Employability and Job Status as Moderators of the Effects of Job Insecurity on Work Outcomes

Despite greater use of temporary employment contracts, little is known about how employees react to job length uncertainty. Individual careers within the safety of one or two primary organisations are no longer the norm. This study investigates the effects of job insecurity and employment status (temporary/permanent) on work outcomes. Three hundred and ninety-one employees (122 temporary and 269 permanent) in low to medium level non-academic positions from two Australian universities completed a survey. The results show that a belief that comparable employment is easily available did not alleviate the negative effects of job insecurity. Work attitudes for temporaries and permanents though were differentially influenced by employee perceptions of their own employability

Connecting physical and social dimensions of place attachment: what can we learn from attachment to urban recreational spaces?

This paper is concerned with the ways in which people form attachments to recreational spaces. More specifically it examines the relationship between recreational spaces associated with sporting activity in urban neighbourhoods and place attachment. The focus is on the ways in which changes to these spaces exposes the affective bonds between people and their surroundings. The paper applies a qualitative methodology, namely focus groups and photo elicitation, to the case study of Parkhead, a neighbourhood in the East End of Glasgow. Parkhead has historically been subjected to successive waves of redevelopment as a result of deindustrialization in the late twentieth century. More recently redevelopment associated with the 2014 Commonwealth Games involved further changes to neighbourhood recreational spaces, including refurbishing of existing sports facilities and building new ones.This paper reflects on the cumulative impacts of this redevelopment to conclude (a) that recreational sports spaces provoke multi-layered and complex attachments that are inextricably connected to both temporal and spatial narratives and (b) that research on neighbourhood recreational spaces can develop our understanding of the intricate relationship between the social and physical dimensions of place attachment

There is a link between work life balance culture and strategic competitive advantage

This paper suggests a linkage between work-life balance culture and competitive advantage through commitment and firm-specific human resources. The paper argues that a workplace culture supportive of employees balancing their work and non-work lives leads to their commitment to their organisation being higher. Higher commitment leads to a greater willingness to invest in the development of firm specific resources – such as developing certain intra-organisational competencies or idiosyncratic technical competencies. This greater level of firm specific resources then enables the firm to have a stronger competitive advantage. The paper argues theoretically for these relationships, reviewing the relevant empirical and theoretical literature and concludes with suggestions for practice and future research

Toolbox Talks: Insights for Improvement

Tool box talks (TBTs) have the potential to improve communication, empower workers, reduce injuries and improve safety; however, they can also be “missed opportunities” for providing important safety messages in construction. The goal of this paper is to share the results from two research projects designed to improve the frequency, delivery, participation, and outcomes of TBTs. The results of these projects provide suggestions for planning and delivering TBTs in construction. METHODS: In the first project, 86 residential carpentry foremen from 8 different residential contractors in the St. Louis region participated in training for delivering TBTs as part of an 8-hour fall prevention and safety communication intervention. We compared baseline measures of safety behavior and fall prevention knowledge items to follow-up between participating foremen and their crewmembers. Concurrently, surveys of 300 apprentice carpenters were collected to describe the frequency and delivery methods of TBT and to serve as a comparison group for the TBT intervention. In the second project, we evaluated the utility of ergonomics TBTs delivered by a safety representative to 36 carpenters and laborers. Workers rated their perceptions of topic relevance, delivery method, similarities to traditional TBTs, and intent to change behaviors. The safety representative provided feedback regarding the TBTs and reported their observations of improved worker use of ergonomics in work tasks post-training. DISCUSSION / CONCLUSIONS: Both interventions described in this paper improved workplace safety. The interventions demonstrate how to simply shift from non-collaborative TBTs to participatory, context-driven TBTs by using a pre-printed TBT template, modified to address the hazards present at the worksite. Delivery suggestions relate the information to the workers, and include workers in the identification of problems and safety-related solutions. These participatory methods for preparing and delivering TBTs have the potential to improve construction workplace safety practices

When the Balance Isn't Easy: A Case Study Exploring the Complications with Work-Life Balance Initiatives in the Australian Construction Industry

Studies of work and life balance often concentrate on the ways in which employees may require and use flexible work practices to cope with the demands of their other ‘non-work’ activities and responsibilities. This paper adds to our knowledge in this arena through presenting a case study of work-life balance. This case study focuses on managerial and employee issues in implementing organisational work life balance initiatives within the construction industry in Australia. For this case study, the workplace was an ‘alliance’ project, of four collaborating companies undertaking a large infrastructure project. The project management group determined that work-life balance was an important issue within the industry and consequently implemented a five-day instead of the industry standard six-day working week as a balance initiative for the workforce. A range of factors contributed to this five-day week initiative reverting to the original work schedule of a six-day working week. This paper explores these issues and analyses the competing priorities and demands of management in endeavouring to develop alternate strategies to maintain a positive work and life balance for employees. The analysis of this case suggests that management and employees were dedicated to improving work-life balance; however, a range of externalities resulted in not all initiatives being successful. Nevertheless, within the constrained choices, the management group instigated alternate initiatives

Technical Provocations: Material Inventions, Structural Assemblies, and Environmental Responses as Precursors and Design Prompts

The purpose of the study is to develop a studio course that is a precursor to the integrative studio in the University of Florida Master of Architecture curriculum. The studio course introduces each building technology discipline as design concept generators and the course intends to prepare students not to think of building technologies in only practical terms but to integrate a conceptual thinking regarding building technologies in their design work. Our primary goal is for the students to discover poetic approaches for working with building technologies before they need to integrate all disciplines simultaneously in their design work. The studio tests three projects in a 16-week semester: one project generated from materials and construction methods, a second rooted in structural principles at multiple scales, and the third centered on environmental strategies for extreme climates. In the first project, the students were challenged with the connecting their speculative proposals with built reality. In the third project, they had to address places and conditions that are beyond their own experience. In all three projects, we found that the majority of students struggled with the application of building technology principles in their design process. There was a disconnect between practicalities and conceptual thinking. In our analysis, this indicates that building technologies may not be most effective when they are separate studies isolated from studio design

Dimensional Changes of Upper Airway after Rapid Maxillary Expansion: A Prospective Cone-beam Computed Tomography Study

Introduction: The aim of this prospective study was to use cone-beam computed tomography to assess the dimensional changes of the upper airway in orthodontic patients with maxillary constriction treated by rapid maxillary expansion. Methods: Fourteen orthodontic patients (mean age, 12.9 years; range, 9.7-16 years) were recruited. The patients with posterior crossbite and constricted maxilla were treated with rapid maxillary expansion as the initial part of their comprehensive orthodontic treatments. Before and after rapid maxillary expansion conebeam computed tomography scans were taken to measure the retropalatal and retroglossal airway changes in terms of volume, and sagittal and cross-sectional areas. The transverse expansions by rapid maxillary expansion were assessed between the midlingual alveolar bone plates at the maxillary first molar and first premolar levels. The measurements of the before and after rapid maxillary expansion scans were compared by using paired t tests with the Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons. Results: After rapid maxillary expansion, significant and equal amounts of 4.8 mm of expansion were observed at the first molar (P 5 0.0000) and the first premolar (P 5 0.0000) levels. The width increase at the first premolar level (20.0%) was significantly greater than that at the first molar level (15.0%) (P 5 0.035). As the primary outcome variable, the cross-sectional airway measured from the posterior nasal spine to basion level was the only parameter showing a significant increase of 99.4 mm2 (59.6%) after rapid maxillary expansion (P 5 0.0004). Conclusions: These results confirm the findings of previous studies of the effect of rapid maxillary expansion on the maxilla. Additionally, we found that only the cross-sectional area of the upper airway at the posterior nasal spine to basion level significantly gains a moderate increase after rapid maxillary expansion

Justice Journeys: Informing Policy and Practice Through Lived Experience of Victim-Survivors of Rape and Serious Sexual Assault

No abstract available

In and of an urban time: (re)imagining the (im)possible limits of time, knowledge and the city

In the broadest sense this work is concerned with processes of cultural construction in the contemporary city, and their connections to the framing, recording and concrete manifestation of society and its ills. Acknowledging the academy to be a productive site in this regard this thesis takes a somewhat meta-theoretical approach, engaging with dominant analyses of urban problems and the methodological approaches they entail. My specific focus is on understandings of time and modes of temporality – crucial factors in the organisation of urban society but which appear largely naturalised in both everyday life and the academy. Attempting to uncover some of the ways in which the socially constructed nature of time has become invisible in these contexts, my aim in this work is to recast time and temporality as critical factors in the formation of urban culture and the organisation of urban society, which warrant detailed future study. Beyond that, this work seeks to establish this case as an impetus for the examination of other absences in urban knowledge production, and a renewed urban imagination. To this end I have designed a methodological approach of autoethnographic rhizoanalysis. I have rhizomatically analysed the urban studies canon for the (non)presence of time and temporality within its dominant texts, practices, performances and methods; and I have performed everyday and experimental autoethnography, as I have continued to make sense of time and temporality as a member of both the contemporary culture that experiences time as naturalised, and the academic culture which seeks to construct knowledge of the city. Along the way this work has also engaged with the craft of academic work, as I have worked to uncover some of the everyday assumptions and practices which may serve to maintain and strengthen hegemonic ideas of the nature of time, temporality and truth. As a counter to the ways in which existing approaches may limit rather than expand urban imaginations I have made a hand-embroidered, patchwork quilt to accompany this written thesis. This object allows for an alternative way of experiencing and performing this work as it relates to processes of knowledge production and cultural construction, of and in the contemporary city