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.     

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.     

Ethical leadership supports safety voice by increasing risk perception and reducing ethical ambiguity: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

Misconduct by business and political leaders during the pandemic is feared to have impacted people's adherence to protective measures that would help to safeguard against the spread of COVID-19. Addressing this concern, this article theorizes and tests a model linking ethical leadership with workplace risk communication—a practice referred to as ‘safety voice’ in the research literature. Our study, conducted with 511 employees from UK companies, revealed that ethical leadership is positively associated with greater intention to engage in safety voice regarding COVID-19. We also find that this association is mediated by relations with the perceived health risk of COVID-19 and ambiguity about ethical decision making in the workplace. These findings therefore underscore the importance of good ethical conduct by leaders for ensuring that health and safety risks are well understood and communicated effectively by organizational members particularly during crises. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study and highlight further opportunities for future research to address the ethical dimensions of leadership, risk management, and organizational risk communication.     

Work–family conflict and crossover in volunteer emergency service workers

Abstract

A growing literature indicates that organizational and work demands place pressure on the partners and families of volunteer workers as it does on paid workers. This study evaluated a conceptual model integrating work–family conflict and stress crossover theoretical frameworks, to investigate the mechanisms by which emergency service volunteer work, specifically, predicts outcomes for the partners of volunteers. Matched data from 102 couples in which one partner was an Australian emergency services volunteer – firefighter, ambulance officer or emergency rescue volunteer – were analysed using structural equation modelling analyses. Findings suggested that one mechanism by which inter-role conflict related to partner adjustment was through elevated withdrawn marital behaviour and decreased intimacy reported by the couple, which indirectly affected partners’ distress. This finding regarding withdrawn behaviour appears to be novel and may also be applicable to paid workers. Alternative mechanisms involving role overload and angry marital behaviour were not supported. These findings extend limited research which has adapted organizational theory to understand processes affecting volunteer workers, and advance conceptual accounts of the mechanisms through which the partners and families of workers are impacted by inter-role conflict.     

Employment of Older People in the European Union

Abstract. This article identifies the alternative employment modes of older workers in the European Union. Against a background of changing levels of labour force participation and declining employment opportunities the paper describes and discusses the relative significance for older workers of alternative employment modes. Two atypical modes, part‐time and self‐employment, are discussed in detail. The paper concludes that atypical employment modes offer ageing employees the opportunity to gradually retire by providing a bridge between full‐time employment and final retirement.     

Stereotypical Inferences as Mediators of Age Discrimination: The Role of Competence and Warmth

Drawing on theories of stereotype content and role congruity, this research investigated the role of stereotypes for employment discrimination against older candidates. Study 1 investigated the content of stereotypes about older workers, focusing on warmth and competence as the two core dimensions in social judgement. As predicted, older workers were perceived as less competent but warmer than younger workers. Studies 2 and 3 investigated how these stereotypes interact with job requirements to predict age bias in an experimental setting. Further, they tested if warmth‐ and competence‐related stereotypical inferences mediate the relation between candidate age and selection bias. Results showed that age bias was robust. Older candidates were discriminated against, even if the job primarily required warmth‐related qualities, and independently of evaluators' own age or professional experience in human resources. Moreover, age bias was mediated by competence‐related stereotypical inferences. Age bias was also mediated by inferences related to warmth but those inferences were opposite to the high‐warmth older worker stereotype identified in Study 1 . Implications of the findings for theoretical approaches to age discrimination and for organizational practice designed to combat age discrimination are discussed.     

Inconsistent style of leadership as a predictor of safety behaviour

Abstract

Research on the effects of passive rather than transformational styles of leadership is limited, especially regarding safety-related outcomes in the workplace. Both styles of leadership can be exhibited at different times in the same individual; here we refer to this as inconsistent leadership. In this study, we examine the effect of inconsistent safety-specific leadership style on the safety participation and safety compliance of employees. Operationalized as the interaction of safety-specific transformational leadership and passive leadership, inconsistent safety leadership emerged as a significant predictor of both outcomes in two samples in Canada: a sample of 241 young workers and again in a sample of 491 older workers, who were long-term health care employees. We found that a transformational safety-specific leadership style was associated with greater safety compliance and safety participation in employees. Furthermore, in all cases, the predictive effect of transformational style of leadership on safety participation and safety compliance was attenuated when leaders also displayed passive leadership with respect to safety outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications for safety management are discussed.     

The Moderating Effects of National Age Stereotyping on the Relationships between Job Satisfaction and its Determinants: A Study of Older Workers across 26 Countries

This research explores how national age stereotypes impact older workers' job‐related perceptions by examining probability based samples across 26 countries taken from the European Social Survey. Multilevel data analysis was undertaken. Results show that, at the individual level, both extrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards directly impact older workers' job satisfaction. At the country level, significant variations are found in the relationships between job satisfaction and related rewards for older workers across the 26 countries. Society's stereotypical views towards older people explained some of these cross‐country variations. This study contributes to extant literature by explicating the process by which society's age stereotypes and the meta‐stereotypes held by older workers affect how these workers make sense and take meaning out of their job‐related circumstances leading to enhanced or diminished job satisfaction. Implications highlight the need for management to be vigilant in identifying and dealing with age stereotypes in the workplace. Furthermore, managers need to be more aware of the potential harmful consequences arising from negative meta‐stereotypes and should implement strategies to tackle workplace stereotypes that would lead to negative meta‐stereotypes held by older workers.     

Supporting temporary agency workers’ affective commitments: exploring the role of opportunities for competence development

Nowadays, many organizations employ parts of their workforce via employment agencies and, as such, temporary agency workers (TAWs) are important for our economies. Increasingly, research is conducted to explore the relationships among the three parties involved – the TAW, the client organization and employment agency – and how this relationship can be strengthened by HR instruments. This study adds to this stream of literature by studying to what extent TAWs’ affective commitment (AC) towards the client organization and employment agency relates to their expectations and their fulfilled expectations regarding offered opportunities for competence development (OfCD) by both organizations, and by exploring to what extent TAWs regard both employment organizations responsible for offering them OfCD. A cross-sectional survey study was conducted among TAWs in the Netherlands (n = 449), including quantitative and qualitative analyses. All results of this study together revealed that TAWs tend to be focused on the client organization with regard to OfCD. This is the organization to which they feel most affectively committed, that they regard responsible for organizing their OfCD, and where they ask for OfCD. This study indicated that TAWs do not yet profit maximally from the triangular employment relationship, and have a rather traditional view on TAW constructions.     

Exploring the generation gap in the workplace in South Korea

This study reviewed current literature on generational issues in Korea, specifically in relation to the workplace. Based on the results, this study concluded that distinct generations of workers exist in Korea. While there are similar generational characteristics between Korea and the United States because of the unique societal, historical, and cultural factors in each country, there are noticeable differences such as the existence of Generation 386 in Korea. Due to rapid industrialization and social transformation during the past few decades, Korean society seems to exhibit wider gaps between older and younger generations than the United States. The roles of Generation 386 and Generation Y in organizations should be considered for the future.     

Labor Market Intermediaries and the New Paradigm for Human Resources

Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) are entities that stand between the individual worker and the organization that needs work done. They include well-known operations such as executive search firms that act as brokers to fill jobs and temp agencies that lease labor to clients but also less familiar entities such as professional employer organizations (PEOs) that take on the legal obligations of employment for clients. LMI's mediate between individual workers and the organizations that need work done, shaping how workers are matched to organizations, how tasks are performed, and how conflicts are resolved [Autor, D.H. (2009). Studies of labor market intermediation: Introduction. In D. Autor (Ed.), Studies of labor market intermediation (pp. 1–26). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press]. They essentially disintermediate aspects of management that had been performed by employers. The growth and increasing prominence of LMI's is important for all research associated with the workplace because we can no longer do a study of “workers” in an organization and assume that they are all employees: Some may be temps under contract to an agency, some may be “employed” by a PEO, some may work for vendors. The reason that matters is because LMI's appear to alter attitudes and behaviors on all sides. For example, they change the bilateral, employee–employer relationship into a three-way “triangular” relationship. They may well create “dual allegiance” issues, where individuals feel ties to the search firm that placed them in their current job and their employer or the agency that employs them and the client on whose behalf they are currently working. Most fundamentally, they challenge the existing paradigms we have used to understand the workplace: Does “attraction–selection–attrition” have any relevance, for example, when employers hire temps placed by agencies into permanent jobs? What does career development mean when the person with the most influence over your next job is a search consultant? There is already an extensive literature on LMIs, but it is spread across disciplines and fields and mainly examines the labor market outcomes associated with the use of LMIs. The literature lacks a management voice. We know relatively little about the effects of LMIs on workplace attitudes and behaviors, the central focus of organizational behavior; about how LMIs and the associated rise of outside hiring change how we should think about topics such as recruiting and selection, a central concern of personnel psychology; we know even less about how LMIs change the way firms think about competencies and boundaries of the firm, central topics in strategy, when the firm's workforce is actually employed by another organization or when it can be reshuffled very quickly. We develop a taxonomy of LMIs and use it to classify the burgeoning but disjointed literature on LMIs across the social sciences. We classify LMIs in terms of three main attributes of human resource (HR) practices that they perform: Information Providers, Matchmakers, and Administrators. We describe first how LMI activities differ from HR management practices performed by employers in the traditional relationship. Second, we outline the existing research about how LMIs affect employment outcomes, such as access to employment, wages, work-related attitudes and behaviors, working conditions, and skill development. Finally, we highlight the implications of LMIs for management research, especially new, understudied research questions that need to be addressed.     

Job resources and emotional exhaustion: The mediating role of learning opportunities

The Job Demands-Resources model predicts that job demands increase and job resources decrease emotional exhaustion in employees. In this study, we investigated one possible mechanism for this, in order to provide a deeper insight into the role of job resources in this energy-depletion process. We assumed that job resources (autonomy and task variety) reduce emotional exhaustion through the promotion of opportunities for personal growth and development, especially workplace learning. Moreover, we expected that job demands (workload, cognitive and emotional demands) would be positively related to work-related learning opportunities. Our research model was tested in a large and heterogeneous sample out of the Dutch working population (N = 4589), following a cross-validation procedure. Multi-group structural equation modelling revealed that autonomy and task variety promoted learning opportunities, which in turn partially mediated between these job resources and emotional exhaustion. With respect to job demands, our study showed mixed results: cognitive demands promoted learning opportunities, workload frustrated such opportunities, and emotional demands were not significantly related to learning opportunities. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between job demands, job resources and learning opportunities in the energy-depletion process, and support the need for the promotion of learning opportunities in the workplace.     

‘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.     

Job insecurity,perceived employability and targets' and perpetrators' experiences of workplace bullying

Abstract

We aimed to investigate (1) the association between job insecurity and workplace bullying from the perspective of both targets and perpetrators and (2) perceived employability as a moderator of these relationships. We argue that job insecurity is associated with social or interpersonal strain as in the case of workplace bullying. Furthermore, workers who feel that they have alternative opportunities for employment may find it easier to cope with insecurity. Stated differently, we aimed to investigate whether the relationship between job insecurity and workplace bullying depended on the level of perceived employability. Hypotheses were tested among 693 workers who participated in a survey on the quality of working life. They were employed at establishments of two Belgian organizations from the textile industry (N=189) and financial services (N=505). We found that that job insecurity was associated with targets' and perpetrators' reports of workplace bullying. The interaction between job insecurity and perceived employability did not contribute to targets' reports of workplace bullying. However, it was related to perpetrators' reports of workplace bullying. Interestingly, the relationship between job insecurity and workplace bullying was stronger under the condition of high versus low employability. This hints at the idea that there could be a “dark side” to employability.     

Sleep disturbances in shift-workers: A marker for maladaptation syndrome

Abstract

This study aims to examine whether the relationship between overtime and well-being is influenced by the voluntary vs. involuntary (i.e., compulsory) nature of overtime work and by the presence or absence of rewards for overtime. We also explored the prevalence of these types of overtime and how they were related to work and personal characteristics. A survey was conducted among a representative sample of Dutch full-time employees (N=1612). AN(C)OVA was used to compare rewarded and unrewarded, voluntary and involuntary overtime workers on personal and work characteristics, fatigue, and work satisfaction. Most overtime workers were rewarded (62%). About half of the sample (n=814) could be classified as either voluntary or involuntary overtime workers, or as having “mixed reasons” to work overtime. Voluntary and unrewarded overtime workers had a relatively high income and favourable job characteristics. Involuntary overtime work was associated with relatively high fatigue and low satisfaction, especially for involuntary overtime workers without rewards who can be considered a burnout risk group. Voluntary overtime workers were non-fatigued and satisfied, even without rewards. It can be concluded that control over overtime and rewards for overtime are important for well-being. Moderate overtime work may not be a problem if it is done voluntarily. Moreover, the negative effects of compulsory overtime work may be partly offset by fair compensation for the extra work.     

The time is now: the need to develop team performance consultants in Canadian healthcare institutions

Malaysia has emerged as a major economic force in the Asia-Pacific region. While the recent growth is supported in part by government incentives, much credit can be attributed to the development of small-medium enterprises (SMEs). Recent US studies have found evidence of extensive HRD in small to mid-sizedbusinesses, and otherrecentstudies found higherlevels ofjob satisfaction among employees of small firms. This study measures the nature and extent of HRD; the level of job satisfaction among workers; and determines the correlation between workplace learning and job satisfaction in Malaysian SMEs.     

Discrepancies between chronological age and personal age as a reflection of unrelieved worker stress

Abstract

The general proposition that stress-related variables will be associated with discrepancies between chronological age and perceived personal age of working adults was examined. Responses from a field survey of day, afternoon, and night fixed-shift workers in a large manufacturing organization (n = 1674) were used to explore the relationships between a variety of reported stress-related variables and personal age constructs. Discrepancies between perceived personal age and chronological age were reported by a large proportion of the workers surveyed. Three categories of stress-related variables each accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in discrepancies. As hypothesized, the reported presence of stressors and the frequency/extent of strains (stress-related outcomes) were positively correlated with feeling older than one's chronological age. In addition, the reported presence of support mechanisms for coping with stressors was negatively correlated with feeling older than one's chronological age. The manner in which work and non-work stress may impinge upon personal age perceptions is discussed, and appropriate avenues for future research in this domain are considered.     

Occupational stress,rescue workers and English law

Abstract

This paper shows how two strands of English case law, one establishing liability to compensate for shock suffered by those at the scene of disaster, and the other concerned with physical injury suffered by rescuers, were brought together in the 1960s to provide a remedy for a rescuer suffering from what the law describes as ‘nervous shock’. It further traces the development of employers' liability in this context, but finds that the law provides few examples of the contractual duty of employers to protect employees generally against stress that may cause psychological injury. It points out that there is no case law on the liability of employers for stress suffered by rescue workers, whether professional or otherwise. It notes that law reports give little guidance as to the medical evidence judges require to persuade them that nervous shock has been suffered. Finally, it spells out that EC-inspired regulations could now be used to require employers to assess, and take steps to control, stress to which their employees, including rescue workers, are exposed.     

Out of mind,out of sight? Leading distributed workers to ensure health and safety

ABSTRACT

Current frameworks of leadership are based on face-to-face interaction. A growing number of workers work away from their main location of work; this makes it challenging for leaders to ensure the health and safety of distributed workers. In the present study, we explore the relationship between line managers’ health and safety leadership and distributed workers’ health and safety behaviours. We also explore the organisational procedures and practices that may enhance the impact of health and safety leadership. We included a broad range of distributed workers (in analyses, minimum N?=?626) from 11 organisations. We found that health-and-safety-specific leadership was positively related to distributed workers’ self-rated health, safety compliance and safety proactivity. These relationships were augmented by distributed workers’ sense of being included in the workplace. Knowledge sharing among colleagues was associated with safety compliance when health-and-safety-specific leadership was low. Our results indicate that one way of addressing the challenges of distributed working may be through line managers putting health and safety on the agenda.