Peter M. Hart

Occupational Wellbeing and Performance: A Review of Organisational Health Research

The organisational health framework is a theory-based approach delineating how key individual and organisational factors interact to determine employee wellbeing and organisational performance. The present review focuses on a particular research model derived from the organisational health framework, and summarises studies that have investigated the applicability of the framework across different occupational groups. In particular, the review focuses on the determinants of employee wellbeing, discretionary performance, and withdrawal behaviour intentions, including the submission of stress-related workers compensation claims and the use of uncertified sick leave. We also discuss research that links employee wellbeing to performance-related outcomes, and provide an overview of the major practical implications stemming from the research to date. The consistency of findings across a range of settings demonstrates that the organisational health framework provides a robust evidence-based approach to the manage...

Development of the school organisational health questionnaire: a measure for assessing teacher morale and school organisational climate.

BACKGROUND A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that organisational factors are more important than classroom specific issues in determining teacher morale. Accordingly, it is necessary to have available measures that accurately assess morale, as well as the organisational factors that are likely to underpin the experience of morale. AIM Three studies were conducted with the aim of developing a psychometrically sound questionnaire that could be used to assess teacher morale and various dimensions of school organisational climate. SAMPLE A total of 1,520 teachers from 18 primary and 26 secondary schools in the Australian state of Victoria agreed to participate in three separate studies (N = 615, 342 and 563 in Studies 1, 2 and 3, respectively) that were used to develop the questionnaire. The demographic profile of the teachers was similar to that found in the Department as a whole. METHOD All teaching staff in the participating schools were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire as part of the evaluation of an organisational development programme. RESULTS A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to establish the questionnaires factor structure, and correlation analyses were used to examine the questionnaires convergent and discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS The three studies resulted in the 54-item School Organisational Health Questionnaire that measures teacher morale and 11 separate dimensions of school organisational climate: appraisal and recognition, curriculum coordination, effective discipline policy, excessive work demands, goal congruence, participative decision-making, professional growth, professional interaction, role clarity, student orientation, and supportive leadership.

Assessing police work experiences: Development of the police daily hassles and uplifts scales

Abstract The development of two self-report scales that measure police daily hassles and uplifts is reported These scales reflect the positive and negative work experiences common to police officers. Self-report questionnaire data were provided by 330 police officers drawn from a systematic sample of all ranks and work sections within an Australian police department. Results showed that 19 dimensions of police hassles and 12 dimensions of police uplifts could be grouped into two broad domains of organizational and operational experiences. Correlations with job satisfaction and perceived quality of life (PQOL) indicators supported the construct validity of the scales and suggested that organizational hassles and uplifts were more important than operational experiences in determining a police officers PQOL. When compared to population norms, police officers reported more favorable levels of PQOL. These results raise questions about the assertion that policing is highly stresful, and they demonstrate the need for a more systemic view of police work that takes into account experiences that are beneficial as well as experiences that are harmful to an officers well-being.

Conventional Wisdom is Often Misleading: Police Stress Within an Organisational Health Framework

The attached book chapter is one of the most comprehensive scientific articles on the nature and determinants of police stress. Using a large sample of serving Australian police officers, the authors examined how the levels of occupational well-being among police officers compared with other occupational groups, and then examined whether police officers’ levels of occupational wellbeing were determined by their personality characteristics, their use of coping strategies, the climate of their organisation, or their operational and organisational work experiences. Results showed that:

Work and non-work coping strategies : Their relation to personality, appraisal and life domain

The nature and degree of the relationship between the choice of coping strategies, personality, situational appraisals and the extent to which these relationships are domain-dependent is open. This study surveyed 330 police officers in order to answer seven specific questions : (1) Is the selection of coping strategies independent of the situational domain ? (2) Is the experience of hassles and uplifts independent of the situational domain ? (3) Is the experience of hassles independent of the experience of uplifts ? (4) Is the selection of problem-focused coping independent of the selection of emotion-focused coping ? (5) Is personality related to the selection of coping strategies ? (6) Is personality related to the reappraisal of the situational events ? (7) Does the selection of the coping strategy relate to the reappraisal of the situational event ? The findings indicate that extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N) are related to the selection of coping strategy, and that personality, domain and coping strategy make independent contributions to the final appraisal of the events. Personality, coping and situational experiences operate as discrete subsystems, with N, emotion-focused coping and hassles correlating together on the one hand, and E, problem-focused coping and uplifts correlating together on the other. This finding of two independent systems also adds support to other results in signalling to stress researchers and practitioners that they need to take account of both negative and positive aspects of the stress-coping process.