Interwoven stories: our path of creativity and poetry named the ecodialogue center

The history of organizations and collectives is something alive. It is a network of memories, actions, collaborations, dreams, encounters, and disconnections that live within each of its members. The EcoDialogue Center is an academic space of the University of Veracruz for promoting dialogue between disciplines. In this article we are presenting the stories, both personal and collective, and the values and ideals that create our Center. We are using this opportunity to reflect on the cultural, geographical, emotional, intellectual, and societal conditions that have allowed this innovative process within the rules and customs of a university.     

L’addiction au travail : quels effets de la charge de travail,de la dissonance émotionnelle et du surinvestissement ?

The present study aimed to assess workaholism in the light of job demands (psychological demands, efforts, emotional dissonance) and job resources (control, social support, rewards). The study was conducted among 342 employment counselors. The results revealed that the employment counselors would have all the more workaholism behaviors that the organizational context expose them to high levels of psychological demands and efforts, high levels of over-commitment and emotional dissonance and low levels of social support and rewards. Multiple regressions highlighted the central role of psychological demands, over-investment and emotional dissonance to reveal workaholism.     

The relationship between employment quality and work-related well-being in the European Labor Force

In this article, data from the 2005 European Working Conditions Survey are used to examine the relationship between contemporary employment arrangements and the work-related well-being of European employees. By means of a Latent Class Cluster Analysis, several features of the employment conditions and relations characterizing jobs are combined in a typology of five employment arrangements: SER-like, instrumental, precarious unsustainable, precarious intensive and portfolio jobs. These job types show clear relationships with separate indicators of job satisfaction, perceived safety climate and the ability to stay in employment, as well as with an overall indicator for work-related well-being. The findings from this multifaceted approach towards employment quality raise questions about the long-term sustainability of highly flexible and de-standardized employment arrangements.     

Job search self-efficacy: Reconceptualizing the construct and its measurement

Job search self-efficacy (JSSE) is one of the most studied variables in the job search literature and an important component of the theory of planned behavior and self-regulation theory which have both been used to explain the job search process. However, even though JSSE has been a part of job search research for thirty years, the measurement of JSSE has varied from study to study. This questions both the validity of the measures used and the findings from each study that used a different measure. In this paper, we propose and test a two dimensional measure of JSSE that corresponds to job search behavior (JSSE-B) and job search outcomes (JSSE-O). The results of a longitudinal study of employed and unemployed job seekers support a two-factor model corresponding to the two dimensions of JSSE. We also found differential relationships between each dimension of JSSE and several antecedents and consequences. Among the antecedents, environmental exploration and self-exploration were stronger predictors of JSSE-B while career planning was a stronger predictor of JSSE-O. In terms of consequences, JSSE-B was a stronger predictor of job search intention and behavior while JSSE-O was a stronger predictor of the number of job offers received. These findings provide support for two dimensions of JSSE and have important implications for job search research and practice.     

Change-oriented behavior: A meta-analysis of individual and job design predictors

We propose and meta-analytically test a theoretical model of individual and job-based predictors of change-oriented behaviors. Meta-analytic tests (106 effect sizes, N = 28,402) demonstrate that employee's proactive personality is a stronger predictor of change-oriented behavior than the five-factor model (FFM) personality traits of openness and extraversion. Also, enriched job characteristics (autonomy, complexity, and task significance) are more important in predicting change-oriented behavior, than un-enriched job characteristics (routinization and formalization). Finally, we establish work engagement as a mediator that provides an explanation for how and why proactive personality and enriched job characteristics predict change-oriented behavior. We provide both theoretical and empirical integration of the literature with practical implications for managing change-oriented behaviors, which are increasingly recognized as important to both organizational effectiveness and employee career management.     

A comparison of individuals with unanswered callings to those with no calling at all

The purpose of this research was to compare the life-, job-, and health-related experiences of those who perceive an unanswered occupational calling to those who (1) are living a calling and (2) perceive no calling at all. Surveys containing measures of callings, work engagement, job involvement, career commitment, life and job satisfaction, turnover intentions, physical health and emotional well-being were administered to 378 American academics. As expected, academics with an answered occupational calling tended to report better job attitudes and domain-specific satisfaction and less withdrawal intentions than those who reported an unanswered occupational calling or no calling at all. Furthermore, those who did not have a calling to a particular vocation reported better life-, job-, and health-related outcomes than those experiencing an unanswered calling. Surprisingly, only those academics experiencing an unmet calling reported significantly poorer physical and psychological health as compared to the other two calling groups. These results are consistent with the self-determination theory, which predicts that those who are able to satisfy their basic psychological needs reap benefits in terms of psychological growth, optimal functioning, and wellbeing. The study contributes to the literature on callings by showing that having a calling is a benefit only if it is met, but can be a detriment when it is not as compared to having no calling at all.     

Effects of team and organizational commitment – A longitudinal study

Retention management, i.e., keeping qualified employees, is a top priority for contemporary organizations. Commitment, and especially team commitment, can be the key to mastering this challenge. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the development and the direction of the effects of team commitment over time. In a longitudinal field-study design with three points of measurement, a total of 360 employees in 52 semi-autonomous industrial teams were surveyed over a period of three years. On the one hand, organizational commitment showed stronger effects on organization-related criteria (job satisfaction and intention to leave). These effects were consistent over the three points of measurement. Team commitment, on the other hand, affected team-related criteria (team performance and altruism). Longitudinal analyses confirmed the effects of organizational commitment on job satisfaction and intention to leave, and of team commitment on team performance and altruism. Moreover, these effects increased over time. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The costs of today’s jobs: Job characteristics and organizational supports as antecedents of negative spillover

This study examined job characteristics and organizational supports as antecedents of negative work-to-nonwork spillover for 1178 U.S. employees. Based on hierarchical regression analyses of 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce data and O∗NET data, job demands (requirements to work at home beyond scheduled hours, job complexity, time and strain) had positive relationships, and job resources (autonomy and skill development) and organizational supports (flexible work arrangements and two work-life culture facets) had negative relationships to negative spillover, but not all relationships held when multiple predictors were examined. Organizational supports did not moderate relationships of job characteristics to negative spillover, and relative weights analysis indicated that job characteristics accounted for the majority of explained variance in negative spillover. The findings underscore the importance of job characteristics, and suggest that job characteristics and organizational supports both need to be considered when developing work-life policies intended to reduce employees’ negative work-to-nonwork spillover.     

Network Hubs and Opportunity for Complex Thinking Among Young British Muslims

This study examines whether individuals in a network esteem peers who think in integratively complex ways about religious issues in the context of a small‐group educational course comprised of young British Muslims. Integrative complexity (IC) measures the degree to which an individual's information processing is characterized by (a) rigid, black‐and‐white thinking or (b) ability to recognize the validity of, and integrate, multiple perspectives. A novel measurement procedure was developed for this research called the Social Field Generator. Results from seven groups (n = 55) showed that (a) participants with levels of IC were described by their peers with more positive sentiment than their low‐IC counterparts; (b) the higher the IC scores of participants, the closer peers felt toward them; and (c) the highest IC individuals were consistently selected as sources of advice, whereas the lowest IC individuals were not viewed as sources of advice. This research shows that within an educational environment aimed at promoting complex thinking, group processes and grassroots religious leadership can encourage higher levels of IC as a group norm.