Job Context Research Articles

Commitment Systems in Cross‐boundary Work

AbstractWork increasingly takes place across organizational boundaries. This has implications for workers’ commitments to a plethora of targets, including the organization and the client, as well as for the conflicting nature of the interrelation between these commitments. In this paper, we draw on commitment system theory (CST), which views commitment as a malleable and interconnected system. Using a pragmatic abductive and quantitative discovery approach, we distinguish and develop commitment systems to consist of strength, including the multiple targets and types of commitment, as well as interaction between commitments, including coupling and nature. In particular, we develop a theoretical understanding of the nature dimension by identifying two target‐neutral types of conflict and one context‐ and target‐specific type of conflict. Three commitment systems are identified: ‘balanced system’, ‘conflicting system’, and ‘detached system’. Furthermore, we provide insights into how job demands resources and contextual job aspects influence membership of these commitment systems. This paper is the first to empirically explore commitment as a system, and it advances the theoretical understanding of commitment systems in a cross‐boundary space. Our study discusses the theoretical, methodological and practical implications for cross‐boundary organizations that compete with their clients for the commitment of their employees.

Racism in Europe: Characteristics and Intersections With Other Social Categories.

Concerning race and its intertwinements with gender, sexual orientation, class, accents, or ability there is a scarcity of social psychological research in Europe. With an intersectional approach studying racism in Europe it is possible to detect specific experiences of discrimination. The prevalent understanding of European racism is connected to migration from the former colonies to the European metropoles and the post-Second-World-War immigration of ‘guest workers.’ Thus, the focus of this research is on work-related discrimination. Against the background of a short historical review, we present the results of the few existing studies on intersectional discrimination within the labor market in Europe and discuss their implications. The pattern of findings is more complex than the assumption that individuals belonging to two or more marginalized social categories are always the most discriminated ones. Gender, sexual orientation, and origin rather interact with the specific job context. These interactions determine whether minority individuals are discriminated against or even preferred over individuals belonging to the majority group. We argue that considering the stereotype content model and social-identity theory helps to structure the sometimes contradictory results of intersectionality research. Therefore, the review presents new perspectives on racism in Europe based on current research, develops hypotheses on the interplay of intersecting identities, and identifies four novel research questions based on racist attributions considering situational variables: These are the role of concrete job contexts in explaining (no) discrimination, the influence of different stereotypes regarding marginalized groups, the explanatory value of sexual orientation as well as class or socioeconomic-status and age in terms of some patterns of results.

Job and Employee Embeddings: A Joint Deep Learning Approach

The accumulated massive job and employee data at various platforms such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor are very valuable for many online applications such as job/employee search and recommendations. In order to exploit these data, an interesting and practical problem is how to learn effective job and employee representations, which could be further utilized for many computing tasks such as searching for similar jobs and employees. Yet this problem is very challenging because these user-generated job and employee data are semi-structured and created without standards, which makes them very messy, sparse, and difficult to model. Developing novel and advanced methods to learn job and employee representations has become an urgent need. To this end, in this paper, we develop a novel neural network model for job and employee embeddings. Our proposed approach consists of three components to model career data from three levels of granularity: job content, job context, and job sequence. We fine-tune a transformer model to learn the semantics of massive text in job content, build a shallow neural network to accumulate contextual information in job sequences, and develop an RNN encoder-decoder model to learn representations of employees’ career paths. To evaluate the proposed method, we conduct two experimental tasks: job similarity and employee similarity searches. The experimental results with a real-world dataset demonstrate the superiority of the developed approach.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TASK AND CONTEXTUAL JOB PERFORMANCE AMONG MIDDLE MANAGERS IN THE MALAYSIAN ARMY

The research was conducted to determine the different aspects of job performance among Senior Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCO), often mentioned as middle managers in the Malaysian Army. This study has identified that the job performance of the SNCOs in the combat element corps consists of task and contextual job performance. The quantitative approach was implemented, and the data consisting of 458 respondents were collected from soldiers of the rank of corporal and below, i.e. JNCOs from the combat element corps of the Malaysian Army in all geographic locations of Malaysia. The data analysis used was PLS-SEM to determine the acceptability of the data obtained with the hypothesised model of job performance. The R2 value of 0.852 indicates that 85.2 % of job performance is predicted by task and contextual performance constructs. The results also support the hypothesis that task performance and contextual performance have a significant positive relationship with job performance among the SNCOs. This study established that both task and contextual job performance are of equal importance in determining the job performance of middle managers of the combat element of the Malaysian Army. Nevertheless, task performance is more significant compared to contextual performance.

Pedagogical and Psychological Settings for Training of Student Lawyers in Framed Professional Communication

The purpose of the study was to identify how the training of student lawyers in message framing influences their professional written and verbal communication proficiency. The study used qualitative research methods such as observations and focus groups to yield the data for the analysis. The focus group was used to obtain feedback from the sampled students concerning the training in framing messages. The study found that a specifically structured instructional model that relied on a ‘bolt-on’ module in message framing delivered throughout the entire elective course in Legal Rhetoric positively influenced students’ professional written and verbal communication proficiency. The data drawn from observations showed that students' abilities to use functional language and language rules increased throughout the training. When rating the activities for training in framing messages that are useful for lawyers, the observers mentioned five framing message activities seen as the most effective. Those were as follows: gain and loss, storytelling, WASP, call-to-action, ethos, and pathos. Gain and loss, ethos and pathos, and storytelling were rated by the observers higher than WASP and call-to-action. These were considered by the observers to be the most appropriate for the lawyer job context. Data relating to students’ general impressions of training in framing messages showed that they found this training interesting and engaging, practically useful for their jobs. Received: 14 April 2021 / Accepted: 5 July 2021 / Published: 5 September 2021

Analysis, design, and creation of a learning program in Big Data at the higher education level: Case study Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Rioverde, SLP

In this paper results of a quantitative and qualitative study are shown to identify interest and acceptance level of Big Data in university students. The creation of a learning program is proposed that will allow students to obtain the necessary knowledge to form a solid foundation regarding Big Data, as well as the necessary tools to start working with this technology. A survey has been carried out of students who study the Educational Programs of Computer Engineering and Engineering in Computer Systems at ITSRV, the results show that 41% of the respondent’s report having zero knowledge of Big Data, 51.28% mention that it is important to learn about the subject by development professional and the most suitable way, according to the answers, is through a workshop or a certification. Of the eight most used Big Data tools, Hadoop and Spark were the ones identified by the respondents, due to this, and the literature reviewed, it is important that spaces and Big Data learning programs are generated in higher level institutions that allow Students obtain the necessary basic knowledge and identify applications of Big Data in the professional and job context.

From Job Resources to Idea Implementation: A Moderated Sequential Mediation Model

Considering the motivational path of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, this study investigates a multistep process by which contextual job resources might have an indirect effect on idea implementation. Among 187 shop floor employees of a manufacturing company, we found support for a model whereby job control has an indirect effect, over a 5-month time frame, on idea implementation through employee work engagement and personal initiative. In addition, we found that the indirect effect of job control on idea implementation is stronger when employees have a higher conformity orientation. Support was not found for the hypothesized indirect effect of coworker social support on idea implementation. Our findings support the usefulness of the JD-R theory for understanding how increased idea implementation occurs at work, especially when the additional factors of personal initiative and employee conformity orientation are integrated into the model.

Contextual and task performance: role of employee engagement and organizational culture in hospitality industry

PurposeExtensive work related to examining predictors and determinants of employee engagement and job performance have been conducted in past studies. A dearth of studies relating organizational culture and employee engagement with contextual and task performance in the hospitality industry necessitated the present study. This study aims to examine variability in the task and contextual performance owing to employee engagement and organizational culture.Design/methodology/approachThe study has been conducted in four districts of Himachal Pradesh using a multistage sampling technique. A total of 360 hotel employees were involved in collecting their responses through a structured questionnaire.FindingsThe results of multiple regression showed that vigor, dedication and absorption variables of employee engagement contribute toward contextual performance. Vigor and absorption affect the task performance of employees. In the case of contextual performance vigor shows maximum contribution followed by absorption and dedication whereas for task performance, the maximum contribution is exhibited by absorption followed by vigor. Organizational culture sub-variables of experimentation, autonomy and trust came out to be major predictors, which help to improve contextual and task performance of employees.Practical implicationsThe study suggests that psychological ownership, along with trust toward top management can create an enriched work culture, which influenced both the contextual and task performance of employees. The findings of the study can be practically used by government and private organizations for improving workforce performance in the hospitality industry. Future research can be conducted based on the findings of the study.Originality/valueThe study provides insight on how and to what extent cultural and employee engagement variables can affect employee’s contextual and task performance. The present study adds value to the existing literature and investigates the role of culture and employee engagement in enhancing task and contextual job performance. Managers and policymakers can use the findings of the study to improve organizational culture, employee engagement and performance of the employees in the hospitality sector. The study opens avenues for future studies.

The mental health of aid workers: risk and protective factors in relation to job context, working conditions, and demographics.

This study utilised a cross-sectional survey of 369 participants in 77 countries to examine 15 possible risk and protective factors pertaining to the mental health of aid workers-many of which have not been assessed before-in the categories of job context, working conditions, and demographics. Risk factors associated with job context include emergency postings and being an international worker. No significant differences were found between humanitarian and development workers and none between organisation type; the number of past traumas was not associated with negative mental health outcomes. Protective factors with regard to working conditions include higher income, long-term contracts, previous psychosocial training, and voluntary postings. With respect to demographics, protective factors include older age, more work experience, and greater religiosity and spirituality, while female gender was a risk factor. Ultimately, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of the aid worker sector, which can inform the development of more targeted mental health support.

A qualitative application of the Job Demand-Control-Support (JDCS) to contextualize the occupational stress correctional workers experience

ABSTRACT Correctional workers are at increased risk for a variety of mental disorders relative to the general population. The increased risk appears associated with frequent exposures to a variety of potentially psychologically traumatic events; however, the Job Demand-Control model and the Job Demand-Control-Support model posit operational (job content) and organizational (job context) stressors as increasing risks for mental health challenges. In the current study, we explore the potential impact of operational and organizational stress on correctional worker mental health, identifying specific stressors that might be modifiable. Data were drawn from the reports provided by 158 participants completing a large survey that elected to respond to either of two open text boxes inviting feedback related to their mental health. Qualitatively mapping our results onto the Job Demand-Control-Support model indicates participants perceive themselves as experiencing iso-strain as a function of being in a high demand, low control, and low social support work environment complicated by under-recognized caregiving. Participant reports suggest increased consultation by management and increased training may help to mitigate the perceived negative impact of the current workplace on their mental health.

Risks that are “worthy” to take: temporary workers’ risk-benefit and willingness perceptions

ABSTRACT Differences in temporary and permanent workers’ risk-benefit appraisals need to be investigated due to its potential relationship with incurred risk and occupational risk-taking behaviours. A total of 158 temporary and 158 permanent workers were recruited and exposed to information on eleven different hazardous job contexts, the description of the required tasks, inherent occupational hazards, and suggested salaries. They were asked to report their perceptions on how hazardous the jobs are, their satisfaction with the accompanying salary, and their willingness to take the job for eleven different job contexts. Temporary workers reported lower job security, lower perceived control, and were more satisfied by salaries than their permanent counterparts; however, there was no difference in perceptions of hazard associated with the jobs. Temporary workers also reported greater willingness to take job opportunities. Temporary workers experience a unique array of stressors and may agree to hazardous work opportunities, not due to a lack of acknowledged safety and health risks, but rather a greater satisfaction from salaries. These findings need to be considered in the safety management of temporary workers, as organizations can improve safety and facilitate self-regulatory engagement in safer and healthier behaviours for both permanent and temporary employees with this appraisal system in mind.

Managing boundaries between work and non‐work domains: Personality and job characteristics and adopted style

With an increasing overlap between the work and non‐work domain, more research is needed to understand the factors that relate to how individuals manage their boundaries across multiple roles (i.e., work roles, family roles). Using a sample of 498 individuals, we explored the relationships between personality, O*NET job characteristic variables, and boundary management styles. Results revealed that job responsibility and work structure related to cross‐role interruptions and work identity centrality. Further, conscientiousness was related to greater perceptions of boundary control, family identity centrality, and fewer interruptions of work, while neuroticism was related to fewer interruptions of non‐work. Finally, the present findings replicated four of six defined boundary management styles put forth in prior research. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.Practitioner points Individuals may differ in how they enact boundaries between work and non‐work as related to their individual personality. The job in which one works may relate to the manner in which boundaries between work and non‐work are managed. Organizational efforts to help employees with boundary management may be improved if job context and employee individual differences are noted and accommodated.

Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance: A Meta-analysis

This study employed Hunter and Schmidt meta-analytic method to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and job performance. It contributes to the existing literature on five counts: we include more than twice as many studies that have more than triple the sample size than previous meta-analyses, we employed a more suited methodology, we followed the criterion driven-strategy, we imposed rigorous inclusion criteria, and we investigated a series of moderators of EI and job performance relationships not studied before. Results showed that EI had operational predictive validity of 0.45 (k = 99, N = 17,889) and self-reported ability EI measures proved to be the most valid. In addition, we found that the job context and the job performance measures types moderates this correlation and job position of incumbents proved to partially moderate the EI validity. The results support the overall validity of both ability and trait models of EI.

Spotting the “Ideal” Personality Response

Abstract. Forced choice (FC) personality questionnaires attempt to constrain job applicants from presenting idealized responses (or “faking”). FC questionnaires are designed by identifying items equally desirable in applicants, matching these into “blocks,” and instructing respondents to rank the items “most like” themselves. Nonetheless, how closely items should be matched remains unclear, and desirability seems dependent on the job. We investigated how strongly respondents ( N = 436) agreed regarding the “ideal” applicant response, while varying (a) how closely items were matched into blocks and (b) the job context. While the most closely matched blocks elicited slight agreement on an ideal response, agreement increased noticeably with poorer matching. Nonetheless, differences in item desirability between different job conditions were evident even in closely matched blocks.

Factorial analysis of stress factors among the sample of Lebanese police officers

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to determine the prevalence of stress and to identify the occupational stressors among Lebanese police officers.Design/methodology/approachOperational Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ-op) was addressed to 100 randomly selected male Lebanese Police officers. Twenty items from the PSQ-op were run through the principal component analysis to determine the most significant factors of stress and loading within each of the factors.FindingsThe results indicated that 59% of officers reported moderate stress level and 41% reported strenuous stress. Principal component analysis identified six independent factors or stress among Lebanese police officers explaining in total 72.1% of the total variance: excessive workload (30.6%), social-life time management (12.8%), occupational fitness (9.1%), success-related stress (8.6%), physical and psychological health (5.8%), and working alone at night (5.2%).Research limitations/implicationsThis research approach encountered some limitations so further research must: use a larger sample size, include female gender and identify other sources of stressors mainly organizational or job context stressors.Originality/valueAddressing and understanding stress factors among Lebanese police officers helps improving awareness and developing individualized treatment strategies leading police officers to engage in stress-management training to learn coping strategies and use effective tools for preventing stress before it becomes chronic.

Burnout among labour inspectors in Greece: A nationwide cross-sectional study

The principal role of labour inspectorates is labour law enforcement and compliance, to secure effective implementation of legal provisions relating to the protection of workers. These aspects can turn the job context of a labour inspector into a really demanding occupation, that may have significant physiological and psychological effects. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of burnout between labour inspectors in Greece and associated factors. A semi-structured survey was conducted covering job characteristics, perceived job limitations, some associated with economic crisis, and a burnout assessment tool. There were 102 responses collected out of the 245 labour inspectors specialised in occupational safety and health. Two out of three inspectors (67.65%) reported that reduction of their salary resulted by austerity measures, affected their work quality and performance, 92% reported that job demands had significantly increased during the previous year and 55% that their work does not provide the flexibility, while NLI’s framework does not provide support in performing their job related tasks. Our study identified high rates of burnout and a plethora of work-related contributing risk factors such as increased job demands, lack of staff and resources. The establishment of an effective work framework, that would be supportive and protective for inspectors, in a top-down approach, promoting interpersonal relations and providing the necessary degrees of freedom to labour inspectors’ tasks, could significantly reduce the levels of experienced burnout.

Inflation and the negotiation of wages. Comparative responses to monetary changes in Germany and the United States during the Gold Standard Era, 1876–1926

ABSTRACT Negotiations over wages have always been a central part of industrial relations in capitalist economies. The unstable value of money in the 19th and 20th centuries has made these negotiations both crucial and complex. Linking contemporary understandings of monetary values to wage bargaining provides an important historical background for a better understanding of real wage developments and the agency of workers. Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper discusses how managers and workers dealt with changing monetary values in Germany and the United States from the 1870s to the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The paper also discusses the extent to which actors understood the instability of their respective currencies’ purchasing power and whether their perceptions changed over time. The paper reveals that negotiations were never exclusively shaped and guided by concepts such as inflation or the ‘cost of living’ in both countries but that the importance of the concepts changed with the level of price fluctuations and institutional setting. Indices could achieve a dominant role only in exceptional circumstances due to their artificial and contestable nature, their neglect of the complexity of workers’ job contexts and living environments, and their normative implications concerning wage demands.

Relationships between work-related hazards and occupational burnout among academics: are active coping strategies important

The objectives of the study included the analysis of the relationship between work-related risks and occupational burnout as well as answering the question whether active coping strategies can alleviate the negative effects of such risks. The hypotheses were verified based on the survey conducted among a sample of 340 academic staff. The Psychosocial Risk Scale and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory were used in the survey. All three groups of hazards (job content, job context, pathology) correlate significantly with both the overall measure of burnout and its components. For both of these (exhaustion and disengagement) the burnout shows the strongest correlation to job context related risks. However, less clear conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the role played by active stress management strategies in this process. Only within the relationship between job content hazards and exhaustion, those reaching for active strategies were affected by negative consequences less frequently.

Foundations and affordances of workplace assistive technology: The case of mobile and enabling IT for workers with visual impairments

ABSTRACT Smartphones, with their built-in cameras, speech synthesizers, processing power, sensors, and network connectivity have established themselves as a fertile and ubiquitous platform for software developers interested in augmenting the capabilities of users with visual impairments. When fitted with readily available nonvisual apps, they comprise a mobile and enabling IT bundle (ME-IT) which can afford users new capabilities to interact with visual aspects of their environment. In this study, we investigated the potential of ME-IT as a workplace enabler for workers with visual impairments (WVI). Adopting a Delphi approach, this study contributes five categories of extended capabilities afforded by ME-IT deemed highly relevant to WVI and their employers: reading text on the fly, understanding the visual properties of people and things in the workplace, orienting to the physical features of one’s work environment, tagging objects in one’s work environment, and locating things in the work environment. Two characteristics of the ME-IT bundle emerged as the basis for these extended capabilities: portable computer vision and context awareness. Findings extend literature on the use of mobile technology in the workplace, contextually aware computing, and assistive technology, and invites additional work to calibrate ME-IT to specific jobs, job contexts, and the needs of users.

308 - Personal protective factors in personal growth for nursing homes staff

IntroductionMost studies about nursing homes staff are based on deficit models and focused on risks factors, however, when appealing to protective factors or individual strengths the publications are scarce. People differ in individual characteristics, abilities or skills which may be protective when managing adversities. Engaging and resolving positively stressors and other adversities gives people a sense of achievement, satisfaction, and helps to their personal growth, being this expressed through a major tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, and hope.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess whether variables associated to the professionals (resilience, purpose in life, job content, job satisfaction and burnout) had a significant role in the personal growth of nursing homes staff in different job context situations (person-directed care and person-centred care).Method:187 professionals working in nursing homes participated in this study.Results:The results showed that personal growth was explained by purpose in life, person-centred care, burnout self-realization, personhood, management and resilience, predicting 66% of variance (F= 23,22; p≤.01).Conclusion:Individual variables of the staff predict personal growth, especially in person centred care. Personal growth has positive consequences on the caregiver but also on the care receiver. These results are consistent with the Person-Centered Care model that stresses the need of considering the humanistic aspects not only of the care-receiver but also of the caregiver.This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant number PSI2016-79803-R).