Wan Har Chong

This paper examines how to support blue-collar workers in adapting to the growing digitalization of work. Recognizing that blue-collar workers typically possess lower levels of formal skills, the study highlights their heightened vulnerability to technological disruption and the challenges of transitioning to digitalized work environments. Using an exploratory case study of a cleaning company, the research extends career construction theory as a theoretical lens to understand how managerial interventions support worker adaptation. The findings identify a set of ten interventions. These interventions help blue-collar workers develop new competencies, adjust to digitally augmented workflows, and maintain employability in evolving job contexts. In contrast to most existing research that focuses on how blue-collar workers themselves adapt to the digitalization of their work, this study focuses on their managers, contributing to the research and practice for a more human-centered approach in supporting blue-collar workers' adaptation to digitalized work.

Given their lower skill endowment, blue-collar workers tend to experience greater difficulty in adapting to digitalized work. Yet, there is a dearth of research focusing on the digitalization of blue-collar work or how blue-collar workers adapt to the digitalization of their work. This paper presents an exploratory case study on a cleaning company to investigate how managers of blue-collar workers facilitated their adaptation to digitalized work. Career Construction Theory is employed as the theoretical sense-making lens in analyzing the case study data, resulting in the identification of ten interventions taken by managers in facilitating blue-collar workers adapt to digitalized work. Contributions of this study to research are then drawn, and recommendations on future research direction are posited. Practical implications for managers, unions and governments are also presented. In conclusion, a call for more research on this strategic and emancipatory topic of ‘digitalization of blue-collar work’ is presented.

The purpose of the research is to examine the perceptions of primary school educators toward inclusive education in Singapore. The research study seeks to provide an understanding of inclusion as it is practiced in Singapore primary schools. It examines the features of inclusion and its implementation, the experience of primary school teachers, perceived barriers and facilitators of inclusion, and the benefits and disadvantages of inclusion.

Employee-driven innovations (EDI) have gained traction in research and inform workplace practice to address the need in responding to dynamic economic environments, the imperative of enterprise viability and worker employability. A constellation of contextual factors has been posited to shape employee predisposition to EDI engagement. One key factor – the mindset of employees in relation to their initiation, enactment and maintenance of innovative practices in workplaces – has been identified as instrumental in igniting this process. The intent of this study is to elicit the antecedents and personal factors that foster growth mindsets and the pathways through which these factors shape EDI practices at work. Guided by Keating and Heslin’s (2015) framework on growth mindset in workplace engagement, findings from 40 interviews with employers and employees of four small to medium size enterprises, where work activities and foci are quite distinct, were examined to explore its applicability in the Singapore workplace.

Parent education programs are important avenues through which parents of children with developmental delays can learn new skills to help them with child-rearing challenges. However, those in economic hardship often face problems with applying these skills at home where the child’s learning and/or behavioral problems commonly occur. In this exploratory qualitative study, we adopted a positive deviance (PD) lens to explore strategies six economically disadvantaged parents used to support their children who were attending special and mainstream preschools concurrently. The PD perspective was first used in public health research with low-resource communities where a few individuals have been observed to adopt uncommon practices and behaviors that enable them to find better ways to prevent social or health problems than their neighbors facing similar constraints and risks. We identified adaptive parental behaviors, thoughts and feelings that helped them navigate daily hassles faced with “dual schooling” their children in Singapore. The study highlights important implications in the development and refinement of future parent training programs.