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Comprehensive primary health care (PHC) models are seldom implemented in high income countries, in part due to their contested legitimacy in neoliberal policy environments. This article explores how merging affected the perceived legitimacy of independent community health organisations in Victoria, Australia, in providing comprehensive PHC services.

A longitudinal follow-up study (2–3 years post-merger) of two amalgamations among independent community health organisations from the state of Victoria, Australia, was conducted. This article explores the perceived effects of merging on (1) the pragmatic, normative and cognitive legitimacy of studied organisations and (2) the collective legitimacy of these organisations in Victoria's health care system. Data were collected through 19 semi-structured interviews with key informants and subjected to template and thematic analyses.

Merging enabled individual organisations to gain greater overall legitimacy as regional providers of comprehensive PHC services and thus retain some capacity to operationalise a social model of health. Normative legitimacy was most enhanced by merging, through acquisition of a large organisational size and adoption of business practices favoured by neoliberal norms. However, mergers may have destabilised the already contested cognitive legitimacy of community health services as a group of organisations and as a comprehensible state-wide platform of service delivery.

Over-reliance on individual organisational behaviour to maintain the legitimacy of comprehensive PHC as a model of organising health and social care could lead to inequities in access to such models across communities.

This study shows that organisations can manage their perceived legitimacy in order to ensure the survival of their preferred model of service delivery.

This study aims to integrate the social cognitive theory and flow theory to examine how e-skills self-efficacy (ESSE) and trust-building self-efficacy (TBSE) impact work-related flow in remote work. It also explores how work-related flow (WOLF) mediates the connection between these factors and employee resilience (ER) in the context of the growing shift toward remote work.

The study tested an empirical mediation model with 535 remote workers from Indian organizations that adopted remote work either before or during the pandemic. Hypotheses were tested using Hayes’ PROCESS macro.

The study confirmed the direct influence of ESSE and TBSE on WOLF. Moreover, a mediation analysis demonstrated that WOLF significantly mediates the association linking ESSE, TBSE and ER.

This study, evaluating experienced remote employees in the quaternary sector, offers data-driven insights for informed organizational decisions. These findings aims to guide HR and training departments in formulating recruitment and training strategies, emphasizing digital skill development to enhance knowledge and skills effectively.

This study highlights the need for remote workers and organizations to be aware of the challenges of remote work. It is among the first to explore the link between ESSE, TBSE and ER, addressing psychological factor, i.e. WOLF, often overlooked in organizational contexts.

This report aims to examine the capacity for research to support integrated care developments. The focus is on health service research agencies in English universities. It is designed to promote an understanding of alternative approaches as national research programmes offer new opportunities for larger and more rigorous studies.

The approach draws on three analyses of different data from relevant programmes of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) over a 30 month period. The data are derived from commissioning briefs, monitoring reports and annual reviews. Relevant international comparisons indicate possible responses to deficits.

The review points to a process of normalisation, through which integrated care has become an important standard dimension of health services research in England. While the commissioning of studies related to integrated care is shown to demonstrate a sustained and enhanced profile, the capacity of higher education providers appears to be changing. The growing emphasis on health services research corresponds with increased research leadership from clinical and public health academics, which raises questions regarding future multi‐disciplinary and social sciences contributions and projects on lateral forms of integrated care.

The findings are only derived from a single source from the NIHR portfolio, and a period in which there were significant and structural changes in the NHS and administration of relevant NIHR programmes.

The review is the first of its kind in employing aggregate NIHR programme data. It offers an original typology of higher education research agencies and novel insights into comparable developments elsewhere.

This study aims to assess e-working remotely from the perspective of online workers based on important theoretical aspects that have been found to have an impact in this regard. Specifically, the study examines the influence that work–life balance, job effectiveness, organizational trust and flexibility have on e-workers experience in terms of satisfaction.

For this research, the E-Work Life (EWL) scale, which consists of 17 questions and yields four critical dimensions, namely work–life balance, job effectiveness, organizational trust and flexibility, was adapted to measure remote e-working experience. Data were collected by sending the electronic questionnaire link to e-workers. In order to define the factorial structure and test whether the data fit the hypothesized measurement model, factor analysis was initially conducted on a sample of 230 e-workers. The relationship between EWL scale variables and e-worker experience was examined using order logit model.

This paper initially provides the validity and reliability of the EWL scale. Exploratory factor analysis optimally supported three factors and 13 items in contrast to the original scale. The influence that the remaining structure comprised of work–life balance, job effectiveness and flexibility has on e-worker experience was also measured. Results indicate that work–life balance and job effectiveness have a positive influence on e-workers satisfaction with online working, while flexibility does not show a positive association in this regard. Of the three variables, job effectiveness shows to be the most influential factor for e-worker satisfaction.

For the nature of this study, a larger sample size would have been more preferable. It must also be noted that the study took place in circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic where social activities were limited, and this could have interfered with employees' emotions to some level and ultimately with their evaluation of e-work. It is suggested that further research be conducted.

Owing to the increasing occurrence of these working practices worldwide, particularly with the COVID-19 situation, this study, through its' findings, contributes to a broader knowledge on successful implementation of e-work environments. It helps individuals to comprehend crucial e-work-related issues and supports organizations to identify areas for improvement, so that effective strategies can be developed to increase productivity while supporting worker's well-being and satisfaction at the same time.

This paper addresses a previously identified need for further validation of the newly developed EWL scale in a different setting and with a new sample. At the same time, it adds to the understanding of the impact of important dimensions previously shown to affect e-worker satisfaction with online working.

This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which is characterized by worker control without ownership, and the United States, which is marked by worker ownership without control. Section three explores three pathways through which broad-based worker ownership and control might be deepened and more strongly coupled in the future.

This paper aimed to revise and further validate the published e-work life (EWL) scale. The EWL scale was originally developed to assess theoretically relevant aspects of the remote e-working experience related to four main areas: organisational trust, flexibility, work–life interference and productivity.

A number of changes were implemented to the scale (i.e. including new items, rewording of existing items) following a recent qualitative study conducted by the authors. The two studies outlined in this paper, conducted within discrete remote e-working populations, resulted in a validated and adjusted 20-item version of the scale.

Study 1 performs confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on data from a sample of 399 remote e-workers (57.9% female) in UK to check the factor structure of the revised version of the EWL scale and the reliability of the posited dimensions. Results provided support for a 20-item scale, replicating the factorial structure of the original version. Study 2 tests and confirms the factorial structure of the final 20-item EWL scale in an independent sample of 366 remote e-workers (48.6% female) in UK. Study 2 provides further evidence of EWL scale's reliability and validity, with the four factors of the scale being significantly correlated with positive mental health, detachment from work and technostress.

The EWL scale is a very timely and important tool which provides an overall framework of the key areas that are affecting remote e-workers’ life; whose greater understanding may better prepare organisations to adapt work arrangements and introduce support policies and guidance.

Communication systems are structured by economic forces which use them to optimise sales, and politicians who increasingly live by slogans and repeated sound bites. Both want people to act without much reflection, and may threaten to turn human beings into imitiations of the computers they use. Theorists first noticed that communication systems channeled goods and services, structured political geography, and created their own pictures of the world. They went on to describe communications devices which act as extensions of human senses. Now communication systems try to structure our inner lives. This paper examines reflective consciousness and its relation to civilisation. It suggests countervailing forces which make for thought and turn the ordinary aspects of life into art.

With the decentralization and deregulation of the labor market over the past decade or so, there has been considerable debate about the future of industrial relations as a discipline or field of enquiry in Australia. Much of this literature assumes a discipline in decline, or at least at a crossroads, in terms of its purpose and continued relevance. In order to both evaluate these general claims and provide a more nuanced understanding of the future of the field in Australia, this chapter examines industrial relations in terms of three major dimensions: as a field of teaching, research, and practice. This exercise reveals important differences about the situation facing the discipline. Despite advances by human resource management (HRM) in universities, the teaching of industrial relations remains important even if its separate identity is contracting slightly at the present time. In terms of research, the multi-disciplinary and policy-oriented approach has much to contribute to understanding the changing world of industrial relations in Australia and remains a strong dimension of the field. However, in the area of industrial relations practice we observe a major decline as industrial relations and human resource professionals in Australia have become less important both in the wider regulation of work and within business organizations. We conclude that the field needs to broaden its focus to ‘work and employment relations’, seek more theoretically informed ways to explain contemporary developments in labor markets and societies, while at the same time remain committed to its traditional goals of equity and efficiency.

Under the Demand-Resources framework, more household dependents and higher levels of work–family conflict are demands on workers in high-income countries, yielding negative effects on worker wellbeing. The authors investigate how living in a household characterized by multiple types of dependency – where children and other adults are living with married, working respondents – shapes self-rated health. The authors further investigate whether work–family conflict mediates or moderates the relationship between this multi-faceted dependency and self-rated health, as expected. The authors exploit data from the 2014 General Social Survey and 2015 International Social Survey Program on over 2,000 individuals in Austria, France, Iceland, Switzerland, and the United States – the available countries with indicators appropriate to their research purpose. The authors employ logistic regression techniques to estimate individual self-rated health.

The authors find that living in a multi-faceted dependent household is actually associated with better self-rated health, while work–family conflict has a negative influence on self-rated health. There is also no evidence of strong mediating or moderating effects of work–family conflict on the positive association between living in a multi-faceted dependent household and health. These results suggest that individuals experience similar effects with regard to dependents and work–family conflict, regardless of their country of residence. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.