Determinants of mental health in the workplace

Mental health is the mainstream of public policy have demonstrated, mental health policy is no longer limited to a segregated enclave under the direction of a specialized bureaucracy. It has moved to the mainstream across a wide range of public policy dimensions

Exploring customers’ zone of tolerance for B2B professional service quality

Purpose – This paper aims to extend the current research on zone of tolerance (ZOT) and its antecedents, to the context of business-to-business (B2B) professional services from both client and service firms’ perspectives, with a modified ZOT framework including five client and service firms attributes as antecedents of desired (DSL) and adequate (ASL) service levels. Prior research on zone of tolerance (ZOT) and its antecedents mostly focuses on business-to-consumer services and customers’ perspective. The authors address these gaps with a modified ZOT framework with five attributes of client and service firms as antecedents of customer expectations, namely, desired service level (DSL) and adequate service level (ASL), for business-to-business (B2B) professional services. Design/methodology/approach – A combination of qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (online survey) research methods with managers of professional audit firms and their clients, using a reduced AUDITQUAL instrument with 39 items and seven dimensions. Findings – Professional firm size and fee premium have a positive effect on DSL; service tenure positively influences both DSL and ASL; client firm size has a negative effect on DSL; both client and service firm sizes positively moderate each other’s influence on the DSL; and DSL positively influences ASL. Research limitations/implications – The authors study a single B2B professional service (audit) in a single city (Hong Kong) from a single perspective (customers) that may limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research should validate the findings for other B2B professional services in diverse locations and also include service providers’ expectations and perceptions. Practical implications – Managers in professional service firms should understand the factors influencing different levels of expectations for their customers and develop suitable strategies (e.g. customer education and employee training) to manage these expectations more effectively. Originality/value – The authors extend current research on customer expectations and ZOT by identifying five unique attributes of professional service and client firms and testing their roles as antecedents of adequate and DSLs using AUDITQUAL instrument. © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Bosses deserve to be happy at work too: Here’s how

We intuitively know that a “happy worker is a good worker.” But what about their bosses? In the modern workplace, managers are accountable to several groups of people, from rank-and-file employees on one side, to chief executives and shareholders on the other. How well they juggle these conflicting pressures can determine not only their performance at work, but also how happy they are while doing it

A theoretical framework for the interactive effects of key influencers on mental health in the workplace

Declining mental health in the workplace presents organizational decision-makers with serious challenges because it detracts employees from job performance and damages organisational effectiveness. From an economic perspective, the direct and indirect costs of diminished employee mental health are huge and predicted to rise for decades. Prior research indicated that the interactive effects between policy and organizational actions have a positive impact on mental health in the workplace as well as for society as a whole. Affirmative (proactive) action can improve the mental well-being of employees and positive psychology moderates the relationship between the incidence of mental health in society and the workplace. An effective solution to this growing problem requires policymakers and organizational decision-makers to collaborate. This paper identifies a range of current and emerging issues related to mental health in the workplace and presents a theoretical framework to provide a suitable platform for future empirical research in this area

“Happy-performing managers” thesis: Testing the mediating role of job-related affective outcomes on the impact of role stressors on contextual performance

The purpose of this paper is to extend the “Happy-Performing Managers” thesis to show that managers’ job-related affective well-being and affective job satisfaction mediate the impact of their role stressors (ambiguity, conflict and overload) on their contextual job performance

Extending the ‘Happy Performing Managers’ Thesis’: Key drivers and mediators of managers’ contextual performance

Organizational and behavioural scholars have a long fascination with the ‘happy–productive worker thesis.’ Despite mixed empirical evidence, there is general support for the idea in both academic and applied literatures. A refined and extended version of this debate, namely the ‘happy– performing managers’ thesis’, tests the impact of job-related affective antecedents (affective wellbeing and affective job satisfaction) and role stressors (ambiguity, conflict, overload) on the contextual performance (volunteering, following, persisting, helping, endorsing) on Australian managers. The measurement and structural models indicate support for the relationship between these variables. Job-related affective wellbeing and affective job satisfaction fully mediate the impact of role overload on contextual performance. These findings have the potential to enhance managerial performance in organizations, particularly those experiencing rapid economic growth and transformation. An important aspect of human behaviour is investigated that informs the broader debate on what determines job performance

The impact of engagement in front‐line service roles on the subjective wellbeing of Indigenous employees

Indigenous (Aboriginal) populations in advanced economies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are severely disadvantaged in comparison to wider society across most socioeconomic, health and wellbeing indicators (Manning, Ambrey and Fleming, 2016). For example, in Australia when compared to the community at large, Aboriginal members of the Australian society are still overrepresented in key social areas such as infant mortality rates, poor school attendance, literacy and numeracy levels, and labor force participation (Commonwealth of Australia, 2017). Moreover, according to ‘Australia’s Health 2016’, a recent report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2016), there are large gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on many health and well-being measures, after adjusting for differences in age structure. However, effective solutions to this ongoing policy concern is further complicated in Australia because of the long history of endemic racism towards the Indigenous community

Can transformational leadership tackle the ‘Perfect Storm’ of growing employee diversity, environmental uncertainty and organizational change?

Organisations worldwide are faced with growing a) cultural and demographic employee diversity resulting from decades of inbound immigration and affirmative policies, b) environmental uncertainty due to recent global financial crisis and economic slowdown, and c) shortage of managerial knowledge and skills to manage the rapid pace of organisational change. We call the confluence of these critical issues a ‘Perfect Storm’ that poses a unique managerial challenge. In this research, we develop a conceptual model with the ingredients of this perfect storm and develop specific hypotheses about their inter-relationships. We propose to test these hypotheses with the publicly available data from Australian Public Service Commission’s (APSC) State of the Service Census data by mapping the variables in our model to the measures included in the APS State of the Service Census questionnaire, as briefly described in this paper

Interactive impact of ethnic distance and cultural familiarity on the perceived effects of free trade agreements

Past research on free trade agreements (FTAs) mostly uses an economic perspective to assess their impact on the level of trade and investments between nations. As a result, there is a distinct paucity of research on the perceptions of employees and managers in organizations affected by FTAs, towards the likely outcomes of those FTAs. We address this gap by using the context of recently signed China-Australia free trade agreement (ChAFTA) to develop a multidimensional scale for the perceived advantages and disadvantages of FTAs. Drawing on social identity theory and the similarly-attraction paradigm we also show direct and interactive effects of perceived ethnic distance (between home and partner country) and cultural familiarity (with the FTA partner country) on these perceived outcomes of FTAs. Our findings highlight the need to look beyond the economic perspective and consider a much broader range of perceived outcomes of FTAs. © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Natur

Looking beyond workforce diversity: Towards a theory of workplace complexity

Decades of inbound immigration and affirmative government policies have led to a rise in cultural and demographic diversity in both public and private organisations, however there is still no consensus about how these affect organisational performance. Moreover, with rapid advancements in technology and changes in human resource management practices, modern workplaces have become more complex and dynamic than ever before, making it even more difficult to identify and manage factors that influence individual, group and organisation- level performance. In this paper, we respond to these developments by arguing that we need to look beyond workforce diversity and acknowledge workplace complexity as the new frontier in organisation behaviour and human resources management research. Specifically, we introduce a multi-dimensional workplace complexity construct based on a preliminary review of diversity and workplace literatures, and we propose to validate this construct with Australian Public Service Commission’s (APSC) State of the Service Census data, as briefly described in this paper. This research would help both academic researchers and managers understand the importance of workplace complexity and gain useful insights into its underlying dimensions as well as its antecedents and outcomes