Browsing by Author "Carr SC"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    A cross-cultural test of competing hypotheses about system justification using data from 42 nations
    (Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society of Political Psychology., 2024-09-25) Valdes EA; Liu JH; Williams M; Carr SC
    System justification theory (SJT) is a thriving field of research, wherein the primary questions revolve around why individuals and groups are motivated to see the systems they depend on as just, fair, and legitimate. This article seeks to answer how accurate the postulates of SJT are when compared to competing self-interest claims of social identity and social dominance theory. We addressed the ongoing debates among proponents of each theory by identifying who, when, and why individuals decide to system-justify. We used data comprised of 24,009 participants nested within 42 countries. Multilevel models largely supported the competing claims of social dominance and social identity theories over SJT. The most robust findings were: (1) greater objective socioeconomic status (SES) was associated with greater system justification; (2) the consistent positive relationship between subjective SES and system justification was partially mediated by life satisfaction; and (3) both ends of the political spectrum were willing to system-justify more when the political party they favored was in power. The results presented are used to discuss both the current state and the future directions for system justification research.
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    An 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 H
    Living 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.
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    Careering’ – toward radicalism in radical times: Links to human security and sustainable livelihoods
    (SAGE Publications, 2024-08-13) Hopner V; Carr SC
    In this Age of the Anthropocene, the world of work is being radically disrupted by mass precarity, rising wage and income inequality, habitat destruction, and the rise of artificial intelligence. Facing such insecurity, people, we show, are careering toward radical ways of making a living. They range from radical professionals to social media influencing and environmental activism. Human security is fundamentally enhanced by sustainable livelihoods, and we explore ways not only to de-radicalise, but also to accept and embrace radical careering, if and whenever it serves the purpose of making people's livelihoods more sustainable for society, economies, and ecosystems. The article concludes by introducing an Index of Sustainable Livelihoods (SL-I). Success to the successful. The Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I) is designed to be a ‘visible hand’ for end-users, including career counsellors, students, and workers undergoing career transitions, by Corporate Responsibility Officers, and by government ministries supporting just workforce transitions into sustainable livelihoods.
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    Deliberating 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 S
    Most 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.
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    Fitting social enterprise for sustainable development in Vietnam
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2021-10-01) Nguyen MHT; Hodgetts DJ; Carr SC
    Drawing 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.
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    Organizational citizenship behavior in civil society workplaces
    (John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2024-02-01) Langdon S; Fletcher RB; Carr SC
    Organizational citizenship behavior is argued to be particularly important to civil society organizations (Akhtar, Hakeem, & Naeem, 2017). However, organizational citizenship behavior needs further theoretically driven research in the civil society sector, which is the overarching aim of this study which compared two competing models of organizational citizenship behavior within the New Zealand's civil society sector: Organ (1988) and Williams and Anderson (1991) models. Participants were N = 442 employees from 217 civil society organizations in New Zealand. Confirmatory factor analysis tested these two competing measurement models of organizational citizenship behavior. Results suggested employees of civil society organizations tended to perform citizenship behavior in accordance with Organ (1988) structured five-factor model, independent of their organization. Results are discussed, with a focus on why employees working in New Zealand's civil society sector seem to be more likely to perform Organ (1988) model of organizational citizenship behavior, and practical implications presented.
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    Pandemic 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 S
    Recent 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.
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    Striving for more: Work and Organizational Psychology (WOP) and living wages
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2021-01-01) McWha-Hermann I; Searle RH; Carr SC
    Research 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).
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    Transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: new mediating roles for trustworthiness and trust in team leaders
    (Springer Nature, 2024-08-19) Lee MCC; Lin M-H; Srinivasan PM; Carr SC
    This study investigates the pivotal role of trust in bridging the effects of transformational leadership on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The study was conducted using a multilevel longitudinal approach with 276 employees in 71 teams from private medium-sized organizations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Transformational leadership was found to be positively related to: (1) three facets of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity); (2) trust in the leader; and (3) OCB. All three facets of trustworthiness mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and trust in leaders. In addition, trust in the leader mediated only the relationship between the benevolence facet of trustworthiness and OCB. As OCB is inherently benevolent, these findings not only are consistent with the principle of compatibility, but they also contribute to theorizing about ‘how’ trust plays an important role in the influence of transformational leadership on employees.
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    Worlds Apart? – The Challenges of Aligning Brand Value for NGO’s
    (Springer Nature, 2022-09-01) Hand K; Murphy R; MacLachlan M; Carr SC
    Brands 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.