Three consultant child psychiatrists with child care responsibilities have won an unfair dismissal case against the NHS trust that took over their services from a previous provider and tried to make them do out of hours (OOH) on-call work. Victoria Laakkonen, Sarah Taylor and Mary Cole won their case in the Southampton employment tribunal in… Read More
Exercise: National Cost & Personal Gain
Potential savings to the UK from more exercise is … £7 billion. If each adult in the UK did 12 minutes more exercise each day, the country could save £7 billion in NHS treatment costs, welfare, and loss of earnings, said a report by the healthcare charity Nuffield Health and the London School of Economics. People… Read More
The Hawthorne Effect in a New Light!
The iconic Hawthorne experiments at a Western Electric factory used changes in working conditions such as subtle adjustments to lighting and noise levels to improve the working environment. They were founded on the insights of psychology and affected a sea change in workplace relations. This new “human relations” approach broke the influence of scientific management… Read More
Perspectives on Team Success
“Two recent articles explore effectiveness in team-working, one academic and strongly evidence-based, the other practitioner-focused and advisory. The first, by a group of Dutch academics, presents an in-depth statistical analysis of survey data that gives us a more nuanced understanding of certain aspects of team dynamics. The main focus is on how respected people feel… Read More
Organisational Culture: Not Just the Preserve of Big Business
Research Paper Title Interoperatbility: Merging the Organisational Cultures of Special Forces and the Infantry. Abstract Combining two separate military units with different organisational cultures to operate as one is difficult and complex. However, Henry Mintzberg’s classic organisational design principles aid in anticipating friction points and identifying the governing dynamics of this action. As the researchers… Read More
Mental Health in Modern Military Forces
Research Paper Title Effects of Deployment on Mental Health in Modern Military Forces: A Review of Longitudinal Studies. Background Earlier studies presenting evidence that operational deployment negatively affects mental health outcomes among military personnel and veterans generally have lacked conclusiveness, largely because of cross-sectional or retrospective design. Purpose To review longitudinal studies investigating mental health… Read More
Management Fads, Just Another Fad!
“A US psychologist, Carl Rabstejnek, has identified at least 100 management fads since the second world war, from ‘acceptable risk’ at one end of the alphabet to ‘zero defects’ at the other. He argues that fads reflect managers’ need to appear to be ‘in the know’ and to talk the language of change even when… Read More
Boot Camp & Military Fitness Institute 