Vocational Concerns of Elementary Teachers: Stress,Job Satisfaction,and Occupational Commitment

This study examines the vocational concerns of 185 elementary teachers. Participants were classified based on their perceptions of the magnitude of their classroom demands and resources. These groupings were then examined for differences in teachers' personal coping resources, job satisfaction, and occupational commitment. Results indicated that teachers classified as perceiving high classroom demand vis‐à‐vis classroom resources reported lower personal coping resources, less job satisfaction, and more plans to leave their current job.     

Qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance: a bidirectional longitudinal relationship?

This study adds to the understanding of the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and employee in-role performance, by analysing the association longitudinally. While social exchange theory predicts that the relationship should be negative and bidirectional, the job preservation motivation model indicates a self-correcting mechanism, where job insecurity leads to increased performance, which, in turn, could decrease job insecurity. We developed competing hypotheses and examined them using structural equation modelling in a heterogeneous sample of 337 employees. For employees with a higher professional level, results pointed towards a reciprocal causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, indicating a loss cycle. For employees with a lower professional level, results showed a small positive direct causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, while the negative direct path from in-role performance to qualitative job insecurity did not reach statistical significance. This is the first study to test the diverging theoretical predictions of social exchange theory and the job preservation motivation model, with regard to the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance. Being longitudinal, our study only allows us to hint at possible causal relationships between the involved variables, the chronological order being necessary, but not sufficient to prove causality.     

Job demands,job resources and innovative work behaviour: a European Union study

This study aims to investigate the relationship between several job design variables and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Guided by the Job Demands Resources model, the aim was to evaluate the relationship between work demands (time constraints), resources (autonomy and social support), and other work factors (task monotony, complexity, and dealing with unforeseen circumstances) with idea generation and idea implementation behaviours in a sample of 12,924 participants from the 27 European Union member states in 2010. We also wished to investigate if individual IWB, at the country level, is associated with country innovative performance (an aggregate of process/product and marketing/organizational innovation). We employed a multilevel generalized structural equation model to test our hypotheses. In our final model autonomy, manager encouragement and dealing with unforeseen problems showed the highest positive relationship with idea generation and idea implementation. Conversely, monotonous tasks and working at high speed were negatively related to IWB. Furthermore, we have found strong indications that country-level IWB positively relates to the odds of a country scoring higher on the aforementioned innovation indicators. Between-country unexplained variance in IWB was reduced from 17.1% in our initial model, to 1.9% in our final iteration. Limitations, implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Lower back pain in nurses working in home care: linked to work–family conflict,emotional dissonance,and appreciation?

In industrial countries home care services for elderly people living in the community are growing rapidly. Home care nursing is intensive and the nurses often suffer from musculoskeletal pain. Time pressure and job control are job-related factors linked to the risk of experiencing lower back pain (LBP) and LBP-related work impairment. This survey investigated whether work-family conflict (WFC), emotional dissonance and being appreciated at work have incremental predictive value. Responses were obtained from 125 home care nurses (63% response rate). Multiple linear regression showed that emotional dissonance and being appreciated at work predicted LBP intensity and LBP-related disability independently of time pressure and job control. WFC was not a predictor of LBP-related disability in multiple regression analyses despite a zero-order correlation with it. Redesigning the working pattern of home care nurses to reduce the emotional demands and improve appreciation of their work might reduce the incidence of LBP in this group.     

Job demands and psychological well-being: Moderating role of occupational self-efficacy and job social support among mid-career academics

The study investigated the moderating role of occupational self-efficacy and job social support on the relationship between job demands and psychological well-being among mid-career academics. Participants were 203 academics at three public Nigerian universities (female = 37.93%; mean years of service = 8.58 years, SD = 2.20). The academics completed measures of job demands, occupational self-efficacy, job social support, and psychological well-being. Moderated regression analysis of the data suggested only occupational self-efficacy to moderate the relationship between work demands and psychological well-being. Findings underpin the buffering effects of work self-efficacy in employee psychological well-being with high job demands.     

Combined effects of workplace bullying and perceived organizational support on employee behaviors: does resource availability help?

Background and Objective: This research examines the detrimental effects of workplace bullying as a social stressor on employees’ job performance, organizational retaliatory behaviors, and organizational citizenship behaviors and how the availability of support can reduce the negative impact of bullying. Using social exchange theory and the conservation of resources theory as theoretical frameworks, we propose that workplace bullying drains personal resources, leading to reduced job performance, low citizenship behaviors, and increased organizational retaliatory behaviors. We also propose that perceived organizational support acts as moderator, such that it reduces the detrimental effects of bullying on employee behaviors.

Research Design and Methods: We tested our hypotheses in two field studies (N?=?478 and N?=?395) conducted in Pakistan.

Results: The results of both studies supported the assertion that workplace bullying exacerbates employees’ job performance, reduces organizational citizenship behaviors and intensifies organizational retaliatory behaviors. The idea that perceived organizational support would moderate the bullying-work behavior relationships found mixed support. While perceptions of organizational support reinforced the bullying-job performance and bullying-retaliatory behaviors relationships, it did not moderate the bullying-citizenship behaviors relationship in the suggested direction.

Conclusion: The findings show that workplace bullying leads to more organizational citizenship behaviors when employee’s perceptions of organizational support is high.     

Action‐semantic and syntactic deficits in subjects at risk for Huntington's disease

Frontostriatal networks play critical roles in grounding action semantics and syntactic skills. Indeed, their atrophy distinctively disrupts both domains, as observed in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's disease, even during early disease stages. However, frontostriatal degeneration in these conditions may begin up to 15 years before the onset of clinical symptoms, opening avenues for pre‐clinical detection via sensitive tasks. Such a mission is particularly critical in HD, given that patients’ children have 50% chances of inheriting the disease. Against this background, we assessed whether deficits in the above‐mentioned domains emerge in subjects at risk to develop HD. We administered tasks tapping action semantics, object semantics, and two forms of syntactic processing to 18 patients with HD, 19 asymptomatic first‐degree relatives, and sociodemographically matched controls for each group. The patients evinced significant deficits in all tasks, but only those in the two target domains were independent of overall cognitive state. More crucially, relative to controls, the asymptomatic relatives were selectively impaired in action semantics and in the more complex syntactic task, with both patterns emerging irrespective of the subjects’ overall cognitive state. Our findings highlight the relevance of these dysfunctions as potential prodromal biomarkers of HD. Moreover, they offer theoretical insights into the differential contributions of frontostriatal hubs to both domains while paving the way for innovations in diagnostic procedures.     

Transmission of reduction‐oriented crafting among colleagues: A diary study on the moderating role of working conditions

Zooming into reduction‐oriented job crafting among employees, next to minimizing demands (i.e., making a job less strenuous), we introduced optimizing demands (i.e., simplifying the job and making work processes more efficient) and suggested that optimizing demands should be positively related to work engagement, whereas minimizing demands negatively related to work engagement. Moreover, we suggested that both forms of reduction‐oriented crafting can be transferred among colleagues, and this will particularly occur in jobs that are high on demands (workload and emotional demands), low on resources (autonomy), and when the colleagues have a high‐quality relationship. We examined these hypotheses among 65 dyads of employees who filled in a general questionnaire and a diary for three working days. Multilevel analyses supported the transmission of both job crafting dimensions among colleagues. Moreover, there is more transmission of minimizing demands among colleagues when workload and emotional demands are high and autonomy is low. Additionally, optimizing demands was transmitted among colleagues when autonomy was low and quality of relationship with colleague was high. Optimizing demands was positively related to work engagement, whereas minimizing demands was unrelated to work engagement. These findings imply that optimizing demands is a favourable behaviour and can be transmitted among colleagues under specific conditions.

Practitioner points

• Working smarter is related to higher work engagement
• Employees model their colleague's proactive behaviour
• Unfavourable working conditions stimulate modelling behaviour of colleagues