Workplaces abound in conflict. Individuals within organisations are therefore vulnerable to a wide range of intimidating interactional tactics. These tactics can have an extremely negative impact upon individual workers and upon subsequent organisational performance. Consequentially, the diverse forms of organisational social harassment, and specifically bullying, place a large financial burden upon both organisations and nations. Therefore, the identification of strategies used to prevent and ameliorate workplace bullying and an examination that highlights their comparative success or failure is of great importance for all employers, employees and government. This study focuses upon those strategies used to prevent and ameliorate such workplace bullying and investigates their impact.

This study examined the understanding of workplace expectations of a group of deaf workers. Nine males and fifteen females, ranging in ages 18 to 48, all prelingually deaf, and whose preferred mode of communication was Auslan (Australian Sign Language), participated in the study. All had a history of extended periods of unemployment, interspersed with short-term vocational training courses that had not resulted in long-term employment. Ten of the participants were individuals identified as low-functioning deaf (LFD) characterised by their limited communication skills in sign language, English and presence of secondary disabilities. The purpose of this research was to investigate the extent the deaf participants understood employer expectations and how this knowledge may have impacted their employment success. Each deaf participant completed a 25-item written questionnaire exploring their views about workplace behaviours. A group of 100 employers from the Western Sydney area completed the same survey. The 24 deaf participants were interviewed regarding how they prioritised the items in the questionnaire and were asked to describe their workplace experiences. Subsequently, both data sets were analysed and compared. The participants were divided into four subgroups based on their employment status: employed/unemployed and functional levels: medium/LFD. Analysis of questionnaire rankings indicated the employed participants? responses showed good understanding of employer expectations. Results for the unemployed participants were divided; the rankings for the medium-functioning unemployed participants were very similar to the employed participants except in four areas. Predictably, the unemployed participants with LFD demonstrated a much lower understanding of employer expectations. The qualitative interviews provided further insight into the deaf participants? attitudes towards employment and the importance of meeting employer expectations. Additionally the interview transcripts identified many workplace problems experienced by the deaf participants which contribute to a lack of correspondence. The findings suggest deaf workers? dissatisfaction with their workplace conditions may play a role in their ability to sustain employment. Therefore, meeting employer expectations can be seen as only one of many components of successful employment. The findings suggest that both deaf workers and employers would benefit from greater understanding of each others? perspectives about the workplace. Seven topics are recommended for inclusion in future curricula. Better understanding of each others? views can support improved workplace relationships, employment retention and satisfaction levels.

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of communication differences in effective and ineffective teams. It investigates task and socio-emotional verbal behaviours over time and its relationship to team effectiveness and team members' self-perceived member viability. The author used an aural observational method to examine verbal communication of three teams. Participants were post-graduate students formed into teams, working on a complex and dynamic task over a project duration of five days in a classroom setting. Spoken interaction was audio recorded and analysed using Bales' (1950) Interaction Process Analysis (IPA). Three questionnaires were developed, mainly by combining existing measurement instruments from communication and small group research, measuring team effectiveness and member viability. The analysis of selected team meetings with IPA displayed interesting task and socio¬emotional communication differences in effective and ineffective teams. These differences were more visible in socio-emotional interaction than in task-related interaction. Observed interaction patterns changed over time, although communication behaviours were more stable in the effective teams. Findings indicate that a consistently high level of positive socio-emotional communication in combination with a consistently low level of negative socio-emotional interaction seem to facilitate team effectiveness, while a high level of negative socio-emotional interaction or constantly changing socio-emotional behaviour seems to inhibit team effectiveness. It seems to suggest that communication behaviours impact upon team effectiveness and member viability. When communication behaviours could be described as task focused with a consistent level of positive reactions, outweighing negative reactions, effectiveness and member viability can increase. Opposite behaviours, shifting from task to interpersonal issues in combination with negative reactions outweighing positive reactions can lead to low levels of perceived member viability and a lack of effectiveness. The results lead to the suggestion that communication behaviours and member viability, particularly cohesion and willingness to continue as a member of this team, seem to be indicators for a team's 'well-being' and impact upon its effectiveness. These factors seem to be especially visible at the beginning and the temporal midpoint of a project. During these two periods, monitoring of the team process is recommended, either self-managed or with support from outside the team in order to prevent communication problems impacting on team effectiveness.

This thesis investigated the relative importance of six emotional intelligence (EI) abilities comprising the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT) in the prediction of (1) psychological resilience to negative life events, (2) romantic relationship adjustment and communication behaviour, and (3) employability skills. In Study 1, the strength of relationship between negative life events and distress varied across three latent classes, reflecting vulnerable, average, and resilient profiles. Graduated EI scores, in terms of emotional self-awareness, ability to express, and self-manage emotions, predicted membership to each class. Across the 414 survey respondents, these three EI abilities appeared to augment psychological resilience in the aftermath of negative life events. In Study 2, all six EI abilities were found to be weakly associated with dyadic adjustment, and moderately associated with eight relationship enhancing communication behaviours. The eight behaviours were themselves moderately to very strongly associated with adjustment. Mediation analyses revealed that each EI ability influenced dyadic adjustment through the communication behaviours it best predicted. Across the 116 romantic partners surveyed, those better able to express and self-manage emotion communicated in the most relationship enhancing ways. In Study 3, four of the six EI abilities were found to be differentially important in the prediction of seven Adaptive Performance dimensions, five Conflict Management strategies, three forms of Organizational Commitment, and seven Achievement Motivations. The abilities to think clearly under pressure, identify others' emotions, self-manage emotions, and manage others' emotions made valuable contributions, while emotional self-awareness, and the ability to express emotion, did not. Across the 105 workers surveyed, those with these four EI abilities appeared to have decidedly stronger employability skills, skills that distinguish between more and less successful workers of similar education and vocational experience, across all job families. These findings are largely consistent with EI theory, and with the small body of research to have examined similar effects in similar domains. Importantly however, the current findings offer much more specific insights into the relative importance of each EI ability in each context, and thus, the means by which emotional intelligence contributes to a psychologically healthy, intimately connected, and vocationally valuable life.

This thesis arose out of my professional engagement as a therapist, with people suffering depression, and from my recognition of the significance of such people’s workplace experience in times of significant workplace change. Worker depression is now widely identified as a significant and growing problem by employers, by governments and by international authorities such as the World Health Organisation. By the end of the 20th century, it had become a significant site for policy, leading to the collection of data and the development of management ‘tools’ at all these levels. Actions formed by such new policy range from workplace interventions to the establishment of government-funded bodies, such as beyondblue and the Black Dog Institute in Australia, charged with both research and information dissemination. An understanding of the context in which depression is increasing requires an exploration of two 20th century phenomena: on the one hand, the changing workplace of the advanced capitalist societies; and on the other, the ways in which depression itself has come to be diagnosed and treated, and consequently understood, as a medical phenomenon. There is a substantial literature on the contemporary workplace, and on the diagnosis, treatment and management of depression. Very little is available, however, dealing with the experience of individual workers who have been diagnosed with depression. This is the area the thesis is concerned to explore. In order to undertake this task, two significant methodological moves have been made, away from the ‘realist’ orientation of much of the available literature. The ‘genealogical’ move, drawing on Foucault, is the move concerned to understand how things are as they are and not otherwise, to ask questions such as: How has depression come to be a more and more common diagnosis in the late 20th - early 21st centuries? What is it about workers’ experience of the workplace that is making such diagnoses more likely? Might it be the case that more workers are increasingly unhappy and that unhappiness, particularly manifested somatically, through bodily ‘symptoms’, is increasingly likely to be diagnosed and treated medically, as depression? The ‘discursive’ move, drawing on Foucault, together with Nikolas Rose and Judith Butler, is the move that works with the understanding that selves are not simply given, existing autonomously. Rather, persons are constituted as selves – as subjects – in and through their active participation in the social worlds they come to inhabit. The mechanisms of this participation are the characteristic ways of acting and speaking – the discourses – of social institutions. Learning such discourses involves not only learning how to act appropriately but also to become a certain kind of self. For workers in the neoliberal workplace, this means learning to be the autonomous, flexible worker of overt requirements while simultaneously learning to live with increased demands for hours of work and levels of work output, together with escalating levels of surveillance. It is not surprising that many workers experience this workplace as increasingly stressful. Such stress, when medically diagnosed and treated as ‘depression’, offers a new kind of subject position to those affected. The heart of the thesis is an interview study which explores the narrative stages a set of workers diagnosed as depressed detail as they account for their progressive ‘resubjectification’ as depressed workers. Five stages, involving the narrative positioning of different selves or subject positions, are identified from detailed readings of the interview data: these are the narrating of psychologising, internalising, somatising, medicalising and pharmacologising positionings. The identification and naming of these stages draws substantially on the work of Nikolas Rose and his identification of key 20th century selves. The identification of these as narrative or discursive stages in the retrospective reconstruction of resubjectified selves is the original contribution of this thesis.

Work in organisations is a shared and joint endeavour often accomplished by groups, teams or other collectives. Yet groups at work do not always learn at work, limiting an organisation’s capability to thrive in knowledge economies. Research investigating collective learning at work continues to place the analytic focus on entities or abstractions representing the collective. For example, culture, power, group membership, group structure, group communications, motivations and skills are often examined to explain why groups learn or not in organisations. In contrast, this thesis investigates what it means to learn together when people act, talk and judge at work through their relational and responsive interactions. This relational orientation conceptualises learning as emerging from patterns of interactions that are responsive to local contexts and shaped by practical sensemaking that occurs in the everyday practice of work life. Specifically in the case study interpretive tradition, I investigate the relational practices of dyads and small groups in three disparate organisational contexts and professions. The organisational, group and individual characteristics differ widely for musicians in an orchestra, apprentice chefs in a commercial kitchen and rehabilitation staff in a corrections centre. Yet these three groups shared relational similarities in learning how to weave ways of acting, talking and judging together to make their work ‘work’. Such weaving together is enabled by shifting conceptually from notions of context as descriptive setting or situatedness to the notion of groups contextualising together. This thesis contributes to collective learning research by highlighting the significance of patterns of interactions and the dynamics of practice. The findings enhance existing collective learning theory by including spatio-temporal concepts from theories of organisational change and complexity. The findings have implications for guiding the learning of commencing practitioners into professions as well as for generating modes of transdisciplinary learning across professions. Re-viewing collective learning in relational ways recognises that learning is an emergent phenomenon, each time practised anew from interactions between people and the possibilities that lie within. The Latin prefix con means with. It seems appropriate that concerts performed by musicians, condiments added to dishes by chefs and the consequences of behaviours by corrections staff across diverse contexts of work can provide practical insights for better understanding how groups learn collectively at work.

Work in organisations is a shared and joint endeavour often accomplished by groups, teams or other collectives. Yet groups at work do not always learn at work, limiting an organisation’s capability to thrive in knowledge economies. Research investigating collective learning at work continues to place the analytic focus on entities or abstractions representing the collective. For example, culture, power, group membership, group structure, group communications, motivations and skills are often examined to explain why groups learn or not in organisations. In contrast, this thesis investigates what it means to learn together when people act, talk and judge at work through their relational and responsive interactions. This relational orientation conceptualises learning as emerging from patterns of interactions that are responsive to local contexts and shaped by practical sensemaking that occurs in the everyday practice of work life. Specifically in the case study interpretive tradition, I investigate the relational practices of dyads and small groups in three disparate organisational contexts and professions. The organisational, group and individual characteristics differ widely for musicians in an orchestra, apprentice chefs in a commercial kitchen and rehabilitation staff in a corrections centre. Yet these three groups shared relational similarities in learning how to weave ways of acting, talking and judging together to make their work ‘work’. Such weaving together is enabled by shifting conceptually from notions of context as descriptive setting or situatedness to the notion of groups contextualising together. This thesis contributes to collective learning research by highlighting the significance of patterns of interactions and the dynamics of practice. The findings enhance existing collective learning theory by including spatio-temporal concepts from theories of organisational change and complexity. The findings have implications for guiding the learning of commencing practitioners into professions as well as for generating modes of transdisciplinary learning across professions. Re-viewing collective learning in relational ways recognises that learning is an emergent phenomenon, each time practised anew from interactions between people and the possibilities that lie within. The Latin prefix con means with. It seems appropriate that concerts performed by musicians, condiments added to dishes by chefs and the consequences of behaviours by corrections staff across diverse contexts of work can provide practical insights for better understanding how groups learn collectively at work.

<h1>Fördomar och diskriminering existerar ännu i dagens samhälle. Rasfördomar förekommer dagligen i olika arbetsmiljöer och även under anställningsprocesser. Denna undersökning syftar till att studera och utforska om namn spelar en avgörande roll vid bedömning av en arbetsansökan. För att besvara syftet med denna undersökning utfördes en undersökning där studenter vid Mälardalens Högskola fick läsa en arbetsannons och en arbetsansökan med olika namn. Därefter fick deltagarna skatta och bedöma de arbetssökande utifrån tolv egenskaper samt finna om de sökande var lämpliga för arbetstjänsten som civilingenjör. Undersökningen påvisade att namn inte har betydelse för hur man bedömer en arbetssökande då det inte fanns en signifkant skillnad mellan namn och hur man bedömde en arbetssökande.</h1>

<p>Earlier research has shown the difficulty of defining insulting behaviour in the workplace. It has been noted that the individual and subjective definition is connected to the specific situation in which the potentially insulting incidence occurred. In this study we designed a quantitative questionnaire in order to hopefully elucidate the comprehension of insulting behaviour and furthermore enable a more in-depth investigation on how important the contextual meaning is. This study examined 140 (n=140) working adult’s attitudes towards insulting behaviour in the workplace and the importance of the contextual variables. The results showed that improper contiguity (80,7 %), sexual insinuations (84,2 %) and being ignored (88,6 %) are what the respondents find most insulting. The results also show that the context in which the potentially insulting incidence occurred was not the sole determining factor when the respondents evaluated the incidence.</p>

<p>Upper secondary school contains of several different programs, for some of them workplace training, APU, is a part. The Industry programme is one of those. The education within a programme where workplace training is a part works out differently. The workplace training part of the education is a collaboration between school and different working sites. The aim of this study is to illuminate one kind of education model from different perspectives.</p><p>The workplace training part of this model starts from term four and takes place two days every week, the other three days of the week used for education in school. The questions at issue for this study are in what meaning can workplace training affect the results of the programme goals? And how is the education interpreted, valued and described by different participants? The study contains of sex interviewees. In the study are six persons from three different categories; cooperative companies, teachers teaching core subjects and pupils. The results from the study show how important the cooperative companies think that communication and the possibility to be able to have influence in the education model are. They look at themselves not only as a company that provides trainee possibilities. They also consider the lifeexperience that the pupils get through the combination of education in school combined with workplaced training affect their efforts of reaching the programme goal positively. The education model is seen with positive eyes both from the cooperative companies and the pupils, while the results from the coresubject teachers interviews not are quit as distinct.</p>