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The aim of the paper is to present the causes and manifestations of the changed conditions of work for employees since the 1990s with a particular focus on the situation in Germany. These changes are characterized by a higher demand for expertise and a lower protection against life risks for employees. The paper seeks to address some of the issues surrounding this.

The desire to realize an individual concept of personal identity in work life is argued to be the main driving force of individual career development. It is set in relation to new normative guiding principles of employment (protean career model, boundaryless career model, employability construct).

Empirical studies support the importance of an individual work identity concept for individual career development. The political and, more importantly, the economic situation in Germany, Europe and other parts of the world has dramatically changed since 1989. The prospective demographic changes in Germany until 2050 and their effects on the job market are also considered.

The paper describes the underlying causes for the changes in the conditions of employment and how these are manifested in the conditions of work, and it also presents empirical findings about the individual coping with career changes.

In this paper, I synthesize the prior psychology literature on ego depletion and apply this literature to an auditing setting. Ego depletion refers to a reduced desire or ability to use self-control in task performance due to using self-control on prior tasks. I focus on the likely causes and consequences of depletion in an auditing setting, as well as means of mitigating depletion and recovering self-control resources. While ego depletion theory is prevalent in the psychology literature, little is known about whether or how ego depletion affects professionals on meaningful task performance. As a result, this synthesis is aimed at stimulating future ego depletion research in accounting, and specifically auditing, by surveying existing literature and applying this literature to an auditing setting. Further, I develop 13 questions for future research to investigate. My synthesis reveals that ego depletion likely has a pervasive effect in an auditing setting, and can hinder auditors’ judgment and decision-making (JDM) quality. Therefore, this synthesis helps to provide a greater understanding of the impact of auditing tasks on individuals, and refines both auditor JDM and ego depletion theories.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between networking ability, autonomy and work performance.

The data, collected from a sample of 510 employees in a professional service firm, were analysed using regression analysis.

First, networking ability and autonomy are positively associated with in-role and extra-role performance. Second, the greater the job autonomy, the stronger the effect of networking ability on in-role performance.

This paper adds to the growing body of literature on demand for social and interpersonal skills in organisations. The authors combine the literature on work design with the literature on networking ability and complexity in employment relations. The authors’ findings show the importance of networking ability and autonomy for work performance, as well as pointing to factors such as age and work experience.

The longitudinal impact of media multitasking on the development of executive function has been understudied, as most of the existing studies are cross-sectional. This longitudinal study addresses this research gap and uses multiple measures, i.e. behavioral and self-reported, to explore the impact of media multitasking on the executive function of Chinese adolescents.

This study followed 99 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 14.41, SD = 1.10; 42 boys and 57 girls) for one year using both behavioral (2-back, Stroop Color and Number-letter tasks) and self-reported (questionnaire) measures. The adolescents were categorized as either heavy/high media multitaskers (HMMs; 19 boys and 29 girls) or light/low media multitaskers (LMMs; 23 boys and 28 girls). They were tested at baseline, 6 months later and 12 months later.

The results indicated that the accuracy scores for all cognitive tasks differed with age, but the switch-cost in the shifting task and the self-reported measures of executive function did not. And there were consistent differences between the HMMs and LMMs in the self-reported measures and 2-back accuracy. However, the interaction effect was found only in shifting ability, indicating a decline in the LMMs' self-reported problematic shifting behavior in daily life.

This study used behavioral and self-reported measures to confirm the longitudinal impact of media multitasking on executive function. The impact of media multitasking on executive function is more apparent in daily-life behavior than in cognitive task performance.