Browsing by Author "Carr SC"
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- ItemAn Employee’s Living Wage and Their Quality of Work Life: How Important Are Household Size and Household Income?(Hapres Co Ltd, 2019-07-01) Carr SC; Haar J; Hodgetts D; Arrowsmith J; Parker J; Young-Hauser A; Alefaio-Tuglia S; Jones HLiving Wage (LW) campaigns normally assume a prototype household configuration in setting their LW rate, comprised of number of dependent householders and the number of incomes. This information is used to calculate the hourly pay rate required to sustain their quality of life and work life. Real households are nonetheless diverse in terms of number of householders and incomes, rendering the living wage conceptually more of a continuous variable than a single constant, across a wage spectrum. We explored this spectrum and its links to job attitudes with a nationally representative sample of N = 1011 low-waged New Zealanders. We measured each participant’s: hourly pay rate, number of household dependents and total household income, alongside individual job attitudes indicative of quality of work life (job satisfaction, work engagement, career satisfaction, meaningful empowerment, affective commitment, organizational citizenship behaviours and work-life balance). As a set, job attitudes consistently pivoted upwards into positive values approximating the campaign LW rate in New Zealand, regardless of either number of household dependents or household income (net of personal wage). However household income net of personal wage (unlike number of household dependents) buffered the gradient of the pivot upwards. The gradient was steeper (more clearly transformational and binary) among lowest-waged workers, in single-income households. To the extent that job attitudes as a set are already widely linked to individual and unit-level productivity, paying at or above the living wage threshold may bring productivity gains and thereby contribute toward decent work and economic development combined.
- ItemDeliberating Upon the Living Wage to Alleviate In-Work Poverty: A Rhetorical Inquiry Into Key Stakeholder Accounts(Frontiers Media S.A, 2022-06) Hodgetts DJ; Young-Hauser AM; Arrowsmith J; Parker J; Carr SC; Haar J; Alefaio SMost developed nations have a statutory minimum wage set at levels insufficient to alleviate poverty. Increased calls for a living wage have generated considerable public controversy. This article draws on 25 interviews and four focus groups with employers, low-pay industry representatives, representatives of chambers of commerce, pay consultants, and unions. The core focus is on how participants use prominent narrative tropes for the living wage and against the living wage to argue their respective perspectives. We also document how both affirmative and negative tropes are often combined by participants to craft their own rhetorical positions on the issue.
- ItemFitting social enterprise for sustainable development in Vietnam(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2021-10-01) Nguyen MHT; Hodgetts DJ; Carr SCDrawing on aspects of both commercial and not-for-profit organisational structures, social enterprises strive to become financially sustainable in order to support efforts to address various societal problems, including poverty and socio-economic exclusions. This study documents the experiences of 20 social entrepreneurs regarding the fit between their leadership practices, social enterprises and the Vietnamese societal ecosystem. Results from semi-structured go-along interviews foreground the importance of fit between the societal eco-system, key cultural values and relational practices, entrepreneur leadership and the structure and functioning of social enterprises in achieving their pro-social missions. This article contributes to emerging literature on the sustainability of social enterprises in emerging economies and is currently being drawn upon in the development of policy responses in Vietnam.
- ItemPandemic or Not, Worker Subjective Wellbeing Pivots About the Living Wage Point: A Replication, Extension, and Policy Challenge in Aotearoa New Zealand(Frontiers Media S.A, 2022-07) Carr SC; Haar J; Hodgetts D; Jones H; Arrowsmith J; Parker J; Young-Hauser A; Alefaio-Tugia SRecent pre-pandemic research suggests that living wages can be pivotal for enhancing employee attitudes and subjective wellbeing. This article explores whether or not the present COVID-19 pandemic is impacting pivotal links between living wages and employee attitudes and subjective wellbeing, with replication indicating robustness. Twin cohorts each of 1,000 low-waged workers across New Zealand (NZ), one pre- (2018), and one present-pandemic (2020) were sample surveyed on hourly wage, job attitudes, and subjective wellbeing as linked to changes in the world of work associated with the pandemic (e.g., job security, stress, anxiety, depression, and holistic wellbeing). Using locally estimated scatter-point smoothing, job attitudes and subjective wellbeing scores tended to pivot upward at the living wage level in NZ. These findings replicate earlier findings and extend these into considering subjective wellbeing in the context of a crisis for employee livelihoods and lives more generally. Convergence across multiple measures, constructs, and contexts, suggests the positive impacts of living wages are durable. We draw inspiration from systems dynamics to argue that the present government policy of raising legal minimum wages (as NZ has done) may not protect subjective wellbeing until wages cross the living wage Rubicon. Future research should address this challenge.
- ItemStriving for more: Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) and living wages(Taylor and Francis Group, 2021-01-01) McWha-Hermann I; Searle RH; Carr SCResearch focusing on the lower end of the wage spectrum has typically centred on the economic business case for, and against, a living wage. But as work and organizational psychologists (WOPs) know, there are important psychological consequences of low wages too. Wages have far-reaching consequences for work motivation, employee performance, and job losses or gains, as well as for broader questions of wellbeing and quality of life. It is surprising, therefore, given the depth of existing WOP knowledge about wages, that psychological research on living wages has only emerged relatively recently (e.g., Smith, Citation2015). Over the past five years or so, there has been notable growth in the psychological study of living wages (see Searle & McWha-Hermann, Citationthis issue, for a review). Our goal in instigating this special issue was to gather together this interesting current work, stimulate further psychological research on living wages, and facilitate further theoretical development which incorporates psychological perspectives on this topic. In this editorial, we first introduce the topic of living wages to provide context to the five papers that comprise this special issue, before summarizing the contribution of each paper. Building a synthesis of these papers, we then identify some important avenues for future research. In doing so, we highlight how research on the living wage is an integral part of a broader agenda within work psychology to enhance social impact (Arnold et al., Citation2021; www.eawopimpact.org), further extend the value of our discipline (Lefkowitz, Citation2008, Citation2017), and consider how WOP science can contribute to creating decent work for all workers (Bal et al., Citation2019; Grote & Guest, Citation2017; Parker & Jorritsma, Citation2020).
- ItemWorlds Apart? – The Challenges of Aligning Brand Value for NGO’s(Springer Nature, 2022-09-01) Hand K; Murphy R; MacLachlan M; Carr SCBrands are increasingly part of how international aid and development Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) operate, but there are challenges in aligning NGO brand value across diverse stakeholders. This research explores how key decision makers within one major NGO – Oxfam—construct the challenges of brand value alignment, using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis methodology. Three master-themes emerge demonstrating key tensions around aligning NGOs brand value: the difficulty of balancing competing stakeholder needs, the internal cultural conflict around branding, and the existential dilemma underlying the societal effectiveness of NGOs. This paper proposes that NGOs can better navigate these intra—brand tensions using Brand-as-Purpose as an organizing principle; framing shared identity, creating a dynamic container for stakeholder interests and cultivating Moral Capital strongly anchored in increasing recipient wellbeing. This paper is one of the first pieces of research which explores how NGOs make sense of aligning brand value in the context of complex stakeholder cultures and recipient sovereignty. Brand-as Purpose is put forward as an organizing principle to help balance three key tensions around brand value alignment. This paper proposes that Moral Capital anchored in recipient wellbeing underpins NGO brand value and societal legitimacy and needs to be paramount in how NGO’s establish and legitimize their brands.