Examining Job Crafting from an Interpersonal Perspective: Is Employee Job Crafting Related to the Well‐Being of Colleagues?

Individuals engage in job crafting to create a better fit between their job and their preferences, skills, and abilities. However, the individual focus may overlook the impact of job crafting on the job context or well‐being of colleagues. Therefore, an important question that is addressed in this study is whether the crafting of one person is related to the job characteristics and well‐being of a colleague. This study explores the potential negative effects of a seemingly positive strategy for the individual on a colleague. Namely, we predict that when employees decrease their hindering job demands, their colleagues will be more likely to report a higher workload and more conflict. In turn, we hypothesise that colleague reports of workload and conflict are related to colleague burnout. Data were collected among 103 dyads and analyzed with the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model. The results largely supported the hypothesised relationships: Decreasing hindering job demands was positively related to colleague workload and conflict, which, in turn, related positively to colleague burnout. These findings suggest that proactively decreasing hindering job demands not only relates to personal job experiences, but also to colleague job characteristics and well‐being.     

Proactive vitality management in the work context: development and validation of a new instrument

In the present research, we use proactivity literature and studies on energy at work to argue that individuals may proactively manage their vitality (i.e., physical and mental energy) to promote optimal functioning at work. We develop and validate a scale to measure proactive vitality management (PVM), and explore the nomological network. We conducted a five-day diary study (N = 133; 521 days), a survey study (N = 813) and a cross-sectional study measuring daily PVM (N = 246) among working individuals from various occupational sectors. The results show that PVM can be reliably measured with eight items that load on one overall factor, both on general and daily level. Furthermore, daily PVM was moderately but positively related to the use of work-related strategies and micro-breaks. Moreover, PVM related positively to relevant personal characteristics (i.e., proactive personality and self-insight) and showed moderate but positive relationships with job crafting and relaxation (convergent validity). PVM was unrelated to psychological detachment and decreasing hindering demands (discriminant validity). Finally, PVM was positively related to well-being, in-role work performance, creative work performance and performance on the Remote Associates Test (criterion validity). We conclude that employees may promote their own work performance through the use of PVM.     

King,David P.: God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism

Review of Religious Research -     

Challenging the Universality of Job Resources: Why,When, and For Whom Are They Beneficial?

In this paper we introduce the topic of job resources and elaborate on their relevance for research and practice in work psychology. We start out with a brief overview of the historic and current understanding of job resources. Next, we discuss the need for a more nuanced perspective on the effects of job resources and present some ideas on how to move this forward. After these conceptual preliminaries, we introduce the papers in the special issue and conclude with a brief summary of the special issue's key messages.     

The Role of Story-Making in Disclosure Writing: The Psychometrics of Narrative

Writing about self-relevant emotional topics has a wide range of mental and physical health benefits. An appealing explanation for this phenomenon is that writing facilitates 'story-making' - the ability to make coherent and meaningful stories out of events in one's life - and it is forming a good story that promotes the health benefits. Despite the recent attention to this idea, the psychometrics and correlates of story-making are not known. The purpose of the current study was to explore this idea by measuring participants' story-making ability when writing about both emotional and unemotional topics and relate this to health, personality variables, and linguistic dimensions. Story-making was reliably assessed by independent raters, except for nonemotional topics. The ability to make good stories was not, however, consistent across topic, and story-making did not correlate with personality dimensions nor did it predict the health outcomes of participants.     

on the clinical validity of the maslach burnout inventory and the burnout measure

Abstract

Current knowledge about burnout suffers from a healthy worker bias since only working - and thus relatively healthy - employees have been investigated. The main objective of this study is to examine - for the first time among employees who sought psychological treatment - the validity of the two most widely used burnout instruments; the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Burnout Measure (BM). Two groups were distinguished: a “burned out” group (n = 71) that suffers from work-related neurasthenia (according to ICD-10 criteria), and a “non-burned out” group (n = 68). Results show that: (1) the validity of the three-factor structure of the MBI and the BM is confirmed; (2) burnout can partly be differentiated from other mental syndromes (e.g., anxiety and depression); and (3) two MBI-scales (Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization) and one BM-scale (Exhaustion) are able to discriminate between burned out and non-burned out employees. The practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Stability and change in burnout: A 10‐year follow‐up study among primary care physicians

The aim of the present study is (1) to investigate the impact of patient demands on primary care physicians’ burnout and (2) to examine the stability and change of burnout across time. Participants were drawn from the official Dutch registration system for primary health care, and longitudinal panel data (n= 165) from three waves with a 5‐year time interval were used. They filled in the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and a validated scale for the assessment of patient demands. The results of various stability and change models that were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that demanding patient contacts lead to increased burnout among physicians. In addition, the findings suggested that about one quarter of the variance in physician's actual burnout levels across one decade is accounted for by a stable component, whereas about three quarters is accounted for by a change component. Hence, physician burnout seems to be a rather chronic condition that may be aggravated by exposure to demanding patients.     

Breaking through the loss cycle of burnout: The role of motivation

We aimed to study burnout as a process that develops over time. On the basis of the Conservation of Resources theory ( Hobfoll, 2002 ), we tested whether burnout induces a loss cycle, depleting resources, and enhancing demands. In addition, we investigated whether intrinsic job motivation and externally regulated job motivation attenuated or aggravated this loss cycle. Using a sample of 352 employees who answered online questionnaires in 2005 and 2007, we found that baseline burnout predicted future burnout that results from an increase in job demands (e.g., work overload) and a decrease in job resources (e.g., social support, information). Furthermore, external regulation aggravated the positive relationship between baseline burnout and demand accumulation. Intrinsic motivation attenuated the positive relationship between baseline burnout and resource loss. We conclude that intrinsic motivation is an important factor enabling employees to break through the negative cycle of burnout.     

Job resources and flow at work: Modelling the relationship via latent growth curve and mixture model methodology

The aim of the present three‐wave follow‐up study (n = 335) among employees of an employment agency was to investigate the association between job resources and work‐related flow utilizing both variable‐ and person‐oriented approaches. In addition, emotional exhaustion was studied as a moderator of the job resources–flow relationship, and as a predictor of the development of job resources and flow. The variable‐oriented approach, based on latent growth curve analyses, revealed that the levels of job resources and flow at work, as well as changes in these variables, were positively associated with each other. The person‐oriented inspection with the growth mixture modelling identified four trajectories based on the mean levels of job resources and flow and on the changes of these mean levels over time: (a) moderate work‐related resources (n = 166), (b) declining work‐related resources (n = 87), (c) high work‐related resources (n = 46), and (d) low work‐related resources (n = 36). Exhaustion was found to be an important predictor of job resources and flow, but it did not moderate their mutual association. Specifically, a low level of exhaustion was found to predict high levels of job resources and flow. Overall, these results suggest the importance of a person‐oriented view of motivational processes at work. In addition, in order to fully understand positive motivational processes it seems important to investigate the role of negative well‐being states as well.