Perceived conditions of workers in different organizational settings

Purpose: – Research into office design and its effect on employee satisfaction and performance has attracted considerable contemporary research interest. However, most studies have tended to concentrate on the impact of the built environment on human performance, ignoring the actual needs of employees working in different organizational settings. This paper hence aims to investigate the nature and extent of occupant satisfaction with the built environment in different organizational settings in Australia for a range of climates.

Design/methodology/approach: – A survey was conducted in Australia from 2004-2005, comprising 41 buildings, including six government buildings, 14 educational buildings and 21 commercial buildings. The Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to explore whether there are differences in the mean ranking of office environment satisfaction amongst the three organizational settings, and the Mann-Whitney U test was employed to further test whether there are differences in the mean ranking of office environment satisfaction between any two groups.

Findings: – Significant differences were found in aspects of air, temperature, space suitability, flexibility, usability and controllability. Employees in commercial settings seem to be more satisfied with their physical work environment than employees in other organization types. Employees in educational settings showed the highest satisfaction with most variables in the workspace design and management category. Government employees showed a lower level of satisfaction with their physical work environment and workspace design and management.

Originality/value: – Moreover, the government and educational groups showed more similarity with each other, while the commercial group displayed significant difference.

Defining dual diagnosis : a qualitative study of the views of health care workers

Background: 'Dual diagnosis' is the term of choice in many countries to describe clients with co-occurring mental health and alcohol and other drug (AOD) issues. However, it is not known if its meaning is consistently represented within and across health care services. This uncertainty has significant implications for referral, consultation and research.
Aim: To obtain information about the way that different health care professionals understand the term 'dual diagnosis'.
Method: Twenty-nine health care workers across five service types (medical, mental health, AOD, dual diagnosis and community health) in Victoria, Australia were interviewed about their understanding of the term 'dual diagnosis'.
Results: The findings indicated that service providers working in AOD and Mental Health had a shared general understanding of what was meant by 'dual diagnosis', despite uncertainties about more specific inclusion criteria. In contrast, medical and community health staff lacked a similar shared understanding, and were more likely to recommend change, but offered no consensus on alternatives.
Conclusion: The results indicate that while the term 'dual diagnosis' has value in efficiently directing attention to the complexity of treatment issues, health practitioners cannot assume it will convey the intended meaning outside mental health or AOD services. Clear articulation of the intended definition may be a necessary requirement in wider health care communication.

Contextualizing risk in the assessment of intellectually disabled individuals

In this article we examine the idea of expanding structured clinical judgement from primarily offender variables to a broader framework in which environmental (including staff) variables are given equal consideration in a comprehensive risk appraisal conducted for risk management purposes of intellectually disabled individuals. It is posited that only by contextualizing the individual's risk within environmental variables can an accurate portrayal of current dynamic risk (and hence the management of that risk) be construed.

Book review : Class act : Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987 - 2007

The article reviews the book "Class Act: Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987-2007," edited by Glenn D'Cruz.

Democracy in the making : municipal reforms, civil society, and the Brazilian Workers' Party

Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. Change and Continuity: Brazilian Municipal Reforms in Context -- Ch. 3. Itabuna -- Ch. 4. Sao Paulo -- Ch. 5. Porto Alegre -- Ch. 6. 'Genuine' Democracy: Civil Society, the Workers' Party and Beyond.

What can Arendt's theorising add to critical social workers empowerment practice?

Empowerment is one of the most frequently invoked concepts in critical social work theory and practice. Critical social work theory tends to privilege the concept of “power” as the central concept in em-power-ment. However over the last two decades postmodern and poststructural thought has discredited how power was understood in critical social work. Some leading critical social workers have re-thought the notion of “power” with Foucault’s early and middle work. One of the key problems raised by leading social workers is about how to re-think “allowance for difference” in empowerment practice (Fook 2002; Healy 2000). I argue that to re-think power in relation specifically to problems with “allowance for difference” using Foucault’s early and middle work is not possible because he is still conflating power with domination. Hence I turn to Hannah Arendt’s theorising on power. For Arendt power is understood as the capacity of people to “act in concert” and to create something new. Arendt’s concepts of “plurality”, “natality” and “publicness”, I argue can add a much to critical social work empowerment practice by re-thinking the notion of “allowance for difference” in critical empowerment social work.

Greening Australian workplaces : workers and the environment

Workers have in the past have been seen as a hindrance to environmental reform. This has been primarily because of the fear of job loss. The job versus the environment dichotomy that has placed workers and trade unions against environmentalists is unhelpful and believed by many as outdated. Internationally, trade unions have worked together with the United Nations and other international bodies to ensure that the rights of workers have not been ignored in the climate change debate. Significantly workers are now seen as part of the answer. Workers are not a hindrance to environmental reform. Rather they are an important part of finding solutions to climate change and wider environmental sustainability measures in our community. The United Nations Environmental Programme report titled ‘Labour and the Environment; A Natural Synergy’ examines how workers and their representative trade unions can make a significant contribution towards promoting action on climate change and wider environmental sustainability measures in the workplace. The report outlines three broad recommendations which countries can implement to foster a growing ‘synergy’ between the interests of labour and protection of the environment. The advantage of the report is that it discusses the recommendations in the context of existing laws and general regulatory structures common to many countries including Australia. The first two recommendations draw upon labour laws whilst the third is in the area of company law. The first recommendation is the use of enterprise bargaining to incorporate clauses which protect and promote the environment in enterprise agreements commonly called ‘green friendly’ clauses. The second recommendation is the use of occupational health and safety laws as a vehicle for the promotion of environmental standards in the workplace. The third recommendation is the active engagement of corporate social responsibility principles by companies. This article discusses the recommendations in the context of Australian law.