Towards a better understanding of police experience: An assessment of the unique shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments that officers have worked

Using the survey data from 791 officers in a large western police department in the United States, the current study assesses how officers’ unique work experiences (i.e., shifts, crime areas, and duty assignments) vary and culminate throughout a career in policing. Findings provide a glimpse into the early socialization and work experiences of novice officers and how experiences manifest across officers as they gain years on the job. The results also show that there is particularly high variation in the career work experiences amongst the most tenured officers, which calls into question the validity of using only length of service to measure officer experience. This study closes by discussing the implications that these findings have for future research and practice.

A qualitative study on the working experiences of clinical pharmacists in fighting against COVID-19

Background The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has overwhelmed healthcare systems across the world. Along with the medical team, clinical pharmacists played a significant role during the public health emergency of COVID-19. This study aimed to explore the working experience of clinical pharmacists and provide reference for first-line clinical pharmacists to prepare for fighting against COVID-19. Methods A qualitative study based on descriptive phenomenology was employed with face-to-face and audio-recorded interviews to study the working experience of 13 clinical pharmacists (including two clinical nutritional pharmacists). All interviews were transcribed verbatim, and the interview data were analyzed thematically using NVivo software. Results Four themes emerged from interview data, including roles of clinical pharmacists, working experiences of clinical pharmacists, psychological feelings of clinical pharmacists, and career expectations of clinical pharmacists. Conclusions The results contributed to a deeper understanding of the clinical pharmacists’ work experiences in COVID-19 and offered guidance to better prepare clinical pharmacists in participating in a public health crisis.

Work-Integrated Learning

Work-integrated learning (WIL) continues to be an essential topic of conversation among governments, educators, employers, and students. By various names and definitions, WIL attempts to inject the realism of workplace employment tasks into the post-secondary learning environment. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced stakeholders to innovate in the WIL space often using the advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) to build further bridges between learners and real work experiences. The chapter provides an overview of WIL followed by three specifics cases from marketing faculty at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). In each of the three cases, faculty used different ICT to provide engaging learning environments linking business, industry, consumers, and the learners.

Teachers’ Time Use and Affect Before and After COVID-19 School Closures

Several large-scale survey efforts have attempted to understand teachers’ experiences in the early months of the pandemic. Our study complements this literature by providing direct evidence of teachers’ work prior to and after the onset of COVID-19. We leverage unique longitudinal time use and affect data on 131 teachers from one district across the 2019–2020 school year. Specifically, we provide a full accounting of teachers’ instructional activities, their reports of their positive affect and negative affect while engaged in these activities, and the extent to which teachers’ work experiences changed post-COVID. Our results suggest a large reduction in teachers’ daily instructional minutes, which were replaced with increased planning, paperwork, and interactions with colleagues and parents. Teachers’ overall positive and negative affect did not change post-COVID. But teachers’ affective responses to specific work activities did. Post-COVID, we saw increases in teachers’ positive affect when with students.

Examining relational social ontologies of disaster resilience: lived experiences from India, Indonesia, Nepal, Chile and Andean territories

PurposeThe neoliberal resilience discourse and its critiques both contribute to its hegemony, obscuring alternative discourses in the context of risk and uncertainties. Drawing from the “ontology of potentiality”, the authors suggest reclaiming “resilience” through situated accounts of the connected and relational every day from the global south. To explore alternate possibilities, the authors draw attention to the social ontology of disaster resilience that foregrounds relationality, intersectionality and situated knowledge.Design/methodology/approachQuilting together the field work experiences in India, Indonesia, Nepal, Chile and Andean territories, the authors interrogate the social ontologies and politics of resilience in disaster studies in these contexts through six vignettes. Quilting, as a research methodology, weaves together various individual fragments involving their specific materialities, situated knowledge, layered temporalities, affects and memories. The authors’ six vignettes discuss the use, politicisation and resistance to resilience in the aftermath of disasters.FindingsWhile the pieces do not try to bring out a single “truth”, the authors argue that firstly, the vignettes provide non-Western conceptualisations of resilience, and attempts to provincialise externally imposed notions of resilience. Secondly, they draw attention to social ontology of resilience as the examples underscores the intersubjectivity of disaster experiences, the relational reaching out to communities and significant others.Originality/valueDrawing from in-depth research conducted in six disaster contexts by seven scholars from South Asia, South America and Northern Europe, the authors embrace pluralist situated knowledge, and cross-cultural/language co-authoring. Thus, the co-authored piece contributes to diversifying disaster studies scholarship methodologically.

The Antecedents, Consequences, and Mediating Role of Workload among Chinese Courier Drivers

The growth of e-commerce in China can be regarded as a significant factor in the increase in occupational stress and the voluntary turnover of courier drivers. This paper aims to investigate selected occupational stress factors behind the turnover intentions of Chinese courier drivers. Using data from 229 couriers employed at the largest delivery companies in China, this study applies structural equation modelling to investigate not only the direct relationships between job-stress factors and turnover intentions but also the extent to which workload indirectly mediates turnover intentions among couriers. The results indicate that a combination of high workload with social stressors leads to turnover intentions. In particular, it was found that workload completely mediated the relationship between both the independent variables and the intention to leave the industry, suggesting that when workloads are high, the net effect of negative work experiences with regard to verbal aggression and ambiguous customer expectations increases the likelihood of an intention to leave the industry. Although restricted to China, this is one of the first studies investigating the effects of courier drivers’ job stressors which highlights the importance of delivery companies working with staff to mitigate job stressors to reduce turnover intention.

Wage Theft and Work Safety: Immigrant Day Labor Jobs and the Potential for Worker Rights Training at Worker Centers

Immigrant day laborers routinely experience exploitative behaviors as part of their employment. These experiences are understood in the context of their immigration histories and in the context of their long-term goals for less precarious labor and living situations. Using mixed methods, over three data collection periods in 2016, 2019, and 2020, we analyze the work experiences of immigrant day labors in Houston and Austin, Texas. We report how workers judge precarious jobs and respond to labor exploitation in an informal labor market. We also discuss data pertaining to a worker rights training intervention conducted through a city-sponsored worker center. We discuss the potential for worker centers to be a convening and remediation space for workers and employers. Worker centers where immigrant day labors meet employers offer the potential for informal intervention into wage theft and work safety violations, by formalizing the context where laborers are hired.

Social Inclusion and Exclusion of Women Directors in Malaysia

Modern society is currently experiencing strong influences in the 21st-century that are shaping culture, structure and various institutional features. Although modern rational value systems supersede traditional ones, some traditional and modern values still coexist. The blurring of the modern-traditional values dichotomy is the result, even now in the Malaysian corporate world, shaping corporate and economic behaviour and practices. The social inclusion and exclusion of women in board directorship are influenced by traditional values as much as modern values, hence challenging male board dominance. Based on a qualitative research methodology, this paper discusses some empirical findings. Semi-structured interviews with 17 male and female directors from public-listed (PLCs) and private companies in Malaysia found the coexistence of traditional and modern values and related aspects that have enabled women to get appointed, empowered, and sustain their appointment on the PLCs boards. Modern values like rationality, efficiency, meritocracy, professionalism, and individuality coexist with traditional personalism, trust, loyalty and patriarchy (notably male status quo dominance). These values are portrayed through hard and soft skills, technical and practical business knowledge, some personality traits and professional business and work experiences. This social inclusion and exclusion aspects will drive the rise, withdrawal, exit or even avoidance of women as company directors of PLCs in Malaysia. This blurring dichotomy argument may hold for as long as the society subscribes to the coexistence of modern and traditional values systems in modern corporate Malaysia.