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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.

The purpose of this study was to explore school principals’ job crafting profiles during the prolonged COVID-19 crisis in 2021, and investigate profile differences regarding principals’ own perceived servant leadership, stress and work meaningfulness.

Using latent profile analysis (LPA), two job crafting profiles were identified: (1) active crafters (55%) and (2) average crafters (45%). By auxiliary measurement-error-weighted-method (BCH), we examined whether and how job crafting profiles differed in terms of servant leadership, stress and work meaningfulness.

Active crafters reported higher than the overall mean level of approach-oriented job crafting (increasing job resources and demands), whereas average crafters reported an overall mean level of approach-oriented job crafting. Avoidance-oriented job crafting by decreasing hindering job demands did not differentiate the two profiles. Active crafters reported significantly higher servant leadership behavior, stress and work meaningfulness than average crafters.

Study findings provide new knowledge and reflect the implications that the unprecedented pandemic had for education. This study contributes to the existing literature within the scholarship of job crafting through empirical research during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. For practitioners, these study findings reflect contextual constraints, organizational processes and culture, and leadership in workplaces.

In response to the increasing interest in entrepreneurs' well-being in both the entrepreneurship and management research fields, this study builds and tests a research model on the role of entrepreneurial passion for inventing in work engagement in the context of modern knowledge work. The research argument is built on the job demands–resources model, the most commonly used frame for measuring employee well-being in work and organization psychology. The research setting in this study compares digital entrepreneurs and freelancers with traditional knowledge workers and part-time platform workers in terms of passion and engagement.

Using a quantitative research design, the authors collected data from 349 highly specialized knowledge workers through anonymous questionnaires. The research hypotheses were tested with linear and logit models.

The results show that entrepreneurial passion is positively related to increased job demands and work engagement and that job demands can have a positive effect on work engagement in highly complex knowledge work.

The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by expanding the analysis of entrepreneurial passion outside the entrepreneurship context and into work engagement theory by adding passion for inventing as an important motivational factor in modern knowledge work. Extant literature on the consequences of work digitalization is still scarce, and this study provides insights into successful working on digital platforms.

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.

Based on the job demands–resources (JD-R) model, this study aims to answer a key research question, i.e. can the job characteristics (i.e. job demands and resources) affect intention to retire early? Additionally, a mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and organizational commitment on the relationships of job demands and job resources, respectively, with early retirement intentions has been explored in the study.

The data has been collected from survey of 450 employees from the banking sector in the state of Punjab (India). A structured questionnaire adapted from past literature has been used as survey instrument for the study. Partial least squares structural equation modelling has been applied in the study using latest version of SmartPLS (version 3.2.8) software.

Both job resources and job demands have a direct significant impact on early retirement intentions. Moreover, a significant partial mediation effect of emotional exhaustion and affective organizational commitment has also been found out on the relationship of job demands and job resources with early retirement intentions, respectively.

The study makes incremental contribution by highlighting the role of both deterrent and motivational factors that either instigate or discourage early retirement intentions among employees. It offers valuable insights for the organizations to use efforts for curtailing the excessive job demands that lead to emotional exhaustion and further result in early retirement intentions. Besides this, adequate job resources should be provided to the employees that lead to the development of affective organizational commitment, which further helps in sustaining the workforce until their actual retirement age.

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.

This paper aims to improve our understanding of performance measurement systems in the health and care sector, by focussing on employee reactions to core performance measurement practices. Targets and monitoring are hypothesised to be associated with employee perceptions of job control, supportive management and job demands, which in turn, are expected to be linked to employee-wellbeing and organisational commitment.

Matched employee workplace data are extracted from a nationally representative and publicly available survey. Structural equation models are estimated.

Performance measurement systems are neither perceived as resources nor additional demands. Setting many targets and a focus on productivity can lead to negative employee outcomes, since these positively correlate with perceptions of job demands, which negatively correlate with employee wellbeing. However, monitoring financial performance and monitoring employee performance may be helpful to managers, as these are positively associated with employee perceptions of job control and supportive management, which positively correlate with job satisfaction and organisational commitment and, negatively, with anxiety. Overall, common criticisms of performance measurement systems in healthcare are questioned.

Given the lack of consensus on how performance measurement systems can influence employee experiences and outcomes, this study combines theories that argue for performance measurement systems in managing operations with models developed by psychologists to describe how perceptions of the work conditions can affect employee attitude and wellbeing. A conceptual model is therefore developed and tested, and potential direct and indirect effects of performance measurement systems in the health sector are inferred.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the general and travel-specific job exhaustion of international business travelers (IBTs). The study employs a JD-R model to explain general and travel-specific job exhaustion (IBTExh) through international business travel as demand and leadership (LMX) as a resource buffering the demands of international business travel.

The study was conducted among Finnish service company employees who had taken at least one international business trip during the previous year. The data (N = 569), collected in 2015, were analyzed with path models.

The results suggest that a higher number of international business travel days is related to a higher level of job exhaustion, especially the exhaustion related to international business travel. Moreover, a high-quality LMX was found to be linked to lower levels of both types of exhaustion. Interestingly, for those IBTs' with a low-quality LMX, even a high number of long-haul international business travel days was not connected with IBTExh

The contribution of our study is threefold. First, this study contributes to JD-R theory and the ill-health process by focusing on a job-specific well-being indicator, IBTExh, in addition to general exhaustion. Second, specific job demands related to international business travel, particularly the duration of business travel spent in short-haul and long-haul destinations, contributes to the literature on global mobility. This study sheds light on the potential effects on IBTs of different types of business travel. Third, our study contributes to the leadership literature and the importance of acknowledging the context in which LMX occurs.

This study explores whether expatriation type (assigned expatriates (AEs) versus self-initiated expatriates (SIEs)) is linked to job exhaustion via possible differences in required efforts for their jobs and the rewards they gain from them, and/or the balance between efforts and rewards. Adopting effort–reward imbalance (ERI) and job demands/resources (JD-R) theories, the authors study the possible role of ERI as a mediator between expatriation type and job exhaustion.

An online survey was carried out in co-operation with two Finnish trade unions, providing representative data from 484 assigned and SIEs. The authors test this study’s hypotheses through latent structural equation modelling, and the analysis was conducted with Stata 17.0 software.

The results show that ERI between them are correlated with the job exhaustion of expatriates in general and there are no direct links between expatriation type and job exhaustion. The required effort from AEs was higher than that from SIEs though no difference was found for rewards, and the match between effort demands and rewards is less favourable for AEs than SIEs. AEs experienced higher job exhaustion than SIEs because of the higher effort demands and greater imbalance between efforts and rewards.

The study examines the work well-being of two types of expatriates and explores the underlying mechanisms that may explain why they may differ from each other.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore well-being experiences of international business travellers (IBTs) and contribute to our understanding of personal and job characteristics as antecedents of ill- or well-being.

The authors’ insights are based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 32 IBTs assigned to various destinations ranging from single-country travel to global operation. Participants in this study represent a range of traveller personas (regarding demographics, type of work, travel patterns). Thematic analysis is used to reveal new insights.

The authors’ analysis revealed trip-load (i.e. workload, control, organisational support) and intensity of travel (i.e. frequency, duration and quality) as job characteristics that sit on an energy stimulation continuum, driving work-related outcomes such as stress and burnout or health and well-being. Energy draining and boosting processes are moderated by cognitive flexibility and behavioural characteristics.

Findings represent a framework for managing IBT well-being via adjustments in job and travel characteristics, plus guidance for training and development to help IBTs self-manage.

The insights within this paper contribute to the conversation around how to enhance well-being for IBTs and frequent flyers. The study intends to offer direction as to which specific job, psychological and behavioural characteristics to focus on, introducing a novel framework for understanding and avoiding serious consequences associated with international mobility such as increased stress, burnout and ill-health.