Nick Turner

Humour can shape classroom dynamics, yet its pedagogical significance depends on how students interpret its instructional and relational meaning. This study examines how instructors’ use of course-related and self-disparaging humour relates to students’ perceptions of transformational teaching, and whether these relationships vary as a function of students’ educational orientations. Drawing on Instructional Humour Processing Theory (IHPT) and transformational teaching frameworks, we conceptualize instructional humour as a social-cognitive cue that students may use to infer instructional relevance and relational approachability. Using hierarchical regression analyses of survey data from 362 Canadian undergraduate business students, both humour types were positively associated with perceptions of transformational teaching (course-related B = 1.67, p < .001; self-disparaging B = 0.77, p = .001). A small interaction indicated that the positive association between self-disparaging humour and transformational teaching was weaker among students high in learning orientation ( B = −0.06, p = .044). Grade orientation did not moderate either relationship. These findings suggest that instructional humour is associated with transformational teaching perceptions in ways consistent with both instructional relevance and relational interpretation, while the association involving self-disparaging humour appears more contingent on student motivation. The study integrates IHPT with leadership-based teaching models and suggests that instructors’ use of humour as a pedagogical leadership behaviour may require calibration to students’ motivational orientations.

Drawing on the Thriving through Relationships model, we examine transformational leadership as a relational job resource that may help employees with chronic pain manage pain‐related work interference by fostering positive psychological well‐being. We conceptualize chronic pain as a persistent adversity and examine pain intensity as a boundary condition that may constrain the benefits of leadership‐supported psychological resources. Using three‐wave longitudinal data from 195 employees with chronic pain, we found that transformational leadership was indirectly associated with lower subsequent pain interference through positive psychological well‐being. This indirect effect was significant at low and moderate levels of pain intensity, but non‐significant at high levels. These findings suggest that transformational leadership may support employees' capacity to manage pain interference by fostering positive psychological well‐being, but that this pathway is attenuated when pain intensity is high. More broadly, the study identifies adversity load as a condition that may shape when relational job resources translate into improved functioning.

This mixed-method study examines how human resource management (HRM) practices relate to organizational work injury rates and when their safety benefits are constrained by features of the work system. Using quantitative data from 106 ethnographies spanning 1940–1999 in Hodson’s (2004) Workplace Ethnography Project, we simultaneously modeled five general HRM practices: systematic selection, training, information sharing, compensation, and autonomy-based structural empowerment. Autonomy-based structural empowerment emerged as the only practice associated with lower injury rates when modeled alongside the others. To examine theoretically informative deviations from this dominant pattern, we conducted qualitative re-immersion into four counterfactual cases in which very high empowerment co-occurred with frequent injuries. This analysis suggests four recurring boundary conditions—uncertainty, physical hazard exposure, interpersonal strain, and task complexity—that appear to weaken empowerment’s protective association by likely increasing volatility, cognitive load, and coordination demands. Together, these findings advance a contingency-based account of HRM effectiveness by specifying when empowerment functions as safety-enhancing and when clustered boundary conditions limit its effectiveness.

Leadership research has paid limited attention to how distinct leadership behaviours operate jointly under conditions of high complexity in high‐reliability settings. This study examines how transformational and directive leadership behaviours combine to influence team psychological safety and patient outcomes during complex surgical procedures. Drawing on situational strength theory and integrative leadership perspectives, we argue that the complementarity of people‐focused (transformational) and task‐focused (directive) leadership becomes especially functional when surgical complexity is high, enhancing team psychological safety and indirectly improving patient outcomes. We test these arguments using multi‐source, time‐sequenced data from 150 surgeries, including third‐party observations of intraoperative leadership behaviours, team reports of psychological safety, objective indicators of surgical errors and blood loss, and patient‐reported postoperative complications. Results show that under high surgical complexity, transformational and directive leadership interact to predict higher team psychological safety. In turn, psychological safety is associated with more observed surgical errors per hour but fewer and less severe post‐discharge complications. Transformational leadership shows no unconditional main effects; rather, its benefits emerge only when paired with directive leadership under high complexity. These findings highlight the importance of contextual boundary conditions and demonstrate how leadership combinations shape performance processes and outcomes in high‐reliability surgical environments.

Employee retention, motivation, performance, and well‐being remain enduring priorities in human resource management, yet existing constructs such as engagement, commitment, and satisfaction do not fully capture the depth of emotional attachment that some employees feel towards their jobs. We introduce Love of the Job (LOJ) as a higher‐order form of affective attachment to one's job that integrates passion for one's work, non‐romantic intimacy with coworkers, and commitment to organizational membership, grounded in Sternberg's triangular theory of love. Across a four‐stage, eight‐sample program of research (total N = 1,801), we develop and validate a concise and reliable LOJ scale using diverse working‐adult samples and longitudinal designs. The measure demonstrates strong psychometric properties and discriminant validity from related constructs, establishing LOJ as a distinct form of work attachment, and shows incremental predictive validity for key outcomes, including discretionary performance, innovation, and job crafting, as well as retention and well‐being indicators such as turnover intentions, partial absenteeism, and work neglect. Together, these findings position LOJ as a novel, theoretically grounded construct with strategic relevance for HRM and provide scholars and practitioners with a robust tool to assess and better understand employees' deep emotional attachment to their work.

Educational settings often operate in resource-constrained environments, limiting opportunities for leadership development. Most research focuses on long-term, resource-intensive programs (e.g., mentoring, coaching, leadership development courses), which restrict accessibility and scalability. This study evaluates a short-duration, student-centered leadership development initiative—the “Learning with Leaders” program—that engages higher education students in structured, 1-hr sessions with experienced leaders. Using qualitative data from 72 participant feedback surveys and testimonials, we examined the program’s impact on leadership knowledge, self-efficacy, and identity formation. Findings indicate that these microdose interventions enhance leadership knowledge, strengthen leader self-efficacy, and support identity formation through active social learning and reflective practices. These results suggest that short-term, active learning can complement traditional leadership development approaches by offering a scalable and resource-efficient alternative to long-term programs. This study contributes to leadership development theory by introducing the concept of microdose interventions and demonstrating their effectiveness in fostering leadership identity and self-efficacy.