Search results

This chapter investigates the relationship between abusive supervision and employee well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, engagement) and ill-being (i.e., burnout, workaholism) and examines whether follower core self-evaluations (CSE) moderate this relationship.

The study uses cross-sectional survey data collected from 111 professional employees across a range of industry sectors.

Results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee well-being (i.e., engagement and job satisfaction) and positively related to employee ill-being, namely burnout. In addition, employees low in CSE are less engaged and less satisfied than employees high in CSE.

The study’s cross-sectional design limits the strength of its conclusions.

This chapter notes the ethical and legal obligations of organizations to provide a safe working environment and identifies the policies and procedures that will signal a commitment to employee well-being.

The study contributes to the leadership and well-being literatures by exploring the influence of abusive leaders on follower well-being and engagement. It also goes beyond merely identifying correlations between leadership style and follower well-being outcomes to investigate how leader and follower attributes can combine to influence these outcomes.

High turnover rates, delay and dissatisfaction among PhD students about the high efforts and low rewards are common problems in doctoral education. Research shows that many different factors are associated with the mental health crisis in graduate education, but these diverse aspects have not often been studied in relation to talent management and human resource management (HRM) strategies. Based on questionnaires and in-depth interviews, this chapter critically assesses the factors that influence doctoral students’ well-being, using as theoretical framework the self-determination theory, concerned with the social and other conditions that facilitate or hinder human well-being and flourishing, and the job demands–resources model, an occupational stress model that suggests strain is a response to imbalance between demands on the individual and the resources he or she has to deal with those demands. These theoretical frameworks help to explore the perceived job demands and resources, and motivations of a sample of 25 PhD students in the Netherlands, in order to recommend adequate talent management strategies to improve PhD work conditions at universities and reduce the increasing levels of ill-being. The study proposes a collegial model, focussing on the enjoyment of work, instead of the current managerial model, which focusses on strengthening knowledge and skills, and stimulating performance-oriented behaviour. A differentiated approach is needed, offering customized talent development for each PhD student in order to respond to his or her specific qualities, improving general well-being. This radical shift in talent management is needed to counter the mental health crisis in doctoral studies.

There is significant research describing how the development of neuroscience has affected the definition and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders, as well as brought about changes in research and care practices. Little is still known, however, about the ways in which these changes come about and on how they affect individuals’ – in particular, patients’ – experiences. In this chapter, I describe the changes imposed by neuroscientific practices not only on patients’ experience of their neurological or psychiatric disorder, but also on how they define themselves. In so doing, I draw on ethnographic research conducted among a neuroscientific team of a French hospital which has coordinated a research trial for the application of an experimental neurosurgical treatment – deep brain stimulation (DBS) – to patients suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder who are resistant to conventional treatments. This technology has been used since 1986 for treating various neurological and psychiatric disorders. My objective is to describe how the models of pathology conveyed by DBS and the experiences of patients suffering from a neurological or psychiatric disorder interact to constitute a form of personhood. I argue that, in certain situations, some of the patients attribute more significance to cerebrally orientated – or naturalistic – explanatory models and give a new value to their subjective experience: they ‘cerebralize’ and find inside the brain and its (dys)functions – or through an intervention on it – the source or the solution of a plurality of personal situations.

This chapter sheds light on how the internationalization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is jointly influenced by the ownership involvement of the state and other relational investors and by the home country’s institutional setting. It integrates international business literature and insights from the theory of corporate governance into a varieties of capitalism framework. Taking a configurational perspective, the interdependencies that link the SOE internationalization to the joint effects of particular combinations of actors and institutions are analyzed. As a result, it is argued that only a few home country–SOE governance configurations favor the expansion of SOEs abroad: (i) a configuration in which the state is a dominant owner capable of aligning the interests of any other private shareholder and the government is embedded in a proactive institutional context, so as to effectively orchestrate the internationalization process, (ii) a configuration in which, assuming the home country institutions markedly deficient in supporting interventions, relational co-owners are involved in SOE ownership and governance and have commitment, influential power, and competencies to equip the company with an effective strategy and competitive advantages to be exploited abroad. In all other configurations, the international performance of SOEs is worse, being undermined by institutional contexts that favor an inward-looking approach of the state and government, and/or by principal–principal agency problems.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

Research on coping at work has tended to adopt a between-person perspective, producing inconsistent findings on well-being outcomes. This focus on interindividual differences is in contrast to many theories that position coping as process, hence, as an intraindividual process that unfolds over time in response to job stressors and appraisals. The authors propose that focusing more on the within-person coping processes and integrating them with learning perspectives has the potential to advance our understanding. More specifically, coping behavior and well-being can be seen as an outcome of current and past learning processes. In this chapter, the authors discuss three mechanisms that explain how coping processes can produce positive versus negative effects on well-being, and how coping can be integrated into a learning framework to explain these pathways. First, the stress process entails encoding and evaluation of the situation and, as a consequence, deployment of suitable coping behavior. Over and above the efforts that have to be invested to understand the stressful situation, the coping behavior itself also requires time and energy resources. Second, coping behavior likely co-occurs with learning processes such as reflection, exploration, and exploitation. These learning processes require further time and cognitive resources. Third, although coping behaviors and their accompanying learning processes have the potential to drain resources at the within-person level, they can also build up interindividual coping resources such as a broader repertoire and coping flexibility. These between-level differences equip employees to deal with future stressors.

A small number of studies have suggested that parental divorce may manifest during adulthood as low-level emotional distress characterized by painful feelings such as sadness or self-blame. In light of the paucity of existing research on distress, the current study was designed to assess the presence of distress among a sample of young adults with divorced parents and to ascertain whether painful feelings accurately describe the primary ongoing consequences of parental divorce.

Semi-structured interviews with a sample of university students were conducted to investigate the concept of distress after parental divorce. Interview guides were designed to elicit responses about ways that parental divorce continues to influence the lives of young adults.

The study identified a set of ongoing stressors that do not overlap substantially with previous measures of post-divorce distress and that are often rooted in logistical difficulties. Three specific sources of distress are discussed: family coordination difficulties, struggles balancing the politics of parental expectations about time with their children, and perceptions of family fragmentation. These sources of distress frequently originate in the physical separation of parents’ households. Interviewees reported spending extra time and energy arranging family visits. Their choices about visiting parents frequently led to both feelings of guilt about the allocation of family time and a reduced sense of family cohesion. Ongoing logistical difficulties were much more commonly cited by young adults than painful feelings.

This qualitative investigation of distress suggests a significant re-orientation toward our understanding of the consequences of parental divorce is needed.

The research problem investigated in this paper addresses how love can intentionally be reflected in decision-making processes. The study is built on a theoretical and a practical foundation. The theoretical foundation comprises two parts with perspectives from theology and organizational theory. The practical foundation is derived from field research in the area of public administration and church leadership. Examples from field research indicate that trust and building of relationship will change adversarial behaviour into cooperative behaviour. Three network strategies are identified to make decision-making intentionally relational. The conceptual contribution is original, although the authors draw on existing insights from theology and public administration.