Investigating effort–reward imbalance and work–family conflict in relation to morningness–eveningness and shift work

Abstract

An increasingly older workforce and a growing emphasis on jobs involving interaction with computers have resulted in a need to more carefully examine the relationship between ageing and computer-based work. In this study, a sample of 394 subjects ranging in age from 20-75 years performed a computer task across a 3-day period. Three different types of computer-based jobs (data entry, information retrieval, and accounts balancing) performed at three large US companies were simulated. Age differences in the subjective experience of stress, workload, and bodily discomfort were evaluated. The results indicated that age effects for these measures varied according to task. The older subjects perceived greater workload for the more mentally challenging problem-solving oriented accounts balancing task (Which involved a graphical user interface) than the younger participants, even with increased exposure to the task. However, the older subjects generally experienced less stress than the younger subjects on an information retrieval task that involved a more socially interactive telephone component. A positive relationship between the frustration component of workload and the measure of stress was also found, suggesting an important link between the constructs of stress and workload. Overall, the outcomes of this study provide important insights into design interventions intended to accommodate older as well as younger persons in the workforce.     

Work–family conflict: The importance of differentiating between different facets of job characteristics

This review study clarifies the relationships between job characteristics and work–family conflict (WFC) by differentiating among three facets of job characteristics: latent, perceived, and enacted. To date, research linking job characteristics to WFC has not distinguished the facets of job demands and job resources in this way. Such distinctions are important as a means of understanding the affective, behavioural, and cognitive processes involved in determining how and when job characteristics relate to WFC. Our review of 115 studies showed that perceived job characteristics have been most commonly explored in relation to WFC, whereas latent and enacted job characteristics have been hardly examined. While these findings may not be surprising, our contribution lies in reviewing the literature through the lens of these categories. Based on the findings, and through highlighting examples in the extant literature, we argue that understanding job characteristics in terms of both how they are perceived and enacted by workers will provide a deeper insight into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between job characteristics and WFC. In order to inform evidence-based interventions, future research must uncover the dynamic mechanisms underpinning the connection between job characteristics and WFC through a focus on enacted job facets and the cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes involved.     

Abusive supervision and work–family conflict: The path through emotional labor and burnout

Building on the theoretical foundations of conservation of resources theory, this research provides insights into the relationship of abusive supervision with work–family conflict (work-to-family and family-to-work). Further, it is the first attempt to incorporate the emotional labor to burnout link as the mediating process between abuse and conflict. Using a sample of 328 individuals working fulltime we examined both the direct relationship of abuse with conflict as well as the indirect relationship through surface acting (emotional labor) and burnout. Our results suggest that abusive supervision influences conflict and the relationship is partially mediated through the surface acting to burnout path.     

The prospective effects of work–family conflict and enrichment on job exhaustion and turnover intentions: comparing long-term temporary vs. permanent workers across three waves

This study investigated work–family conflict (WFC) and enrichment (WFE) in relation to job exhaustion and turnover intentions among long-term temporary (n = 384) and permanent (n = 430) workers. We used three-wave data collected among Finnish university employees in 3 consecutive years. The participants were either permanently or temporarily employed for the whole 3-year period. The results showed that permanent employees reported both higher WFC and WFE during the follow-ups than temporary employees. Temporary workers reported higher job exhaustion and turnover intentions compared to permanent workers. Job contract functioned as a moderator: high WFC showed a prospective effect on increased turnover intentions in permanent employees. In contrast, temporary employees benefited more from high WFE, which showed a prospective effect on reduced job exhaustion in temporary employees. The results suggest that measures taken to improve work–family balance could have different implications for long-term temporary and permanent workers.     

Exploring work- and organization-based resources as moderators between work–family conflict,well-being,and job attitudes

Abstract

In modern Western life it is difficult to avoid work–family conflict. Therefore the resources that might reduce its negative outcomes on well-being and job attitudes come into focus. Our study contributes to the work–family conflict literature by exploring the indirect (moderator) and direct role of three work- and organization-related resources, i.e., job control, family supportive climate, organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), in the work-to-family conflict and well-being/job attitude relationship. Theoretically, the study tested the recently developed Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model in the Scandinavian context. Data for the study were gathered from three differing Finnish organizations (health care district, ICT company, Cardboard mill; n=1252). In line with the predictions of the JD-R model, job demands (time- and strain-based work-to-family conflict) were more robustly associated with strain-based outcomes (physical symptoms), whereas job resources (job control, family supportive climate, OBSE) were more strongly linked to motivational-based outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment). Both job control and family supportive climate moderated the relationships studied; high job control and family supportive climate buffered against the aversive effects of work-to-family conflict on well-being and job attitudes. These indirect effects also varied in relation to the independent, moderator, and dependent variables. However, OBSE did not operate as a buffering factor, although it showed significant direct effects. From a practical viewpoint, our findings suggest that job control and family supportive climate are resources that help employees to reduce the negative effects related to work–family conflict.     

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.     

Uncertainty in competitive bidding – a framework for product–service systems

Owing to servitisation, manufacturing companies are increasingly required to compete through the provision of services around their products. The contracts for these services are often allocated through competitive bidding where the potential suppliers submit a price bid to the customer. The pricing decision is influenced by various uncertainties. This article proposes a conceptual framework depicting these influencing uncertainties on the bidding strategy. This framework is based on three empirical studies with industry investigating different viewpoints on the decision-making process. The intention is to support the pricing decision when competitively bidding for a service contract. The framework can be applied to specific competitive bidding situations to identify the influencing uncertainties, model them and depict their influences on the pricing decision.     

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.     

Tweaking the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in family firms: the effect of control mechanisms and family-related goals

Management literature is currently giving growing conceptual and empirical attention to the peculiarity and relevance of entrepreneurial attitudes in family firms, with divergent outcomes. Aiming at concretizing the effects of these attitudes, denoted by the entrepreneurial orientation construct, on family business performance and considering that family dynamics come into play in this relationship, we particularly investigate the impact of control mechanisms and family-related goals. Findings are based on a sample of 180 family firms and show that Proactiveness and Autonomy are particularly relevant to financial performance. Agency-problems avoiding control mechanisms moderate the effect of Innovativeness and Autonomy, while socioemotional wealth (SEW) goals moderate the effect of Risk-Taking, respectively. The usage of these mechanisms and managing SEW goals provide opportunities for a more efficient exploitation of entrepreneurial attitudes.     

Health and well-being of older workers: comparing their associations with effort–reward imbalance and Pressure,Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure

Work organisation has well-established associations with health. This study compares the associations of Pressure, Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure (PDR) and effort–reward imbalance (ERI) with health and well-being among older workers. Participants were 714 Australian workers aged 45–65 (56.3% female), with a mean age of 54.6 years (SD = 5.0) and a mean of 34.7 working hours per week (SD = 13.9). Hierarchical regression analyses tested the strengths of the associations of both ERI and PDR with work–life conflict and mental health. Independent variables were entered in blocks: demographic characteristics (age and gender), working hours and then ERI or PDR (measured using the four subscales: financial pressure, reward pressure, disorganisation and regulatory failure). Compared to ERI, the PDR subscales collectively accounted for slightly less variance in work–life conflict and slightly more variance in mental health. The PDR subscales also accounted for extra variance in both dependent variables when ERI was included in the model. These findings indicate that PDR is a promising construct that includes elements of work organisation not addressed by ERI.     

Power and trust in board–CEO relationships

In this paper we develop and test a theoretical model that reduces relational risks to solve the puzzle of conflicting task requirements imposed on boards of directors in listed companies. Doing so unites two seemingly conflicting tasks—board control and service tasks—through examining relational risks between the board and the CEO. We also present two mechanisms that could reduce relational risks. One is board power over the CEO, and the other board trust in the CEO. Practitioners could apply these two mechanisms to achieve better performance of board control and service tasks simultaneously. We test hypotheses using 441 survey responses collected in 2005. The result shows a good fit between the model and survey data, indicating examining relational risks is a rewarding approach to understanding conflicting board task performance, and board control over the CEO and board trust in the CEO are two effective mechanisms to reduce relational risks.     

The impact of family CEO’s ownership and the moderating effect of the second largest owner in private family firms

This study explores two ownership issues in private family firms. First, we investigate the relationship between the ownership of family CEOs and firm performance, and postulate that this relationship in private family firms is more complex than the inverted “U” relationship found in public family firms. Second, we predict a potential moderating effect of the second largest owner, who may exert a monitoring role on family CEOs. We focus on private family firms as recent studies show that private family firms have distinct features compared to public family firms, and that findings documented in public family firms may not apply to the ubiquitous, but much less studied, private family firms. We have applied agency theory to develop the two hypotheses, used secondary data on a large sample of private family firms, utilized an adjusted conventional quadratic technique to test the hypotheses, and validated the findings using a second method of piecewise linear specification. The results show that the non-linear relationship between the ownership of family CEOs and firm performance is more complicated than the often-documented inverted “U” shape from public firms. Meanwhile, the second largest owner with a high enough ownership stake can impose a positive moderating effect by mitigating potential agency problems caused by family CEOs.     

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.     

Is trust in leadership a mediator between transformational leadership and in-role performance among small-scale factory workers?

Globalization and the transformation of the organizational scene are increasing the pressure and threshold for employees to constantly perform maximum output. As such, the measure of success for many organizations is determined by their productivity level. Therefore, we believe that the leadership style adopted by the leader and the level of trust subordinates have in such a leader may be salient in determining the level of in-role performance of the subordinates in question. This study therefore tries to shed light on this issue by testing the hypotheses that transformational leadership and trust in leadership would significantly predict in-role performance, and that trust in leadership would further mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and in-role performance. A sample of 170 factory workers (subordinates) and 6 supervisors participated in the study. The subordinates completed measures of transformational leadership and trust in leadership while that of in-role performance of these subordinates was based on the ratings of their immediate supervisors. The results of the Hierarchical Multiple Regression showed that only transformational leadership positively predicted in-role performance, whereas trust in leadership failed to predict or even mediate this relationship. The study discussed the implications of the findings, limitations, and suggestions for prospective research.     

The relationship between safety–production conflict and employee safety outcomes: Testing the impact of multiple organizational climates

Safety research is understandably dominated by studies examining the impact of organizational safety climate. Yet, other climates (e.g. service climate; productivity climate) that may also influence safety-related outcomes are rarely concurrently studied. Consequently, questions regarding how different organizational climates simultaneously affect employee safety attitudes and behaviours largely remain unanswered. Multilevel data collected from public transit employees indicated that safety–production conflict (SPC) was negatively related to accident-reporting attitudes and behavioural safety compliance. As expected, among employees in workgroups exhibiting a positive safety climate, the negative effect of SPC on behavioural safety compliance was attenuated. Moreover, a positive customer service climate reduced the negative effects of SPC on reporting attitudes; on the other hand, this relationship was exacerbated among workgroups with a high-productivity climate (i.e. those emphasizing on-time performance). The need for considering multiple aspects of an organizational climate is discussed in light of these results.     

Turbulence and Bifurcation in North–South Higher-Education Partnerships for Research and Sustainable Development

The article analyzes processes and objectives of transnational higher-education partnerships (THEPs) devoted to research and sustainable development by applying concepts and insights from chaos theory, Rosenau??s work on turbulence, Farazmand??s contributions on institutionalized chaos and the management of cascading crises, and the transnational-competence framework. The bifurcation of research and development activity into asymmetrical and symmetrical processes and objectives provides the focus for analysis. Building on Farazmand??s insight regarding the positive possibilities of transformative change, the conclusion explores possibilities for amplifying the symmetrical trajectory. Given the structural forces of global capitalism and local political constraints, the range of symmetrical process- and outcome-path possibilities for THEPs is now bounded by the strange attractors of resource inequalities and collaborative decision making.     

Ownership structure,investors’ protection and corporate valuation: the effect of judicial system efficiency in family and non-family firms

Research on the effect of ownership structure on firm performance shows no convergent evidence concerning the sign and form of the above-mentioned relationship. Similarly, there is no homogeneous evidence documenting family ownership concentration is always positively or negatively correlated with firm value, or irrelevant. This paper analyses whether and how the de facto investor protection provided by the judicial system affects the relationship between corporate performance and ownership structure in 1314 firms operating in four European countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) over a five-year period, 2010–2014. Moreover, we analyse whether judicial system efficiency influences if and how family firms in the controlling coalition collude for expropriating minority shareholders. Our findings show that the level of shareholder protection, derived from judicial efficiency, is relevant to the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance, thus corroborating literature in that institutional contexts matter in explaining such relations. The results suggest the need for more efficient external mechanisms of corporate governance to facilitate investment in equity capital, thus decreasing the country risk perceived by investors.     

Perceptions of the effectiveness of training and development of ‘grey-collar’ workers in the People's Republic of China

An important human resource development (HRD) implication of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) rapidly expanding economy has been the emergence of a critical shortage of grey-collar workers (GCW). Although ‘grey-collar’ has been commonly used in the West to describe an aging population within the workforce, in China it refers to people who are neither white nor blue collar workers but technicians. The shortage of GCW constrains the PRC's economic and developmental sustainability, and has been recognized in central and provincial government initiatives to increase training and development of employees within these fields. While acknowledged as a policy and organizational problem, there has been no research investigating what organizations are doing to develop these employees. Drawing upon a survey of 310 semi-skilled and skilled employees in Beijing, our findings suggest that while the surveyed organizations are investing heavily in both on- and off-the-job training, employees' perceived value of such differs markedly according to age and position. The research has important implications for China's HRD strategy in suggesting links between training and other human resource management (HRM) functions are yet to be evidenced.     

Relational commitments in employee–supervisor dyads and employee job performance

We investigated employee commitment to the supervisor and supervisor commitment to the employee within employee–supervisor dyads. We examined the relationships among four commitment mindsets (affective, normative, continuance-sacrifices, and continuance-alternatives) across members of the dyads and their relationships to employee job performance. Using a sample of 300 employee–supervisor dyads from health care organizations, HLM analyses revealed that supervisor positive commitments (i.e., affective, normative, continuance-sacrifices) generally related significantly to employee positive commitments. Moreover, supervisor commitment moderated the relationship of employee affective commitment to job performance, such that when supervisor affective, normative, and continuance-sacrifices commitments were high, the relationship between employee affective commitment and performance was weaker. We discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of employee–supervisor relationships.