In the Industrial and Organizational Psychology literature, the issue of leadership has always been an important area of research. In the first paper of this issue, “Are Leadership Styles and Maturity in Healthcare Teams Synchronized?” by Helena Maria Baptista Alves and Porfirio Canilho, through an empirical investigation, the leadership styles of 15 head nurses of 15 Portuguese units of internment were compared with the level of maturity of 228 nurses working in these units. The leadership styles and the level of maturity were then plotted on to the four quadrants of the situational leadership model. The results did not indicate a perfect match of leadership styles with that of followers’ maturity level. Not many studies have used the situational leadership model to plot the leadership styles and the level of maturity of the team members, but given the findings of the study and its approach, such studies could be conducted for diagnostic purposes to identify mismatches between leadership styles and followers’ maturity level.

The second paper, “Training Programs: Evaluation of Trainees’ Expectations and Experience”, by Niraj Kishore Chimote, deals with the issue of evaluating a training program and uses the Kirkpatrick’s model for identifying gaps between trainees’ pre-training expectations and post-training experiences. The findings of the study indicate that there were no statistically significant differences between the two. An interesting aspect of this study however, is the results of the factor analysis that to some extent validates the four-levels of evaluation as proposed by Kirkpatrick. Though many models and conceptualization have followed the Kirkpatrick’s four-level model, this model tends to be the most widely used one when it comes to evaluating training programs. The factor analysis results of the present study, to some extent validates the fact that the four levels of evaluation are distinct and therefore, ideally a training program needs to be evaluated on all the four levels.

The third paper, “A Study on Attitudinal Hindrances and Human Resource Practices in Empowering Women Construction Workers”, by Joseph Anbarasu and Annette B, deals with a segment of the workforce which has not attracted much attention from the researchers. Most of our research is confined to the organized sector and hardly any attention is paid to the workers employed in the unorganized sector. This is despite the fact that a huge segment of our workforce in India is currently employed in the unorganized sector. It is therefore, important to highlight their concerns and issues by way of research. This particular paper examines the issue of gender discrimination amongst the construction workers, especially with reference to the attitudinal hindrances that come in the way of women construction workers’ promotion and equal compensation. The findings of the study indicate that women construction workers are largely confined to unskilled work and are paid less than their male counterparts for the same kind of work. What is interesting to note is the fact that though women construction workers are willing to learn and take up skilled work like that of a mason, in reality, very few women construction workers get to work on skilled tasks.

The final paper, “Labor-Management ‘Non’ Cooperation”, by Jashwini Narayan, gives a detailed account of the industrial relations issues in Fiji. The industrial relations issues are presented in the light of the public enterprise reforms. The study does not make use of any quantitative analysis and largely relies on information collected through in-depth interviews, published studies and archival data. The information thus collected, is presented historically and gives a fairly good account of the undergoing reforms in Fiji.

-- Vivekanand
Consulting Editor