"Walking the Walk" of Public Service Motivation: Public Employees and Charitable Gifts of Time, Blood, and Money

Research generally indicates that public employees "talk thetalk," but do they also "walk the walk" of the public servicemotive (PSM)? Are public service employees more likely thanothers to engage in public service activities? The behavioralimplications of PSM are addressed by studying the involvementin charitable activities of public, nonprofit, and private workers.Using data from the 2002 General Social Survey, multivariatelogistic regression models are estimated to examine self-reportedgifts of time, blood, and money to charitable organizations.It is found that government employees are more likely to volunteerfor charity and to donate blood than for-profit employees are.Additionally, nonprofit workers are also more likely than theirfor-profit counterparts to volunteer. However, no differenceis found among public service and private employees in termsof individual philanthropy. These findings generally lend supportfor the hypothesis that PSM is more prominent in public servicethan in private organizations, especially as it pertains togovernment personnel.     

Promotions and Earnings – Gender or Merit? Evidence from Longitudinal Personnel Data

This study examines the determinants of promotions, performance evaluations and earnings using unique longitudinal data from the personnel records of a large university. The study focuses on the role of gender in remuneration using, first, information on the complexity ratings of job tasks to define promotions on job ladders and, second, information on objective individual productivity. The study finds that individual research productivity was an important determinant of promotions and earnings. The results indicate that gender has no effect on the probability of being promoted, conditional on productivity, nor does it play a role in the performance evaluation of employees. Furthermore, the results suggest that contemporaneous productivity measures provide a usable proxy for the past productivity of a worker.     

Personal(ized) Health Monitoring,Personalization, and Personality

Use of technology in individual health monitoring is predicted to be widespread in near future healthcare systems and in smart home environments. The term Personalized Health Monitoring (PHM) is proposed for these applications. A framework describing aspects of personalization and personality that are relevant to personalized health monitoring is presented. The framework addresses personal data, adaptability, feedback, and personality. Influence of personality on approach, interaction, and adherence to PHM technology are discussed. Personality is both a variable influencing monitored data, as well as a variable that can be monitored itself. An agenda for future research in the field of Personal and Personalized Health Monitoring is presented.     

The impact of part-time employment on union density

Because part-time employees are less likely to be unionized than full-timers, increases in part-time employment may lower unionization rates. However, the size of the reduction, after controlling for other factors, has not been estimated. My results obtained from a probit analysis indicate that part-time status has a small, but significant, negative effect on the probability that a worker is a union member. Not surprisingly, as the working hours of part-time employees decrease, the negative effect increases. The results of this analysis also show that the negative effect of part-time variables had decreased between 1973 and 1989. I thank Darold T. Barnum of the University of Illinois, Chicago and Richard U. Miller of the University of Wisconsin, Madison for their valuable comments and support.     

A Collaborative University Model for Employee Wellness

Abstract

Universities are taking a more active approach in understanding and monitoring employees’ modifiable health risk factors and chronic care conditions by developing strategies to encourage employees to start and sustain healthy behaviors. WellBama, the University of Alabama's signature health and wellness program, utilizes a collaborative model in partnership with select colleges and departments to implement strategies to improve employees’ health status. The program provides onsite health screenings and assessments, timely health advising sessions, assistance in setting and monitoring individual health goals to promote improved health, and preventive examination referrals.     

Betting on Illusory Patterns: Probability Matching in Habitual Gamblers

Why do people gamble? A large body of research suggests that cognitive distortions play an important role in pathological gambling. Many of these distortions are specific cases of a more general misperception of randomness, specifically of an illusory perception of patterns in random sequences. In this article, we provide further evidence for the assumption that gamblers are particularly prone to perceiving illusory patterns. In particular, we compared habitual gamblers to a matched sample of community members with regard to how much they exhibit the choice anomaly ‘probability matching’. Probability matching describes the tendency to match response proportions to outcome probabilities when predicting binary outcomes. It leads to a lower expected accuracy than the maximizing strategy of predicting the most likely event on each trial. Previous research has shown that an illusory perception of patterns in random sequences fuels probability matching. So does impulsivity, which is also reported to be higher in gamblers. We therefore hypothesized that gamblers will exhibit more probability matching than non-gamblers, which was confirmed in a controlled laboratory experiment. Additionally, gamblers scored much lower than community members on the cognitive reflection task, which indicates higher impulsivity. This difference could account for the difference in probability matching between the samples. These results suggest that gamblers are more willing to bet impulsively on perceived illusory patterns.     

Diskontinuität im Erwerbsverlauf und betrieblicher Kontext

The influence of the firm and the former work life on the probability to interrupt one’s current employment between 1993 and 1995 is analyzed. For reconstructing individual work lifes, we use data from the “German Employment Statistic Register Sample 1975–1995” of the Institute of Employment Research (IAB). Characteristics of the firm were taken from the “firm panel” (Betriebspanel) of the same institution between 1993 and 1995. Both samples were merged to create a “linked employer-employee” data-set. Therefore, firm related variables like number of employees, economic situation and industry are independent of individual characteristics. In our empirical model we included the change of the employer, the interruption of work and unemployment as competing risks. Our analysis shows that the former work life has an independent influence on the risk of interrupting work or to become unemployed between 1993 and 1995. Furthermore, qualified persons who experienced job shifts within their last firm and who are employed by larger employers which invest in their employees have a greater probability to move directly to another employer. In sum, our results indicate a “reproduction” of discontinuous employment patterns over the work life.     

Austerity plan announcements and the impact on the employees’ wellbeing

This study investigates the impact of austerity plan announcements on employees’ wellbeing. We exploit the unexpected announcement of a drastic wage cut (25%) related to public sector employees in Romania. Using data from the Eurobarometer Surveys and the European Quality of Life Survey, we employ a difference-in-difference research design combined with matching, based on entropy balancing, to identify the causal effects. Our results reveal that the mere announcement of austerity measures leads to an overall drop in life satisfaction among those working in the public sector. We also show that men, and especially married individuals, are most affected by the substantial wage cut announcement. Contrary to previous research, we find that public sector employees with higher levels of education are more likely to be affected by this policy communication compared to those with only secondary or primary levels of education. Our results also suggest that the negative effect of the announcement is not persisting over time.     

Karriereerfolg als Ergebnis des Personalmanagements

Strategic human resource management has avoided to evaluate its efforts in relation to employees’ careers. Recent research has investigated a selection of individual human resource management (HRM) practices (e.?g., training and development, mentoring, career development, talent management, performance appraisal) in relation to objective and subjective career success, but failed to study HRM systems or bundles. This paper argues that HRM systems and career success can be connected via human capital theory because human capital is understood as an organizational resource and as an individual antecedent to careers. Based on extant research that relates individual HRM practices to objective or subjective career success, this paper reviews and discusses the relationship between bundles of HRM practices and the individual practices contained therein and career success. The final conclusion suggests that evaluations of HRM systems should take careers into account because organizations rely on employees’ human capital. Future research should focus more intensely on the role of HRM for the development of careers also across organizations.     

EMPLOYEE FINANCIAL LITERACY AND RETIREMENT PLAN BEHAVIOR: A CASE STUDY

This article uses administrative data on all active employees of the Federal Reserve (FR) System to examine participation in and contributions to the Thrift Saving Plan, the System's defined contribution (DC) plan. We link to administrative records a unique employee survey of economic/demographic factors including a set of financial literacy questions. Not surprisingly, FR employees are substantially more financially literate than the population at large. Most importantly, financially savvy employees are also most likely to participate in their DC plan. Sophisticated workers contribute three percentage points more of their earnings to the DC plan than do the less knowledgeable, and they hold more equity in their pension accounts. We examine changes in employee plan behavior 1 year after employees completed a Learning Module about retirement planning, and we compare it to baseline patterns. We find that those employees who completed the Learning Module were more likely to start contributing and less likely to have stopped contributing to the DC plan postsurvey. In sum, employer‐provided learning programs are shown to significantly impact employee retirement saving decisions and consistent with a lot of other research, higher levels of financial literacy are found to have a beneficial impact on retirement saving patterns. (JEL J3, H7)     

An exploratory study of subjective well-being in organizations–A mixed method research approach

ABSTRACT

Subjective well-being (SWB) has been widely found to have a profound impact on the individual, yet the process of its occurrence in public organizations remains unexplored. So the primary purpose of this paper is to explore the determining factors affecting the process of employee’s subjective well-being in public organizations using mixed methods research. Qualitative analysis using the grounded theory methodology reveals the effective factors that affect the process of employee’s subjective well-being in public organizations. Quantitative hypotheses are then developed based on a qualitative investigation. Survey data were collected from employees of public organizations in one of the provinces of Iran. Analysis of Moment Structure is used for data analysis. The results of the research revealed that both individual and organizational factors (as causal factors) influence the employees’ subjective well-being process (life satisfaction and positive affect). This phenomenon leads to the use of strategies which are affected by intervening and contextual factors. The consequences of this process are to change the attitude and behavior of individuals and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. This paper is among the first known to examine subjective well-being in public organizations using mixed methods research. The mixed methods approach offers a better insight to understanding effective factors affecting subjective well-being compared to the use of either a qualitative or quantitative method alone.     

Attitude Differences Between Paid Workers and Volunteers

This study addresses the extension of research on paid employees to volunteer workers. Pearce (1978, 1993b) has postulated that job attitudes are substantially different between volunteers and paid employees, based on her work studying fourteen organizations employing either entirely volunteer workgroups or entirely paid workgroups. Another interpretation of her data would be that the organizational culture of such workgroups is different, not the individual job attitudes.     

An Examination of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Model: Replication and Extension

This study examined the Perceptions of PoliticsModel (Ferris, Russ, & Fandt, 1989) in a three-phaseprocess. In the first phase, the model was examinedusing Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) two-step approach to structural equations modeling. Themodel was tested on data collected from 786 employees ofa state government agency and 469 employees of anelectric utility cooperative. Results from this phase indicated that the model had acceptablefit and was more parsimonious than any of the competingmodels to which it was compared. In the second phase,understanding as a moderator of the relationships between perceptions of organizational politicsand several outcome variables was examined. Resultsindicated that understanding only moderated the outcomerelationship between politics and job satisfaction, not intent to turnover or job anxiety. Finally,in phase three, the additional outcome variables oforganizational satisfaction, supervisor effectiveness,and self-reported individual performance were included in an effort to expand the Ferris et al. (1989)framework. Additionally, the moderating effects ofunderstanding on the relationships between perceptionsof politics and these new outcome variables were explored. Results from the final step indicatedthat adding the new outcome variables increased theparsimonyof the model without decreasing model fit. Withrespect to the moderating effects, only thepolitics-performance relationship was moderated byunderstanding.Allof these results are discussed in light of theirimplications for future research.     

Ich – wir – meine Organisation werden das überstehen! Der Fragebogen zur individuellen,Team- und organisationalen Resilienz (FITOR)I – we – my organization will survive it! The questionnaire to measure individual,team and organizational resilience (FITOR)

Resilience is defined as the capacity to bounce back from failures, setbacks or other potentially threatening situations. Moreover, resilience enables employees, teams, and organizations to thrive when facing situations of change or adversity. Despite the theoretical discussion of the importance of resilience at different levels (i.?e., individual, team, and organizational level), previous research has mainly focused on individual resilience at work. This may be due to a lack of options to measure resilience in an efficient and reliable way simultaneously at all three levels. The purpose of this study is therefore to develop an instrument to assess resilience in parallel at the individual, team, and organizational level. Applying interviews and two questionnaire studies, we introduce a new instrument which enables researchers to analyze how these different levels of resilience are linked to each other. Furthermore, this instrument offers practitioners a deeper insight in employees’ different perceptions of resilience, which may help to implement interventions at relevant levels.     

Employer‐Supported Child Care: Who Participates?

Child‐care vouchers are becoming more common and can provide child‐care assistance to a wide spectrum of the population. There is little empirical research, however, on which workers participate in their employer's child‐care programs. In this exploratory study, employees with children at 1 large university completed questionnaires to gather information on their child‐care arrangements and their experience with the employer's child‐care voucher program (N = 949). Results indicate that the employees who were most in need of child‐care assistance in terms of family structure, job type, and child‐care expenses were more likely to receive vouchers. Federal policy limiting the structure of employer‐sponsored voucher programs appeared to present barriers to participation for certain groups of employees.     

Constantly online and the fantasy of ‘work–life balance’: Reinterpreting work-connectivity as cynical practice and fetishism

Smartphones and other mobile communication devices are promoted with promises of enhancing professional competence and individual freedom in working life, and in work–life balance. However, an emerging stream of research demonstrates that the adoption of such technologies is accompanied by increasing stress, collective control and work intensification. This article provides a discussion of recent research on the effects of smartphone usage in contemporary organizational life. Generally, this research presents a contradiction between, on the one hand, the discourse on technologies as a means to enhance individual autonomy and competence and, on the other hand, the de facto incorporation of technology users in networks of control and an unhealthy work culture of permanent connectivity. Finding inspiration in the work of Slavoj ?i?ek and his development of psychoanalytical concepts, this article offers an alternative approach to this issue. It does so by reconsidering how to understand employee subjectivity and, specifically, why employees voluntarily embrace company-sponsored smartphones although they are fully aware of the damage that this technology creates in their personal lives.     

Does persistence of social exclusion exist in Spain?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the causes leading to social exclusion dynamics. In particular, we wish to understand why an individual experiencing social exclusion today is much more likely to experience it again. In fact, there are two distinct processes that may generate a persistence of social exclusion: Heterogeneity (individuals are heterogeneous with respect to some observed and/or unobserved adverse characteristics that are relevant to experiencing social exclusion and persist over time) and true state dependence (experiencing social exclusion in a specific time period, in itself, increases the probability of undergoing social exclusion in subsequent periods). Distinguishing between the two processes is crucial since the policy implications are very different. The results suggest that both individual heterogeneity and true state dependence are related to the probability of experiencing social exclusion.     

The Influence of Temporary Employment on Unemployment Exits in a Competing Risks Framework

Using Spanish longitudinal data from the period 1992–2004, this paper examines labour market transitions of the newly unemployed in order to investigate the determinants of unemployment duration in a competing risks framework with four destination states: temporary employment, permanent employment, self-employment and inactivity. Special emphasis is placed on the influence of previous job variables. We find that individuals who become unemployed due to the end of a temporary contract are more likely to exit unemployment by finding another temporary job and less likely to exit through permanent jobs, self-employment or inactivity. However, long tenures in temporary jobs enhance the probability of finding a permanent employment. Moreover, the length of the previous job, when it terminates due to a layoff, hinders the probability of moving to employment (either permanent or temporary).     

A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Organization, Work Group, and Individual Effectiveness During and After Downsizing

The need for a unified, cross-level(organization, work group, individual employee) model oforganizational downsizing has been suggested by severalauthors (e.g., Kozlowski et al., 1993). The definition of downsizing, in terms applicable only at theorganization level, prevents researchers from developinga more cohesive view of the interactive impact ofdownsizing for the organization, work groups, and individuals. In this paper, we definedownsizing more broadly as a constellation of stressorevents centering around pressures toward work forcereductions which place demands upon the organization,work groups, and individual employees, and requirea process of coping and adaptation. This stress-basedview of downsizing allows researchers to developconcepts to guide research on downsizing that are more broadly applicable across levels of analysis.To show the advantages of this stress-based view ofdownsizing, this paper uses concepts from the stresscoping literature to identify a set of criticaldependent variables that should be studied in downsizingresearch. We argue that these variables are applicablefor organization, group, and individual employee-levelresearch.     

When social accounts promote acceptance of unfair ultimatum offers: The role of the victim’s stress responses to uncertainty and power position

We examined which type of social account (denying responsibility versus apologizing) following an unfair offer makes recipients more likely to accept the offer in ultimatum bargaining. We identified stress responses to uncertainty as an individual difference factor that should moderate the relative effectiveness of these social accounts. A denial should make acceptance of an unfair offer more likely among recipients who respond to uncertainty with low stress. An apology should make such acceptance more likely among recipients who respond with high stress. Further, we argued that this cross-over interaction should be observed particularly among recipients interacting with a high power allocator. Two ultimatum bargaining experiments supported these ideas. Employing the perspective of victims of unfairness, the present research identifies a relevant individual difference moderator of the effectiveness of social accounts in bargaining situations and identifies power as a situational variable that promotes the expression of this factor.