Occupational burnout and cyberloafing among teachers: Analysis of personality traits,individual and occupational status variables as predictors

One of the phenomena that causes remarkable losses in terms of productivity and cost in organizations is occupational burnout. Burnout is encountered in different occupational groups. However, in professions that are in contact with a large number of people as part of their responsibilities, such as teaching, burnout is a problem that is far more on the foreground. In addition, emotional burnout, which is seen as the first step before occupational burnout, can cause workers to feel insufficient at the point of carrying out tasks related to their duties, leading to behaviour that is out of their fields such as cyberloafing. Addressing this situation in terms of teaching profession, the feeling of inadequacy in educational activities during the course may prevent the teacher from fulfilling any responsibilities while using a device that has internet access. In this context, the aim of this study is to investigate the factors that predict the cyberloafing and burnout levels of teachers working in different fields. This research is a relational research. This research was carried out with the participations of 194 teachers from different branches working in various provinces in Turkey. In this study, a personal information form and three different data collection tools were used. Analysis of the collected data was performed by hierarchical linear multiple regression analysis. The 9 models, created separately with cyberloafing and burnout, were found to be significant in the study. Demographic variables, ICT usage status variables, occupational variables and personality traits were used in these models. Therefore, all the hypotheses included in the research were accepted. As a result of the research, demographic variables were found to be the most important model to predict teachers’ occupational burnout. The most important model explaining teachers’ cyberloafing situations is their ICT usage.     

农民工职业病:预防是最好的"治疗"

利用《2007中国卫生统计年鉴》、《中国劳动统计年鉴—2005》等全国性数据,分析了目前我国农民工职业病及防护的现状,得出大多数农民工所从事的行业职业病发病率较高及农民工职业病防护程度低的结论。指出预防农民工职业病对于农民工自身、企业和国家均具有重要意义,是最好的"治疗",并在此基础上进一步探讨了农民工职业病的预防措施。     

Will the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Proposed Standards for Occupational Exposure to Respirable Crystalline Silica Reduce Workplace Risk?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing regulations to amend existing standards for occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica by establishing a new permissible exposure limit as well as a series of ancillary provisions for controlling exposure. This article briefly reviews OSHA's proposed regulatory approach and the statutory authority on which it is based. It then evaluates OSHA's preliminary determination of significant risk and its analysis of the risk reduction achievable by its proposed controls. It recognizes that OSHA faces multiple challenges in devising a regulatory approach that reduces exposures and health risks and meets its statutory goal. However, the greatest challenge to reducing risks associated with silica exposure is not the lack of incentives (for either employers or employees) but rather lack of information, particularly information on the relative toxicity of different forms of silica. The article finds that OSHA's proposed rule would contribute little in the way of new information, particularly since it is largely based on information that is at least a decade old—a significant deficiency, given the rapidly changing conditions observed over the last 45 years. The article concludes with recommendations for alternative approaches that would be more likely to generate information needed to improve worker health outcomes.     

Workers’ Risk Tolerance and Occupational Injuries

This study explores the relationship between individuals’ risk tolerance and occupational injuries. We analyze data from a national representative survey of U.S. workers that includes information about injuries, risk tolerance, cognitive and noncognitive attributes, and risky behaviors. We measure risk tolerance through questions regarding individuals’ willingness to gamble on their lifetime income. We estimate zero‐inflated count models to assess the role played by such measures on workers’ recurrent injuries. We discuss some implications of our results for future research and occupational safety policies. Our results highlight the concurrent and changing role played by individual, work, and environmental factors in explaining recurrent incidents. They show that risk tolerance affects recurrent injuries, although not in the direction that proponents of the concept of proneness would expect. Our measure of risk aversion shows that individuals who are somewhat more risk tolerant have fewer recurrent injuries than those who are risk averse. But the estimated relationship is U‐shaped, not monotonic and, therefore, not easy to predict. At the same time, we find that individuals’ “revealed risk preferences”—specific risky behaviors—are related to higher injury probabilities. Demanding working conditions, measures of socioeconomic status, health, and safety problems experienced by workers during their youth remain among the most important factors explaining the phenomena of recurrent injuries. So our results contribute also to the important debate about the relationship between health and socioeconomic status.     

Parenthood,risk attitudes and risky behavior

This study analyzes how risk attitudes change when individuals experience the major life event of becoming a parent by using longitudinal data for a large and representative sample of individuals from Germany. The analysis uses a survey-based measure of risk aversion. The estimation is based on an individual fixed effects model similar to an event study. On average, men and women experience a considerable increase in risk aversion around the time of first childbirth. This increase already starts as early as two years before they become parents, it is largest shortly after childbirth and it disappears when the child becomes older. When analyzing risky choices, the results indicate that risky labor market behavior remains unaffected by parenthood.     

流动劳动力的人力资本与就业身份选择——基于东部和中西部地区在京就业者的比较

利用2006年＂北京市1‰流动人口调查＂数据,分别考察来自东部和中西部地区的在京流动劳动力的就业身份构成,并运用Logistic回归法分析人力资本对流动劳动力不同就业身份选择的影响及作用机制。研究发现,流动劳动力的人力资本提升对改善其就业身份有显著正面影响;受教育年限和健康状况对中西部地区流动劳动力更为重要,对流动劳动力成为雇主的正向影响明显高于来自东部地区者。据此认为,在提升劳动力人力资本之外,针对流动劳动力的系统性边缘化制度安排需要打破。     

Are ‘journalists’ own problems’ aggravating their hostility toward public relations?—A study of Korean journalists

Journalists’ own job problems have been found to be detrimental to media recognition of public relations: journalists vent frustration from their worsening job conditions at public relations practitioners. This outlook of occupational psyche casts a shadow over the bright prospect for media recognition of the profession. Journalists’ problems operate outside media relations, thus beyond direct attempts of public relations practitioners at media recognition via enhancing professionalism in their practices. There have been, however, only a few qualitative studies on this significant issue, all pointing to journalists’ occupational psyche running against media recognition. The purpose of this study is to determine quantitatively whether journalists’ own job satisfaction and their envy of public relations practitioners lead to their negative attitude. A survey of 128 Korean off-line journalists was conducted, and its results suggested that occupational psyche has little influence on media attitude—contrary to the findings of previous qualitative studies. For future study, this paper issues a call for cross-country, comparative research on the subject of journalists’ occupational psyche.     

WebStress: A web interface to explore a multidatabase bibliographic corpus on occupational stress

A bibliographic study on a multidisciplinary subject, such as occupational stress, requires a multidatabase query facility. Given this, we searched eight databases belonging to different fields (medicine, psychology, etc.) and from different countries. Thus, more than 26000 references on occupational stress were gathered. A bibliographic corpus of this sort is unusable because of the heterogeneous format of the records and the number of duplicate entries. Considering the limitations of commercial programs, we have developed a system, called WebStress, for reformatting the data and removing duplicates. The huge number of references and the research needs of updating and searching have necessitated the addition of several other functions to WebStress. Therefore WebStress comprises a web interface that makes it possible to search the corpus with advanced features (using clustering, a specialized thesaurus on stress and Boolean queries). In addition to the usual bibliographic queries on a specific database such as Medline, WebStress provides bibliometric analysis of the corpus, which might contribute to a detailed analysis on occupational stress in order to highlight the networks of researchers and to find the main topics studied in this area. WebStress is not yet available to researchers in general. It is being further developed, and also permission needs to be obtained from the eight commercial bibliographic databases that it consults.     

Employee reactions to behavioural control under conditions of stress: The moderating role of self-efficacy

Extensive research conducted in the occupational stress literature has failed to provide convincing support for the stress-buffering effects of work control on employee adjustment. Drawing on research conducted in the laboratory context, it was proposed that the stress-buffering effects of work control on employee adjustment would be more marked at high, rather than low, levels of self-efficacy. In a sample of 100 customer service representatives, a significant three-way interaction among role conflict, work control and self-efficacy (measured at Time 1) was observed on (low) depersonalization (measured at Time 2). Consistent with expectations, work control reduced the negative effects of work stress on this outcome measure only for employees who perceived high levels of self-efficacy at work. In addition, there was evidence to suggest that self-efficacy moderated the main effects of work control on job satisfaction and somatic health. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the job strain model, and also in relation to workplace interventions designed to improve levels of employee adjustment.     

Psychophysiological reactions during the first year of a foreign assignment: Results of a controlled longitudinal study

Abstract

Previous studies reveal that employees are exposed to several potential stressors during foreign assignments. This prospective multidisciplinary study followed managers (expatriate group) before and during their first year of an international work assignment. Concurrently, a matched reference group that did not relocate was observed. The secretion of the stress-sensitive hormone prolactin increased in the expatriate group during the first year abroad, compared to the reference group. Selfesteem, family relations, language skills, decreased internal locus of control and job promotion explained 32% of the variance in serum prolactin levels. Lower self-esteem and sense of coherence was related to increased serum prolactin. Increased working hours were associated with decreased work satisfaction. Job promotion was not related to work satisfaction. Mental well-being decreased in the expatriate group, compared to the reference group. Individual factors such as a strong sense of coherence and social provision attenuated decreases in mental well-being. A significant increase in cigarette and alcohol consumption was found in the expatriate group during the first year abroad. This study indicates that there are important psychosocial determinants influencing psychophysiological response patterns in expatriates. The present results put into question the generalizability of the ‘culture shock’ syndrome. The results have practical implications for guiding expatriates on time-limited assignments.