Re-organising wellbeing: Contexts, critiques and contestations of dominant wellbeing narratives: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society

Wellbeing has emerged as an important discourse of management and organisation. Practices of wellbeing are located in concrete organisational arrangements and shaped by power relations built upon embedded, intersecting inequalities and therefore require critical evaluation. Critical evaluation is essential if we are to reorganise wellbeing to move beyond critique and actively contest dominant wellbeing narratives in order to reshape the contexts in which wellbeing can be fulfilled. The COVID-19 pandemic under which this special issue took shape, provides various examples of how practices continue to be shaped by existing narratives of wellbeing. The pandemic also constituted a far-reaching shock that gave collective pause to consider to the extent to which work is really organised to realise wellbeing and opened up potential to think differently. The seven papers included in the special issue reveal the problematic and uneven way in which wellbeing is pursued and examine possibilities to imagine and realise more radical practices of wellbeing that can counter the way in which ill-being is produced by the organisation of labour.

How culturally unique are pandemic effects? Evaluating cultural similarities and differences in effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on COVID impacts.

Despite being bio-epidemiological phenomena, the causes and effects of pandemics are culturally influenced in ways that go beyond national boundaries. However, they are often studied in isolated pockets, and this fact makes it difficult to parse the unique influence of specific cultural psychologies. To help fill in this gap, the present study applies existing cultural theories via linear mixed modeling to test the influence of unique cultural factors in a multi-national sample (that moves beyond Western nations) on the effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on pandemic outcomes that include adverse financial impacts, adverse resource impacts, adverse psychological impacts, and the health impacts of COVID. Our study spanned 19 nations (participant N = 14,133) and involved translations into 9 languages. Linear mixed models revealed similarities across cultures, with both young persons and women reporting worse outcomes from COVID across the multi-national sample. However, these effects were generally qualified by culture-specific variance, and overall more evidence emerged for effects unique to each culture than effects similar across cultures. Follow-up analyses suggested this cultural variability was consistent with models of pre-existing inequalities and socioecological stressors exacerbating the effects of the pandemic. Collectively, this evidence highlights the importance of developing culturally flexible models for understanding the cross-cultural nature of pandemic psychology beyond typical WEIRD approaches.

Use of a Clinical Guideline and Orderset to Reduce Hospital Admissions for Croup.

BACKGROUND: Studies have found infrequent interventions after croup admission. Our objectives were to achieve 25% reduction in (1) admission rate and (2) neck radiograph utilization among patients presenting to the emergency department. METHODS: At our tertiary children's hospital, we implemented clustered interventions including education, guideline, and orderset integration. We included patients 3 months to 8 years old with an emergency department, observation, or inpatient encounter for croup. We excluded patients with direct or ICU admissions, complex chronic conditions, or concurrent asthma, pneumonia, or bronchiolitis. We reviewed a random sample of 60% of encounters from baseline (October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2019) and implementation (October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020) periods. We conducted a posthoc analysis from October 1, 2017 to December 1, 2021 to assess sustainment during coronavirus disease 2019. Interrupted time series analysis was used to evaluate changes in outcome, process, and balancing measures. RESULTS: There were 2906 (2123 baseline and 783 implementation) encounters included. Extrapolating preintervention trend estimates, the baseline admission rate of 8.7% decreased to 5.5% postintervention (relative decrease 37% [95% confidence interval: 8 to 66]) and sustained over 26 months after implementation. Admission rate in patients receiving 2 or fewer racemic epinephrine was significantly lower in implementation (1.7%) compared with baseline (6.3%), relative decrease of 72% (95% confidence interval: 68 to 88). There were no significant changes in neck radiographs, length of stay, or revisits. CONCLUSIONS: Croup quality improvement interventions were associated with a significant decrease in hospital admissions with no increase in revisits.

The protective role of work self-efficacy on wellbeing during COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a longitudinal year-long study.

In this study, we focused on four work self-efficacy dimensions and their relationship with wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopted a person-centered approach and investigated whether individuals with different work self-efficacy profiles would have different wellbeing experiences at 6 and 12 months from the beginning of the pandemic. Data were collected in the UK across three waves (January 2020, October 2020 and January 2021) on a sample of 393 full-time employees. Results showed that being in two at-risk profiles significantly increases the likelihood of experiencing lower wellbeing during the pandemic. In particular, the probability of belonging to the Profile 3 "low self-efficacy but high empathic" significantly increased the risk of lower wellbeing in the shorter and longer timeframe. In addition, the probability of belonging to the Profile 2 "high assertive and task self-efficacy but low emotional" also significantly increased the risk of lower wellbeing in the longer timeframe.

Authenticity in the pursuit of mutuality during crisis

Employee wellbeing activities constitute a space for organizations to realize a shared agenda with employees, and therefore a means to pursue mutuality. The pursuit of mutuality draws on assumptions of reciprocity in social exchange theory (SET) but is dynamic and put under pressure by external shocks. The first UK COVID-19 lockdown provided the setting to explore how organizations addressed employee wellbeing concerns under conditions of crisis. Using qualitative data from five organizations, we identify authenticity-building, which is the constellation of past and present activities through which organizations channel efforts to be authentic in their concern for employees. Attributions of authenticity emerge as fundamental to authenticity-building, while authenticity work (the organization noticing, understanding and acting on shifts in interests) is enabled by dialogic processes. Authenticity-building shifts the quality of the exchange relationship to allow for mutual benefits and is therefore a vital and dynamic component of mutuality. Our findings contribute to the mutuality literature by providing a theoretically embedded extension of SET and show how organizations may become more (or less) authentic within the context of the employment relationship. We highlight the complexity of organizational endeavour for mutuality and show how mutuality need not be compromised during external shocks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Inpatient and Outpatient Differences in Pediatric Patients with Laboratory-confirmed COVID-19.

Among 30,286 pediatric inpatient and outpatient encounters with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 seen at one of 40 US healthcare organizations, 1586 (5.2%) were inpatient. Encounter types varied by age and sex; the proportion of Black/African American inpatients was significantly higher than outpatients, and Hispanic/Latinx children made up nearly one-fourth of patients.

Variation in Human Research Ethics Committee and governance processes throughout Australia: a need for a uniform approach.

BACKGROUND: In Australia, ethics committees across different states vary in application, requirement and process for the ethical review and approval for clinical research. This may lead to confusion and delays in the enablement of multicentre research projects. This study explores the effect of differing processes for Ethics and Governance in the establishment of the CovidSurg-Cancer study during the global COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: An anonymous, structured web-based questionnaire was designed using the Research Electronic Data Capture application (REDCap) platform to capture consultant surgeons, fellows, and trainees experience in the ethics application process. 'CovidSurg-Cancer' was an international multicentre collaborative study to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the outcomes of patients undergoing cancer surgery. The ethics process to set up this observational study was used as to explore the differing processes applied across Australia. RESULTS: The CovidSurg-Cancer study was successfully set up in 14 hospitals. Four hospitals approved the study directly as an audit. Of the remaining sites, 10 ethics applications underwent Human Research Ethics Committee review following which two (14%) were subsequently approved as an audit activity and eight hospitals (57%) were given formal ethical approval with waiver of consent. Ethics application acceptance from another Australian Human Research Ethics Committee was provided with six applications; however, only three were reciprocated without the requirement for further agreements. A third of (30%) respondents suggested that the details of the application pathway, process and documentation were unclear. CONCLUSION: Ethics processes are varied across Australia with considerable repetition. A centralized, harmonized application process would enhance collaborative research.

Bovine coronavirus in neonatal calf diarrhoea in Iran.

Partial gene sequencing for the bovine coronavirus at the World Genebank is available for many countries, which are distributed unevenly in five continents, but so far, no sequencing of strains has been recorded in Iran. One hundred ninety-four stool samples from calves with diarrhoea less than one-month old were collected from five different geographical regions of country in order to detect coronavirus and characterize it if coronavirus was found. Samples were screened for the presence of BCoV by using a commercially available ELISA kit. Furthermore, RT-PCR was carried out on positive samples for confirmation of the presence of N and S specific genes. Sequencing and phylogenetic analysis was carried out following RT-PCR tests. 7.2% of samples, were positive for BCoV and all stool samples from the South-West, Northeast and West regions of Iran were negative. The results showed that all the strains of coronavirus identified in Iran were completely in independent clusters and that they did not stand in the same cluster as any of the strains identified in other parts of the world. The strains from Iran were quite different from strains in other parts of the world but from the point of similarity these viruses showed some similarities to the European strains, such as those found in France, Croatia, Denmark and Sweden.