Strengthening Professional Efficacy Due to Sustainable Development of Social and Individual Competences—Empirical Research Study among Polish and Slovak Employees of the Aviation Sector

Małgorzata Dobrowolska,Adam Wawoczny,Maria Flakus,Magdalena Ślazyk-Sobol

doi:10.3390/su12176843

Abstract

Nowadays, taking into account the multidimensionality of the external environment and necessity of the sustainable development of human resources, organizations are obliged to take more care of the psychological resources of their employees, e.g., positive orientation, ego resilience, and emotional stability. Such resources affect how we cope with stress and a sense of threat. The authors of this paper focus on people employed in the aviation sector, who work in the hard-to-cope environment of full automation, demanding working conditions and numerous stressors. The presented study fills a gap in the research on the psychological characteristics of the aviation sector. Moreover, a sense of stress/threat is described in the context of the high specificity of employees representing the 4.0 sector. Therefore, it provides additional insights into the psychological functioning of the employees in the aviation sector. The results show that both positive orientation and ego resilience might be seen as protective factors against a sense of threat and stress, while a type D personality is a risk factor of a higher level of those psychological states. The novelty of the presented research concerns a better understanding of the sense of stress/threat experienced by the employees in this sector, as well as verifying the relationships between psychological variables described in the literature as personal resources.

Highlights

The sustainable development of organizations is a significant part of the contemporary trends of Human Resource Management
Those challenging states may decrease the integration between person and organization and may be severe for people working in high-risk professions, e.g., in the aviation sector
This research study aims to verify a series of hypotheses on relationships between the sense of stress/threat and the following independent variables: positive orientation, type D personality, and ego resilience among employees from the aviation sector in Poland and Slovakia

Summary

Introduction

It requires specific attention to the substantive aspects of professional work, and hard data, and the preservation of management processes. All, it means taking care of developing employees’ future competences and investing in employee resources. Procedures helpful in maintaining the health of employees are an essential ingredient of sustainable development. In this area, particular attention has been paid to working healthily and nurturing healthy and motivated employees [5]. The identification of factors predisposing the more intense experience of stress and threat is of particular importance, as these are essential for sustainable development in organizations [6]

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Conclusion