Ian Kessler
Biographic Data
| ID | 249691 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian Kessler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kessler |
| SIGNATURE | KESSLER I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4947-5579 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Potential for Experienced Occupational Health Professionals in Encouraging Recruitment to the Field in England: Perspectives of Medical and Nursing Undergraduates and Practitioners Working Outside…
Background: The United Kingdom (UK) population is experiencing high levels of economic inactivity due to long‐term sickness absence. Concurrently, the occupational health (OH) workforce, which plays an important role in assisting people back to work and maintaining their health and well‐being at work, is declining in numbers and struggling to recruit. The study aim was to explore the role that experienced OH professionals (OHPs) can play in encou…
The development of the new assistant practitioner role in the English National Health Service: A Critical Realist Perspective
Adopting a critical realist perspective, this article examines the emergence of a relatively new non-professional healthcare role, the assistant practitioner (AP). The role is presented as a malleable construct cascading through and sensitive to structure-agency interaction at different levels of NHS England: the sector, organisation and department. At the core of the analysis is the permissiveness of structures established at the respective leve…
Managing patient emotions as skilled work and being 'one of us
While the literature on emotional labour has concentrated on worker feelings, this article assesses the capacity of an occupational role to deal with the feelings of the service user and, in particular, whether this capacity constitutes a skill. It focuses on the healthcare assistant, an unregulated role increasingly important in the delivery of hospital care. The capacity of this role to manage the emotions of patients has been questioned. Howev…
Opening the window: Managing death in the workplace
This article draws upon the emotion at work literature to explore how workers manage their feelings in dealing with death as a routine part of their working lives. It focuses on a specific group of workers, healthcare assistants (HCAs) in a hospital setting, who in delivering direct patient care have a particularly intimate relationship with dying and death. Based upon interview data from HCAs in four English acute hospital trusts, the article ar…
Nursing a Grievance? The Role of Healthcare Assistants in a Modernized National Health Service
The complex division of labour in health care has encouraged the analysis of occupational boundary disputes between separate professions. Less attention has been directed at the divisions in individual occupational groups but in a context of intensive health sector workforce reform there has been a growth in lower status occupations. This article extends debate about lower status occupations by exploring the manner in which nurses and healthcare …
The consequences of assistant roles in the public services: Degradation or empowerment
This article considers whether and how shifts in the division of labour in the context of organizational change lead to the empowerment or degradation of workplace roles. It focuses on the emergence of assistants in the British public services and, in particular, whether this leads to the degradation or empowerment of those who fill the role and the professionals they work with. Concentrating upon assistant roles in education and social care, cas…
Understanding assistant roles in social care
This article re-connects with structure-agency debates to explore the development of the social work assistant role. Drawing upon an analytical framework based on the tenets of critical realism, it seeks to explain the evolution of this role across three local authorities by looking at the interaction of structure and agency at different societal levels: the sub-sector, the organization and the workplace. In doing so, it establishes the analytica…
Contingent and Non‐Contingent Working in Local Government: Contrasting Psychological Contracts
Given that the contingent worker is likely to be a familiar presence in the public service workplace of the future, this paper explores the consequences of contingent work arrangements on the attitudes and behaviour of employees using the psychological contract as a framework for analysis. Drawing upon survey evidence from a sample of permanent, fixed term and temporary staff employed in a British local authority, our results suggest that contrac…
The Value of Joint Working Parties
It is argued that policy makers, in government especially, use crude output measures such as the link with performance to argue the case for, or more often against, employee participation. The paper considers the problems associated with the use of such crude output measures but argues that researchers cannot avoid the question of what impact participation has on organizational effectiveness. Data from a universal survey of companies given in-dep…
Pay Determination in the British Civil Service Since 1979
This article traces the development of pay determination in the British civil service over the last decade. It argues that after a period of instability, the pay system established at the end of the 1980s embraced rather than reconciled two competing traditions of pay determination; one based upon the importance of traditional compatibility criteria and the other stressing flexibility to meet managerial needs. As a consequence of the difficulties…
Human Resource Management
Pay negotiations in local government—The 1981–82 wage round
Contingent and Non‐Contingent Working in Local Government: Contrasting Psychological Contracts
Given that the contingent worker is likely to be a familiar presence in the public service workplace of the future, this paper explores the consequences of contingent work arrangements on the attitudes and behaviour of employees using the psychological contract as a framework for analysis. Drawing upon survey evidence from a sample of permanent, fixed term and temporary staff employed in a British local authority, our results suggest that contrac…
Managing patient emotions as skilled work and being 'one of us
While the literature on emotional labour has concentrated on worker feelings, this article assesses the capacity of an occupational role to deal with the feelings of the service user and, in particular, whether this capacity constitutes a skill. It focuses on the healthcare assistant, an unregulated role increasingly important in the delivery of hospital care. The capacity of this role to manage the emotions of patients has been questioned. Howev…
Opening the window: Managing death in the workplace
This article draws upon the emotion at work literature to explore how workers manage their feelings in dealing with death as a routine part of their working lives. It focuses on a specific group of workers, healthcare assistants (HCAs) in a hospital setting, who in delivering direct patient care have a particularly intimate relationship with dying and death. Based upon interview data from HCAs in four English acute hospital trusts, the article ar…
Nursing a Grievance? The Role of Healthcare Assistants in a Modernized National Health Service
The complex division of labour in health care has encouraged the analysis of occupational boundary disputes between separate professions. Less attention has been directed at the divisions in individual occupational groups but in a context of intensive health sector workforce reform there has been a growth in lower status occupations. This article extends debate about lower status occupations by exploring the manner in which nurses and healthcare …
The consequences of assistant roles in the public services: Degradation or empowerment
This article considers whether and how shifts in the division of labour in the context of organizational change lead to the empowerment or degradation of workplace roles. It focuses on the emergence of assistants in the British public services and, in particular, whether this leads to the degradation or empowerment of those who fill the role and the professionals they work with. Concentrating upon assistant roles in education and social care, cas…
The Value of Joint Working Parties
It is argued that policy makers, in government especially, use crude output measures such as the link with performance to argue the case for, or more often against, employee participation. The paper considers the problems associated with the use of such crude output measures but argues that researchers cannot avoid the question of what impact participation has on organizational effectiveness. Data from a universal survey of companies given in-dep…
Understanding assistant roles in social care
This article re-connects with structure-agency debates to explore the development of the social work assistant role. Drawing upon an analytical framework based on the tenets of critical realism, it seeks to explain the evolution of this role across three local authorities by looking at the interaction of structure and agency at different societal levels: the sub-sector, the organization and the workplace. In doing so, it establishes the analytica…
The development of the new assistant practitioner role in the English National Health Service: A Critical Realist Perspective
Adopting a critical realist perspective, this article examines the emergence of a relatively new non-professional healthcare role, the assistant practitioner (AP). The role is presented as a malleable construct cascading through and sensitive to structure-agency interaction at different levels of NHS England: the sector, organisation and department. At the core of the analysis is the permissiveness of structures established at the respective leve…
Human Resource Management
Pay negotiations in local government—The 1981–82 wage round
Pay Determination in the British Civil Service Since 1979
This article traces the development of pay determination in the British civil service over the last decade. It argues that after a period of instability, the pay system established at the end of the 1980s embraced rather than reconciled two competing traditions of pay determination; one based upon the importance of traditional compatibility criteria and the other stressing flexibility to meet managerial needs. As a consequence of the difficulties…
Human Resource Management
The Value of Joint Working Parties
It is argued that policy makers, in government especially, use crude output measures such as the link with performance to argue the case for, or more often against, employee participation. The paper considers the problems associated with the use of such crude output measures but argues that researchers cannot avoid the question of what impact participation has on organizational effectiveness. Data from a universal survey of companies given in-dep…
Contingent and Non‐Contingent Working in Local Government: Contrasting Psychological Contracts
Given that the contingent worker is likely to be a familiar presence in the public service workplace of the future, this paper explores the consequences of contingent work arrangements on the attitudes and behaviour of employees using the psychological contract as a framework for analysis. Drawing upon survey evidence from a sample of permanent, fixed term and temporary staff employed in a British local authority, our results suggest that contrac…
Understanding assistant roles in social care
This article re-connects with structure-agency debates to explore the development of the social work assistant role. Drawing upon an analytical framework based on the tenets of critical realism, it seeks to explain the evolution of this role across three local authorities by looking at the interaction of structure and agency at different societal levels: the sub-sector, the organization and the workplace. In doing so, it establishes the analytica…
The consequences of assistant roles in the public services: Degradation or empowerment
This article considers whether and how shifts in the division of labour in the context of organizational change lead to the empowerment or degradation of workplace roles. It focuses on the emergence of assistants in the British public services and, in particular, whether this leads to the degradation or empowerment of those who fill the role and the professionals they work with. Concentrating upon assistant roles in education and social care, cas…
Nursing a Grievance? The Role of Healthcare Assistants in a Modernized National Health Service
The complex division of labour in health care has encouraged the analysis of occupational boundary disputes between separate professions. Less attention has been directed at the divisions in individual occupational groups but in a context of intensive health sector workforce reform there has been a growth in lower status occupations. This article extends debate about lower status occupations by exploring the manner in which nurses and healthcare …
Opening the window: Managing death in the workplace
This article draws upon the emotion at work literature to explore how workers manage their feelings in dealing with death as a routine part of their working lives. It focuses on a specific group of workers, healthcare assistants (HCAs) in a hospital setting, who in delivering direct patient care have a particularly intimate relationship with dying and death. Based upon interview data from HCAs in four English acute hospital trusts, the article ar…
Managing patient emotions as skilled work and being 'one of us
While the literature on emotional labour has concentrated on worker feelings, this article assesses the capacity of an occupational role to deal with the feelings of the service user and, in particular, whether this capacity constitutes a skill. It focuses on the healthcare assistant, an unregulated role increasingly important in the delivery of hospital care. The capacity of this role to manage the emotions of patients has been questioned. Howev…
The development of the new assistant practitioner role in the English National Health Service: A Critical Realist Perspective
Adopting a critical realist perspective, this article examines the emergence of a relatively new non-professional healthcare role, the assistant practitioner (AP). The role is presented as a malleable construct cascading through and sensitive to structure-agency interaction at different levels of NHS England: the sector, organisation and department. At the core of the analysis is the permissiveness of structures established at the respective leve…
The Potential for Experienced Occupational Health Professionals in Encouraging Recruitment to the Field in England: Perspectives of Medical and Nursing Undergraduates and Practitioners Working Outside…
Background: The United Kingdom (UK) population is experiencing high levels of economic inactivity due to long‐term sickness absence. Concurrently, the occupational health (OH) workforce, which plays an important role in assisting people back to work and maintaining their health and well‐being at work, is declining in numbers and struggling to recruit. The study aim was to explore the role that experienced OH professionals (OHPs) can play in encou…
Political science (11 works) · Business (7 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Work (physics (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Government (linguistics (5 works) · Health care (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)