Wise proactivity: making the right things happen in the right way. Little is known about how organisations can motivate their staff to make things happen and at the same time prevent misguided and ineffective proactivity. This project focuses on the concept of wise proactivity. The aim is to develop managers who balance interests beyond their own to make the right things happen in the right way.
Work Design Matters: The Dynamic Interplay of Work, Person and Context. Work design is critical for social and economic outcomes, as exemplified by the International Labour Office's 'Decent Work agenda'. This project first proposes new, long-term dynamic processes by which personality and demographics, and their interactions, shape or constrain individuals' opportunities for high quality work. Second, it considers how family, education, and workplace factors mitigate the pathways between these i ....Work Design Matters: The Dynamic Interplay of Work, Person and Context. Work design is critical for social and economic outcomes, as exemplified by the International Labour Office's 'Decent Work agenda'. This project first proposes new, long-term dynamic processes by which personality and demographics, and their interactions, shape or constrain individuals' opportunities for high quality work. Second, it considers how family, education, and workplace factors mitigate the pathways between these individual variables and work design. Finally, taking account of contemporary challenges in today's organisations, it examines how work design affects the person, including their health, performance, behaviour, and cognition. The project aims to address these questions using a unique longitudinal cohort study, the Raine Study.Read moreRead less
Understanding the learning and development of employees' emotion regulation strategies over time: rethinking the paradigm. This project investigates how new employees develop strategies for managing emotions at work. Using applied and laboratory designs, this research extends our understanding of how organisational socialisation processes influence new employees' management of emotions and identifies the levers to improve employee wellbeing, productivity and retention.
Extending the theory and measurement of personal values and testing relations of values to attitudes and behaviour. Personal values indicate what is important to us, guide our behaviour and reflect real differences between cultures, social classes, occupations, and religions. This project seeks to refine the theory and measurement of personal values across cultures to better understand the motivations that lie behind attitudes and behaviours.
Designing Human Resource Practices that Promote the Retention of Volunteers. This project aims to examine the effects of human resources practices on the attraction and retention of high-quality volunteers. Volunteers provide essential health and educational services to the Australian population, which makes it important for non-profit organisations to develop effective human resource practices that attract and retain the best people. However, non-profit organisations often struggle to attract a ....Designing Human Resource Practices that Promote the Retention of Volunteers. This project aims to examine the effects of human resources practices on the attraction and retention of high-quality volunteers. Volunteers provide essential health and educational services to the Australian population, which makes it important for non-profit organisations to develop effective human resource practices that attract and retain the best people. However, non-profit organisations often struggle to attract and retain a sufficient number of volunteers. This project will examine the effects of three human resource practices on the thriving and organisational attachment of volunteers using theories of motivation and retention. This knowledge is intended to help governments and non-profit organisations improve on policies and procedures to manage Australia’s volunteer workforce sustainably.Read moreRead less
Developing and testing dynamic models of goal striving in approach and avoidance contexts. This project will examine how people manage competing goals, such as productivity and safety, in a dynamic environment. The results will improve understanding of human motivation and have implications for practice in military, industrial and commercial settings.
Improving Neurobehavioural Development In Preterm Infants: A Randomised Controlled Trial Of A Neonatal Intervention
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$680,920.00
Summary
Up to 50% of preterm infants will have one or more developmental difficulties. While medical complications are implicated in these problems, recent evidence points to the added effect of the infant's early environment. Hospitalised premature infants experience stress from necessary but painful hospital procedures, overstimulation and maternal deprivation. Evidence, largely from animal studies, suggests stressful early experience negatively affects brain development. We also know that premature i ....Up to 50% of preterm infants will have one or more developmental difficulties. While medical complications are implicated in these problems, recent evidence points to the added effect of the infant's early environment. Hospitalised premature infants experience stress from necessary but painful hospital procedures, overstimulation and maternal deprivation. Evidence, largely from animal studies, suggests stressful early experience negatively affects brain development. We also know that premature infants find it difficult to handle stress as they are highly disorganised neurobehaviourally. The primary aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a parent-based intervention in enhancing neurobehavioural development at two years of age in very premature infants. It is predicted that this stress-reduction intervention will also enhance medical stability,normal brain development, parent-child interaction and parental mental health. The intervention to be trialled involves intensive training of parents of very premature infants, and in the 12 weeks following birth the parents will be the change agents. A randomised controlled trial comparing intervention and control groups will be undertaken to assess the effectiveness of this intervention. Assessments of early brain and 2 year intellectual, emotional and behavioural development will provide important outcome measures. A major strength of this study is the inclusion of advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology as it enables differences in brain development between the intervention and control group to be assessed, the association between brain and neurobehavioural development to be explored, and the impact of stress on early brain development to be investigated. This intervention is relatively simple and inexpensive, and would be a valuable contribution to neonatal care if found to be effective in enhancing brain and neurobehavioural development.Read moreRead less
Attracting and sustaining engaged science and mathematics teachers. Attracting and sustaining engaged science and mathematics teachers. This project will examine what attracts or deters potential, future and practising teachers of the sciences and mathematics, by focusing on current teachers, school and university students in Queensland. Promises of a technological revolution and rapid economic development will be hollow if students do not study sciences and mathematics, and there are too few qu ....Attracting and sustaining engaged science and mathematics teachers. Attracting and sustaining engaged science and mathematics teachers. This project will examine what attracts or deters potential, future and practising teachers of the sciences and mathematics, by focusing on current teachers, school and university students in Queensland. Promises of a technological revolution and rapid economic development will be hollow if students do not study sciences and mathematics, and there are too few qualified teachers. This project will identify where to intervene in the science and mathematics teacher supply pipeline, and policy levers to attract and sustain quality teachers. The project is expected to uncover what attracts or deters teachers of science and mathematics—disciplines essential to industry innovation, a skilled workforce and productivity growth.Read moreRead less
Pathways to work engagement, wellbeing and positive teaching among mid-career teachers: The role of personal and workplace resources. Teaching is a highly demanding, yet rewarding career for many. It is also a decidedly stressful occupation associated with high burnout. By following a large sample of teachers recruited ten years earlier into their mid-career, this project investigates the coping and motivational resources that keep them engaged, allowing them to thrive personally and professiona ....Pathways to work engagement, wellbeing and positive teaching among mid-career teachers: The role of personal and workplace resources. Teaching is a highly demanding, yet rewarding career for many. It is also a decidedly stressful occupation associated with high burnout. By following a large sample of teachers recruited ten years earlier into their mid-career, this project investigates the coping and motivational resources that keep them engaged, allowing them to thrive personally and professionally in different kinds of school environments, versus pathways that predict to burnout, ill-being and negative teaching behaviours. Selected subgroups who were most at risk and most positively engaged earlier in their career will be the focus of longitudinal case studies to uncover more nuanced processes promoting positive and negative pathways.Read moreRead less
Peer Rejection and the Maladaptive Social Behaviour of Children and Adolescents. Research indicates that peer rejection has serious negative effects on child and adolescent victims. However, little research has addressed the likelihood that peer rejection also has negative consequences for others in the social environment, through its instigation of maladaptive social behaviours such as bullying and ethnic prejudice. Given the incidence of the latter behaviours in primary and secondary schools, ....Peer Rejection and the Maladaptive Social Behaviour of Children and Adolescents. Research indicates that peer rejection has serious negative effects on child and adolescent victims. However, little research has addressed the likelihood that peer rejection also has negative consequences for others in the social environment, through its instigation of maladaptive social behaviours such as bullying and ethnic prejudice. Given the incidence of the latter behaviours in primary and secondary schools, the aim of this project is to conduct a program of research to test an integrative model of the impact of peer rejection on the maladaptive social behaviours of children and adolescents, with a particular focus on ethnic prejudice and bullying.Read moreRead less