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Social welfare work contains elements that may be difficult for employees to put out of their minds when the working day ends, which may affect the recovery. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the length of recovery in relation to different work characteristics and to two types of welfare work.

All 1,365 employees, excluding managers, of two municipality administrations were invited to a survey study. Of these, 673 (49 percent) responded. After adjusting for partial missing, the effective sample included 580 employees (43 percent). Retrospective ratings of four recovery windows were analyzed: recovery after one night’s sleep, weekends, shorter holidays and vacations.

Employees with a university education were less recovered than those with a shorter education. For those with a university education, the long arm of the job mainly involved failures regarding qualitative job demands (task difficulty). For those with a shorter education, quantitative job demands (too much to do) were most prominent for their prolonged recovery. Feedback from managers had consistent and positive associations with all four recovery windows among employees with a university education, but not among those with a shorter education for whom instead having too much to do and social support had significant spillover effects.

The identified differences may relate to employees with a university education having more problem-solving tasks, which may result in a higher need of work-related feedback but also in difficulties detaching from work. Thus, education and job characteristics have differential associations with self-rated recovery.

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate how employees' coping (problem, emotion and avoidance focused coping) may affect the reactions to job insecurity. Because the coping investigated in the present study addresses the stressor in different ways, the authors expect different moderating effects depending on the type of coping, which results in three different hypotheses.

A sample of 579 Swedish accountants was used to test these hypotheses via surveys.

The findings support the authors' assumptions that emotion focused coping weakened the relation of job insecurity and some of the outcomes. Both avoidance and problem focused coping strengthened the relation between job insecurity and some of the outcomes.

As this study utilizes cross-sectional data and only one occupational group, it is important to test the relations using longitudinal data with different occupational groups in future research.

From these results some practical conclusions can be drawn as to which coping forms might be more beneficial, which can be helpful for organizations in order to develop intervention programs.

This study expanded the understanding of coping in the context of job insecurity by testing different forms of coping and including a variety of important outcomes of job insecurity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a failed union merger attempt from a democratic perspective. Although it is estimated that a majority of planned union mergers are never completed, the existing literature is unsuccessful in explaining why it is so. Stressing the importance for merging unions to keep their members informed and participative in the merger process, we highlight two democratic aspects of merger implementation: information anchoring (i.e. the spreading of merger relevant information throughout the membership), and participatory union climate (i.e. the extent to which union leaders provide members with opportunities to participate in union activities and decision making). The act of voting for or against a merger proposal can be regarded as a manifestation of democratic aspects in the internal negotiation process. Thus, members' intention to vote for or against the merger proposal was also analyzed.

Questionnaires were sent to 1,000 members of each of the four participating unions. The survey investigated how many members knew of the merger negotiations, if they would have voted for or against the proposal, and also measured perceptions of the participatory union climate. Discrepancies between representatives and rank‐and‐file members were analyzed, with any significant differences between the two groups interpreted as indicative of the merger process lacking in internal democracy.

The results show that the merger plans were not sufficiently anchored among the membership and that there were significant differences between representatives and rank‐and‐file members in terms of merger plan awareness, vote intention, and perceptions of participatory union climate.

The present study is based on cross‐sectional data collected after the planned merger was rejected.

Few studies have investigated the internal merger negotiation process using an unsuccessful merger attempt as a study case. Also, the need for psychological approaches in IR has long been called for. The present study meets both of these criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a measure of job insecurity climate by: first, testing whether job insecurity climate and individual job insecurity are two separate constructs; and second, investigating the relative importance of individual job insecurity and job insecurity climate in predicting work-related and health-related outcomes.

Data were collected by questionnaires in a simple stratified random sample of 1,380 white-collar workers in Sweden. The response rate was 56 percent.

Confirmatory factor analyses showed that job insecurity climate was distinct from individual job insecurity. Four separate ridge regression analyses showed that qualitative job insecurity climate was a significant predictor of demands, work-family conflict, psychological distress, and poor self-rated health and that quantitative job insecurity climate predicted demands and work-family conflict.

The study is based on self-reports, which may involve common method bias. The cross-sectional study design limits the possibility to make causal inferences regarding the relationship between job insecurity climate and outcomes.

Future studies may consider measuring job insecurity climate in line with a referent-shift model. Work environment surveys in organizations that include measures of individual job insecurity and job insecurity climate can provide practitioners with a fuller picture of the psychosocial work environment.

The present study adds to previous research by introducing a new approach to measuring and conceptualizing job insecurity climate.

The purpose of this study is to introduce the concept of work‐related health attributions and investigate the effects of such perceptions as well as of health status on work‐related attitudes and turnover intentions.

Building on attribution theory, the study tests the assumption that negative work‐related health attributions impair employee work‐related attitudes and intentions, and moderate the relation between health status and work‐related attitudes. Cross‐sectional questionnaire data from 785 Swedish retail white‐collar workers are collected to test these assumptions by utilizing moderated regression analyses.

The results show that negative work‐related health attributions are related to lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment as well as higher levels of turnover intention, even after controlling for demographics, work climate variables, and mental distress. Further, the significant interaction between attributions and mental distress indicates that it makes a difference for employees' turnover intentions if an individual with high mental distress attributes it to work or not.

Work‐related health attributions should be taken into account in order to avoid impaired levels of employee work motivation. The measure introduced renders it possible to identify and help those individuals who believe that work affects their health negatively.

The results underscore the relevance of how individuals think their health is affected by their work, and contributes to the understanding of how health status relates to work‐related attitudes. Since the measure of work‐related health attributions is easily administered it is also valuable for practitioners working with employee health and attitudes.

The cost of selecting and training new police officers is high. However, previous research has provided limited guidance on how to select the best applicants. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the possibilities to select suitable applicants by using combinations of four common categories of selection methods, namely cognitive tests, personality inventories, physical tests, and rater-based methods (i.e. interviews).

Using a sample of Swedish police recruits (n=750) the authors performed hierarchical multiple regression analyses, predicting four criteria – performance, satisfaction, retention, and health – at three consecutive time points (after two years of academy training, after six months of field training, and after the first work year).

No group of selection methods consistently predicted all four criteria at the three time points. In most analyses more than one class of selection methods were statistically significant, but the findings did not support the use of rater-based methods.

Instead of the common praxis of using interviews, the findings suggest an alternative praxis. This involves using the remaining information from cognitive tests, personality inventories, and general fitness tests that had been used in earlier hurdles to screen out unsuitable applicants.

The study extends previous research by including several follow-ups, showing the value of combining different selection methods, and using alternative criteria of successful police recruitment (i.e. satisfaction, retention, and health).

New ownership types in health care of welfare states raise concerns regarding psychosocial work conditions including different control dimensions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how job demands, control over work and control within work (CWW) were related to job satisfaction in publicly administered, private non-profit and private for-profit hospitals.

Questionnaire data came from employees at three hospitals; a publicly administered (n=774), a private non-profit (n=1,481) and a private for-profit (n=694) hospital. Mean-level analyses and hierarchical regressions with multiple group tests were conducted.

Demands including workload were significantly lower at the publicly administered hospital while the control dimension CWW was significantly higher. Background factors and their associations with job satisfaction differed slightly between ownership types. Attitudes to privatization were not associated with job satisfaction within any ownership type. Overall, psychosocial work characteristics, including job demands and control, were significantly associated with job satisfaction while their interactions showed no consistent associations with job satisfaction. As for the strength of the associations, no consistent differences emerged between ownership types.

Using self-reports only, the associations between psychosocial work characteristics and job satisfaction seemed comparable across ownership types.

Associations between psychosocial work characteristics and job satisfaction seem comparable across ownership types. This may relate to societal demands on the structuring of costs, work and production efficiency being similar for all.

Contributions include researching different occupations and their attitudes to privatization and two control dimensions considered important for different ownership types.