Search results

Allied health professionals are vital for effective healthcare yet there are continuing shortages of these employees. Building on work with other healthcare professionals, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of psychological contract (PC) breach and types of organisational justice on variables important to retention among allied health professionals: mental health and organisational commitment. The potential effects of justice on the negative outcomes of breach were examined.

Multiple regressions analysed data from 113 allied health professionals working in a medium-large Australian healthcare organisation.

The main negative impacts on respondents’ mental health and commitment were from high PC breach, low procedural and distributive justice and less respectful treatment from organisational representatives. The interaction between procedural justice and breach illustrates that breach may be forgivable if processes are fair. Surprisingly, a betrayal or “aggravated breach effect” may occur after a breach when interpersonal justice is high. Further, negative affectivity was negatively related to respondents’ mental health (affective outcomes) but not commitment (work-related attitude).

Healthcare organisations should ensure the fairness of decisions and avoid breaking promises within their control. If promises cannot reasonably be kept, transparency of processes behind the breach may allow allied health professionals to understand that the organisation did not purposefully fail to fulfil expectations.

This study offers insights into how breach and four types of justice interact to influence employee mental health and work attitudes among allied health professionals.

The authors explored clinical staff perceptions of their interactions with middle management and their experiences of the uncongeniality of their working environment.

Semi-structured interviews of clinical staff from an Australian public health service's Emergency, Surgery and Psychiatry departments. Volunteer interview transcripts were inductively coded using a reflexive thematic content analysis.

Of 73 interviews, 66 participants discussed their interactions with management. Most clinicians considered their interactions with middle management to be negative based on a violation of their expectations of support in the workplace. Collectively, these interactions formed the basis of clinical staff perceptions of management's lack of capacity and fit for the needs of staff to perform their roles.

Strategies to improve management's fit with clinicians' needs may be beneficial for reducing uncongenial workplaces for healthcare staff and enhanced patient care.

This article is among the few papers that discuss interactions with management from the perspective of clinical staff in healthcare. How these perspectives inform the perception of workplace uncongeniality for clinicians contributes greater understanding of the factors contributing to adversarial relationships between clinicians and managers.