Antonia Girardi (she/her)

Using Multilevel Job Demand-Resources theory, this research explores how crisis influenced perceptions about academic work engagement at individual, team, and organisational levels. The COVID-19 crisis led universities to make significant changes in response to health and fiscal impacts. Changes included restructuring, job shedding, and pivoting to online teaching which affected psychological well-being, and myriad affective outcomes. Thirty-six participants discussed COVID-19, changes in their university, effects on their work, and coping strategies. At the organisational level, participants consider their universities, specifically university leaders and leadership practices, afford limited resources to support responses to crisis and change leading to excessive job demands, negative health outcomes, and low motivation. At the team level, strong team relationships and supportive leaders were identified as important job resources to mitigate against some demands. At the individual level both coping and self-undermining practices were identified to manage demands. The implications on academic work engagement are elaborated.

Universities continue to evolve and adapt to changes brought about by external events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, shifts in government policy, technological advancements, and geopolitics. A significant body of research has focused on negative workplace conditions within universities that contribute to psychosocial hazards. In contrast, this paper reports on the experiences and perceptions of 36 fulltime, continuous, academic staff to explore how they and their colleagues found and/or experienced joy in work set against the backdrop of crisis and change as their universities responded to the impacts of COVID-19. Responses clustered around four key dynamics: joy/student, joy/teaching, joy/research, and joy/colleague. Despite being in work environments characterised largely in negative terms, where agency and voice are constrained, these joys sustained and evoked feelings of purpose, belonging, and connection. This research highlights the need to reconsider how to provide and support healthy work conditions to optimise opportunities for the academic workforce to experience greater joy in their work. The implications for future research are presented.

The contemporary university is now characterised as a complex working environment wherein faculty must negotiate increasing demands for accountability, performativity, and productivity. A multiplicity of expectations adds to this complexity. Specifically, expectations set by employers in developing ‘work-ready’ graduates have compelled faculty to negotiate interdependent contradictions that focus on developing employability skills alongside technical skills. This qualitative study reports on the lived experiences of 30 business school teaching faculty, negotiating tensions as they relate to the teaching of one type of employability skill: teamwork. Paradox theory is appropriated to better understand how faculty perceive their professional environment and practices related to teamwork pedagogy. The findings reveal that faculty navigate the performing/learning, performing/organising and performing/belonging paradoxes of teamwork pedagogy by passively suppressing tensions or through proactive acceptance strategies.

Within healthcare, studies support that nurse manager leadership behaviours positively influence nursing outcomes. However, how this behaviour promotes positive outcomes is less well understood. Integrating a ‘positive deviance framework’ and a ‘model for reflection’, this paper uniquely uncovers positive nurse manager behaviours that deviate from ‘business as usual’ in managing and leading healthcare staff. Applying an interpretivist lens to qualitative data collected from 24 nurse managers from Australia and Seychelles, the outcomes illustrate examples of positive leadership, exemplary performance, and uncommon behaviours and actions amongst nurse managers resulting in positive nursing experiences and positive organisational outcomes. Nurse managers practising positive leadership and taking on an employee champion role, underscore these behaviours. This study contributes to the research of positive outcomes, processes, and attributes of healthcare organisations and their members.

Purpose: Human capital is a key component of the success of organisations, and career development of staff is a vital component to both increasing and retaining human capital. Universities are no different, their people are key to their mission. There has been limited rigorous study of the careers of professional staff in the academy. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review methodology resulted in a review of 23 articles dedicated to research on careers of professional staff in higher education (HE). Thematic analysis identified a series of enablers and barriers that influence career development and progression. Findings: Career enablers and barriers have been found to exist at both the institutional and individual levels. Within the HE context, professional staff have a hybrid career mindset, desiring traditional and more contemporary career factors, leading to a reciprocal relationship between the organisation and the individual. Research limitations/implications: There is a need for future research to investigate the hybrid career mindset, and the reciprocal relationship, both to add depth to understanding of careers for professional staff in universities, and to examine this in other settings. Practical implications: Universities may need to consider ways to integrate institutional support for high performance work systems (HPWS) with opportunities for professional staff, while individuals may need to consider adopting career self-management behaviours (CSMB) to fit their hybrid mindset. Originality/value: This review has highlighted organisations and individuals will benefit if the relationship between HPWS and CSMB is better understood for the hybrid career mindset.

Australian employers continue to indicate that the development of teamwork skills in graduates is as important as mastering technical skills required for a particular career. In Australia, the reporting on the teaching of teamwork skills has emanated across a range of disciplines including health and engineering, with less of a focus on business related disciplines. Although Australian university business schools appear to value the importance and relevance of developing teamwork skills, implementation of the teaching, learning, and assessment of teamwork skills remains somewhat of a pedagogical conundrum. This paper presents evidence from a systematic literature review as to the salient issues associated with teaching teamwork skills in Australian university business disciplines.

There has been increasing recognition over the last decade of the value of using mixed methods approaches to investigate complex social issues. In this paper we undertake a systematic literature review to explore the prevalence of mixed methods research approaches in volunteering research. We set out the underpinnings of mixed methods research. The review methodology, strategy and analysis processes are then presented, followed by the results and discussion. Limited studies were identified which applied mixed methods research. Possibilities for adopting these approaches in volunteering research are also canvassed.

Teamwork pedagogy has received considerable attention across a wide range of academic literature. Yet employers continue to argue that universities need to do more to better prepare graduates to work in team-based environments. Grounded in the social constructivist paradigm, this article uses a two-phase systematic literature review methodology to explore the conditions and influences affording or constraining teamwork pedagogy. A complementary thematic analysis of the articles revealed two broad themes: pedagogy and transaction costs. In almost all 57 articles, a range of factors influencing teamwork pedagogy were elaborated. Temporal, fiscal, and human resource transaction costs were identified as constraints in the application of teamwork pedagogy. An overlap of educator, student, and institutional factors are discussed as contributing to the transaction costs of implementing process-oriented teamwork pedagogy. However, the interdependent interactions among educators and students, within and across institutions, remained largely underexplored and are presented as part of a future research agenda.

Global perspectives and interpersonal and intercultural communication competencies are viewed as a priority within higher education. For management educators, globalisation, student mobility and widening pathways present numerous challenges, but afford opportunities for curriculum innovation. The Interaction for Learning Framework (ILF) seeks to help academics introduce curriculum change and increase peer interaction opportunities. Although the framework has many strengths to recommend it, the ILF does not provide a process by which academics can easily evaluate the outcomes produced by its implementation. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of a popular four level training evaluation framework – the Kirkpatrick model – as a way to appraise the outcomes of ILF-based curriculum interventions. We conclude that the Kirkpatrick model offers educators a straightforward basis for evaluation of interventions, but that as with any model the approach to evaluation should be adapted to the particular setting and circumstances.

The development of soft skills has been the focus of new education and training practices globally and particularly within the Malaysian Higher Education System. Entrepreneurship skills in particular have been identified as one of seven soft skills in Malaysian Public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This present study examines what factors influence educator perceptions about teaching and assessing entrepreneurship skills. Specifically, the study looks at the amount of emphasis educators report placing on teaching and assessing entrepreneurship skills, and the factors which can impact this emphasis. The results from a quantitative cross-sectional study indicate that the university category; discipline area; employment level and status; years of teaching and industry experience; teaching qualifications; and gender have differential effects on educator perceptions about the emphasis placed on teaching and assessing of entrepreneurship skills. The implications of these outcomes will be discussed in line with recent higher education policy within this sector and the wider educational community.