Kantha Dayaram

Establishing ‘decent work and economic growth’ as one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has elevated the discourse of decent work beyond national level policy debate. For emerging economies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the literature, though limited, has sought to explore prospects for workers to find productive and decent work in conditions of human dignity, equity, freedom and security. In this paper, we provide a review of decent work research in SSA by mapping the core themes and discussing the challenges and opportunities for decent work in the region. Our review reveals the informal economy, economic policy and development programming, the rising gig economy and the nature of organisational climate as core themes surrounding ‘decent work deficit’ in SSA . We use the International Labour Organisation's decent work framework: social protection, social dialogue, workers’ rights and employment creation to highlight implications for (a) labour regulation (b) workers’ voice and representation and (c) employer's managerial prerogative. Our paper sets out future IR research to support the analysis and development of decent work in SSA.

Violence against healthcare workers is a pervasive global issue. While previous literature has primarily focussed on fellow employees as perpetrators, little is known regarding violence inflicted by patients and their support such as family and visitors. Adopting a regional lens, this study examines the risk factors of violence against healthcare workers inflicted by patients and their support, owing to higher levels of violence in the Asia‐Pacific (APAC) region. We conducted a scoping literature review of 98 APAC‐based empirical studies in peer‐reviewed academic journals in English. The catalysts for violence were classified according to overarching themes of individual attributes of healthcare professionals, care‐centre provisions and infrastructure, accountability of administration and management, as well as patients and their family's backgrounds. Review purpose and rationale were mapped to Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review protocol. These results were further corroborated by some of the collaborative exercises carried out with medical and para‐medical professionals. The findings and insights establish a regional risk assessment and evaluation framework with policy ramifications concerning workers' occupational health and safety. We identify and present several socio‐economic, political, topographical, and methodological investigation avenues.

This article introduces the special issue, bringing together research on psychosocial workplace hazards (PSWH) which engages industrial relations (IR) perspectives. This is important as PSWH are increasingly studied and regulated, with new regulatory frameworks creating opportunity and necessity for IR perspectives to engage with PSWH. These hazards are intimately related to power relations between employers, workers and the broader society within which they interact, a topic of longstanding investigation within IR. To date, PSWH research has largely occurred in the work, health and safety (WHS) field, reflecting a broader historical separation between WHS and IR in scholarship and practice. While WHS literature outlines the significance of psychosocial hazards as a public health issue, and proposes solutions for their mitigation, we argue that IR framing, and indeed IR frames of reference, can better explain the existence and promote mitigation of PSWH. In this SI the seven papers provide insights into the history of PSWH study; impact of work conditions on restructuring and PSWH; applying the Pressure, Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure (PDR) model in research on sexual harassment; organisational conditions that contribute to the health risks associated with the work, psychosocial hazards women workers experience due to menstruation in developing countries and union strategies for managing workload of union employees.

Working outside of a physical workplace is expanding through the growth of the gig economy and because of the working from home processes enforced as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working outside of the physical confines of a single workplace has always been present across many industries, such as transport and construction, education, defence, and mining. With the development of the online economy, the nature of business and working has been transformed. The internet, mobile phones, and specialist apps have supported new business development, disrupted industries, and opened new ways of working beyond the traditional workplace, including gig work. The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions to work away from the workplace, typically at home. The trend globally is towards working away from the traditional and regulated workplace. This chapter will examine worker wellbeing external working arrangements in two different contexts in Australia: long distance commuting in the West Australian mining sector and enforced working from home arrangements occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: Saudi Arabia (SA) is amongst the few countries with a significant foreign workforce who are employed in the higher education sector. More specifically, 39% of SA's academic staff members are foreign nationals and 63% of that proportion occupy professorial positions. Drawing from a workforce localisation perspective, the study was framed as an exploration of equity and social justice amongst Saudi nationals and foreign nationals in a university work setting. The authors employ the lens of how human resource development (HRD) opportunities are administered.Design/methodology/approach: Following the choice of an exploratory qualitative study, the authors employed a multi-case study approach where each of the six universities represented a unit of analysis.Findings: The authors found that nationality differences influenced access to HRD opportunities. These differences are reinforced by practices associated with procedural processes, managerial discretion and selective restrictions in accessing HRD opportunities.Social implications: The findings have both practical and social implications, specifically for the SA government's strategic vision of developing local human capabilities.Originality/value: The workforce localisation agenda within the higher education sector has both a compounding effect on local human capital and supports SA's 2030 Vision and human capital target. Nonetheless, perceived inequity and injustice in accessing HRD opportunities by foreign nationals potentially undermine morale, academic quality standards and research performance, which impacts the development of future human capital and the ‘Saudization’ goals.

Purpose: Integrating individual and relational centric voice literature, the authors draw on self-presentation theory to analyse the role of status pursuit in employee voice. Status pursuit is believed to be ubiquitous as it is linked to access to scarce resources and social order pecking.Design/methodology/approach: The authors present a cross-level conceptual model outlining relational nuances of employee status pursuit that drive upward voice.Findings: The model integrates status pursuit with peer- and leader-related facets, focusing on three targets of voice: immediate leader (supervisor), diagonal leader (supervisor of another team/unit) and co-workers. The model highlights how employee voice can be directed to diverse targets, and depending on interpersonal attributes, how it serves as underlying links for upward voice.Originality/value: While employee voice can help to address important workplace concerns, it can also be used to advance employees' self-interest. Though there is a wealth of research on the importance of employee voice to organisational performance and individual wellbeing, especially through collective representation such as trade unions, there is a lack of literature on how employees navigate the social-relational work setting to promote their interests and develop status.

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate how human resource professionals (HRPs), in a variety of organizations, responded to the crisis brought about by the event of COVID-19. In particular, it aims to show how organizations, across all sectors, in Western Australia responded with urgency and flexibility to the crisis and showed “resilience in practice”.Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on 136 questionnaire responses, 32 interviews and 25 managerial narratives. The mixed qualitative methodology was designed to enable an investigation of the impact of COVID-19 and the response of HRPs.Findings: HRPs have responded with agility and flexibility to the impact of COVID-19. They have done so through extensive trial and error, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. They have not simply activated a preconceived continuity plan.Research limitations/implications: The research indicates that resilience is an ongoing accomplishment of organizations and the people in them. The objective was description rather than prescription, and the research does not offer solutions to future pandemic-like situations.Practical implications: The research suggests that, given the impact of COVID-19 on organizations, HR practices, processes and policies will need to be thoroughly reconsidered for relevance in the post-COVID world. Possible future directions are highlighted.Originality/value: The research considers the actions of HRPs as they responded to a global crisis as the crisis unfolded.