Achieving flexibility through coordination: reframing the practice of ambidexterity to benefit business and employees during organisational change. Work teams are frequently used yet their capability to perform is constrained by organisational restructures that emphasise centralisation. This project will examine ways to mitigate these potential negative consequences through flexible work arrangements that enable and sustain effectiveness for business units and teams as well as for employees outs ....Achieving flexibility through coordination: reframing the practice of ambidexterity to benefit business and employees during organisational change. Work teams are frequently used yet their capability to perform is constrained by organisational restructures that emphasise centralisation. This project will examine ways to mitigate these potential negative consequences through flexible work arrangements that enable and sustain effectiveness for business units and teams as well as for employees outside work.Read moreRead less
Leveraging organisational context to maximise team performance and thriving: a dynamic approach to understand team learning across diverse settings. Work teams can be a means of delivering business objectives as well as promoting human thriving, resulting in employees who are learning and physically vital. Yet competing tensions in organisations threaten these outcomes. The project will examine ways of mitigating contextual challenges to result in sustained organisational performance and employe ....Leveraging organisational context to maximise team performance and thriving: a dynamic approach to understand team learning across diverse settings. Work teams can be a means of delivering business objectives as well as promoting human thriving, resulting in employees who are learning and physically vital. Yet competing tensions in organisations threaten these outcomes. The project will examine ways of mitigating contextual challenges to result in sustained organisational performance and employee well being.Read moreRead less
Managing Call Centres: A Study of Management Practices, Work and Outcomes. The study offers three types of benefits. First, improvements in management practice. By highlighting variations in management practice and its effects, training materials will be developed to improve call centre management capability. Second, we aim to fill a gap that currently exists in developing employee skills in managing emotions at work. This will reduce job burnout and labour turnover and help to maintain the indu ....Managing Call Centres: A Study of Management Practices, Work and Outcomes. The study offers three types of benefits. First, improvements in management practice. By highlighting variations in management practice and its effects, training materials will be developed to improve call centre management capability. Second, we aim to fill a gap that currently exists in developing employee skills in managing emotions at work. This will reduce job burnout and labour turnover and help to maintain the industry's international competitiveness which is threatened by offshore competition. Third, government policy making will be better informed by highlighting the impact of current institutional arrangements on employment relations and performance.Read moreRead less
Developing leadership for high stress workplaces: Improving well-being, engagement, productivity and staff retention. Workplaces today are increasingly complex. The ageing of the workforce, growing economic pressure and increasing employee mobility make the ability of organisations to attract, develop and retain talented staff critical issues for Australian industry. Staff stress costs the economy tens of billions of dollars a year. This project focuses on the measurement and development of lead ....Developing leadership for high stress workplaces: Improving well-being, engagement, productivity and staff retention. Workplaces today are increasingly complex. The ageing of the workforce, growing economic pressure and increasing employee mobility make the ability of organisations to attract, develop and retain talented staff critical issues for Australian industry. Staff stress costs the economy tens of billions of dollars a year. This project focuses on the measurement and development of leader's ability to take sophisticated perspectives on complex events, and in so doing open new possibilities for effective action. By developing models, tools and training methods to enhance this ability in managers, we aim to make an important contribution economic sustainability and employee well-being in Australia and internationally.Read moreRead less
Advancing knowledge on silence and its impact on errors and safety. Advancing knowledge on silence and its impact on errors and safety. This project will investigate how silence emerges in teams, what sustains it, and how it affects error and safety outcomes. Employees often choose to remain silent about important issues at work, which can have devastating consequences. Although silence is a complex individual phenomenon, there is little knowledge of silence as a collective phenomenon, or how it ....Advancing knowledge on silence and its impact on errors and safety. Advancing knowledge on silence and its impact on errors and safety. This project will investigate how silence emerges in teams, what sustains it, and how it affects error and safety outcomes. Employees often choose to remain silent about important issues at work, which can have devastating consequences. Although silence is a complex individual phenomenon, there is little knowledge of silence as a collective phenomenon, or how it spreads and becomes the norm in teams and organisations. This project will investigate silence using multilevel, longitudinal designs and by testing novel interventions. This research is expected to affect how teams work and communicate effectively to reduce dangerous forms of silence and improve safety.Read moreRead less
Factors influencing workforce attrition of Australian radiation therapists. There are major international shortages of radiation therapists, acutely so in Australia. These shortages lead to long delays for radiotherapy cancer treatment and cause some patients to undertake less suitable forms of treatment. An innovative Australia-wide study of working and recently separated radiation therapists will be carried out, providing a unique opportunity to study an entire profession, integrating a ran ....Factors influencing workforce attrition of Australian radiation therapists. There are major international shortages of radiation therapists, acutely so in Australia. These shortages lead to long delays for radiotherapy cancer treatment and cause some patients to undertake less suitable forms of treatment. An innovative Australia-wide study of working and recently separated radiation therapists will be carried out, providing a unique opportunity to study an entire profession, integrating a range of frameworks. The theoretical model developed will lead to the formation of recommendations and strategies aimed at improving retention of radiation therapists in the workforce. This will result in improved staffing and reduced waiting lists for cancer treatment.Read moreRead less
The antecedents and outcomes of affective and cognitive readiness for organisational change. This project aims to understand employees' readiness for organisational change. It identifies positive beliefs and positive emotional experiences as key aspects of readiness for change. The project focuses on individuals' personality, workplace characteristics, and characteristics of organisational change events as influencing readiness for change.
Organisational Behaviour in the Victoria Police Force. One of the major challenges facing managers in the Victoria Police is to create working environments that provide employees with the best possible chance of achieving organisational objectives. Subsequently, the aim of this project is to investigate a comprehensive model of organisational behaviour that employs the psychological contract approach and an augmented job strain model to predict employee attitudes and behaviour over time. The com ....Organisational Behaviour in the Victoria Police Force. One of the major challenges facing managers in the Victoria Police is to create working environments that provide employees with the best possible chance of achieving organisational objectives. Subsequently, the aim of this project is to investigate a comprehensive model of organisational behaviour that employs the psychological contract approach and an augmented job strain model to predict employee attitudes and behaviour over time. The combined project model goes beyond the typical studies in this field by incorporating cutting-edge issues such as organisational citizenship behaviours. The Victoria Police is highly committed to this project and believes that the successful execution of this project will contribute to its strategic goals.Read moreRead less
Task Contingent Units of Personality and Adaptive Performance. The project aims to test a model of adaptive personality, to cross-validate the model in Italy, China and the United kingdom, and to develop and test a model for the modification and development of adaptive personality factors that enhance adaptive performance. Adaptive tasks differ from routine tasks in degrees of novelty, difficulty and uncertainty which require higher levels and different types of cognitive processing. Individuals ....Task Contingent Units of Personality and Adaptive Performance. The project aims to test a model of adaptive personality, to cross-validate the model in Italy, China and the United kingdom, and to develop and test a model for the modification and development of adaptive personality factors that enhance adaptive performance. Adaptive tasks differ from routine tasks in degrees of novelty, difficulty and uncertainty which require higher levels and different types of cognitive processing. Individuals who adapt their focus, emotions and exploratory activities in response to the changing cognitive demands of tasks are expected to outperform those with less adaptive personalities. Those with more adaptive personalities are expected to perform better on problem solving, learning, innovation and development activities.Read moreRead less
What Makes a Corporate Champion? Great corporations aim to imbue their organisations with a champion mindset. The world's largest management consultancy company, McKinsey & Company, have joined this proposal which aims to assist realising this goal by developing a framework to identify and replicate championship in individuals and organisations. A multi-disciplinary team will apply quantitative and qualitative measures to address issues raised from the Centre for the Mind's existing research. Fi ....What Makes a Corporate Champion? Great corporations aim to imbue their organisations with a champion mindset. The world's largest management consultancy company, McKinsey & Company, have joined this proposal which aims to assist realising this goal by developing a framework to identify and replicate championship in individuals and organisations. A multi-disciplinary team will apply quantitative and qualitative measures to address issues raised from the Centre for the Mind's existing research. Findings will contribute significantly to the social and economic benefit of private and public sector organisations.
Expected outcomes are refined understandings and application of championship in corporations; the publication of reports, a book, refereed articles and a training video.
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