The mythologisation of key workers: occupational prestige gained, sustained... and lost?

Purpose: Key workers are deemed “essential” for keeping the country going while the rest of us have been resigned to the safety of our homes. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, key workers have become the exalted symbol of the pandemic; although, during pre-pandemic many of these roles were considered “low skilled” and were (and still are) low paid. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis uses newspapers as data sources to discuss occupational prestige and situate it within previous theory. Findings: This social commentary discusses how occupational prestige evolves and devolves during times of social change, and how elevated status, dependent on one's service to the country in the spirit of a “war-time” narrative, is just temporary and fleeting. Prestige is wrapped up in notions of class, income and education, and during the pandemic, “key workers” have become their own sub-group with an almost mythologised status and value, which the authors argue might take the focus away from genuine efforts to improve working conditions (e.g. access to PPE and pay rises etcetera). Originality/value: The article considers the current value of key workers and how elevated levels of prestige are transitory. The enduring nature of this new status is yet to be seen. More qualitative nuanced research is required around how occupational prestige changes, evolves and devolves and more quantitative research on why and how widespread some of the critical issues might be

Self-serving perception of charitable donation request: An effective cognitive strategy to boost benefits and reduce drawbacks

The psychological consequences of prosocial behavior depend on people's perceptions of their own volition. Building on this, we hypothesized that people who donate increase their volition and the benefits of donations by judging donation requests as polite (non-coercive), whereas non-donors reduce their volition and the drawback of refusing to donate by judging the request as less polite (too coercive). Three weeks after providing baseline politeness judgments about a fundraising request, participants re-evaluated the same request as potential donors (experimental group) or observers (control group) and reported how they felt (Ntime1?=?605, Ntime2?=?294). Relative to past perceptions, donors judged the request as more polite than control participants. Non-donors redefined the request as less polite than donors, but not less than control participants. Both donors and non-donors benefited from redefining the request as more polite. We discuss how altering one's perception of a request is a multi-purpose self-serving cognition

Are COVID-19 conspiracies a threat to public health? Psychological characteristics and health protective behaviours of believers

We tested the link between COVID-19 conspiracy theories and health protective behaviours in three studies: one at the onset of the pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK), a second just before the first national lockdown, and a third during that lockdown (N = 302, 404 and 399). We focused on conspiracy theories that did not deny the existence of COVID-19 and evaluated the extent to which they predicted a range of health protective behaviours, before and after controlling for psychological and sociodemographic characteristics associated with conspiracy theory belief. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs were positively correlated with beliefs in other unrelated conspiracies and a general conspiracy mind-set, and negatively correlated with trust in government and a tendency towards analytical thinking (vs. intuitive thinking). Unexpectedly, COVID-19 conspiracy believers adhered to basic health guidelines and advanced health protective measures as strictly as non-believers. Conspiracy believers were, however, less willing to install the contact-tracing app, get tested for and vaccinated against COVID-19, and were more likely to share COVID-19 misinformation – all of which might undermine public health initiatives. Study 3 showed conspiracy theory believers were less willing to undertake health protective behaviours that were outside of their personal control, perceiving these as having a negative balance of risks and benefits. We discuss models explaining conspiracy beliefs and health protective behaviours, and suggest practical recommendations for public health initiatives

Interpersonal mindfulness in leadership development: a Delphi study

Mindfulness is increasingly being used within leadership development to enhance managers’ wellbeing and leadership capability. Given the relational nature of leadership, we posit that an interpersonal form of mindfulness has the potential to offer benefits over and above those provided by personal or internal mindfulness. We therefore chose a Delphi research methodology to consult and achieve consensus among expert practitioners, exploring if and how interpersonal mindfulness, in the specific form of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Program (IMP), can contribute to leadership development. Our aims were, firstly, to identify the necessary components of an IMP-based leadership development program and, secondly, to create guidelines for practitioners. Through four phases of data-gathering and feedback, we achieved consensus among 39 experts on guidelines for how to develop a leadership development program based on the IMP, contextual factors that will act as facilitators or barriers, and selection and screening of participants. The intention is that the resulting guidelines will support the implementation of coherent, consistent IMP-based leadership development, sensitive both to its origins and to the context

Listen carefully: transgender voices in the workplace

We find that only 17% of FTSE 100 company websites refer directly to transgender (‘trans’) individuals, illustrating the extent to which trans voices are unheard in the workplace. We propose that these voices are missing for a number of reasons: voluntary silence to protect oneself from adverse circumstances; the subsumption of trans voices within the larger ‘LGBT’ community; assimilation, wherein many trans voices become affiliated with those of their post-transition gender; multiple trans voices arising from diversity within the transgender community; and limited access to voice mechanisms for transgender employees. We identify the negative implications of being unheard for individual trans employees, for organizational outcomes, and for business and management scholarship, and propose ways in which organizations can listen more carefully to trans voices. Finally, we introduce an agenda for future research that tests the applicability of the theoretical framework of invisible stigma disclosure to transgender individuals, and calls for new theoretical and empirical developments to identify HRM challenges and best practices for respecting trans employees and their choices to remain silent or be heard

What can critical femininity offer reviewing? A case for reviewing with empathy

In academia, hegemonic patriarchal norms equate scientific quality with masculinity, and reviewing has followed in this tradition often channeling an angry army general instead of an empathetic peer invested in supporting the development of a manuscript. Indeed, femininity and emotionality are ostracized in favor of “rational” and “scholarly” (masculine) “science.” What can, then, critical femininity offer reviewing? In this piece, I put a case forward for reviewing with empathy

The ethics of service work in a neoliberal healthcare context: doing embodied and ‘dirty’ emotional labor

We explore how service workers negotiate emotional laboring with ‘dirty’ emotions while trying to meet the demands of neoliberal healthcare. In doing so, we theorize emotional labor in the context of healthcare as a type of embodied and emotional ‘dirty’ work. We apply Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to our data collected from National Health Service (NHS) workers in the United Kingdom (UK). Our data show that healthcare service workers absorb, contain, and quarantine emotional ‘dirt’, thereby protecting their organization at a cost to their own well-being. Workers also perform embodied practices to try and absolve themselves of their ‘dirty’ labor. We extend research on emotional ‘dirty’ work and theorize that emotional labor can also be conceptualized as ‘dirty’ work. Further, we show that emotionally laboring with ‘dirty’ emotions is an embodied phenomenon, which involves workers absorbing and containing patients’ emotional ‘dirt’ to protect the institution (at the expense of their well-being)