Browsing by Author "McWha-Hermann I"

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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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    The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I)
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2025-07-09) Carr S; Hopner V; Meyer I; Di Fabio A; Scott J; Matuschek I; Blake D; Saxena M; Saner R; Saner-Yiu L; Massola G; Atkins SG; Reichman W; Saltzman J; McWha-Hermann I; Tchagneno C; Searle R; Mukerjee J; Blustein D; Bansal S; Covington IK; Godbout J; Haar J; Rosen MA
    The concept of a sustainable livelihood affords protection from crises and protects people, including future generations. Conceptually, this paper serves as a study protocol that extends the premises of decent work to include and integrate criteria that benefit people, planet, and prosperity. Existing measures of sustainability principally serve organisations and governments, not individual workers who are increasingly looking for ‘just transitions’ into sustainable livelihoods. Incorporating extant measurement standards from systems theory, vocational psychology, psychometrics, labour and management studies, we con ceptualise a classification of livelihoods, criteria for their sustainability, forming a study protocol for indexing these livelihoods, a set of theory-based propositions, and a pilot test of this context-sensitive model.
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    Work education and educational developments around sustainable livelihoods for sustainable career development and well-being
    (SAGE Publications for the Australian Council for Educational Research, 2024-10-08) Caringal-Go JF; Carr SC; Hodgetts DJ; Intraprasert DY; Maleka M; McWha-Hermann I; Meyer I; Mohan KP; Nguyen MH; Noklang S; Pham VT; Prakongpan P; Poonpol P; Potgieter J; Searle R; Teng-Calleja M
    Covid-19, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Climate Change, have disrupted work education, rendering sustainability of careers and livelihoods a concern. This paper outlines a collaborative response to that challenge, offering opportunities for sustainable livelihoods in a work education cloud collaboration, Project SLiC (Sustainable Livelihoods Collaboration). We have joined forces across nation states in the Global South/North to share cloud resources, focused on teaching a postgraduate course, Sustainable Livelihoods. Online modules are stored in a secure cloud site, from which local courses draw-down, autochthonously, whichever resources fit workforce development in context. We outline modules, and an evaluative process, in a proof-of-concept trial. Finally, we envisage how this initial collaboration may morph into a whole degree, including research supervision. We close with a call to career development professionals to share their unique expertise and experiences at the work education frontline, on how to develop this sustainable careers project, for the greater good.