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The current study inspects pathways through which job crafting relates to the quality of employees' working lives. To date, this has been mostly done either by linking job crafting to individual job characteristics or by investigating its association with separate aspects of occupational well-being (such as work engagement), whereas empirical evidence about how it may affect one's overall work situation remains scarce.

To address this question, the authors conducted latent profile analyses based on selected job resources and job demands, which allowed the authors to derive distinct work environment patterns prevailing in a heterogeneous sample of 1,064 employees. Four patterns were identified denoting a passive, high-strain, low-strain and optimally balanced work environment types. The authors then tested the hypothesis that job crafting would relate to employees' odds of exposure to these patterns and that the latter would differentiate between high and low work engagement.

Approach job crafting was related to higher odds of being exposed to a favourably balanced work environment, and the reverse was true of avoidance crafting. Work engagement differed as a function of the quality of the work environment. Furthermore, the results suggested a potentially indirect link between approach job crafting and work engagement via exposure to different work environment types, whereas avoidance crafting related to lower work engagement only directly.

The findings contribute to theory testing and practice by providing a holistic representation of the work environment and then interlinking its features with employee proactivity and engagement.

The thin feminine body ideal in Western society has persisted, despite becoming less representative of the female population, with obesity rates consistently rising since the 1980s. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated obesity rates, due to curtailed interventions, restricted mobility/enforced physical inactivity and increased reliance on processed food with a longer shelf life due to social isolation (World Obesity Foundation, n.d.). Individuals with obesity report weight discrimination in a broad range of settings, including employment, where researchers have documented weight discrimination in relation to hiring, job assignment, promotion, remuneration and work stability. Weight discrimination may be worse for jobs involving public interaction, particularly for women, because heavier women do not conform to societal body ideals, leading to weight stigmatisation such as anti-fat attitudes and beliefs (e.g. negative stereotypes) and prejudice. This chapter presents a systematic literature review of studies that have examined weight discrimination against women with obesity in jobs involving public interaction, i.e. ‘customer-facing roles’.

To run a job guarantee public policy scheme, it is important to know the aspiration level or the reference point of labor, and accordingly, the labor hour and the wage sequence are to be prepared. The existing job guarantee schemes consider the same wage rates for all types of jobs. As a result, it is to identify the reference point. The present work aims to propose a job guarantee scheme where different types of jobs have different wage rates. The paper explains the choice problem between labor and leisure at different wage rates and proposes complete computational tools to be incorporated into the job guarantee schemes. The paper also gives a mechanism to prepare the list of jobs and corresponding wage rates by maintaining a balance between labor and leisure, where productive activities measure labor hours and labor welfare measures leisure hours. Lastly, the paper provides the analytical tools to interpret the ex-post data of the job guarantee public policy schemes.

The paper has been written based on the Coordination Game and its Welfare Implications in the job guarantee public policy schemes.

The present paper gives an initial work to measure the choice between labor and leisure for the different wage rates practically. This will help in getting the equilibrium strategies, namely, the combination of the labor hour and the wage rate between the policymaker and the labor. This method will help to implement the job guarantee schemes. For example, to run successfully the Basic Income policy, the basic income calculation should give due care; otherwise, there will be a downward trend in the basic income and the welfare of labor will be reduced, because the labor would have to supply excess labor to meet the target income.

This paper derives theories and explains how the equilibrium in this coordination game can be achieved. The paper explains how the policy of the job guarantee schemes can be practiced practically. In the MGNREGA scheme, the public institution declares different categories of jobs with different wage rates. The categories have been classified with respect to the hours required to complete the job. Therefore, the public institution declares different lists or a sequence of pairs of labor hours and wage rates. Moreover, the list is stochastic, because the list can be changed by the inclusion of an offer from the market as well. The labor has to select from the list. The challenge on the part of the public institution is to prepare the list in such a way so that the inclusion of the market offers will not distort the equilibrium of the coordination game. An important method has been proposed here to analyze the ex-post data of job offers so that the preparation of the future sequence of the job offers can be prepared with due care. One objective of the policymaker here is to make a list of job offers in such a way so that the labor supply will be converging to a point and that will not deviate if the wage rate increases further. This objective will make a balance of the distribution of funds between the existing registered labor and the new entrants into the job guarantee schemes.

The paper investigates the effects of individual employees' empowerment on different forms of job satisfaction in British workplaces while controlling for the presence of job demands and whether these effects depend on the presence of an equality plan in the workplace. The demand-control model that the authors test proposes that imbalances between the demands placed on employees and the control they have in their job negatively affect employee well-being and health. Control may also be strengthened, and demands mitigated, by effective equality policies. This study looks at nine forms of job satisfaction and examines the individual effects of job demands, job control, the interaction of control and demands and their joint effects with equality plans.

The study uses matched employee–employer British data from the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). The authors conduct principal component analysis (PCA) and logit estimations and estimate a recursive simultaneous bivariate probit model.

Employee empowerment, or job control, is a key predictor of job satisfaction, and job demands are negatively associated with various aspects of job satisfaction. The presence of equality plans strengthens the positive effects of job control and mitigates the detrimental effects of job demands. Consistent with the demand-control model, employees are more likely to be satisfied in low strain jobs (jobs with low demands and high control) than in high strain jobs (jobs with high demands and low control). Employees in passive jobs (jobs with low demand and low control) on the other hand are less likely to be satisfied with achievement and influence than employees in low strain job.

Much of the empirical literature has focused on collective empowerment practices and none has tested the demand-control model. This paper adds to the literature on employee empowerment practices with a focus on individualised job control and the way its effects interact with equality plans. In the process, the authors provide novel and rigorous empirical evidence on an extended version of the demand-control model.

The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of selected characteristics of jobseekers on employers’ decisions regarding potential hires (direct and probabilistic signals). The main focus of the study is to test the impact of jobseekers’ participation in selected active labour market programmes on employers’ hiring decisions for three positions: unskilled worker, skilled worker and administrative employee. Other characteristics tested include age, gender, presence of children in the household, state of health, experience of short- and long-term unemployment and indebtedness.

This study analyses data from a representative survey of employers with five or more employees in the Czech Republic. The survey was conducted in December 2020 using stratified random sampling, combining online questionnaires and personal interviews. The study includes 1,040 employers and uses the factorial survey experiment (FSE) design.

The results of the FSE suggest that the perceived positive impact of completing one of the activation programmes depends on the position for which the candidate is being recruited. While for the unskilled job category, the completion of any of the tested schemes (training, subsidised jobs or public works) had a positive effect; for the skilled job category, only the training and subsidised jobs schemes had a positive effect; and for the administrative job category, public works programme even had a negative effect.

A somewhat limiting factor in the context of this study seems to be the definitions of the positions tested (unskilled and skilled workers and administrative staff). The decision-making of the respondents was somewhat restricted by such broadly defined categories. Typically, studies with FSE designs have a focus on a specific sector of the economy, which allows for a better definition of the positions or jobs under test. The relationship between position and the impact of individual characteristics is clearly a matter for further research.

The results of the study confirm that completion of the activation programme, as well as other candidate characteristics, constitute differentiating signals for employers that influence their hiring decisions. At the same time, there is evidence that the training programme and the subsidised jobs programme are effective in terms of increasing participants’ chances of employment.

The demand side should be included in the evaluation of activation policies. The design of the FSE provides an appropriate way to test the impact of activation measures on the decision-making of employers.

Many low-income students are unable to participate in internship programs because they lack financial resources to pay for the cost of housing and relocating to the internship site. This paper examines the types of benefits or supports related to housing and relocation that employers are providing to paid interns.

This paper uses content analysis to examine the types of supports included in job advertisements posted on Handshake, the largest early career networking platform in the US.

During the period studied, less than 11% of internships advertised indicated that the employer was willing to provide housing or relocation support, only 107 employers across the US. Only 53 employers were willing to provide free company-sponsored housing. Internships offering support are clustered in the fields of business, engineering and research, providing almost no internships for students in other fields.

Given the high cost of housing, if a student does not have access to considerable financial resources, they are unlikely to participate in an internship or will be limited to a position in their commutable area. To level the playing field among all students, employers need to offer free or subsidized company-sponsored housing to student interns. While some employers do offer support, the number of students needing support far exceeds the number of internships available.

While there is information on what students identify as barriers, there is no accurate picture of employer supports available to mitigate these barriers. This exploratory analysis is the first to examine the benefits and supports employers are providing to paid interns.

Although building information modeling (BIM) has brought competitive advantages and many new jobs, the BIM-related job market is still confusing in China, which will undermine the adoption of BIM. This paper aims to show what kinds of BIM-related jobs are there in China, what employers require and whether all BIM engineers are the same kind.

A text mining approach, structural topic model, was used to process the job descriptions of 1,221 BIM-related online job advertisements in China, followed by a cluster analysis based on it.

First, 10 topics of requirements with the impact of experience and educational background to them were found, namely, rendering software, international project, design, management, personal quality, experience, modeling, relation and certificate. Then, six types were clustered, namely, BIM modeler, BIM application engineer, BIM consultant, BIM manager, BIM developer and BIM designer. Finally, different kinds of BIM engineers proved this title was an expediency leading to confusion.

This paper can provide a clear and insightful look into the confusing and unheeded BIM-related job market in China and might help to cope with the abuse of job titles. It could also benefit both employers and candidates in their recruitment for better matching.

Although research on job insecurity (JI) and its relationship with employee performance has increased in recent years, results are mixed and inconclusive. The objectives of this paper are to explore 1) the conceptualizations of JI, 2) the relationship between JI and different performance dimensions, 3) the theoretical perspectives used to explain the JI–performance relationship and 4) the mechanisms and contextual boundaries that affect the JI–performance relationship.

Following the PRISMA guidelines, the authors systematically searched for peer-reviewed empirical studies published before July 2021 in Web of Science and Scopus. The authors analyzed 81 empirical studies published on the conceptualization of job insecurity, its relationship with employee performance, and what mechanisms and contingency factors are studied. The authors used thematic analysis to analyze the articles.

Results of this review show that the quantitative cognitive dimension is dominant in extant JI literature. Furthermore, in-role performance and OCB were most often investigated in relation to the four dimensions of job insecurity, drawing from a range of theoretical perspectives to explain this relationship. Moreover, a variety of mechanisms and contextual factors on individual, individual work-related, individual-level attitudes and job-level characteristics have found to play a role in this relationship.

This study has a number of limitations. The first pertains to the exclusion of articles in languages other than English and non-peer reviewed papers. It is possible that the search strategy used may not have identified other studies that may have met the established criteria in order to be included in our research. However, this method was chosen to guarantee the quality of the included articles in this study and in line with previous meta-analyses and literature reviews (De Witte et al., 2016; Sverke et al., 2019). Second, one selection criteria focused on how performance was assessed in the studies incorporated in this literature review. The authors excluded studies that addressed performance from the perspective of the organization (i.e. studies that measured performance at the organizational level). The authors herewith might have excluded studies that focused on one or multiple job insecurity constructs, but the authors herewith included studies that were comparable in terms of performance indicator outcomes. Future studies could expand the search by investigating, as a next step, the impact on organizational performance. Finally, since the focus of this literature review was on the relationship between job insecurity and performance indicators, including the mechanisms and boundary conditions that affect this relationship, the authors did not include focus on how job insecurity can be influenced (Shoss, 2017), and herewith lack information on the predictors side of job insecurity. However, by narrowing the authors focus to mediators and moderators, the authors were able to come up with an extensive list of factors that impact the job insecurity–performance relationship and herewith provide fruitful areas for future research. Future studies could expand these findings by providing an overview of predictors of different job insecurity constructs, to see whether there are potential different predictors of job insecurity conceptualizations (Jiang and Lavaysse, 2018).

The study review contributes to the systematization of the current empirical evidence on this area of research. This is especially important and enables room to take an additional step toward understanding the consequences of job insecurity on performance. Specifically, it is important for organizations and policymakers to be aware of the different conceptualizations of job insecurity that exist and how they impact employee performance. In addition, an overview of potential mechanisms and boundary conditions that affect this relationship provides insights as to how organizations can intervene to affect reactions to job insecurity.

The study findings are relevant and may be of interest to decision makers in organizations and national authorities that must have information on quality concerning the effects of job insecurity on performance.

Based on these findings the authors show the impact of the different conceptualizations of job insecurity and how they affect job performance. In addition, the authors provide recommendations for future studies how to better handle the integration of different conceptualizations and measures of job insecurity and its different approaches.

The purpose of this study is to verify that if applications categories are segmented and resources are allocated based on their specific category, how effective scheduling can be done?.

This paper proposes a scheduling framework for IoT application jobs, based upon the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, which works at coarse grained level to select a fog environment and at fine grained level to select a fog node. Fog environment is chosen considering availability, physical distance, latency and throughput. At fine grained (node selection) level, a probability triad (C, M, G) is anticipated using Naïve Bayes algorithm which provides probability of newly submitted application job to fall in either of the categories Compute (C) intensive, Memory (M) intensive and GPU (G) intensive.

Experiment results showed that the proposed framework performed better than traditional cloud and fog computing paradigms.

The proposed framework combines types of applications and computation capabilities of Fog computing environment, which is not carried out to the best of knowledge of authors.

Purpose: Students’ transition from education to employment is influenced by factors like the length and calibre of their education, demography, labour market conditions, and the general state of the economy. Regardless of the economy, education systems should seek to ensure that students have the skills required for the labour market. This will help them better transition from school to work. This study examines the work skills that companies require for entry-level positions in Romania.

Need for Study: Previously, text analysis studies treated the job market only for the IT industry in Romania. To understand the demand-side opportunities and restrictions, assessing the employment opportunities for young people in the Romanian labour market is necessary.

Methodology: A text mining approach from 842 unstructured data of the existing job positions in October 2022 for fresh graduates or students is used in this chapter. The study uses data from LinkedIn job descriptions in the Romanian job market. The methodology involved is focused on text retrieval, text-pre-processing, word cloud analysis, network analysis, and topic modelling.

Findings: The empirical findings revealed that the most common words in job descriptions are experience, team, work, skills, development, knowledge, support, data, business, and software. The correlation network revealed that the most correlated pairs of words are gender–sexual–race–religion–origin–diversity–age–identity–orientation–colour–equal–marital.

Practical Implications: This study looked at the job market and used text analytics to extract a space of skill and qualification dimensions from job announcements relevant to the Romanian employment market instead of depending on subjective knowledge.