External Employment Research Articles

A força da proatividade na relação entre a satisfação com a carreira e a empregabilidade

O presente estudo tem como principal objetivo estudar o efeito mediador que a Proatividade possa ter na relação entre a Satisfação com a Carreira e a Empregabilidade. Assim, através do Modelo de Investigação proposto, foram testadas e confirmadas as seguintes condições prévias ao teste de mediação: 1) A Satisfação com a Carreira é preditora da Empregabilidade (βEmp.Int.=.326***;βEmp.Ext.=.121***); 2) A Satisfação com a Carreira é preditora da Proatividade (β=.305***); 3) A Proatividade é preditora da Empregabilidade (βEmp.Int.=.330***;βEmp.Ext.=.238***). Os resultados (N=348) deste estudo evidenciaram o efeito de mediação esperado por parte da Proatividade, tendo-se verificado um efeito parcial relativamente à Empregabilidade Interna (β=.248**) e um efeito total em relação à Empregabilidade Externa (β=.053). Estes resultados sugerem que, embora a Satisfação com a Carreira seja um importante fator para a perceção de Empregabilidade, os comportamentos e atitudes proativos ganham cada vez mais um papel preponderante na perceção das oportunidades laborais. Concluímos que os participantes, embora valorizem a Satisfação com a sua Carreira, têm uma perceção de maior Empregabilidade quando demonstrados comportamentos e atitudes de Proatividade.

Promover a empregabilidade em tempo de insegurança laboral: o papel das práticas de formação no compromisso afetivo

No atual contexto socioeconómico a instabilidade e precariedade dos postos de trabalho têm levantado novos problemas à gestão de recursos humanos, já que a perceção de Insegurança laboral tem apresentado impacto nas atitudes e comportamentos dos colaboradores, refletindo-se não só na redução do bem-estar e satisfação geral do capital humano, mas também muitas vezes em quebras de produtividade da própria organização. Sendo atualmente mais importante que nunca as empresas manterem-se competitivas, torna-se essencial encontrar alternativas à segurança do posto de trabalho. A empregabilidade surge assim como uma destas alternativas, sublinhando a importância de práticas de formação adequadas, que permitam aos colaboradores manterem-se competitivos e empregáveis, perante a volatilidade dos mercados de trabalho. O presente estudo pretende averiguar o efeito da Formação promotora de Empregabilidade no Compromisso afetivo dos colaboradores para com a organização empregadora, distinguindo-se ainda a Empregabilidade interna (valor para Organização) e Empregabilidade externa (valor no mercado de trabalho). Adicionalmente procurou-se avaliar a possibilidade de existência um efeito mediador da Insegurança Laboral nesta relação. Participou nesta investigação um total de 156 participantes, profissionalmente ativos em diferentes organizações. Os dados foram analisados com recurso à Análise de equações estruturais. Os resultados demonstram uma associação positiva entre a Formação como Promotora de empregabilidade e o Compromisso afetivo. Verificou-se também que a Insegurança laboral influência negativamente o Compromisso afetivo. Não foi encontrada uma relação significativa entre a variável Formação como Promotora de empregabilidade e a Insegurança laboral, inviabilizando também a hipótese de mediação. Conclui-se acerca da importância de minimizar o impacto da perceção de Insegurança laboral e o potencial de práticas de Formação adequadas para recuperar o Compromisso afetivo dos colaboradores para com a organização.

The Effect of Job Embeddedness on the Relationship between Employability and Career Outcomes

While various studies have theorized or empirically demonstrated positive career outcomes from employability, their results are inconclusive. To address this concern, we incorporate the construct of job embeddedness to explain how perceptions of employability affect employee engagement, perceptions of career success, and psychological mobility. We find that job embeddedness mediates the relationship between internal employability and career success as well as employee engagement. In addition, we find that job embeddedness moderates the relationship between external employability and employee perceptions of psychological mobility.

Employability and Temporary Workers’ Affective Commitment: the Moderating Role of Voluntariness

AbstractThe development of either internal or external employability of temporary workers has been considered a mechanism of protection since it ensures that employment can be maintained. According to the social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, when temporary workers perceive that the training promoted by the organization furthers employability, they are inclined to feel obligated to reciprocate with positive attitudes toward the organization. With a sample of temporary agency workers from three distinct industry organizations (N= 279), the current study investigated the relationship between training that promotes both internal and external employability and affective commitment as well as the role of voluntariness as a moderator of these relationships. The hypotheses were tested by using regression analysis. The results indicated that the perception held by temporary workers that the training they received is a promoter of their internal employability is positively correlated with their affective commitment towards the organization. Furthermore, the data revealed that this relationship is weaker for the group of temporary workers with high voluntariness. On the other hand, there was not a significant relationship between the training that promotes external employability and the affective commitment of temporary workers. Likewise, voluntariness did not moderate this relationship.

Training, exhaustion, and commitment of temporary agency workers: A test of employability perceptions

The aim of this study was to analyse whether the social exchange between temporary agency workers (TAWs) and the client organization is associated with a perception of training. In this study, we developed and tested a moderated mediation model that accounts for TAWs’ exhaustion and desire to obtain a direct contract with the client company in the relationship between the perception of training and affective commitment. Our hypotheses were tested on a sample of 425 blue-collar workers from four Portuguese companies with temporary agency work contracts. Our findings support a conditional indirect relationship between the perception of TAWs that the training provided by the client company facilitates their internal employability and their commitment towards this company via exhaustion for those TAWs who have a low desire to have a direct contract with this company. In addition, our findings show that TAWs do not reciprocally respond to the training that promotes external employability, as this factor is not associated with the affective commitment of these individuals, although exhaustion is associated with this perception. Moreover, we discuss the implications of these findings for the human resource management of TAWs.

Psychosocial Experiences and Needs of Australian Caregivers of People with Stroke: Prognosis Messages, Caregiver Resilience, and Relationships

Background and Objective: Despite stroke being the most common form of cerebrovascular disease, there has been relatively little attention paid to the psychosocial experiences and needs of Australian caregivers of people who have had a stroke. Methods: Twenty Australian informal caregivers and 10 stroke survivors participated in individual semi-structured qualitative interviews covering all aspects of caregiving, including stroke survivors’ views on their caregiver’s experiences. Results: The 5 interrelated topics most discussed were changes in relationships and support services, including being told to expect a poor outcome; caregiver attributes and coping strategies; stroke survivor limitations; external employment and financial stressors; and unexpected positive changes in relationships and priorities. Caring for a stroke survivor involves a complex interaction of these factors that appear to be moderated by the quality of the pre-existing stroke survivor–caregiver relationship and the poststroke coping strategies used. Conclusions: Particular attention should be paid to how prognosis is conveyed and whether appropriate outpatient services are available. Clinicians should also consider discussing appropriate caregiver coping strategies and the quality of the relationship between the stroke survivor and caregiver.

The Optimality of Heterogeneous Tournaments

We investigate the effect of employee heterogeneity on the incentive to exert effort in a market-based tournament. External employers use promotion decisions to estimate employees' abilities and adjust their wage offers accordingly. Employees exert effort to increase the probability of being promoted and thus to increase their ability assessment and wage offer. We demonstrate that ability assessments and wage offers are more sensitive to promotion decisions in the case of heterogeneous employees. Thus, employees have a higher incentive to affect the tournament outcome, and employers find it optimal to hire heterogeneous employees.

The Optimality of Heterogeneous Tournaments

We investigate the effect of employee heterogeneity on the incentive to exert effort in a market-based tournament. External employers use promotion decisions to estimate employees’ abilities and adjust their wage offers accordingly. Employees exert effort to increase the probability of being promoted and thus to increase their ability assessment and wage offer. We demonstrate that ability assessments and wage offers are more sensitive to promotion decisions in the case of heterogeneous employees. Thus, employees have a higher incentive to affect the tournament outcome, and employers find it optimal to hire heterogeneous employees.

종합병원 직원의 직렬별 직무만족도, 조직애착도 및 이직의도에 영향을 미치는 요인

Abstract The purpose of this research is to provide basic data to find a solution for the problem related with job satisfaction, organizational attachment, and intention to change their occupations by job category. The collection was done by self-administered questionnaire conducted by 360 employees from Nursing Division, Medical-support Department, and General Affair for 20 days since August. 15 in 2008. According to the result, for Nursing Division, intention to change their career is still high due to opportunity of external employment although their job-satisfaction or the attachment to the job is high. For Medical-support Department, intention to change their career is low compared with work-satisfaction or the attachment to the job is high. However, there are still intentions to change due to opportunity of external employment and excessive quantity of duty. General affair has the lowest work-satisfaction and the highest attachment to the job. However, intention of change is the highest than the others because of their negative-mind.

The route to employability

PurposeDrawing from the job characteristics model and the job demands‐resources model, this study aims to examine the associations of resources (i.e. feedback, autonomy, and variety) with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and employability.Design/methodology/approachHypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling on data from 611 employees of a Dutch municipality.FindingsConsistent with the hypotheses, the authors' results indicated that resources are related to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and that the association between resources and employability was mediated by extrinsic motivation but not by intrinsic motivation.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors use a one‐dimensional measure of perceived employability and do not make a distinction between internal and external employability and other dimensions of employability. The authors feel that distinguishing between internal employability and external employability will contribute to understanding if internal and external opportunities relate differently to perceptions of employability with the same organization and with a different organization.Originality/valueJob resources are important for improvement of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but the route from job resources to employability is via extrinsic job opportunities and not via intrinsic job opportunities. That is, the perception of performance outcome goals by employees is important for the association between job resources and employability. The paper shows that, without denying the value of intrinsic motivation, it is important for management to emphasize the instrumental value of resources embedded in the job itself that have implications for employability and career advancement.

Cross‐lagged associations between perceived external employability, job insecurity, and exhaustion: Testing gain and loss spirals according to the Conservation of Resources Theory

SummaryThis study investigates perceived external employability (PEE) as a personal resource in relation to job insecurity and exhaustion. We advance the idea that PEE may reduce feelings of job insecurity and, through felt job insecurity, also exhaustion. That is, we probe the paths from PEE to job insecurity and from job insecurity to exhaustion. We furthermore account for possible reversed causality, so that exhaustion → felt job insecurity and felt job insecurity → PEE. This aligns with insights from the Conservation of Resources Theory, which is built on the assumption of resource caravans passageways and associated gain and loss spirals. We based the results on a sample of 1314 workers from two Finnish universities. Respondents participated twice in the study with a time lag of one year. We found that PEE related negatively to felt job insecurity and vice versa. Similarly, there was a reciprocal positive relationship between felt job insecurity and exhaustion. We conclude that PEE may prevent feelings of insecurity and, through reduced job insecurity, also exhaustion. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Les métiers de risk management au sein de la banque : un enjeu RH

Résumé Alors que la crise financière de 2008 a mis en évidence le rôle fondamental de la maîtrise des risques pour l’activité bancaire et le système financier mondial, les métiers de la filière Risque souffrent à ce jour en France d’un déficit d’attractivité. La recherche montre que les principales réticences sont la perte en « bonus » et en employabilité externe, ce qui pourrait témoigner d’une évolution vers des contrats psychologiques davantage transactionnels que dans le passé.

The determinants of local employment dynamics in Western Germany

This article studies the impact of the local industrial structure on employment dynamics in Western Germany. Following the approach of Combes et al. (J Urban Econ 56:217–243, 2004) for France, local employment growth is decomposed into internal growth resulting from employment changes in existing plants and into external growth determined by employment decisions of newly established plants. The dynamics of both components are estimated simultaneously, taking explicitly into account the timing of the impact of specialization, diversity, and competition in a region. The analysis is conducted for 24 sectors in the West German labor market regions from 1993 to 2002. Estimation results emphasize the positive influence of diversity on both the internal and external employment growth, whereas there is no clear result on specialization. A high degree of competition fosters external employment, but is detrimental to internal employment. Dynamic panel regressions show that static externalities dominate. Importantly, the impact of the local industrial structure on employment dynamics does not differ between small and larger plants, nor are there fundamental differences between Western Germany and France.

Internal Employment Opportunity and External Employment Opportunity: Independent or Interactive Retention Effects?1

Contemporary attrition/retention frameworks suggest that internal mobility opportunities (e.g., promotions) and external mobility opportunities (i.e., alternative sources of employment) impact turnover decisions. The present study used data collected' from 413 U.S. Air Force enlistees to estimate the joint effects of internal mobility opportunities (i.e., training/career broadening opportunities) and external mobility opportunities (e.g., existing job offers) on reenlistment. Logistic regression analysis revealed that internal and external mobility opportunities had additive effects on the study's attrition criterion. Moderated regressions failed to detect interactive effects among the study's mobility variables. Implications of the findings for turnover frameworks and retention of military personnel are discussed.

Employment Adjustments on the Internal and External Labour Market – An Empirical Study with Personnel Records of a German Company

SummaryFirms are affected by the product demand. This leads to employment adjustments. In the literature we find only very few contributions investigating the issue whether internal adjustments are linked and which relationships exist with external adjustments. Are they of a complementary or substitutive nature? Furthermore, it is of interest to find out, whether we can observe an obvious trend and whether the adjustments are driven by cyclical movements.For this study we have an extensive data set of a large German manufacturing company, which supplies innovative products for the domestic and international market, provided on amonthly base from January 1999 to December 2005. The empirical analysis starts with descriptive statistics. We find that the employment adjustment cycle coincides only to a certain degree with the macroeconomic cycle. Internal and external adjustments are more characterized by complementarity than by substitution. Over the observed period we cannot detect analogous wage adjustments. It is noticeable that in 2003 compared with the years before the number of employees is substantially reduced. The econometric investigation is based on a two-stage approach. We start with a bivariate probit estimation in order to extract the relationship between the probability of overtime and of promotion. Unobserved variables have opposite effects on the former and the latter adjustment instrument. Furthermore, we detect a negative trend of internal employment adjustments. Cyclical effects are ambiguous. The next step, the determination of external adjustments with respect to overtime and promotion adjustments, is split into two estimates. On the one hand we do not distinguish between the type of external employment adjustment and on the other hand we use this information separating between quits, layoffs, workers with a cancellation agreement and with a transition into a transfer organisation. The first approach demonstrates that a promotion reduces the probability to leave the firm while overtime is positively associated with an external job change. This pattern holds generally speaking in the second, more detailed estimates. Quits are the exception. In this case we observe opposite effects. Finally, we cannot detect any influences of promotions on cancellation agreements.

Gepercipieerde kans op een baan versus een betere baan: relaties met arbeidstevredenheid en welzijn

Perceived chance of alternative employment versus better employment: associations with job satisfaction and well-being Perceived chance of alternative employment versus better employment: associations with job satisfaction and well-being N. De Cuyper & H. De Witte, Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 21, November 2008, nr. 4, pp. 475-492 The present study aims to investigate the relationship between perceived employability and job satisfaction and well-being. Employability is defined as 'the individual's perception of his or her chances to achieve a job'. This may concern (1) a job on the internal (i.e. internal employability) or the external (i.e. external employability) labour market, or (2) a job or a better job, which we refer to as quantitative and qualitative employability, respectively. This combination suggests the following forms of employability: internal quantitative employability, internal qualitative employability, external quantitative employability and external qualitative employability. Confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 389 Belgian (Flemish) respondents supports this 4-factor model. Moreover, the distinction into four forms of employability appears crucial in relation to job satisfaction and well-being: internal qualitative employability relates positively to job satisfaction, and internal quantitative employability relates positively to well-being. External quantitative employability is positively associated with both job satisfaction and well-being, while external qualitative employability is negatively associated with job satisfaction and well-being.

The Importance of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in Shaping Turnover Intent

Employee turnover can have devastating effects on correctional facilities. Excessive turnover wastes recruiting and training dollars. In addition, high turnover rates may also directly affect the security of the institution as well as the safety of both staff and inmates. Thus this study surveyed correctional staff at a maximum security private prison to examine the impact of the work environment, personal characteristics, external employment opportunities, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment on turnover intent. The results of the multivariate ordinary least squares regression equations generally supported the proposed path model, and indicated age, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment directly influence turnover intent, whereas gender, job satisfaction, role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, input into decision making, and organizational fairness indirectly affected employees' decisions to leave the job.

Is expatriation good for my career? The impact of expatriate assignments on perceived and actual career outcomes

This study examines the impact of expatriate assignments on career growth and the external marketability of US employees of a large professional services firm. We use survey and archival data to compare expatriates currently overseas, repatriates, and domestic US employees on compensation, recent promotions, and external recruiting contacts. We then examine how actual pay, promotions, and external recruiting influences anticipated salary growth within the firm and external employment opportunities. We find that despite little or no impact on their current careers, employees with overseas work experience perceived greater internal and external opportunities than domestic US employees. Implications for managers and researchers are discussed.

Employment Adjustments on the Internal and External Labour Market – An Empirical Study with Personnel Records of a German Company

Firms are affected by the product demand. This leads to employment adjustments. In the literature we find only very few contributions investigating the issue whether internal adjustments are linked and which relationships exist with external adjustments. Are they of a complementary or substitutive nature? Furthermore, it is of interest to find out, whether we can observe an obvious trend and whether the adjustments are driven by cyclical movements. For this study we have an extensive data set of a large German manufacturing company, which supplies innovative products for the domestic and international market, provided on a monthly base from January 1999 to December 2005. The empirical analysis starts with descriptive statistics. We find that the employment adjustment cycle coincides only to a certain degree with the macroeconomic cycle. Internal and external adjustments are more characterized by complementarity than by substitution. Over the observed period we cannot detect analogous wage adjustments. It is noticeable that in 2003 compared with the years before the number of employees is substantially reduced. The econometric investigation is based on a two-stage approach. We start with a bivariate probit estimation in order to extract the relationship between the probability of overtime and of promotion. Unobserved variables have opposite effects on the former and the latter adjustment instrument. Furthermore, we detect a negative trend of internal employment adjustments. Cyclical effects are ambiguous. The next step, the determination of external adjustments with respect to overtime and promotion adjustments, is split into two estimates. On the one hand we do not distinguish between the type of external employment adjustment and on the other hand we use this information separating between quits, layoffs, workers with a cancellation agreement and with a transition into a transfer organisation. The first approach demonstrates that a promotion reduces the probability to leave the firm while overtime is positively associated with an external job change. This pattern holds generally speaking in the second, more detailed estimates. Quits are the exception. In this case we observe opposite effects. Finally, we cannot detect any influences of promotions on cancellation agreements.

Research into the psychological contract: Two Australian perspectives

Despite their increasing relevance, employees' psychological contracts have attracted little research attention in Australia. The present paper presents two studies, which examined the psychological contracts of specific cohorts of professional employees and those in a managerial career track. The first study was an in-depth qualitative investigation of research scientists in an Australian public sector research organisation. They were found to have a strong professional affiliation and had developed psychological contracts that were best understood by reference to the ‘ideological currency’ of the scientific community. The second study was a quantitative examination of 156 MBA students at an Australian university, and how their psychological contracts could be related to perceptions of the contextual variables of organisational justice, perceived organisational support and external employability. Organisational justice and perceived organisational support were found to be related to the nature of the psychological contracts measured, but perceptions of external employability were not.