Ishbel McWha

Measuring relationships between workers in poverty‐focused organisations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a measure of relationships and learning within the aid context.Design/methodology/approach – The Aid Relationships Quality Scale (ARQS) was administered to 1,290 local and expatriate workers across six countries in three regions (Africa: Malawi, Uganda; Asia: India, China; Oceania: PNG, Solomon Islands), as part of a larger study exploring remuneration differences. Data were factor‐analysed and explored using correlations. Individual and organisational level variance was partialed out in the analyses.Findings – The ARQS showed a stable factor structure and acceptable reliability for each subscale: “relationship with expatriates”, “relationship with locals”, and “learning from expatriates and locals”. Construct validity was examined using a modification of the Multitrait‐Multimethod Matrix. For the sample as a whole, and at the individual level, both relationships subscales were positively correlated with each other, job satisfaction, and “learning...

Facilitating the Process of Globally Distributed Development-Focused Research Teams

International research collaborations are increasingly common, and particularly perhaps within aid projects and programmes, where those from the so-called developed (higher-income) nations work alongside colleagues from the so-called developing (lower-income) nations. International research provides a multitude of challenges, many of which we will touch on throughout this chapter, not least the considerably diverse disciplinary, socio-political, -economic and -cultural backgrounds from which different team members originate. In this chapter we reflect upon some of the key lessons learnt during a recent successful international research collaboration, which comprised a diverse team of researchers spread across nine countries, themselves characterized by political, economic and cultural diversity.

Challenges and opportunities to developing South–North program partnerships

This chapter poses a number of practical and ethical considerations to developing internationally focused curricula and effective South–North partnerships. We focus on the differences, disparities, and power imbalances within our discipline, and reframe these as valuable learning opportunities to develop a new generation of globally and socially aware organizational psychologists.