is to examine how social and cultural theory might critically re-approach social change and progressive politics today

Learning Psychotherapy: Highly Charged Becoming Through the Other

The purpose of this study was to identify and investigate the domains and processes that novice supervisees identified as being important for learning psychotherapy during their first psychotherapy practicum. The study also sought to examine how these domains developed over the course of the practicum. A series of 4 in-depth interviews were conducted with 5 volunteer novice psychotherapy supervisees while undertaking their first psychotherapy practicum. The interviews alternated between a) open-ended Narrative Interviews, and b) open-ended Interpersonal Process Recall Interviews based on audiotaped recordings of a recent psychotherapy session. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the grounded theory method. The emerging hierarchical and process category structure derived from the analysis represented the understanding that was derived from the analysis. The core category was interpreted as Highly charged becoming through the other. This category represented how supervisees meaning networks and the modes of processing that they engaged in were grounded in, and emerged through reciprocal interactions with the client and supervisor. The second level categories, Original Paradigm, Relationally-based Experiential Learning and Original Paradigm Revised, depicted the steps involved in the learning process. Supervisees entered the practicum with an idiosyncratic and pre-established Original Paradigm or world view that included a theory of practice. Ongoing and reciprocal interactions with the supervisor and client, through Exposure, Exercising Agency, Reflexivity and Relationship, shaped its evolution. Explicit features of the Original Paradigm were clarified while implicit aspects emerged. Through interactions with the supervisor and client, the Original Paradigm was bolstered and refined. It was also expanded. Supervisees acquired a growing appreciation of the clients agency, developed an understanding of psychotherapy as a unique form of discourse, and worked at integrating the personal and professional self. The implications of viewing learning psychotherapy as a form of experiential learning dependent on interpersonal interactions with the supervisor and client are outlined, in addition to directions for future research in this area

Women in STEM in Higher Education

This open access book addresses challenges related to women in STEM in higher education, presenting research, experiences, studies, and good practices associated with the engagement, access, and retention of women in the STEM disciplines. It also discusses strategies implemented by universities and policymakers to reduce the existing gender gap in these areas. The chapters provide an overview of implementations in different regions of the world and provide numerous examples that can be transferred to other higher education institutions

Affective Habits: Sensation, Duration, Automation

This chapter begins with a critical hypothesis: in order to better understand the logics, challenges and potentialities of social change at the current conjuncture, we might need to attend more carefully to the relationship between affect and habit. That is, in the midst of the turn to affect, renewed interest in habit, the rise of various ‘new’ materialisms and ecological approaches and the growing salience of algorithmic life, both apprehending and pursuing socio-political transformation may require closer engagement with the emergent links among sensation, duration, repetition, iteration, automation and atmosphere