The Engine of The New New Zealand

Changing the world

It really is possible for you to change the world.

Stuart Carr’s already started. He’s helping demolish unfair pay structures in developing countries, a move that could contribute to helping end global poverty. It has earned him international accolades, helped to spawn a Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, and helped push at least one major aid agency – operating in 30 countries - into overhauling its pay structures.

That’s pretty cool.

Stuart Carr

Leader of the Poverty Research Group

Massey University Professor and Lecturer
Industrial and Organisational Psychology

Stopping unfair pay

Recent research by Professor Stuart Carr and his colleagues shows that many organisations operating overseas pay their local staff up to 10 times less than the staff from overseas. Because the local people are less skilled? Or perhaps less experienced? No and no, Stuart says – and he’s done the research to prove it.

So why, then? It’s because of age-old colonial discrimination, he says, that has no part in the modern world. And unless that game changes, he adds, there’s no way the United Nations will come anywhere close to halving global poverty – and certainly not by its target year of 2015.

At least one major aid agency – operating in 30 countries – is now overhauling its pay structures, in part because Stuart’s research team shows how paying local staff much less, relative to other employees, is making poverty in these places worse: That’s kind of the opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing. The other reason these organisations are changing things is that deep down many of their HR managers know the pay system is pants.

Other organisations are starting to follow suit with fresh approaches. For example, developing young women’s entrepreneurial skills in countries where that’s not an expected part of women’s contribution to society.

And another example of better practice is ‘task-shifting’ in health services. So, local people are up-skilled as ‘paraprofessionals’ – and, in a procedure such as an eye operation for example, they carry out the parts of the process that they’ve been trained up to do, freeing the fully trained and registered health professionals to focus on other work, creating new jobs and services in the process.

These initiatives build on community and individual pride; and a sense of shared achievement that’s so important in creating a dynamic and responsive workforce. It may also help to reduce ‘brain drain’ – skilled professionals leaving their homeland to seek opportunities elsewhere. Sadly, their departure to seek greener pastures can see highly skilled people like engineers and surgeons ending up as cab drivers in countries like New Zealand.

Fairer wages and better jobs in their homeland will perhaps help prevent this from occurring.

About the Poverty Research Group

Professor Stuart Carr is a lecturer in industrial organisational psychology at Massey University. He’s researched and lecturered in Australia, Asia and Europe, but for the past eleven years he’s been at Massey.

He is a key player in the Poverty Research Group, an Auckland-based and Massey-instigated research organisation that links academics and practitioners working in this field in low and high income countries all across the world.

The Group has links with United Nations organisations and the OECD and has helped to spawn a Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology which guides the development of new research in this field.

The Poverty Research Group’s Project Add-Up is the piece of research that analysed pay structures for 1300 workers in 200 organisations across 10 countries – and helped start breaking down those massively unfair barriers.

The research won the project an internationally-recognised presidential medal from the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology. “It was a team effort,” Stuart says.

Stuart’s passion for humanitarian work psychology (also known as industrial organisational psychology) is innate, but was reinforced and invigorated when he worked in Malawi. He saw children dying from preventable diseases and it haunted him.

Yup, that’d do it.

What career will I have?

The traditional role of organisational psychologists was in management consulting firms, government departments and large corporations, working to help the workforce work more effectively.

But Stuart Carr says it’s time to expand on that.

Today, he says the area he works in – Humanitarian Work Psychology – is “playing a leading role in changing the international development and aid system to empower people, not perpetuate unwanted dependence.”

Really, we weren’t exaggerating when we said you could change the world.

Stuart has been one of the driving forces behind a wider shift to utilising organisation psychology to improve organisations so that their working practices are fairer and people take pride in being part of them.

How can I do that too?

You need to have a strong interest in social justice– if you’re a raving capitalist this is probably not the right field for you. An interest in travel (bummer) is an advantage, as many of the opportunities to work with aid agencies or large organisations such as academic institutions, government departments and multi-national private firms will take you to far-flung places.

Open-mindedness, caring for others and an interest in cultural diversity are an advantage.

If that all sounds too good to be true, it’s “not all hearts and flowers,” Stuart says. A lot of it is about understanding the workings of power and seeking to find ways to shift the balance. There’s still a long way to go to change these things, and you’ll see a lot of ugly stuff along the way, much of which you’ll have little ability to change in the here and now.

You need to achieve university entrance requirements to get a foot on the ladder into this area of study.

At university you could start with a BA or BSc. You can undertake a postgraduate internship diploma in organisational psychology  (for entry into professional practice), following a Masters or PhD in the area of humanitarian work psychology at Massey (for entry to academia).

Stuart believes that the time is right for major growth in humanitarian work psychology: large agencies and corporations are realising they need to change; and the public is starting to demand change by buying products from firms that show corporate responsibility – who are products which are sustainably and fairly produced.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and change the world!

Why Massey?

In a nutshell, Massey’s an awesome place to study humanitarian work psychology. The work of the Poverty Research group is gaining a worldwide reputation, so much so that international students are coming to Massey to study, because they’ve heard about the work that’s going on and they’re excited about it – they want a piece of the action.

Stuart says students’ access to web-based and social media-based humanitarian studies networks – not just within New Zealand but internationally – is one of the Massey faculty’s major unique features. The friendly, welcoming, world-class faculty members are a major plus too, Stuart says – with a totally straight face.

Find out more about psychology

Find out more

If you want to follow in Stuart’s footsteps or just want to learn more about what he does all day, check out our Area of Interest page for Psychology.

There you’ll learn more relating to what Psychology is really all about, what kinds of careers you can get in that field, and how Massey University can help you get started down that path – just like Stuart.