Exploration of the impact of organisational context on a workplace safety and health intervention

ABSTRACT

The Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) was designed to increase workers’ safety and health using supervisor/leadership training. SHIP was implemented and evaluated in a cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 supervisors and 292 construction crew members representing a high-risk industry. The intervention had three components: (1) computer-based training to teach supervisors ways to better support worker safety and work-life challenges; (2) supervisor behavioural self-monitoring to facilitate transfer of training to practice; and (3) team-based discussions with supervisors and work crew members to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement with 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up check-in meetings. Main effects for the intervention on perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors, team effectiveness, and work-life effectiveness were not found, suggesting that the pre-intervention context could help explain the lack of intervention effects. We found that the intervention was more beneficial for work crew members who had poorer pre-intervention perceptions of their supervisor (lower leader-member exchange) and lower perceived team cohesion, suggesting the important impact of the organisational context on intervention effects. We argue that perhaps these work crews were more ready for change and improvements in functioning than were the crews that were already functioning well.     

Stressors beget stressors: The effect of passive leadership on employee health through workload and work–family conflict

The current study examined passive leadership as a potential antecedent of two commonly studied workplace stressors (i.e. workload and work–family conflict), and investigated its negative effect on employee burnout and physical symptoms via these stressors. We collected two waves of data from 274 focal participants, and one wave of data from their co-workers. Results showed that both self-reported and co-worker-reported passive leadership was positively related to employee burnout and physical symptoms, as well as workload and work–family conflict. Additionally, workload and work–family conflict partially mediated the effects of passive leadership on burnout and physical symptoms, respectively. Our findings support the notion that passive leadership can create a stressful workplace and have a detrimental effect on employees’ health.     

When work comes home: technology-related pressure and home support

Given the prevalence of workers bringing work home, issues arising from this practice are a central concern of human resource development (HRD) researchers and practitioners. This study investigates factors related to home boundary permeability (the extent to which one’s home domain is interrupted by work-related matters). Specifically, we examine the impact of technology-related pressure on home boundary permeability, and test both positive and negative consequences of home boundary permeability, along with the role of home support. Based on quantitative data from 267 full-time employees in the Midwestern United States, we found technology-related pressure predicted home boundary permeability, even after accounting for a person’s preference for work–home segmentation. Our findings suggest that high home boundary permeability may be a double-edged sword as it was significantly associated with both greater work-to-home conflict and positive spillover. Further, home support was found to play a buffering role in the relationship between home boundary permeability and work-to-home conflict. Suggestions for how HRD and management practitioners can help employees achieve a healthy balance between work and home are offered.     

Paving the way for coopetition: drivers for work–life balance policy implementation

An extensive literature provides evidence that conflict between employees’ family and work duties is associated with stress and poor well-being, which have negative consequences for firms and their employees. This paper analyzes the role of two internal and two external drivers that encourage (or discourage) organizations to adopt and implement work–life balance policies. The role of external financial assistance and specific laws (external drivers), together with budgetary provision for work–life balance policies and managers’ perceptions regarding problems due to work–life conflict (internal drivers), are analyzed. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is used to pursue the study’s research goals. Analysis of data on 132 SMEs suggests that financial issues (external financial assistance and/or a specific budget within the company) are key factors for the implementation or lack of implementation of work–life balance policies. Moreover, to implement these policies, managers need not necessarily perceive problems due to work–life conflict. Finally, work–life balance legislation seems not to play an explicit role in the relationships discussed herein. Consequences of these findings are discussed in the final section of the paper.     

‘Quality’ part-time work in Australian organizations: implications for HRD

Part-time work is an international phenomenon. Many western countries show similar patterns to Australia, with a significant increase in part-time work in the last twenty to twenty-five years. In Australia, part-time work has developed some unique features, particularly as it often involves lower wages and poor conditions. Part-time employees in Australia are often excluded from human resource development (HRD) activities such as training and career tracks provided to full-time workers. The experience of particular Australian organizations illustrates possible avenues for quality part-time work. This paper examines practical examples of quality part-time work in eight Australian organizations across five industries (nursing, hospitality, retail, local government and the legal profession). Using case study research, the paper discusses the dimensions of quality part-time work in different industry and occupational contexts from an HRD perspective.     

Workplace flexibility and new product development performance: The role of telework and flexible work schedules

This paper investigates the effects of telework and flexible work schedules on the performance of teams in new product development projects. Organizations increasingly introduce workplace flexibility practices that provide flexibility with regard to where or when the employee works. The findings of NPD teams in five cases, situated in two telecommunication firms, show that telework has a positive effect on NPD performance through enabling knowledge sharing, cross-functional cooperation and inter-organizational involvement. This improves the speed and quality of product development, provided that face-to-face contact is not completely replaced by virtual contact. A basic level of face-to face contact is necessary to offset the negative effects of telework on the quality of the shared knowledge, which are larger when the knowledge is sticky. Flexible work schedules and unexpectedly hot-desking were found to increase telework usage. This implies for managers that workplace flexibility needs enablers and cannot do without a sufficient level of face-to-face contact.     

Managerial support for basic psychological needs,somatic symptom burden and work-related correlates: A self-determination theory perspective

Somatic symptom burden, or the experience of physical symptomatology without a medical explanation, is related to functional disability and poor quality of life. The consequences of somatic symptom burden extend beyond the individual and affect society, as manifested in higher medical utilization and lower job productivity. Using self-determination theory, we posited that employees' perceptions of managerial support for basic psychological needs may be associated with lower levels of somatic symptom burden among employees, in part because such contexts promote autonomous self-regulation (a type of motivation) at work. Also, we posited that somatic symptom burden among employees would explain some of the relations of managerial need support and autonomous self-regulation at work to indices of work-related functioning, namely emotional exhaustion, turnover intention and absenteeism. Results from 287 Norwegian employees confirmed these hypotheses. These findings not only identify a theoretical mechanism that may explain (in part) the origin of somatic symptoms, but also offer a model by which social-contextual and motivational factors affect important work-related outcomes. These findings also bespeak the importance of developing workplace interventions that provide support for satisfaction of the basic psychological needs.     

Daily work pressure and exposure to bullying-related negative acts: The role of daily transformational and laissez-faire leadership

The present study integrates the work environment hypothesis and the effort-reward imbalance model to argue that work-related antecedents of workplace bullying are moderated by the day-to-day leadership practices of one’s immediate leader. Specifically, we propose that individuals’ daily experiences of work pressure are positively related to their daily experiences of bullying-related negative acts. Moreover, we claim that this relationship is weaker on days when those individuals report high (vs. low) levels of transformational leadership behaviour, and stronger on days when they report high (vs. low) levels of laissez-faire leadership behaviour. To test these three hypotheses, we asked 61 naval cadets on a tall ship sailing from Northern Europe to North America to fill out a diary questionnaire for 36 days yielding 1509 observations. The results of multilevel analyses supported our hypothesis of a positive relationship of cadets’ daily reports of work pressure with their daily reports of bullying-related negative acts. In addition, laissez-faire leadership behaviour (but not transformational leadership behaviour) moderated the work pressure–bullying-related negative acts relationship. Our findings support the assumption that laissez-faire leadership is an important component in the development of conflict escalation and workplace bullying, while transformational leadership is not. We discuss theoretical as well as practical implications of these findings.     

Geographic Flexibility in Academia: A Cautionary Note

Having the flexibility to pursue an international career is increasingly common in many professions. Based on two qualitative studies of international academics, this paper focuses on academia. Commencing with a discussion about the different dimensions of flexibility in academia it focuses specifically on geographic flexibility, understood as the ability to pursue a career across international boundaries. Drawing on conceptions of an international community of scholars operating in a science context and specific national and institutional contexts the paper explores the experiences of international academics. It also considers the 'modes of engagement' they use to navigate the demands of those contexts. The findings suggest that while academia as a profession may be characterized by geographic flexibility a certain tension exists between academia and the national and institutional contexts within which academics must operate. It is noted that it is internationally mobile academics who are currently paying the price of those tensions and offers a cautionary note to those who are contemplating such a career move. It also suggests that academics can adopt certain 'modes of engagement' in order to maintain, transform or subvert those institutional challenges.     

The Price Chameleons Pay: Self‐monitoring,Boundary Spanning and Role Conflict in the Workplace*

The vast majority of research on self‐monitoring in the workplace focuses on the benefits that accrue to chameleon‐like high self‐monitors (relative to true‐to‐themselves low self‐monitors). In this study, we depart from the mainstream by focusing on a potential liability of being a high self‐monitor: high levels of experienced role conflict. We hypothesize that high self‐monitors tend to choose work situations that, although consistent with the expression of their characteristic personality, inherently involve greater role conflict (i.e. competing role expectations from different role senders). Data collected from a 116‐member high‐tech firm showed support for this mediation hypothesis: relative to low self‐monitors, high self‐monitors tended to experience greater role conflict in work organizations because high self‐monitors were more likely to occupy boundary spanning positions. To help draw a more realistic and balanced portrait of self‐monitoring in the workplace, we call for more theoretically grounded research on the price chameleons pay.     

Relationships between work–family dynamics and parenting experiences: a dyadic analysis of dual-earner couples

Research on the work–family interface has not consistently addressed how the positive and negative features of work–family dynamics relate to the experience of parenting, and still fewer studies have explored these interrelationships using dyads. This investigation addressed this gap by examining the extent to which mothers’ and fathers’ reports of work–family conflict and enrichment in?uenced their own and their spouse’s parenting experiences. Each member of 346 dual-earner couples in Portugal completed measures of work–family conflict (WFC) and work–family enrichment (WFE), along with measures of parenting attitudes and competencies. Dyadic analysis revealed that WFC and WFE affected the quality of parenting attitudes and competencies differently in men and women. Also, a differential pattern of crossover effects between partners was found, particularly with respect to the effect of mothers’ work–family dynamics on fathers’ parenting experience. For women, while only one significant partner effect was observed (from fathers’ WFC to mothers’ increased relational frustration), four partner effects were found in men’s parenting experience (from mothers’ WFC to fathers’ increased relational frustration, reduced sense of competence and reduced attachment; and from mothers’ WFE to fathers’ increased involvement). Further implications of these findings for advancing understanding of the impact of work–family dynamics on intrafamily relationships are discussed.     

‘Full‐time is a Given Here’: Part‐time Versus Full‐time Job Quality*

This study explores full‐time workers' understanding of and assumptions about part‐time work against six job quality components identified in recent literature. Forty interviews were conducted with employees in a public sector agency in Australia, a study context where part‐time work is ostensibly ‘good quality’ and is typically long term, voluntary, involving secure contracts (i.e. permanent rather than casual) and having predictable hours distributed evenly over the week and year. Despite strong collective bargaining arrangements as well as substantial legal and industrial obligations, the findings revealed some serious concerns for part‐time job quality. These concerns included reduced responsibilities and lesser access to high status roles and projects, a lack of access to promotion opportunities, increased work intensity and poor workplace support. The highly gendered, part‐time labour market also means that it is women who disproportionately experience this disadvantage. To foster equity, greater attention needs to focus on monitoring and enhancing job quality, regardless of hours worked.     

The Management of Workplace Conflict: Contrasting Pathways in the HRM Literature

This paper reviews the human resource management literature on the management of workplace conflict. It suggests that workplace conflict is commonly viewed in the literature as a symptom of management failure: the notion that conflict may be intrinsic to the nature of work because employees and managers have hard‐to‐reconcile competing interests is given short‐shrift. At the same time, the paper identifies important differences in the literature, which the authors call ‘pathways’, about the best methods to manage problems at the workplace. It is argued that four contrasting pathways can be detected in the literature with regard to how organizations approach workplace conflict management practices. Each pathway is examined fully and their respective strengths and weaknesses are assessed.     

CEO political liberalism,stakeholders, and firms’ support for LGBT employees

We argue that CEO political liberalism, or the extent to which CEOs are more liberal rather than conservative, affects firms’ support for LGBT employees. Specifically, compared to conservative CEOs, liberal CEOs will be more likely to support LGBT employees by implementing LGBT-friendly policies. We furthermore posit that the presence of certain internal and external stakeholders—including boards, top management teams, and employees, as well as transient institutional investors and LGBT advocacy organizations—alter the proposed effect. Results based on a sample of Fortune 500 firms support our arguments. Our findings contribute to the literatures on leadership, stakeholders, and workplace diversity.     

Abusive interaction and role state stressors: Relative impact on student residence assistant stress and work attitudes

Despite the recognition that poor working relationships can contribute to strain (Chen and Spector 1991, Cooper and Marshall 1978, Kahn and Byosiere lY92, Spector 1987, Spector et al. 1988) and increasing concern over violence and aggression in the workplace (Northwestern National Life Insurance Co. 1993), little research attention has been paid to hostile interpersonal interaction as a work-related stressor. While recent work has focused on interpersonal conflict and sexual harassment as stressors, emotionally abusive interactions have remained largely unaddressed by the organizational stress literature. These interactions are characterized by hostile verbal and non-verbal, non-physical behaviours directed by one or more persons towards another that negatively affect the target's sense of him/herself as a competent person and worker (Keashly et al. 1994, Leymann 1990). The current study examined whether emotional abuse contributed uniquely to understanding work-related stress in student residence assistants (RAs). Seventy-six RAs employed by a Canadian university responded to a questionnaire on the quality of their work experience. The stressors examined were role conflict, role overload, role ambiguity, and number, frequency, and impact of abusive events with dormitory residents. Outcome variables included job-related tension, job satisfaction, job commitment, and intention to leave. Emotional abuse contributed similar amounts of unique variance as the role state stressors to the variables of tension, job satisfaction and intention to leave suggesting emotional abuse is an important and uniquc workplace stressor. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

How to shape positive relationships in medical practices and hospitals

Managing workplace conflict is one of the most important, stressful, and time-consuming tasks faced by today's medical leaders. Poorly managed workplace conflict can alienate patients, demoralize staff, increase turnover, damage relationships with valued referral sources and third party carriers concerned about patient satisfaction, and lead medical practices to costly "corporate divorces." Physician executives cannot solve the problems caused by disruptive doctors simply by bolstering their own conflict management skills or by policing offenders. The larger contexts within which inappropriate workplace behavior occurs must also be assessed and addressed. The true leadership challenge is to intervene in ways that help to foster a "culture" of appropriate interpersonal dynamics throughout your organization. This requires learning to think and to intervene systematically.     

South Korean women leaders’ struggles for a work and family balance

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of women in leadership in Korea and to identify challenges and opportunities that they face in the process of balancing work and family life and developing leadership as women in the uniquely challenging Korean workplace where they face organizational and cultural constraints. Critical to this investigation was the understanding of concepts frequently represented in the previous literature about women in leadership: work–family life balance, women’s leadership development, and the cultural context. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 women leaders selected through a purposeful and snowball sampling method. A thematic analysis of the interview data generated six themes including: (a) commitment to work, (b) struggles for a balance, (c) defining success, (d) gender identity, (e) being a role model, and (f) need for support. Based on the findings, we provide implications for research and practice.     

Moderating effects of social support in shiftworking and non-shiftworking nurses

In this study the causal relationships between work characteristics, in terms of job demands and job resources, and both targets’ and perpetrators' reports of workplace bullying, are investigated. In line with the Job Demands-Resources model and the bullying literature, we assumed that both high job demands (i.e. workload, role conflict and job insecurity) and low job resources (i.e. task autonomy, social support and skill utilization) increase bullying over time (i.e. normal causation). Our sample included 177 employees of various establishments of a large Belgian organization. The results of structural equation modelling analyses partially supported our hypothesis. As expected, we found that T1 job demands related positively to targets’ reports of bullying at T2 one year later, and that T1 job resources related negatively to T2 targets’ reports of bullying. Unexpectedly, there was no significant cross-lagged effect of T1 job demands and resources on T2 perpetrator's reports of bullying. No evidence was found for reverse causation or reciprocal effects. Overall, at least for targets, these findings support the validity of the theoretical models postulating a causal link from work characteristics to workplace bullying.     

The relationship of work stressors, coping and social support to psychological symptoms among female secretarial employees

A conceptual framework is advanced that assumes that psychological symptoms emerge within multiple contexts, such as the workplace, and are influenced by the interplay of individual and situational risk and protective factors over time. This framework was utilized to examine the impact of work and work-family role stressors, coping, and work-related social support on psychological symptoms among 239 female, secretarial employees in the USA, using both cross-sectional and longitudinal structural equation models. Work stressors and avoidance coping were viewed as risk factors, and active coping and social support as protective factors. Work stressors contributed substantially to increased symptoms, primarily through a direct pathway in the cross-sectional model, but also indirectly to both Time 1 and Time 2 symptoms (4 months later) via pathways through active and avoidance coping. In both models, avoidance coping also predicted increased symptoms. Avoidance coping also served to partially mediate the relationship between work stressors and symptoms in the cross-sectional model, but not in the longitudinal model. Active coping was related to fewer psychological symptoms in both models, thereby reducing the negative effect of work stressors on symptoms. Likewise, work-related social support served an indirect protective function by contributing to lower levels of reported work stressors and greater use of active coping. Work stressors but not active coping mediated the relationship between social support and symptoms. Implications for future research and workplace interventions are discussed.     

7 Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work–Family Initiatives on Work–Family Conflict and Business Outcomes

Abstract

Many employing organizations have adopted work–family policies, programs, and benefits. Yet managers in employing organizations simply do not know what organizational initiatives actually reduce work–family conflict and how these changes are likely to impact employees and the organization. We examine scholarship that addresses two broad questions: first, do work–family initiatives reduce employees’ work–family conflict and/or improve work–family enrichment? Second, does reduced work–family conflict improve employees’ work outcomes and, especially, business outcomes at the organizational level? We review over 150 peer‐reviewed studies from a number of disciplines in order to summarize this rich literature and identify promising avenues for research and conceptualization. We propose a research agenda based on four primary conclusions: the need for more multi‐level research, the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, the benefits of longitudinal studies that employ quasi‐experimental or experimental designs and the challenges of translating research into practice in effective ways.