Attention to the quality of the working environment for women factory workers can make a real contribution to productivity. The example of an Indonesian project that introduced low-cost workplace improvements and provided health instruction shows the feasibility and effectiveness of such efforts, provided there is a clear commitment from…

Teacher empowerment can be better appreciated if viewed as professionalization, rather than an exercise in worrying about who the boss is. This article discusses three guiding principles toward empowerment (status, knowledge, and access to decision-making), separate needs and vantage points of teachers and administrators, and teacher autonomy.…

Thirty-six North Dakota rehabilitation counselors were surveyed to examine the relationship between burnout and expectations about selected job factors. Results indicated that burnout is negatively related to current job expectations, and positively related to job expectations at the time of initial employment and to changes in expectations.…

International employment policy must change in order to provide people with work suited to their abilities at every life stage. If technology fails to create sufficient jobs, available work should be redistributed to ensure that large numbers of people do not remain inactive at the community's expense. (Author/CH)

Organizational transformation, rather than improvement, is fast becoming the focus as dynamic and energetic leaders open new frontiers in work life and productivity. Schools can move beyond tinkering with structures and processes by creating a vision of school greatness. Florida's and Minnesota's experiments with professional partnerships are…

Describes a study that used the Job Description Index to survey job satisfaction of academic library support staff in Alabama. The need for better compensation and opportunities for promotion for academic library support staff is discussed, as well as the need to relate satisfaction to quality of working life issues. (23 references) (CLB)

Discusses four activities involving Santa Clara, California, educators that represent serious attempts to create professional collegial learning communities and improve participants' quality of life. These include professional-development teacher-support teams, a high-school-principal-support network, an advanced-fieldwork and peer-coaching…

Recounts how the part-time faculty at Chicago's Columbia College (Illinois) dramatically improved salaries and gained a strong voice in college decision making through unionization. Emphasis is on the negotiation process which worked to obtain the group's goals without undermining the "rather friendly college environment." (DB)

Argues that the ways in which college and university faculty experience their work often inhibit them from applying validated teaching practices. Suggests, however, that leadership practices and working cultures at the departmental level that foster collective and collaborative teaching approaches can go far toward improving teaching and learning,…

Discusses the rapid growth of the Workers Rights Consortium, a student-originated group with 44 member institutions which opposes sweatshop labor conditions especially in the apparel industry. Notes disagreements about the number of administrators on the board of directors and about the role of industry representives. Compares this group with the…

This study with 64 deaf employees working in either signing work groups or nonsigning workgroups found that employees' perceived empowerment was significantly higher in the signing work groups. Deaf associates in signing work groups experienced greater psychological stress and role conflicts, whereas deaf associates in nonsigning groups…

A study of 20 Vermont secondary principals and ex-principals examined what induced some to stay and many others to leave the profession. There are four significant issues: role definition; shifting power and authority; work relationships; and respect, recognition, and rewards. Survivors manage to maintain perspective, detach themselves, and escape…

Discusses why, for these three liberal arts scholars, for-profit colleges offer an attractive alternative to traditional academe. (EV)

Reviews recent literature on the quality of worklife on college and university campuses and offers a framework that conceptualizes these studies in three groups: those that describe and explore differences in the quality of worklife, those that determine the impact of worklife on attitudes, and those that attempt to explain behavioral outcomes.…

Longitudinal data from the New Hope Project--an experimental evaluation of a work-based antipoverty program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin--was used to explore concurrent and lagged associations of nonstandard schedules and variable shifts with parental psychological well-being, regularity of family mealtimes, and child well-being among low-income…