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The literature advocates educational decision‐making processes that are either intuitive or systematic. While the two approaches seem to be incompatible, each has its merits. Intuitive thinking is considered to be holistic and creative, whereas the systematic approach has the advantages of a theoretical foundation and accuracy in data processing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a procedure that integrates both approaches.

A total of 383 academic teachers were asked to resolve a complex educational dilemma by means of three different decision‐making procedures: intuition; a precise systematic procedure utilizing DSS software; and the Simplified Decision Process (SDP) that integrates the intuitive and systematic techniques by breaking the dilemma down into simple secondary problems that can be processed intuitively without computer assistance.

The paper finds that 52 percent of the participants utilizing SDP arrived at decisions similar to the DSS‐mediated conclusions.

The paper sheds light on the differential thinking patterns of decision makers, and on the cognitive potential demonstrated when SDP is employed for simplification of complex educational decisions without the pitfalls of inexact and biased judgments.

This study examined differences in the Meaning of Work among three levels in Israeli organizations: employees, supervisors, and managers. The Meaning of Work has been conceptually defined in terms of five major domains: work centrality, societal norms about working, valued work outcomes, work goals, and work role identification. Autonomy emerged as the single most important variable to distinguish among organizational levels. Additional variables found to be related to people's position in the organization were job satisfaction, educational level, gender, and economic orientation. These findings were discussed and suggestions were made regarding implications for organizations.

Although employee helping behaviors have been widely examined by organizational and human resource management scholars, relatively little is known about the antecedents and consequences of help-seeking in the workplace. Seeking to fill this gap, I draw from the social and counseling psychology literatures, as well as from research in epidemiology and health sociology to first conceptualize the notion of employee help-seeking and then to identify the variables and mechanisms potentially driving such behavior in work organizations. My critical review of this literature suggests that the application of existing models of help-seeking may offer limited predictive utility when applied to the workplace unless help-seeking is conceived as the outcome of a multi-level process. That in mind, I propose a model of employee help-seeking that takes into account the potential direct and cross-level moderating effects of a variety of situational factors (e.g., the nature of the particular problem, organizational norms, support climate) that might have differential influences on help-seeking behavior depending on the particular phase of the help-seeking process examined. Following this, I focus on two sets of help-seeking outcomes, namely, the implications of employee help-seeking on individual and group performance, and the impact of help-seeking on employee well-being. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of some of the more critical issues in employee help-seeking that remain to be explored (e.g., the timing of help solicitation) as well as the methodological challenges likely to be faced by those seeking to engage in such exploration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the workaholism phenomenon.

Workaholism was defined as the individual's steady and considerable allocation of time to work, which is not derived from external necessities. Subsequently, it was measured as time invested in paid work, controlling for the financial needs for such an investment. Workaholism is examined from a cross‐national perspective through representative samples of the labor force in Belgium, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, and the USA

The Japanese worked more hours per week than all other nationalities. The following findings have remained stable across nations: respondents with a high level of work centrality worked more hours per week than did those with a low level of work centrality. Men worked more hours per week than women. Married women worked fewer hours per week than unmarried women, while married men worked more hours per week than unmarried men. Private‐sector employees worked more hours per week than public‐sector employees.

The cross‐national comparisons are based on aggregated self‐reported data obtained from individuals. However, the present study makes three major contributions: applying a non‐biased definition of workaholism, indicating that the existing conceptualizations of workaholism as an attitude have underestimated the importance of sex‐roles in shaping work patterns and behaviors, and findings of similarities as well as of differences across nations on the phenomenon of workaholism.

Developing awareness of cultural variations concerning workaholism.

This is perhaps the only empirical study so far making a cross‐national comparison of workaholism, which also has high external validity.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

Following Snir and Zohar workaholism was defined as the individual's steady and considerable allocation of time to work‐related activities and thoughts, which does not derive from external necessities. It was measured as time invested in work, with consideration of the financial needs for this investment. The effects of attitudinal and demographic variables on workaholism were examined through a representative sample of the Israeli labor force (n=942). Using independent‐samples t tests, the following findings were revealed: respondents with a high level of occupational satisfaction worked more hours per week than those with a low level of occupational satisfaction. The same can be stated of self‐employed versus salaried workers. On the other hand, people with a high level of family centrality worked few hours per week than those with a low level of family centrality. The same was revealed with people who defined an activity as work if “you do it at a certain time,” compared with those who did not define it thus. No significant difference in weekly work hours was found between respondents with a high level of leisure centrality and those with a low level of leisure centrality. A one‐way ANOVA revealed a significant effect for religiosity: secular people worked more hours per week than non‐secular people (religious and those with a loose contact with religion).

The purpose of this study is to examine how two different types of heavy work investment – work engagement and workaholism – are related to family satisfaction as reported by employees and their intimate partner.

In total, 398 Japanese couples completed self-reported questionnaires including the model variables. One year later, participants reported again on their family satisfaction. Structural equation modelling analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

As hypothesized, work engagement was positively related to work-family facilitation, which, in turn, predicted own and partner's family satisfaction, also one year later. In contrast, workaholism showed a positive relationship with work-family conflict, and had an indirect negative effect on own and partner's family satisfaction. The structural relationships between the variables from husbands to wives were similar to those from wives to husbands.

The use of a non-experimental design does not allow for definitive conclusions regarding causality.

The findings contribute to the work-family interface literature by showing how experiences built up at work can have a positive or negative impact on one's partner's family satisfaction. The study highlights a growing need to promote work engagement and discourage workaholism within organizations since engagement has positive and workaholism has negative implications for employees' private life.

This study clearly shows the differences between two important work experiences – work engagement and workaholism. Using the spillover-crossover model, the study sheds a new light on the process through which employee work engagement and workaholism influence one's partner at home.

The industry-wide adoption of a novel practice is often considered to be an institutional change. Although research on institutionalization has been accumulating, how and why embedded actors in the field become motivated to embrace change that remains sidelined. Viewing the introduction of a new human resource management practice, the recruitment of non-compulsory certified manpower, which is still in its infancy in the service sector of Taiwan, as a new institution, the purpose of this paper is to identify the distinct motives behind firms’ hiring decisions, and examine the extent to which such hiring decisions are contingent on institutional conditions and firm attributes.

The data used to test the hypotheses were drawn from a survey on service firms in Taiwan in the second half of 2011. Hypotheses were examined through moderated hierarchical regression analyses in a sample of 254 Taiwanese service firms across major sectors.

Integrating the resource dependency and social contagion views, the study contends that resource scarcity drives, or legitimacy enables, service firms to deviate from traditional hiring patterns and instead adopt new preferences toward certified manpower. The study not only shows that social factors should be incorporated into the diffusion of a new HR recruitment practice in the service sector, which is traditionally based upon economic considerations, but also sheds light on the context-dependent nature of the process of institutional innovation.

This study is an attempt not only to test a dual-theoretical model on the extent to which a service firm’s new hiring pattern is influenced by two distinct types of motivation, but also to evidence how an institutional innovation, in terms of the regime of service manpower certification, takes root and spreads in the field. The managerially discretional account of the resource dependence theory needs to be reconciled with social contagion theory, which highlights the influence of collective actions and so provides a better understanding of the diffusion of new HR recruitment practices in the service industry.