Do core self-evaluations and coping style influence the perception of job insecurity?

Over the last few decades, increased flexibility and lack of stability in employment has made job insecurity a work stressor that affects more and more employees. Since worrying about potential job loss (quantitative job insecurity) or possible loss of valued job features (qualitative job insecurity) constitutes a subjective perception, it has been claimed that personality factors may be decisive for job insecurity perceptions. Furthermore, the perception of a stressor, in this case job insecurity, could be argued to be dependent on appraisals of available coping resources. This study investigates whether core self-evaluations predict job insecurity perceptions, and whether coping mediates this relationship, in a two-wave data set from a Swedish sample of white-collar workers (N = 425). The results show that core self-evaluations had a negative total effect on both qualitative and quantitative job insecurity. Core self-evaluations were positively related to problem-focused coping but not to emotion-focused coping. However, there was no mediating effect of coping style on the association between core self-evaluations and job insecurity.     

Working conditions,well-being,and job-related attitudes among call centre agents

A comparison of 234 call centre agents with 572 workers in traditional jobs with long lasting training revealed lower job control and task complexity/variety and higher uncertainty among call agents. However, time pressure, concentration demands, and work interruptions were lower in call agents. Within the call agent sample, controlling for negative affectivity and other working conditions, job control predicted intention to quit, and job complexity/variety predicted job satisfaction and affective commitment. Social stressors and task-related stressors predicted uniquely indicators of well-being and job-related attitudes. Furthermore, data confirm the role of emotional dissonance as a stressor in its own right, as it explained variance in irritated reactions and psychosomatic complaints beyond other working conditions. Results indicate that strong division of labour may be a rather general phenomenon in call centres. Therefore, working conditions of call agents require a redesign by means of job enrichment or—better—organization development. Moreover, measures of social stressors and emotional dissonance should be integrated routinely into stress-related job analyses in service jobs.     

Book Review

Abstract

Yukl, G.A. (1989). Leadership in organizations (2nd ed.), Prentice Hall International Editions. ISBN 0-1352-7169-X. £20.95.     

Occupational well-being as a mediator between job insecurity and turnover intention: Findings at the individual and work department levels

This study examined the relationship between job insecurity and turnover intention by applying occupational well-being (exhaustion, vigour) as a mediator. The study was inspired by two theories: the conservation of resources and emotional contagion theories. We investigated the relationships at the individual and work department levels by utilizing Multi-Level Structural Equation Modeling (ML-SEM) with the aim of clarifying whether the mediating mechanism was similar at both levels. In addition, we examined the relationships across the levels (cross-level interactions). Self-report data for the study were obtained from Finnish University staff (N = 2137 individual respondents from 78 work departments). The analyses resulted in three main findings. First, job insecurity, turnover intention, and occupational well-being were found, to some extent (2–6%), to be shared experiences within work departments. Second, we found that low occupational well-being (high exhaustion, low vigour) partly mediated the relationship between job insecurity and turnover intention at both levels of analysis. Third, the results on cross-level interactions revealed that the lower the level of well-being at the work department level, the stronger the negative effect of job insecurity on well-being at the individual level. Thus, if poor well-being characterizes the work department, this may strengthen the negative relationship between job insecurity and well-being at the individual level.     

Investigating the relationship between employability and self-efficacy: A cross-lagged analysis

The construct of employability has been conceptually related to self-efficacy in different ways. Employability has sometimes been regarded as an equivalent to self-efficacy, or as a distinct but related phenomenon. Since the relationship between the two phenomena has not been subjected to empirical scrutiny, the aim of the present study is to analyze whether self-efficacy and employability are two distinct but related constructs, and if they are, to investigate the direction of their relationship. The data (N = 1730) were collected through a two-wave longitudinal survey with one year between each data collection (2005 and 2006). The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the measures of employability and self-efficacy were distinct from one another, within and over measurement points, indicating that these are related but separate constructs. The results of latent variable cross-lagged analysis showed that employability predicted subsequent self-efficacy, even after controlling for age, gender, educational level, and regional differences. Thus, employability is not an expression of efficacy beliefs, but rather, the strengthening of employability perceptions may have beneficial effects on more general efficacy beliefs.     

Service users’ perceptions of shared agency in mental health services

Objective: The concept of shared agency is used in examining the collaboration between the service user and the professionals. The study aims to find out what kind of experiences on shared agency mental health service users have.

Method: The study was based on interviews of 19 service users. The data set was formed of those parts of the interviews that dealt with shared aims, being heard, collaboration and joint planning and decision-making. Typical methods of inductive content analysis were applied.

Results: Three domains of shared agency were found: emotional, communicative and supportive ones. The emotional domain included elements of becoming heard and building confidence. In the communicative one, the main features were mutual information sharing, finding words to describe the chaos and reconstructing harmony. The supportive domain included encouragement and giving support. Experiences on non-shared agency were also found.

Conclusion: Many experiences on shared agency were found. Joint planning and working with life goals were, however, seldom reported. This result, together with experiences of non-shared agency, sets a challenge for mental health services.     

Mortality-Related Differences and Changes in Episodic Memory Among the Oldest Old: Evidence From a Population-Based Sample of Nonagenarians

We examined cross-sectional differences and longitudinal changes in episodic memory performance related to impending death among a group of very old people, aged 90–101 years. Participants were assessed at 3 measurement points across a 6-year interval. Three groups were identified: those who survived the entire follow-up period (n =40), those who died before the first follow-up (n =44), and those who died after the first follow-up (n =14). Participants completed a battery of episodic memory tasks consisting of face recognition, word recognition, word recall, and object recall with selective reminding. Those who survived performed better than those who were going to die in object recall at baseline. A Cox regression analysis, controlling age, revealed that object recall performance was significantly related to subsequent mortality status. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated significant 3-year decline for both face recognition and object recall, but no evidence of differential decline as a function of mortality group. Thus, longitudinal changes in memory preceding death were not as pronounced as the corresponding cross-sectional differences in this very old sample. In general, the results suggest that mortality-related memory deficits are present in extreme old age, although these deficits are relatively small and task-specific.     

The impact of accountability on teachers’ assessments of student performance: a social cognitive analysis

Research on teachers’ judgments of student performance has demonstrated that educational assessments may be biased or may more correctly take the achievements of students into account depending on teachers’ motivations while making the judgment. Building on research on social judgment formation the present investigation examined whether the accountability of teachers has an influence on judgment formation. We predicted that unaccountable teachers would activate social categories and use them for the assessment, whereas accountable teachers’ attention would be directed to individual attributes of students. Using secondary school teachers as participants, three studies investigating teachers’ assessments, inferences and memory for students’ attributes supported these hypotheses. Thus, accountability appears to be a moderator of social information processing and judgment formation in the domain of educational assessments.     

Remembering Numbers in Old Age: Mnemonic Training Versus Self-Generated Strategy Training

The effectiveness of two memory training programs designed to enhance four-digit number recall was examined in 90 healthy older adults. One group received instruction and training in the number-consonant mnemonic, whereas another group was instructed to adopt their own encoding and retrieval strategies to enhance number recall. Also, a control group receiving no training between testing occasions was included. The criterion task was administered according to the Buschke selective reminding procedure. Posttest performance was evaluated with and without cognitive support for remembering (i.e., verbal cues). Under unsupported conditions, the mnemonic group improved number recall following training and the self-generated strategy group showed a tendency in the same direction. When support was provided, group differences in favor of the two training groups increased. In addition, no training-related gains were observed in two verbal transfer tasks. The relatively similar patterns of gains in the two intervention groups were discussed in terms of advantages and disadvantages in the two training regimens balancing each other.     

Recall of Subject-Performed Tasks,Verbal Tasks,and Cognitive Activities Across the Adult Life Span: Parallel Age-Related Deficits

Motor activity during encoding of verbal information has been suggested to reduce age differences in episodic memory. Here we examined memory for sentences encoded with enactment (SPTs, subject-performed tasks) or without enactment (VTs, verbal tasks) in a population-based sample consisting of 10 groups ranging in age from 35 to 80 years (N = 1000). Memory performance was assessed by immediate free- and category-cued recall. Degree of clustering was measured by the adjusted ratio of clustering score. Recall of cognitive activities served as a complementary measure of memory for performed tasks. Sentence recall showed a gradual decline across age, of about the same magnitude for SPTs and VTs, in both free and cued recall. Clustering in free recall was higher for SPTs than for VTs, but there were no age differences in clustering. A pattern of gradual decline from age 35 was observed also in activity recall, regardless of whether the activities involved motor activity or not. Across the memory measures, differences in education accounted for all of the age-related variance in performance among the younger (35-55 years) but not the older groups (60-80 years), suggesting that genuine aging effects in these measures are more prominent in old age. Together, the results indicate that age differences in episodic memory, in line with most, if not all, types of encoding support, generalize across the performed/non-performed distinction.