Workplace and family support and work–life balance: Implications for individual psychological availability and energy at work

This study presents three studies that explore the ways in which multiple support sources (workplace and family social support) help individuals to experience work–life balance (WLB) and thereby develop a sense psychological availability and positive energy at work. We examine this serial mediation model across three population groups in Israel using time-lagged data from part-time students (sample 1), as well cross-sectional data from workers in the industrial sector (sample 2) and physicians in public hospitals (sample 3). The results indicate a complex process in which workplace and family support augment employee positive energy through WLB and psychological availability. The findings shed light on the importance of support from work and nonwork sources for the pursuit of employees to achieve balance in the spheres of work and life and suggest that the WLB helps in the development of psychological availability and augmenting employee positive energy.     

Worker equality and adult development: the kibbutz as a developmental model

Adults' social status, particularly their occupations, is a powerful predictor of their level of moral and ego development. This association's inevitability was tested by examining the relationship of personal development with social status among 3 groups of workers. Results showed that kibbutz workers' moral and ego development were not significantly associated with educational, occupational, or social class standing, but that Israeli city and North American workers' moral and ego development were significantly associated with all measures of social status. In further contrast, work complexity was significantly associated with both moral and ego development only for kibbutz workers, suggesting that they engage in jobs that are appropriate to their psychological development without creating social inequality. Implications for developmental theory and workplace research are considered.     

The Relationship between Workplace Status and Workplace Religious Expression

A growing body of literature explores religious expression in workplaces, but comparatively little research examines how religious expression might be shaped by inequality in workplace status. We hypothesize that perceived work autonomy and socioeconomic status (SES) both function as mediating links between organizational status and religious expression. Drawing on a sample of employed adults from a nationally-representative survey in the United States (n = 8611), we examine three modes of religious expression at work: displaying faith, feeling comfortable talking about faith, and expressing views when observing unfair work practices that conflict with faith. Results revealed that workers at the bottom of their organizations express their religiosity less than those at the top. Religious expression in the workplace is thus not simply a reflection of individual religiosity or religious identity, but also workplace power. Although perceived work autonomy mediated the relationship, SES buffered the relationship. Findings have important implications for workplace policy.     

Social support, sense of community in school, and self-efficacy as resources during early adolescence: an integrative model

Influences of different sources of social support (from parents and friends), school sense of community, and self-efficacy on psychosocial well being (as measured by self-reported life satisfaction and psychological symptoms) in early adolescence were investigated in an integrative model. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Multi-group comparisons were used to estimate differences between sex and age groups. The survey sample was composed of 7,097 students in Northern Italy (51.4% male) divided into three age cohorts (equivalent to 6th, 8th, and 10th grades with median ages of 11, 13, and 15). Findings obtained using SEM were consistent with self-efficacy and school sense of community mediating effects of social support on psychosocial adjustment. The multi-group comparison indicates a need for more complex developmental models and more research on how changing forms of support interact with each other as their effects also change during this important stage of the life. Implications for primary prevention and cross-cultural comparisons are discussed.     

GENDER AND WORK HISTORY IN THE PLACEMENT AND PERCEPTIONS OF ELDER COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERS

This study explored factors that determine the types of volunteer jobs older adults are placed in, as well as factors that define the meaning of their roles. With a sample of 169 elder community volunteers (mean age, 73 years), we investigated the patterns of job perceptions of women and men in two types of volunteer positions: jobs that involved leadership and jobs that did not. A two-way MANOVA with gender and leadership as independent variables revealed that there was a significant interaction effect. When men are leaders, their sense of interpersonal feedback is higher than when they are non-leaders, but their sense of influence and autonomy is lower. Women in leadership jobs feel more influential and autonomous than their peers in non-leadership jobs. Subsequent analyses probing differences in job placement suggested that work history was a significant predictor of leadership jobs for men, but not for women. Correspondingly, men with prestigious preretirement work histories perceived their volunteer roles as less influential than men who had been in lower status jobs before retirement. Work history was not a predictor of job perception for women. These placement and perception issues are discussed within the context of an historical perspective on paid work, with special emphasis on gender.     

A multiple case study of rape victim advocates' self-care routines: the influence of organizational context

This study assumes that rape victim advocates who provide community outreach services to victimized women must adjust to a heightened awareness of sexual violence to do their jobs. Using qualitative methodology, this multiple case study explored rape victim advocates' strategies for incorporating repeated exposure to sexual assault into their daily lives as well as ways that organizations can support such endeavors. Findings suggest that advocates' self-care routines draw upon various personal resources (i.e., cognitive, physical, social, spiritual, verbal), and serve 2 roles for coping with rape-related pain: (a) cathartic releasing of traumatic material, and (b) improving capacity to integrate the traumatic material into one's life. Additionally, over 20 organizational characteristics that workers perceive to be supportive (e.g., weekly meetings, flexible hours) were identified. Nonparametric and categorical statistical analyses were used to analyze the relationship between organizational support and self-care routines, finding that advocates working in organizations with higher levels of support utilize more strategies that are integrative in nature. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Procrastination's Impact in the Workplace and the Workplace's Impact on Procrastination

Procrastination is a self‐regulatory failure, whose costs are debated. Here, we establish its impact in the workplace. Using an Internet sample, we assessed 22,053 individuals in terms of their sex, employment status, employment duration, income, occupational attainment and level of procrastination. High levels of procrastination is associated with lower salaries, shorter durations of employment, and a greater likelihood of being unemployed or under employed rather than working full‐time. Also, procrastination partially mediates sex's relationship with these work variables. Women tend to procrastinate less than men, evidently giving women an employment advantage. If women procrastinated the same as men, there should be 1.5 million fewer women in full‐time employment in the US. alone. Determining the causes of procrastination in the workplace, we also examined it at an occupational level. The results strongly support the gravitational hypothesis: jobs that require higher levels of motivational skills are less likely to retain procrastinators. However, there was some support that jobs can foster procrastination. Procrastinators tend to have jobs that are lower in intrinsically rewarding qualities.     

Work and its place in the lives of immigrant women: Garment workers in New York City's Chinatown

Working wives and mothers are traditionally considered secondary wage earners, and employment is not automatically accompanied by occupational attainment of individual workers. For immigrant women, the double burden is compounded by lack of English, transferable education and skills, and knowledge of the larger economy. In this article, we have illustrated the special meanings of immigrant women's work in the context of ethnic enclave employment and family responsibility. Based on census data and fieldwork in the garment industry in New York's Chinatown, we have found that the particularly high rate of immigrant Chinese women's labor market participation is largely accounted for by the availability of jobs provided by the ethnic enclave economy, that those women are overrepresented in low-wage menial jobs, and that they tend to perceive their work as meaningful, despite of low wages, long working hours and poor working conditions. These findings suggest that survival is more important for immigrant Chinese women than their own rights in the workplace, at least in the earlier stages of immigrant adaptation, and that their wage labor is an indispensable part of the collective family effort for social mobility. The results imply that, for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, it is difficult to achieve long-term social mobility merely through individual efforts. Therefore, policies dealing with those groups mired in poverty and confined to survival at the margins of society should put more emphasis on community development in connection to the promotion of individual education and job training.     

Men in pink collars: Stereotype threat and disengagement among male teachers and child protection workers

Male employees are a traditionally advantaged group, but when working in a female‐dominated industry they may be vulnerable to negative gender stereotypes. The current research examined stereotype threat among men in two traditionally feminine jobs. Study 1 measured stereotype threat among primary school teachers and found that men experienced more stereotype threat than women, and that feelings of stereotype threat were related to negative job attitudes for men but not women. Study 2 manipulated the direction of social comparisons to elicit stereotype threat among male child protection workers. For men but not women, upward social comparisons with a successful feminine target elicited stereotype threat. In turn, stereotype threat was associated with intentions to resign and feeling expected to perform stereotypic masculine work tasks. These results suggest that despite their advantaged status, men in pink‐collar jobs are susceptible to workplace stereotype threat.     

An epidemiological study on work and family stress among Chinese in Hong Kong

Hong Kong, with a population of over six million in a modern city, has been shown to be a very stressful place to live in. However, epidemiological data from a big-scale study in this regard are lacking. The present territory-wide survey, from a sample representative of the general population, was aimed to investigate the work and family stress of Chinese adults in the community with respect to the impact on their psychological well-being. The psychosocial context was considered as an important source of stress. The results showed that coping with work demands and rearing children were reported as the highest stress responses. Moreover, workers in Hong Kong took an instrumental attitude, i.e., one emphasizing material rewards, in order to reduce the job stress arising from interpersonal conflicts in the workplace.     

Jealousy at work: The role of rivals’ characteristics

The present study examined rival characteristics that may evoke jealousy in the workplace, differences between men and women in this regard, and the relationship between jealousy responses and intrasexual competitiveness and social comparison orientation. Participants were 426 male and female employees. By means of a questionnaire, participants were presented with a jealousy‐evoking scenario after which jealousy responses to 24 rival characteristics were assessed. Findings showed that a rival's social communal attributes evoked highest levels of jealousy, and that, compared to men, women reported more jealousy in response to a rival's physical attractiveness. Overall, as individuals had higher scores on intrasexual competitiveness and social comparison orientation, they also experienced more jealousy in response to their rival, regardless of his or her characteristics. These findings suggest that those characteristics that are highly valued in employees may backfire when employees perceive co‐workers as rivals.     

The Roles of Perceived Identity Compatibility and Social Support for Women in a Single-Sex STEM Program at a Co-educational University

Single-sex programs have been implemented in a variety of educational settings to help promote greater engagement of women in STEM fields. However, the mechanisms through which single-sex programs increase women??s engagement in STEM fields are unclear. Drawing from research in social and health psychology, we examined two theoretically-guided predictors of women??s sense of belonging in their STEM majors and belonging at the university: perceived identity compatibility between being a woman and being in a STEM field, and perceived social support. Participants were 65 racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse women enrolled in a single-sex STEM program at a co-educational university in Northeastern United States. Participants completed online surveys before the start of their first year of college, and again at the beginning of their second year of college. Findings from multiple regression analyses support hypotheses that across STEM women??s first or transitional year of college, perceived identity compatibility, perceived support from close others, and perceived support from the single-sex program for STEM women were each independently associated with greater sense of belonging in their major. Additionally, perceived identity compatibility and perceived support from the single-sex program were associated with greater sense of belonging at the university. These findings suggest that perceived support from sources such as single-sex programs and perceived compatibility between one??s field and being female may sustain women pursuing training in nontraditional fields such as STEM. Continued investigation of these factors may elucidate the impact of single-sex programs and inform interventions to increase the retention of women in STEM.     

Sense of Community Responsibility in Community Collaboratives: Advancing a Theory of Community as Resource and Responsibility

This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship aimed at advancing our understanding of the experience of community by empirically investigating sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to traditional measures of sense of community (SOC) and indices of satisfaction, engagement, and leadership in interorganizational collaborative settings. Findings support the proposition that, although both are related to the experience of community, SOC and SOC-R emphasize different aspects of that experience and operate under different theoretical mechanisms of influence. SOC emphasizes community as a resource which was found to be a more salient aspect in differentiating those who will be more or less satisfied with their experience. In addition, SOC was found to predict general participation in a community collaborative. SOC-R emphasizes the experience of community as a responsibility which appears to be a stronger predictor in explaining higher order engagement requiring greater investment of time and resources. Even more importantly, this study indicates that SOC-R is uniquely equipped to help us advance models of community leadership. As such, it represents an important contribution to expanding our understanding of the factors that drive members’ willingness to give of themselves toward collective aims.     

Stressed organizations and organizational stressors: A systemic analysis of workplace injury

The experiences of five injured workers from one workplace which had been identified as having a very poor workers' compensation claims experience were analyzed using a systemic theory framework. It was predicted that the fundamental stress-producing conflict between safety and profit that exists in industry between workers and their employers is exacerbated when a worker is injured; furthermore, the degree of stress experienced by both the injured worker and the employer is related to the impact of the injury on the organization and on the productivity of the workplace. The increased stress in both the injured worker and the employer results in increased rigidity in responding to the change or threat in the organization caused by workplace injury. A systemic approach to rehabilitation was recommended in which the employer as well as the injured worker were viewed as clients who required varying levels of support and intervention in managing workplace injury.     

派遣制员工对雇用形式的认知与其工作态度的关系研究

采用派遣制员工对雇用形式的认知等5项问卷,对270名派遣制员工进行测查。结果发现:(1)派遣制员工组织认同、工作投入和工作满意度均处较高水平,离职倾向相对较低。(2)78.9%知道自已的派遣制身份;33.1%愿意作为派遣制员工;对于派遣制存在模糊认识和矛盾心态。(3)知道派遣制身份者组织认同、工作奉献、工作意义和工作乐趣等显著高于不知道者;愿意作为派遣制员工者工作满意度、工作意义和工作奉献显著高于不愿意者。对雇用形式的认知在一定程度上决定派遣制员工的工作态度。     

Dimensions of Support Among Abused Women in the Workplace

The authors draw on social support theory to examine supervisor support match (support wanted and received), support mismatch (support not wanted and received) and work outcomes for abused low‐wage working women, and to determine if supervisor support match and mismatch are more strongly associated with work outcomes than global supervisor support Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with a community sample of abused, employed women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in the past year (N = 163). Using hierarchical regression, we found, after accounting for global supervisor support; a higher level of supervisor support match was associated with greater job satisfaction, fewer job reprimands and less job termination. Findings from the study inform theories of social support and have practical implications for workplace interventions for IPV.     

Thriving and Adapting: Resilience,Sense of Community,and Syndemics among Young Black Gay and Bisexual Men

We examined resilience associated with the avoidance of psychosocial health conditions (i.e., syndemics) that increase vulnerability for HIV among young Black gay and bisexual men. We used analytic induction to compare a sample of 23 men who showed no evidence of syndemic conditions to a sample of 23 men who experienced syndemic conditions. The men who avoided syndemics reported supportive relationships with people who helped them to develop a strong sense of identity, provided them with opportunities to give back to their communities, and promoted positive norms about health. In contrast, the men experiencing syndemic conditions described numerous instances of trauma and oppression that infringed upon their desire to form positive relationships. Among these men, experiences of oppression were associated with shame, identity incongruence, social isolation, relational disconnection, mistrust of men, and expectations of further marginalization. We examined participants’ experiences through the framework of the psychosocial sense of community. Results of this study provide evidence for using strength‐based intervention strategies to prevent syndemic conditions. Findings suggest that to attenuate socio‐structural barriers to health and comorbid psychosocial health concerns, interventions must address young men's social isolation and promote positive identity and sense of community.     

Comment on “Antecedents of Performance and Satisfaction in a Service Sales Force as Compared to an Industrial Sales Force”

Theory contends that social support can reduce the impact of stress in the workplace. Yet little research is available that investigates the role of social support in the sales area. Reliable and valid instruments are needed to measure this key construct. House and Wells (1978) developed an instrument of social support that addresses both sources and types of support. This study examines the reliability and validity of the instrument in the sales environment, and evaluates the psychometric properties of the instrument from the sources and types perspectives. Findings suggest that the instrument may be a sound measure of sources of social support, but is not appropriate for measuring types of support. Additional research is recommended.     

Multiple commitments in the Chinese context: Testing compatibility, cultural, and moderating hypotheses

This paper evaluates the contribution of the multiple constituencies of commitment framework in explaining work attitudes and behaviors in a sample of Chinese manufacturing workers. Findings suggest that the organization, the supervisor, and co-workers were seen by respondents as separate commitment foci. Although the various commitments were moderately positively correlated, they were related differently to the dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior and withdrawal cognitions, in a way which provides support for the “compatibility” hypothesis. There was only limited support for our “cultural” hypothesis. An analysis of interactions between commitments suggested that commitment to supervisor was a stronger positive predictor of protecting company resources and interpersonal harmony when commitment to work group was lower, providing partial support for our moderating hypotheses.