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    Frontline leadership in a distal employment relationship: a qualitative psychological contract perspective
    (Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics in Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ), 2025-06-02) Irai P; Arrowsmith J; Junaid F
    Frontline leadership is crucial to framing the psychological contract (PC), which governs implicit expectations and obligations between workers and their employers. Much of PC research focuses on white-collar and professional occupations, including in managing recent shifts between workplace and home-based working, and the dynamics of distal relationships in jobs such as driving are much less explored. This study explores the employment relationship, and in particular the supervisory role, in bus driving through the PC’s lens. Given the inherently subjective and relational nature of the PC and the dynamic context of Covid and industrial disputes in which the research was conducted, a qualitative approach was employed to understand how distal employment relationships influence the formation and fulfilment of PC. The findings highlighted structural challenges relating to privatisation and driver shortages, though it also underscored five distinct and relevant aspects of workplace support: trust, psychological safety, supervisor-bus driver exchange, co-worker relationships and relational leadership. Notably, drivers perceived under-delivery in these attributes were linked to inadequate perceived organisational support (POS) and PC breaches. These insights have implications for the broader literature on frontline leadership, POS, and PC while offering practical suggestions for improving employee relations and human resource management (HRM) in the industry.
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    Organizational downsizing and the instrumental worker: Is there a connection?
    (Massey University. Department of Management and International Business, 2006) Macky, Keith
    A national population sample of 424 employees was used to explore the proposition that the widespread use of organizational downsizing by management has led employees to adopt a more instrumental orientation to the employment relationship. Contrary to predictions, employees who had never worked in a downsized firm (Controls), or who had been made redundant as a result of downsizing (Victims), reported stronger instrumentalist beliefs than those who had experienced at least one downsizing but had never been made redundant (Survivors). Employees who had experienced more downsizings were also more likely to report lower instrumentalism, by disagreeing with statements suggesting that work is a necessary evil, just something that has to be done in order to earn a living, and that money is the most important reason for having a job. The findings are discussed in the context of reactance theory and instrumentalism as a malleable socialized work attitude.