The purpose of this study was to describe how frontline student service professionals in Western Canadian higher education describe their personal engagement at work, through the lens of Kahn's (1990) theory of employee engagement and psychological dimensions of meaningfulness, safety, and availability. It was motivated by the prospect that…

Research evidence suggests that faculty members' well-being is a serious concern in academia. However, little is known about the academic job demands and resources, which are specific to the professional context and faculty work, that influence faculty well-being. Moreover, the psychological processes how job characteristics lead to well-being…

The very nature of contemporary principals' work depends on the effective management and regulation of emotions. This study uses data derived from 13 interviews to provide insight into how secondary school principals manage their emotions. Findings indicate that principals use several strategies to manage their emotions, including those associated…

Fifty-two faculty at two Canadian universities were interviewed about the impact of work environment, role conflict, and work-life balance on career-related experiences and decisions to apply for promotion to full professor. Faculty described conflicts between their academic responsibilities of teaching, research, and service (including limited…

Purpose: The purpose of this multiyear research study is to examine leadership in K-12 schools using a positive organizational perspective to understand how to foster, support and encourage flourishing in schools. In this article, the authors describe the lived experiences of a small group of principals and vice-principals in K-12 schools…

We tested four proposed dimensions of a Culture Conducive to Women's Academic Success (CCWAS; i.e., supportive leadership, freedom from gender bias, equal access to opportunities, and support for work-life balance) on a sample of women faculty from Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering (NSE) departments/units. The results of our serial and…

The literature reports high levels of occupational stress for teachers, exacerbated by heavy loads of emotional labour in the classroom. We know less, however, about teacher mental health concerns as they relate to leaves of absences and returns to work, and the role gender may play related to leaves of absences and returns to work. Our pilot…

Aim: To identify the prevalence and correlates of burnout among research administrators. Background: Research administration is characterized by increasing government regulation, hyper-competitiveness, institutional management of growing complexity, and changing economic conditions. However, there is a lack of research on burnout among research…

Since the 1980s, research on employment conditions in post-secondary institutions has focused on the growth of contingent academic workers, or what the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) has labelled "non-full- time instructors" (Field, Jones, Stephenson, & Khoyetsyan, 2014). Very little attention, however, has been…

The study used qualitative case-study methodology and involved six participant superintendents in semi-structured interviews, two from each of western, Atlantic and northern Canada. The findings revealed work lives significantly impacted personal and family life. Regardless of location or size of school district, all described an all-consuming…

Over the past few decades Canada has experienced sweeping demographic, social, economic and technological changes. These changes have had, and continue to have, a major impact on the work-life balance of Canadians--that is, on their ability to balance work and personal demands. Some of these factors also impact the work-life balance of the…

Our research situates, contextualizes, and analyzes the lived experiences of ten female academics who were among the first women in the academic discipline of educational administration in seven of the ten provinces in Canada. Using institutional ethnography and life history to inform our analysis, this article explores three of the themes that…

The United States does not guarantee families a wide range of supportive workplace policies such as paid maternity and paternity leave or paid leave to care for sick children. Proposals to provide such benefits are invariably met with the complaint that the costs would reduce employment and undermine the international competitiveness of American…

This paper discusses a portion of the findings of a mixed-methods study that examined the career patterns of senior educational administrators in public school divisions in Manitoba, Canada. Data based on the career paths of senior administrators from both a survey and interviews of senior administrators were analyzed and compared along three…

This article focuses on how a worker's relationship with either a place of work or employer--or with what the skilled worker does very well--contributes to very different forms of work identity. Work identity that reflects a determination on the employee's part to commit to the values of the work group is vocational identity, which is important…