Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated a shift to remote working for previously office-based employees in South Africa, impacting employee outcomes such as well-being. The remote work trend is expected to continue even post the pandemic, necessitating for organizational understanding of the factors impacting employee well-being. Using the Job Demands–Resources model as the theoretical framework, this study aims to understand the role of job demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being in the pandemic context.

A self-administered online survey questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data about remote workers’ (n = 204) perceptions of specifically identified demands, resources and employee well-being. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and moderated hierarchical regression were used to analyse the data.

This study found that job demands in the form of work–home conflict were associated with reduced employee well-being. Resources, namely, job autonomy, effective communication and social support were associated with increased employee well-being. Job autonomy was positively correlated to remote work frequency, and gender had a significant positive association to work–home conflict. Social support was found to moderate the relationship between work–home conflict and employee well-being. Findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work–home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. This study advances knowledge on the role of demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being of remote workforces during COVID-19 and beyond.

This paper provides insight on employee well-being during COVID-19 remote work. Further, the findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work–home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study carried out to explore the employee well-being during COVID-19 pandemic and will be beneficial to stakeholders for understanding the factors impacting employee well-being.

In the backdrop of job demands-resources model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of selected job resources (job autonomy and rewards and recognition) and job demands (problem with work) on innovative work behaviour through the mediation of employee engagement in the higher education sector of India.

The sample consists of randomly selected 275 teachers from higher education institutions from a city in India. This study used PLS-SEM for data analysis.

The results suggest that employee engagement associates closely with innovative work behaviour. Job autonomy, one of the resources, affects innovative work behaviour directly and its effect does not move via employee engagement. Further, reward and recognition does not impact innovative work behaviour directly, rather, its effect moves through employee engagement. Finally, the work suggests that employee engagement mediates between selected job resources and job demands and innovative work behaviour.

This study can be extended to include more demands and resources which are unique to academic institutions. For example, a transparent career path to all teachers or a high-octane research culture can serve as a boon. Additionally, their interaction effect can also be studied. The present study being a cross-sectional study, at best, offers a snap-shot view of relationship among the variables.

This study shall help organizations to use job resources and job demands to enhance teachers’ engagement and innovative work behaviour. Specifically, results of this study offer a reason to academic institutions to give more autonomy and rewards to their teachers to eke out innovative work behaviour.

Firstly, this study will have a positive outcome for students who will be the prime beneficiaries of innovative work behaviour of teachers. Secondly, broadly the society and its constituents will get benefited by improvement in research outcomes.

The outcome of this study proposes that job autonomy and reward and recognition do not connect with employee engagement and innovative work behaviour in a known way.

Engaged employees assure organizational competitiveness and sustainability. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between job resources and employee turnover intentions, with employee engagement as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 934 employees of eight wholly-owned pharmaceutical industries. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Construct reliability and validity was established through confirmatory factor analysis.

Data supported the hypothesized relationship. The results show that job autonomy and employee engagement were significantly associated. Supervisory support and employee engagement were significantly associated. However, performance feedback and employee engagement were nonsignificantly associated. Employee engagement had a significant influence on employee turnover intentions. The results further show that employee engagement mediates the association between job resources and employee turnover intentions.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s pharmaceutical industry focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers for stakeholders and decision-makers in the pharmacuetical industry to develop a proactive and well-articulated employee engagement intervention to ensure organizational effectiveness, innovativeness and competitiveness.

By empirically demonstrating that employee engagement mediates the nexus of job resources and employee turnover intentions, the study adds to the corpus of literature.

Drawing from the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, the authors’ study examines the impact of high commitment HR management (HCHRM) practices and psychological capital (PsyCap) on job autonomy and job demands in predicting burnout in frontline food service employees.

A moderated mediation model was developed and tested on 257 Australian workers employed in the food service industry. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

There was support for the mediation effect of HCHRM on burnout, via two sequential mediators: job autonomy and job demands. PsyCap was found to buffer (moderation) the effect of job demands on burnout. Frontline employees also perceived HCHRM to be a “negative signal” that was implemented for the good of management.

The authors are aware of the potential of common method variance due to the cross-sectional research design. Future research should adopt a longitudinal research design or collect data from several sources of informants. As the authors did not find support for the optimistic perspective hypothesis, despite its theoretical and empirical relevance under JD-R and COR perspectives, they call for further research exploring the link between HRM, job design and psychological conditions in promoting employee wellbeing.

Burnout is one of the most common and critical health issues faced by frontline food service employees. Food service organizations have to strategize their management practices to reduce employees' experience with burnout by implementing high commitment enhancing HR practices and developing employees' PsyCap.

This study provided a better understanding of how (macro) HCHRM practices as an organizational resource reduce burnout of frontline food service employees via two (micro) mediators: job autonomy and job demands. PsyCap is an important personal resource that lessens burnout, consistent with the COR theory. These findings contribute to the literature on strategic HRM and its relationship to employee wellbeing.

While both perceived job autonomy and self-leadership are assumed to be important for optimal functioning of healthcare workers, their mutual relationship remains unclear. This cross-lagged study aims to theorize and test that perceived job autonomy and self-leadership have a reciprocal relationship, which is moderated by need for job autonomy.

Two-wave panel data were used to measure cross-lagged relationships over a time period of three months. Self-leadership is indicated by both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior. The data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression (HMR).

Job autonomy was not causally nor reverse related to self-leadership strategies, but did relate to self-leadership behavior in both directions. Need for job autonomy did not influence the causal and reverse relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership (strategies and behavior). Instead, need for job autonomy discarded the influence of job autonomy on self-leadership behavior, and predicted self-leadership behavior over time.

For optimizing healthcare jobs, human resource management (HRM) policy makers need to consider other interventions such as training self-leadership, or developing an autonomy supportive work environment, since job autonomy does not lead to more use of self-leadership strategies.

This study used a cross-lagged study design which gives the opportunity to investigate causal relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership. Both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior are included.

This study aims to analyze the influence of job autonomy and unscripted agility on ambidextrous innovation in startups in times of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A survey was conducted with founders and managers of Brazilian startups in the e-commerce segment, resulting in a sample of 84 startups. Symmetric (structural equation modeling) and asymmetric (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) analyses were performed. The variables' external financing and institutional ties were controlled.

The symmetric findings indicate that unscripted agility is a full mediator between job autonomy and ambidextrous innovation. The asymmetric findings offer two solutions for startups to achieve high ambidextrous innovation.

The implications of the research for the literature are discussing elements associated with ambidextrous innovation, exploring the context of innovation in startups in times of crisis, specifically in the Covid-19 pandemic, and considering the role of resilience in startups.

The study provides informational inputs to founders and managers of startups on how job autonomy and unscripted agility can propel incremental and radical innovations.

This study provides new insights and success factors into startups, based on the discussion of entrepreneurship in times of crisis, as in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This study explored moderating effects of employee generations on factors related to employee retention and motivation in the workplace.

The authors developed a survey instrument and collected the survey data via Amazon Mechanical Turk. After filtering out bad responses, the authors ended up with 489 sample cases for this study. The authors used structural equation modeling for data analysis.

Evidence showed that only transformational leadership was significantly related to retention of Generation X employees and only work–life balance had a significant relationship with intrinsic motivation. For Generation Y employees, transformational leadership was the only factor affecting their retention while both transformational leadership and autonomy showed significant impacts on their intrinsic motivation. Generation Z employees reported that only transformation leadership affected their retention while transformational leadership, corporate social responsibility and autonomy were significantly related to their intrinsic motivation in the workplace. All three generations showed statistical significance between intrinsic motivation and employee retention.

This study could help business practitioners increase employees' work motivation and retention.

First, our results revealed interesting similarities and differences between generations in terms of the factors that affected employees' retention and motivation. Second, this study proved that employees' generation affects the impacts of transformational leadership, CSR, autonomy, WLB and technology on their motivation and retention in the workplace. Third, the results of our study also showed that employees of different generations are intrinsically motivated by different factors, proving the importance of considering generational differences in motivation literature.

It is important to understand why some workers prolong their working life even though they are entitled to statutory pension benefits. This paper aims to investigate whether senior workers are motivated by external factors such as pay and social expectations (extrinsic motivation) or are primarily motivated by internal factors such as job satisfaction (intrinsic motivation). This is a central question for policymakers and social partners when it comes to the design of public pension systems and work organisation.

This study uses a combined longitudinal administrative data and an own-designed postal survey to ask individuals aged 65–76 years to describe their work motivation. Based on the answers, this study constructs an index of autonomous motivation (AM) where a value of zero implies only extrinsic motivation and a value of one implies only intrinsic motivation. The values between zero and one thus imply various grades of AM, where higher values signal motivation that is more autonomous and hence a higher degree of intrinsic work motivation.

The results of the statistical analysis show that the extent of intrinsic motivation is higher among senior workers who retired aged 65 years or older compared to those who retired at 65 years or younger. In addition, this study found that the degree of intrinsic work motivation among senior workers decreases when they face economic and financial constraints. It also found that intrinsic motivation is more prevalent among high-skilled workers.

This study shows that individuals who continue to work after 65 are mostly motivated by the satisfaction they derive from their job. Job satisfaction is strongly related to skill level, job quality, job content and job autonomy. Results indicate that job quality and commitment to work are essential elements for motivating seniors to postpone retirement.

This study contributes to this literature by applying a multidisciplinary approach from organisational psychology and labour economics that considers the potential importance of intrinsic motivation to work after standard retirement age. The authors think that this approach enhances the understanding of the mechanisms behind the lengthening of working life. Finally, this study suggests a simple, but efficient way of empirically measuring the extent of intrinsic motivation among workers.

This paper aims to identify which types of creative R&D employees prefer which daily and weekly working schedules.

This paper builds on an original repeated survey of creative R&D employees from Estonia and presents multinomial logit regression estimates based on a sample of 153 individuals from 11 entities.

The probability of women preferring their weekly work to be concentrated in three to four days is 20 percentage points higher than in men, and the case is similar for less-educated creative R&D employees. The more educated prefer the standard five-day working week. Men have a stronger preference for their week of work to be dispersed over six to seven days. Sleep patterns appear to relate to working time preferences as morning-type individuals have a stronger preference for a working day with fixed start and end times. Those who sleep 7 h or more per day prefer the standard five-day working week more, while employees who sleep less than 7 h favour a working week of six to seven days. Employees who desire more creativity intensity at work have a stronger preference for irregular daily working hours, as do those with poorer general health.

The results indicate that individual characteristics have a significant impact on the preferences for working time arrangements. Similar working time regulations for all employees appear outdated, therefore, and may make work inefficient and harm individual well-being, at least for creative R&D employees.

The study aims to investigate organization interventions experienced by employees during the lockdown for Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), and the effect of these organization interventions on hope.

The respondents for the study were employees in full-time white-collar or professional job positions; they performed their job roles by way of work from home (WFH) in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 lockdown. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

Results showed that employees maintained high levels of hope while working from home. The study identified four organization interventions that (a) promote collaborative and coordinated work, (b) promote meaningful goals and a sense of social support, (c) alleviate psychological strain and (d) assist in maintaining physical health. These four organization interventions increased hope during the COVID-19 lockdown while working from home.

The literature calls for research on intervention studies explaining the promotion of hope. The present study was built on the theories of positive organizational behaviour, conservation of resources theory and hope theory. The findings support that these three traditional theories have lasting theoretical resonance in explaining present-day phenomena with unique applications.