This thesis investigates justice and fairness in the UK public sector when formal disciplinary procedures are invoked. The golden thread of justice and fairness in the workplace addresses the following questions:-
1. What types and scale of workplace disciplinary transgressions exhibit in the UK public sector, and are demographics relevant?
2. How the Host employer processes disciplinary cases and what are the experiences at this and other bodies of the parties involved, employees, trade unions, managers, HR, and politicians, and what improvements could be made?
The initial phase comprised a five year longitudinal study of a public sector employer’s disciplinary records, and compared employee demographics with workforce characteristics of which they formed a part. It is unique in being purely case-based, and unlike much research does not conflate grievance and disciplinary cases. Employee demographics of age, gender, tenure and absence show statistically significant linkages to a propensity to commit serious breaches of contract resulting in a formal disciplinary investigation. In the case of gender, evidence strongly points to it being generalizable.

The concluding qualitative phase found isolated examples of ‘good’ practice, but also serious inconsistencies and lapses by employers. Three key concepts emerged. Structural Differentiation where disciplinary criteria were being applied differently across the same employer; Hierarchical Differentiation where senior management interpreted and applied policies in favour of themselves; and Boundary Conditions where gatekeeping decisions are made whether to invoke formal procedures. These Boundary Condition failures saw unimaginable harm being meted out to victims of child sexual abuse, with innumerable employee, service and society implications.

This work tasks Human Resource professionals to be more proactive in constructively using the wealth of data metrics at their disposal, so as to avoid unnecessary investigations, and challenges them along with management to remove impediments to achieving equitable justice and fairness in the workplace.

The purpose of this research is to recognize and analyse the relationship between work stress and job satisfaction. The research was conducted using a survey questionnaire which was sent to 118 participants who were working across 14 different organizations. The response received was uploaded into SPSS for analysis. The scale of reliability was conducted and the findings were reflected in chapter 4 of this document.

The major cause for work stress was identified as workload and poor interpersonal relationships, whereas the major cause for job satisfaction was identified as pay and career prospects, which contributed as a stability factor to the employee. The final objective of the study was to identify the relationship between work stress and job satisfaction, and it was concluded that they have a negative relationship. This research has supported previous studies in the similar arena and have covered the aspect of work stress and job satisfaction in marketing industry of Mumbai, India.

The Internet is growing rapidly and is becoming an essential part of children’s lives. Internet use has many benefits for learning, participation, creativity, entertainment and communication. Along with such benefits, however, Internet use might expose children to a wide range of online risks. Some of those risks, such as bullying, exposure to pornography, and sexual exploitation, are known in the offline world but there are also new ones, such as the invasion of personal data and privacy, geolocation tracking, sexual messaging and harassment.

Unfortunately, the existing mechanisms for protecting children online are ineffective. The parental controls currently available focus on monitoring and restrictive functions to reduce potential online risks, which might not satisfy the expectations of young people who want unrestricted freedom to use the Internet. Parental controls also demonstrate shortcomings in increasing parents’ awareness of the risks that their children may encounter. Parents not only need to be aware of their children’s online activities, but also to understand and mitigate the potential risks associated with their children’s online activities. Young people might engage in online behaviours that expose them to risk, although not all risk leads to harm. Therefore, parental controls should improve parents’ awareness of the potential security risks related to their children’s online activities, so that they can support their children’s use of the Internet, enhance their opportunities and help them develop the coping skills to deal with potential risk.

The present research suggests applying a risk communication mechanism to parental controls to raise the security awareness for parents and children in order to help them make safe decisions and reduce online risks. Firstly, this research proposes a risk assessment model that assess the risk levels of children’s online activities in order to warn parents and children about them in an individualised, timely, and continuous way. The proposed system also provides appropriate protection responses to avoid those risks. Secondly, a prototype system has been designed and developed to simulate the proposed system and provide a clear image of its functionalities and how it works. After implementing the prototype system, it was important to have parents evaluate its usability and usefulness. The participants were able to use the system and were satisfied in terms of its overall appearance and the functions provided. They agreed and prefer to use the system in real life. It can also be stated that the overall feedback from the participants regarding the proposed system was very encouraging and positive.

Bullying of autistic children by their peers is prevalent. This is a significant concern, given research linking childhood bullying with adverse mental health outcomes, in both autistic and neurotypical groups.

The first section of this thesis is a scoping review, which aimed to establish what interventions have been developed to reduce the bullying of autistic children. The second section reports an investigation of the feasibility of examining the relationship between bullying victimisation and psychosis-like experiences (PLEs) in autistic children. Following a systematic literature search 10 studies were identified for inclusion in the scoping review. Broadly, interventions focussed either upon skills-development for autistic children, or the promotion of contact between autistic children and neurotypical peers. There was heterogeneity in the research designs used and outcome measures employed.

Overall, the evidence base is in its infancy and there is a need to develop and evaluate multicomponent interventions involving autistic children, neurotypical peers, staff and schools. A quantitative cross-sectional design was used to investigate the feasibility of testing the relationship between bullying victimisation and PLEs in autistic children, and to test the preliminary hypothesis of association between these variables. Parents completed a battery of online questionnaires about their children (N=53). Hierarchical multiple regression was used to test the relationship between the variables of interest, while controlling for: age, sex, family history of psychosis and internalising difficulties.

It was found that there is a lack of suitable questionnaires for measuring PLEs in autistic children, and that recruiting a large sample via a clinical service may not be feasible. Preliminary hypothesis testing failed to establish a statistically significant relationship between bullying victimisation and PLEs in autistic children. However, this should not preclude future work in this area.

The author’s objective was to establish if Emotional Intelligence (EI) influences work related stress among Irish Civil Servants. EI is the ability to perceive, understand and regulate one’s own feelings and emotions along with those of others essential for daily functioning. Work related stress is the perceived inability to cope due to an imbalance between demands and resources, leading to fatigue, irritability and poor communication which can challenge interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning. Stress management through EI helps workers reappraise workplace demands helping them cope. Schutte et al. (1998) Assessing Emotions Scale (AES) was employed to measure EI within the Irish Civil Service. A customised self-reported questionnaire obtained participants socio-demographic information pertaining to gender and age. An adapted Occupational stress Index (OSI) developed by Srivastava and Singh (1981) was used to measure perceived occupational stress levels among Irish Civil Servants, determining whether EI is a meditating factor of work-related stress. It is suggested that occupational stress scores reflect levels of EI influenced by one’s ability to adapt and cope through the appraisal, regulation, management and utilisation of emotions rather than what a job entails. Contrary to empirical research the inferences drawn indicated that the null hypotheses were accepted. H01: Global EI does not correlate with perceived occupational stress among Irish Civil Servants. H02: Global EI does not predict perceived occupational stress when accounting for age and gender. Further exploration was done using the three components of occupational stress: role ambiguity, role overload and role conflict. Age was the only variable factor which significantly contributed to role ambiguity, rejecting H02. It is suggested that Human Resource Management evaluate the organisational role structure to mitigate any risk of occupational stress. Employees could develop self-focused EI as it is believed to have positive effects on psychological and physiological occupational well-being.

The research finds the connection between employee well-being in an organisation with organisational growth and well-being. It is seen that organisational well-being or growth rate will depend positively on the well-being of the employees since employees are the human resource of the organisation that defines the functional capabilities of an organisation. Poor work condition of organisations like stress and work pressure deteriorates the well-being of the employees, and they become ill, both physically and mentally. The illness of the employees reduces the productivity level of the organisations, which in turn diminishes the organisation’s well-being and growth.

The research introduces the topic by explaining the background of it, and then in the next section, the aims of the research are stated. The following sections cover the rationale for performing the research, the relevance of the research. The introduction part ends with the research questions. The next chapter of this dissertation is the literature review which is divided into four parts and discussed in brief for the support of the study. Then in the third & fourth chapters, research problems are discussed relating to the research objective.

The fifth chapter is the methodology part, where the sections of performing research are discussed. The first section introduces the methodology then the particular research philosophies, approach and strategies are considered for this research. The analysis was done with the help of primary data gathering and using graphical representation to express the data. The data are gathered by surveying 100 respondents in which those 100 respondents are employees of different large multinational corporations or organisations in India. The respondents are sent the questionnaire form through email, and the data will be represented with pie charts. The graphical representation that is used in the study is the Pie chart. The final chapter is a conclusion of this study along with the recommendation, future aspects and suggestions.

In less developed countries (LDCs) there is a research deficit on the positive and negative aspects of their respective emerging digital cultures. Education programmes that seek to raise awareness of online safety, needs to be based on evidence and not simply transposed from other countries as the issues involved may be very different. Thailand, in particular, has very little data that can be used to create meaningful educational material. This was determined after a thorough literature review which found that most of the research has been carried out in the advanced economies of North America, Europe and Australasia. By contrast in South East Asia very little research had been carried out. This research proposes an integrative security awareness education framework for emerging digital cultures. It was constructed from the ground up so that it would be evidence led. In the first phase, a survey of the online behaviour and attitudes of young people in Thai schools was undertaken. Between November 2016 and June 2018, 352 students aged between 12 and 18 completed a comprehensive online questionnaire. In addition, 25 students were interviewed and asked to describe their online experiences both good and bad.

From the survey it was found that 69% of students had been upset by an online interaction with 55% experiencing some form of cyber-bullying. They were also exposed to potentially harmful content. At least a third or more had seen posts or discussions on; committing suicide, self-harm, being very thin, sexual images and hate messages against individuals and groups. In terms of mediation the interviews revealed a slightly different picture than the one painted in the survey. In the latter, young people suggested that they did sometimes talk to their parents and teachers about upsetting experiences. In the interviews most said that they did not tell their parents or teachers about negative online interactions. This was backed up during the workshops with most reasoning that what they were going through was not important enough to tell a parent or teacher or that they might be the ones that get blamed. They would either stay silent or tell a close friend.

A series of online safety workshops were carried out, structured around the theme of cyber-bullying, as that was the standout issue from the surveys and interviews. An action-research approach was taken to determine what kind of activities would be best to engage Thai students. Activities that were based around active learning strategies like gamification (i.e., using elements of game design) and involving cooperation or competition proved the most successful. Activities where students had to present something or be involved in classroom discussions did not fare too well.

The resulting education framework from the field research consists of themes and topics that are relevant to LDCs as well as the type of activities that works best. A novel component, ‘Cultural Mask’ was added to the framework. This looks at the influence of a country’s culture and its impact on education. In Thailand this includes the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP). In the education sector, SEP schools should promote student centric learning with creativity, critical thinking and problem solving amongst other goals. Knowledge they learn should lead to the betterment of their school and community. Therefore, the education framework can be adapted to reflect the SEP goals. In other LDCs by working through the education framework, awareness programmes can be developed that will be effective and culturally relevant.

The intention of this thesis is to examine various types of online deviance, such as ‘trolling’ and other forms of cyber bullying with special attention paid to the deviance which occurs on social networking sites and peer-2-peer file sharing websites.

The central claim of this thesis is that deviant behaviour can be influenced (encouraged, magnified) by ‘ressentiment’, which can reside within the individual. This ‘ressentiment’ forms part of a complex array of situational factors called ‘Flexible Causal Prediction’, whereby individuals may experience a particularly strong influence on behaviour but are not predetermined to act in certain ways. In this thesis the author uses Nietzsche’s philosophical notions of ‘Nihilism’, ‘Slave Morality’, ‘ressentiment’, ‘Will to Power’ and the ‘Übermensch’ to build an existential picture of deviant behaviour.

The author also draws upon the criminological/sociological notions of ‘Drift’, ‘Master Status’ and the ‘Techniques of Neutralisation’ (Sykes and Matza 1957) to introduce the new concepts of ‘Flexible Causal Prediction’ (previously referred to as ‘Causal Probability’); and the idea of ‘Situational Influences’. This undertaking is done with the intention of building upon the Meta-theoretical work of Owen (2007 – 2015), which seeks to build bridges between the social and physical sciences. The theory of ‘Flexible Causal Prediction’ is also applied to the deviant activities of internet trolling and anti-social behaviours to demonstrate the influences on behaviour.

Nietzsche’s philosophical notion of ‘Slave Morality’ and ‘ressentiment’ will also be extended when looking at some radical social justice movements, such as ‘AntiFa’, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the ‘#MeToo’ movement to demonstrate the role that ‘ressentiment’ may play in behavioural choices. To assist this analysis Saul Alinksy’s 1971 book ‘Rules for Radicals’ will be referenced to demonstrate how the rules are based on a collectivist ‘herd’ mentality of slave ‘ressentiment’ and how these rules have themselves lead directly to deviant behaviour, online and offline and how a politically correct ideology could be responsible for encouraging such behaviours.

The ever-increasing use of social media in the internet space have induced a number of problems like cyberbullying and cyberaggression over the internet. Researchers have made a commendable progress on the ongoing fight against cyberbullying but a lot of unresolved issues still persist that primarily motivates the purpose of the research. The paper aims to integrate recent advances in the field of word embedding like fastText, ELMo and stacked flair embeddings combined with a host of robust deep learning techniques to further the efficiency of detection over the state-of-art. Two distinct datasets Formspring and Wikipedia were requested and processed for the purpose of the research. A number of different combinations of word embedding with deep learning methods were tested and compared with CNN with ELMo embedding delivering the most promising results with an F1 score of 0.82 on both datasets. On the other hand, CNN with fastText obtained F1 score of 0.82 on Formspring and 0.64 on Wikipedia dataset but was computationally faster than the counterparts. Moreover, transfer learning was performed using the models to test and prove the robustness and efficacy of the models. The system performed considerably well with superior scores in precision, recall and F1 over the state-of-the-art across all the test cases performed.

Introduction: Adolescence is a critical period of self-concept development. However, with the prevalence of social networking site use amongst this age group, this development is now occurring in a completely different context when compared to previous generations. Aims: This study aimed to investigate 1) the intensity of adolescent social networking site use, 2) discrepancies between adolescent and parent estimations of their social networking site intensity and their actual social networking site usage, 3) the relationship between social networking site usage and adolescent self-concept and 4) whether this relationship is mediated by adolescents’ social comparison tendencies.

Methods: A cross-sectional sample of adolescents (N = 86, Mage = 16.8) and their parents completed a web-based questionnaire composed of reliable and validated measures including the Social Networking Intensity Scale and the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. Participants also recorded their social networking site usage for one week using a recording application installed on their device.

Results: Data analyses included descriptive statistics, a Hierarchical Multiple Regression and a One-Way Analysis of Variance. Results showed that participants spent an average of 1 hour and 35 minutes on social networking sites per day. The most popular sites amongst participants were Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp and the most common uses included talking with friends and family, finding entertaining content and feeling involved with what is going on with others. A significant difference was found between self and parent-reported social networking site usage and actual social networking site usage. Time spent on social networking sites or social networking site intensity did not predict adolescents’ general self-concept.

Discussion: The results of this study did not provide evidence as to an association between social networking site intensity and adolescent self-concept. Results, implications and limitations are discussed in relation to previous literature and theory, educational psychology practice and policy.

This research hones in on the differing stress levels between blue and white-collar employees. The research looked at the particular reasons for developing stress in the workplace of blue and white-collar workers, as the author found an opening for such research. Previous research states that it is the white-collar industry that has to endure the higher levels of stress, however further research states that blue-collar workers have to put up with similar and even more stress than those in the white-collar industry. Therefore this study will attempt to explore the different reasons for stress in both industries and see which sector has to deal with the most stress. The individuals who participated in this quantitative study participated in an online survey, which was comprised of 10 demographic questions, and a 35-question questionnaire developed by the Health Service Executive (HSE) put together to calculate participants stress level. The results showed that the only significant result displayed a negative correlation between work being brought home and stress. All the other correlations were not statistically significant.

Social media has changed how society communicates, transformed how individuals access the latest headline news and has altered many aspects of everyday life. It has, in turn changed the way in which individuals can target other members of society. In recent years, society has seen the likes of Facebook and Twitter used to distribute hate speech, accommodate revenge pornography and abuse others online. Consequently, the Government and the criminal justice system are being put under increasing pressure to tackle online abuse. Many of the current legal provisions contained in the law of England and Wales were enacted before the creation of social media. Yet these Acts are used to prosecute those who conduct abusive behaviour online. Issues are therefore arising with the adaptation of Acts of Parliament never intended to cover a digital age.

This thesis will critically examine several Acts of Parliament which have been used to control unlawful behaviour on social media sites, including, though not limited to, the Public Order Act 1986, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. It will be argued that the current use of these Acts breaches the fundamental principle of legality in the criminal law, before turning to examine freedom of speech and privacy online. Legality, at its very basic means the law needs to be accessible and clear to maintain the rule of law.

The final parts of this thesis will examine how other countries and institutions govern online behaviour. In the conclusive chapters, recommendations will be put forward as to how the legal system and society can better protect those who are abused online, including a draft social media Bill and a proposed universal code of conduct.

Teachers play a critical role in responding to, reporting, and preventing bullying. This study focuses on teachers’ perceptions of various types of bullying: physical, verbal, relational, and especially the more recent phenomenon of cyberbullying. It compares English and US teachers’ perspectives of the seriousness of these different types of bullying, thereby investigating how and why teachers have different views of how to address bullying and the different reasons they give as to why they would or would not respond to different bullying scenarios. This can possibly contribute to potential strategies to combat bullying.

The research is based on a sequential explanatory mixed methods design. In the first quantitative phase, the researcher developed two questionnaires, asking teachers for their perceptions of different hypothetical bullying scenarios, drawing on Expectancy Theory and Social Cognitive Theory. Questionnaires were adapted from those previously developed in a series of American studies (Bauman and Del Rio 2006; Yoon and Kerber 2003; Stauffer et al. 2012). They were administered to a purposive sample of teachers in both England and the US in order to provide a comparative element in two English-speaking country contexts. The questionnaires were analysed to establish whether there are differences between the perceptions and the reasons for responses for new and experienced teachers across the two different country contexts. The analyses also explored teacher perceptions of more long-term strategies to deal with cyberbullying.

In the second qualitative phase, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with small sub samples of teachers in both England and the US to provide additional qualitative evidence about teachers’ understandings and experiences of bullying. The interviews explored a number of topics emerging from the quantitative findings pertaining to bullying and cyberbullying, allowing teachers to comment on the survey findings and share their experiences. In addition, the analysis of the qualitative interviews offered the opportunity to provide richer descriptions and insights, building explanations and enhancing understandings. This process enables the research to investigate the degree of similarity between the quantitative and qualitative findings. The combination and integration of findings from both phases of the mixed methods study adds to the ability to triangulate findings and to explore and clarify the reasons for differences in perspectives between English and US teachers. In the mixed sequential explanatory strategy, quantitative findings reveal general trends from the data that are later expanded and investigated further within the qualitative phase. The discussion then explores the nature of the similarities and differences between these findings.

The quantitative findings suggest that three main variables predicted both US and English teachers’ responses to cyberbullying scenarios: the perceived seriousness of the situation, the confidence in one’s ability, and the location (home having less of a response than school scenarios). The qualitative findings suggest that teachers’ perceptions of severity could be shaped by current policies and the relationships teachers developed with their students; the perceived confidence in one’s self could be mediated by one’s interpretation of the school culture and the trust established with others on staff; responding to a home cyberbullying situation could depend on one’s understanding of pastoral responsibilities and the current parental involvement. This research provides new findings that can inform policy makers and practitioners in designing and implementing anti-bullying programs that are relevant to different contexts. Knowledge of teacher perceptions could prove useful as a starting point for developing a teacher education program. An understanding of the different types of bullying and cyberbullying that need attention could enable anti-bullying programs to present new and relevant material.

The issue of bullying is an international concern; specifically, the harmful influence that bullying has on young people in educational settings. Restorative approaches have been viewed as an appropriate intervention for addressing bullying. A review of the literature suggests that the Whole School Approach is the most common form of implementing restorative approaches in English schools.

This research has sought to address a substantial gap in the existing literature, which has focused on implementation rather than the sustainability of restorative approaches. This research has developed a qualitative inquiry using a constructionist epistemology to explore the phenomena of change from the perspective of secondary school educationalists in their local ecosystems. Prior to the research phase, a soft systems methodology was used to stimulate opportunities for internal creativity with staff developing restorative approaches in their school. This enabled staff to develop a range of self-generated activities to enhance restorative interventions in their setting. A phenomenological methodology was used to focus on staff perceptions of change happening over an academic year. Focus groups were conducted in each of the four inquiry schools using a semi-structured interview process. A complexity-informed thematic analysis was conducted to synthesize and critique the data collected during the focus groups.

The findings from this research suggest that staff perceptions construct a complex and nuanced understanding of restorative approaches, whilst exploring the tensions and accommodations of school change. Furthermore, this research reveals how systems can innovate or distort initiatives such as restorative approaches.

Consequently, there then follows a discussion for implications of the findings from this research in response to the research questions. Furthermore, there is a wider discussion on the implications for the field of restorative approaches. This includes how a complexity theory-informed analysis provides insights into the phenomena of school change and the sustainability of restorative approaches. The thesis ends with reflections and possibilities on how those seeking to implement and sustain change in complex adaptive systems can act as system-synthesis leaders to engage with complex phenomena.

Research has identified that workplace bullying is a significant problem within healthcare, with healthcare trainees at particular risk. However, there are no studies of workplace bullying within clinical psychology or of trainee clinical psychologists. The aim of the current study was to explore the experiences of workplace bullying from the perspectives of trainee clinical psychologists. Fourteen trainee clinical psychologists were recruited from UK universities and participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. Data was analysed using thematic analysis within a critical realist epistemology. The analysis generated four main themes: workplace bullying ‘activating threat responses’, the process of trainee clinical psychologists ‘making sense of bullying’, ‘difficulties navigating power within the system’ when experiencing and reporting bullying, and ‘finding safety and support’ within and outside of work contexts. The results are considered in relation to existing research, as well as Compassion Focussed Therapy theory and the Power Threat Meaning framework. Clinical implications are recommended at an individual level, within the profession of clinical psychology and for the wider healthcare system.

Social media and communication technology has completely transformed the way that individuals, communities and organizations share and create information. The interactivity, accessibility and usability of social media in particular has made it an extremely popular utility. Political campaigns, celebrity promotions and news disseminations have utilised social media to share important information and raise the awareness of key social issues. Despite this, social media and communication technology also has a great deal of potential to do harm. For example, in 2013, Reddit admitted that their platform had contributed to online witch hunts when groups of users had wrongly named people as suspects in the Boston bombing (Messing & Westwood, 2012). The ease at which individuals can share content also poses risks, with a large potential for the sharing of undesirable material. A survey of 10,000 European children between the ages of 9 and 16 years, reported that 40% of children expressed shock and disgust after being sent violent or pornographic content (Livingstone, Kirwil, Ponte, & Staksrud, 2013). Social media can also contribute to acts of cyberbullying, stalking, and online harassment (Kwan & Skoric, 2013); estimates suggest that 10-40% of youth are victims of cyberbullying (Kowalski, Giumetti, Schroeder, & Lattanner, 2014), and 40% of those who cyberbully report they do so for fun (Raskausas & Stoltz, 2007; Chou & Edge, 2012). Campaigners have called for greater guidance concerning the way communication technology is used, with calls for stricter legislation (NSPCC, 2017). However, at present there is limited research exploring the association between cybervictimization and mental health, particularly in adults. Cybervictimization experiences have many different components. This thesis aims to further explore this and add to the existing evidence base, with a particular focus on cyber harassment of a sexual nature. This review will consist of two chapters. The first chapter will be a systematic review, aimed at exploring the psychological impact of all forms of cybervictimization in adults. The second chapter will specifically explore the effects of cybersexual harassment, with a view to better understanding its associations with anxiety, depression, body image, and trauma.

Section A: Presents a thematic synthesis and appraisal of literature, using a systematic search methodology of qualitative research on the views and experiences of adolescents of social media and well-being. The synthesis revealed four themes, each with positive and negative sides: connections, identity, learning and emotions. Each theme is explored and related to theoretical and extant literature. Clinical implications are provided around each theme, describing ideas of how to work positively with adolescents and social media, while negotiating potential drawbacks. Research recommendations are made concerning extrapolating the factors discussed by adolescents and how to enhance research quality in the area. Section B: Presents a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of the relationship between social media and well-being, in a sample of 497 UK adolescents. Several stress and well-being hypotheses are tested, including the moderating roles of gender and self-esteem that is contingent on friendship quality, within a diathesis-stress model. Results show friendship contingent self-esteem to be significantly related to social media investment, and increased stress to significantly influence well-being change. Findings are discussed in terms of the link between contingent self-esteem and problematic social media investment, stress and well-being. Limitations are considered, and implications for future research and practice are provided.

Autistic people have described masking, or ‘camouflaging’, parts of the self in order to avoid repeated bullying, discrimination, social rejection and in order to meet neuro-normative social expectations. This thesis explores the relationship between autistic people’s experiences of masking and mental health. Part 1 is a conceptual introduction to autism, mental health and masking. Explanations for the increased prevalence of mental health difficulties for autistic people are explored. Masking is identified as a potential factor mediating this relationship. The review discusses different ways of conceptualising masking and explores the drivers and consequences of masking for autistic people. The review concludes with a summary of existing research into the relationship between masking and mental health difficulties. Part 2 is a qualitative study seeking to understand autistic teenager’s experiences of masking and how this relates to their mental health. Semi structured interviews were conducted with 20 autistic teenagers and transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Bidirectional relationships between masking and negative mental health related factors, and conversely between authenticity and positive mental health related factors, were described. Both processes were driven by social and environmental factors. The findings support a broader conceptualisation of masking and have implications for diagnostic and therapeutic clinical services. Part 3 is a critical appraisal of the research process. Personal reflexivity is used to consider the impact of the researcher’s perspective on the research. Introspection is used to identify broader theoretical perspectives to inform system-level implications of the research. Reflections on the essentiality of co-production are also presented.

This participatory action research (PAR) project explored the factors causing stress in the apparel industry of Sri Lanka, its impact and the coping methodologies adopted by the workers. The PAR team was made of 25 voluntary workers from the apparel industry of Sri Lanka. During the group discussions held, the possible causes for stress, coping strategies used and implications of stress on job satisfaction and intention to leave were discussed, debated, and critiqued. The research used a modified version of the Occupational Stress Indicator (Cooper et al., 1998) and Pressure Management Indicator (PMI) developed by Williams and Cooper (1996) to collect stress related information from 155 workers from different apparel factories. Financial difficulties, abusive supervision and workplace incivility, workload were identified as the main factors causing stress in the apparel industry. The researcher’s role as an insider as well as an outsider to the community and shifting positions from an outside consultant/researcher to an active role were important aspects of the data interpretation. The importance attributed to the participants lived experience, focus on social justice and emancipation were inherent characteristics of PAR. Complementary behaviour and religious support were the categories of most commonly used coping strategies by the factory workers. The relationship with others and the recognition were important factors predicting the job satisfaction. Only the ‘workload’ factor could predict intention to leave among apparel factory workers. The implications of the research suggest the importance in the culture and local context on causes and coping strategies on stress. It added abusive supervision and workplace incivility as a key factor causing stress. The impact of the culture was evident as religious support and complementary behaviour were the main categories of coping strategies.

Purpose – This research will examine the relationship between leadership and employee retention. It will examine the styles of leadership currently used within the Irish service sector. It will then determine if the managers consciously work on retaining staff.

Methodology – A qualitative research approach was used in the form of interviews of leaders in several Irish companies. The leaders range from middle to top management positions with various levels of experience. Previous research has often asked the employees about their managers while this paper bridges the research gap by examining the leaders themselves. Themes were then examined to recognise if there are any patterns present within the current leadership style.

Findings –The findings of this paper reveal that the leaders perceived that they had effective styles that proved to have a positive effect on employee retention. Also uncovered was that HR’s presence in Irish companies is disconnected, either there was not a department, or the leaders discussed remaining extremely separate. Three leaders admitted to not consciously working on retention as they believed it was not within their responsibility.

Practical implications – The paper brings to light that organisations need to examine how managers should be supported by the HR department, and how retention should be tackled by both parties for the good of the companies.

Research Limitations – Time constraints due to a worldwide pandemic. Covid-19 restraints as employees were now working from home. The normal environment in which the premise of the thesis was embedded was altered. Further to this, the restrictions imposed for Public Health made it difficult to research libraries as they were closed. Overall, it limited the sources from which data could possibly be harvested from. Limited participants could be accessed through the medium of a phone interview.

Originality/value – Expanding on linking employee retention with (in) effective leadership from the perspective of the managers.

Keywords – Retention, leadership, management, job stress, job satisfaction, Irish workplace, trust, communication