Curing The Dutch Disease? Sickness Absence and Work Disability in The Netherlands

The purpose of the current paper is to provide an overview and evaluation, covering the past decade, of developments and experiences in the Netherlands with respect to the prevention and reduction of sickness absence and work disability. The government has made various attempts to restrict expenditure in this area by increasing the (financial) responsibility of employers. It is concluded that the legislative changes do not seem to have long-lasting effects on sickness absence and work disability rates and have not worked out in practice as well as was foreseen. Employers — particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)— often buy minimum service packages from occupational health services (OHSs), show risk-avoiding behaviour, and primarily undertake procedural and person-oriented measures. Some lessons may be learned from the Netherlands' approach, concerning (1) the principle of self-regulation; (2) the position of SMEs; (3) the privatizing of OHSs; (4) examples of good practice.     

Homelessness: a proposal for a global definition and classification

On the base of an analysis of the definitions of homelessness currently in use, first a change of the notion “homelessness” to “houselessness” is proposed. Houseless persons are then defined as those sleeping rough or using public or private shelters. To better understand the causes of houselessness, its environment is involved in this classification under the notion of inadequate shelter. This comprises the following non-exclusive categories: risk of houselessness, concealed houselessness and substandard housing situations. This classification has the advantage to be adaptable to regional and national differences, while at the same time providing a global basis for data collection and comparison.     

Are state mindfulness and state work engagement related during the workday?

Given the growing interest in mindfulness in the workplace and the established importance of work engagement for work-related health and well-being, we explore the relationships between these 2 positive psychological states as they vary naturalistically over the workday. Utilising data from 3 measurement occasions per day (before work, mid-workday, and end-workday), we track natural variations in state mindfulness and state work engagement to create a fine-grained picture about their reciprocal relationships within the workday. A sample of 94 university employees completed multiple diary entries per day, for 10 working days. Data were analysed using multilevel structural equation modelling in MPlus, testing within-person pathways between mindfulness and work engagement across the day. Although state work engagement was a predictor of subsequent state mindfulness, state mindfulness did not predict subsequent state work engagement when controlling for earlier within-day work engagement. Overall, the within-day associations between mindfulness and work engagement were weak. We note the high within-day stabilities of state mindfulness and state work engagement, and discuss whether job and personal resources as well as task features might be moderators in the relationships between these constructs.     

The role of human resource management practices in managing organizational change

Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Organisationspsychologie (GIO) - The contingency perspective on human resource management (HRM) advocates that HRM practices fit...     

Between family and friends: a longitudinal study of friendship choice

The increasing role for chosen friends is a key element in current debates on individualization and the transformation of intimacy. This paper describes the changes in friendship choices over time and demonstrates how life events subsequently impact on those choices. We primarily distinguish between kin and non-kin nominations of friends and how these may be related to the social and economic turbulence inherent in late modernity. Analyses of data from ten years of the British Household Panel Survey showed that kin nominations still form a significant proportion of all friends but increasingly so with age and over time as people age. Life events, such as divorce or death of a partner, have large effects on the likelihood of changes in friendship choices as did gender, age, marital status and social class. We frame these results in a discussion of the saliency and nature of friendship at stages of the life course and conclude that the case for a general secular shift to choosing non-kin friendships rather than kin-based friendship is not demonstrated.     

Spreading the word ... hospice information systems

The rapid spread of Saunders' thinking across the world has been facilitated by the Hospice Information service and library at St Christopher's Hospice which she helped to create and further enhanced by Help the Hospices. We have set this article in the context of the Web and other information systems as they are developing today. "Connecting people" and "collecting people's experiences" were terms often used by Cicely Saunders when she described the work of Hospice Information, a service that has in some measure contributed to the rapid spread of her thinking across the world and which is currently in close contact with palliative care workers in over 120 countries. Connecting--or networking--putting people and organizations in touch with each other for mutual benefit and collecting and disseminating people's experiences are central to our work as a U.K. and international resource on hospice and palliative care for professionals and the public. Add to these the crucial role of information provision and advocacy for patients, carers, and health professionals alike and we hope that you may begin to appreciate how our respective organizations have contributed to the spread of Cicely Saunders' vision.