Current Research in Industrial Relations: proceedings of the 13th AIRAANZ conference, volume 1: refereed papers

The Proceedings contain the papers presented to the first two streams of the conference. The first stream [this volume] is the fully published, refereed stream

Current Research in Industrial Relations: proceedings of the 13th AIRAANZ conference, volume 2: non-refereed papers

The second volume [this volume] contains papers that were submitted to the second stream [of the conference]: fully published but not-refereed papers

The associative-supportive motivation as a factor in the decision to event volunteer

Research into volunteering currently explains the volunteering decision in terms of altruistic, egoistic, solidary, or instrumental reasons. Recent research into reasons for event volunteering provides ambiguous evidence of an additional and often dominant motivation: the desire to support and ensure the success of an event. This paper directly tests for the existence of this associative-supportive motivation among 488 volunteers in five event organizations and finds this motivation is the dominant motivation among the volunteers in all five organizations. Further, findings reveal that the motive takes two forms: (1) a desire to support the event by direct involvement, and (2) a wish for the event to succeed and personal attachment to the activity or event. Correctly identifying this particular motivation will enable the development of a more accurate theory of event volunteer motivation, and the design of more appropriate polices for the recruitment, selection, development and rewarding of event volunteers.

The journey underway : managing and developing careers

This paper sets out to provide a case study for others interested in developing an academic unit that deals with managing and developing careers. In order to achieve this goal, the paper reviews the progress made in implementing and teaching a unit, ‘Managing and Developing Careers’ (MDC) since its inception in 2003. The unit deals with career management from a stakeholder perspective and is an elective, located within the Human Resource and Organisational Development major of the Bachelor of Business and Commerce degree. It is offered by the School of Management at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). MDC is different from a conventional career development subject or program, which generally seeks to assist individuals to identify their career interests, discover their abilities and aptitudes and then obtain appropriate employment based on such a ‘voyage of discovery’. Rather, it is designed to identify the determinants of the process of career management and analyse the roles of key ‘players’ in this process- employers, unions, employees, government and societal groups. In addition, the unit assists students to evaluate the different approaches to career management and relate such approaches to contemporary issues in the field of career management, for example, who is responsible for career management. The tasks undertaken in this paper include: (i) a review of more recent literature in the career management and development field (ii) a description of the structure, content and assessment used in this unit and (iii) an evaluation of data about the unit using structured and open response student feedback. This evaluation is used to both critique the current version of the elective and point to ways of modifying it to better suit the needs and expectations of future students. An important goal of this paper is to provide advice and guidance to other academics with an interest in career management or who are developing units in this field

Globalisation : Australian regional perspectives /

Globalisation is producing far-reaching changes for communities, regions and nations, and creating new types of social, political, and economic challenges and opportunities. This book explores the practical meaning of globalisation at the local, regional, national and international level

Dimensions and determinants of declining employment opportunities for mature aged male practitioners within the human resources profession : occupational change, age and gender

In line with other professions, Human Resource Management (HRM) is witnessing changing age and gender profiles with the advent of greater rates of female participation, increasing reliance on qualifications for entry to the profession and a younger workforce. This paper examines how these factors are influencing opportunities for older male professionals within HRM through an examination of the primacy of HRM (in organisational effective terms), the influences of gender in management style, ageism and sexism. The subtleties of how these ‘isms’ are deployed as an organisational methodology are discussed, as is the emerging capitalist view of the value and usefulness of female management styles with its attendant gender segmentation. Current literature argues that ageism and sexism contribute to consistent findings of a decline in opportunities for older workers of either gender and the role of structural and attitudinal factors will be highlighted

Resistance and accommodation in call centres : towards collective awareness

This paper explores employee responses to temporal and numerical flexibility at three Australian call centres. Some workers accommodated flexible working hours by reducing their hours of work, swapping shifts, and calling upon family members to provide childcare. On occasion they were able to take advantage of the quieter ‘doggo’ shifts to lessen work intensity and interact with workmates. At one site, the payment of penalty rates was a significant contributor to accommodation of shift work. But employees also resisted flexibility. They called in sick for shifts they did not wish to work, used the rhetoric of flexibility to criticise management decisions, and joined unions. The story is not solely one of resistance or accommodation. The paper traces the development and interplay between resistance and accommodation and the transition from individual grievance to collective awareness. It examines the impact of management actions that offended widely held values of dignity, fairness, and autonomy and employee perceptions of how they deserved to be treated. In so doing, it suggests that these concerns present real opportunities for unions to galvanise and organise call centre workers