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The aim of this paper is to present a study performed in conjunction with a branch of the Italian Public Italian Administration, the ISSP (Istituto Superiore di Studi Penitenziari – the Higher Institute of Penitentiary Studies). The study aimed to develop a Transfer of Training (ToT) evaluation methodology that would be both scientifically robust and practitioner-friendly, in an attempt to build a bridge between researchers and practitioners on the topic of ToT process evaluation.

The ToT evaluation system was built using an action research approach, taking into account workplace specifics and stakeholder needs. An “action research” (with the researchers involved throughout the ToT system building phases) and a “Focus Group” (to identify factors influencing ToT and to define items and grids for behavioural assessment) were used.

This study showed that the active engagement of stakeholders (trainees and their supervisors and colleagues) is useful in designing context-adapted tools for ToT evaluation and can help organizations improve the fit between their training activities and organizational goals.

The generalizability of the proposed ToT evaluation methodology is not guaranteed, and the procedure needs to be replicated and monitored in different organizational settings and cultures.

The organization decided to implement the ToT evaluation methodology developed during the course of the study for all future training programmes.

In this study, a ToT evaluation methodology was built that will be both scientifically robust and practitioner-friendly.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how disagreement between supervisors and their subordinates on leadership style (transformational and transactional) is related to employees’ outcomes, considering both work team characteristics (social support and conflict), and employees’ well-being (burnout, work engagement and poor health). The role played by the size of the work team is also analysed.

The sample is composed of 24 supervisors and 468 employees working in grocery stores of a large retail chain; 369 employees worked in 14 medium-size work teams and 99 employees worked in small-size work teams. Disagreement on leadership style between supervisors and their subordinates has been computed as the difference between the score reported by the supervisor and the score reported by the worker on the same items. Linear regression analyses, ANOVA and multilevel analyses have been computed.

Multilevel analyses results showed that, considering the disagreement on transformational and transactional leadership style and the work team size, only disagreement on the transformational leadership style is related to employees’ outcomes. Higher clustering effects, meaning that the between-groups variability was bigger than the variability within groups, have been found in conflict between members and burnout. Furthermore, results showed that work team size moderated the relationship between disagreement on transformational leadership style and burnout.

In order to enhance workers’ well-being and produce a better working climate it could be useful to focus on reducing the disagreement on leadership style between leaders and theirs subordinates.

Disagreement between supervisors and their subordinates, in order to understand the role played by leadership on work team characteristics and workers’ well-being, has rarely been studied before.

This paper aims to extend the stress‐buffering hypothesis of the demand‐control model. In addition to the control variable, it seeks to analyse the role of an opportunity for learning and development (L&D) in the workplace as a moderator variable between increased demands and need for recovery.

A questionnaire was administered to 199 employees (middle managers and clerical workers) at the district court of a region in North Italy during a period of training activities on stress management.

The results show that control and personal development perform a moderating role in the relationship between workload and the need for recovery by reducing exhaustion.

The first limitation concerns the cross‐sectional design of the study, which does not make it possible to establish the direction of the causal relations hypothesised. Moreover, further research will be necessary to identify organisational strategies able to develop the personal competence of workers and manage learning at work.

The understanding of the importance of learning at work has practical implications for strategies of human resources management. Organisations that encourage personal learning by workers at the same time modify themselves, so that they become better able to adapt to changes and external demands.

The paper shows that the importance attributed to learning opportunities has a role in promoting work satisfaction and, specifically, in enhancing the quality of work life.

This study aims to investigate school principals' well‐being by using the job demands‐resources (JD‐R) model as a theoretical framework. It aims at making a significant contribution to the development of this model by considering not only job demands and job resources, but also the role of personal resources and personal demands as predictors of work engagement and burnout. In particular, it was hypothesised that job demands may mediate the relationship between workaholism and burnout, whereas job resources may mediate the relationship between self‐efficacy and work engagement and burnout.

A survey study was conducted. In total, 224 school principals (67 percent women) during training activities completed a questionnaire.

The results of SEM analyses largely supported the hypotheses by showing that personal variables operate as initiators of health impairment and motivational processes.

The study lends support to the literature on individual resources that underlines the role that personal resources play in work engagement and burnout. It contributes to the JD‐R model by highlighting the role of personal demands (i.e. workaholism), which has an effect on the development of burnout in school principals.

The implications of these findings for interventions aimed at the promotion of school principals' well‐being are discussed.

This study advances the understanding of the role played by personal resources and personal demands in the job demands‐resources model. The value added is represented by the study of workaholism as personal demand, which in turn influences job demands and also the health impairment it triggers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether employees’ tendency to work excessive hours is motivated by the perception of a work environment that encourages overwork (overwork climate). Thus, this study introduces a self-report questionnaire aimed at assessing the perception of a psychological climate for overwork in the workplace.

In Study 1, the overwork climate scale (OWCS) was developed and evaluated using principal component analysis (n=395) and confirmatory factor analysis (n=396). In Study 2, the total sample (n=791) was used to explore the association of the overwork climate with opposite types of working hard (work engagement and workaholism).

Two overwork climate dimensions were distinguished, namely, overwork endorsement and lacking overwork rewards. The lack of overwork rewards was negatively associated with engagement, whereas workaholism showed a strong positive association with overwork endorsement. These relationships remained significant after controlling for the impact of psychological job demands.

The findings rely on self-report data and a cross-sectional design.

The perception of a work environment that encourages overwork but does not allocate additional compensation seems to foster workaholism. Moreover, the inadequacy of overwork rewards constitutes a lack of resources that negatively affect employees’ engagement.

This study represents one of the first attempts to develop a questionnaire aimed at assessing a psychological climate for overwork and to explore whether the perception of this type of climate may be significantly related to workaholism and work engagement.

The study seeks to investigate individual preference for early or late retirement. The aim is to determine the impact that variables at personal, work and organizational, and retirement‐related levels exert on such preference.

A questionnaire was submitted to 275 Italian workers, aged from 45 to 63. The “preferred” and “expected” retirement ages were measured, and a preference for retiring before or after the expected age was computed. The questionnaire included personal (e.g. age, income), work and organizational (e.g. work importance, job demands and control), and retirement‐related variables (level of information on pensions and attitudes to retirement). Hierarchical multiple regressions analyses were conducted to test the impact of such variables on the preference for early or late retirement.

The results show a significant preference for retiring on average three years before the expected age. The preference for postponing retirement is related to chronological age and perception of income adequacy, but also to work variables (work importance, firm policies supporting aged employees) and attitudes to retirement.

Political and organizational strategies concerning old employees should take into account the widespread preference for early retirement. It is, however, possible to encourage late retirement by developing interventions aiming to meliorate working conditions, organizational perceptions and retirement attitudes.

The difference between preferred and expected retirement age may be useful to identify employees preferring late retirement. It is also suggested that certain psychosocial factors are related to such preference. This knowledge is relevant for European policies encouraging employees to stay longer in the workforce.

This study aims to investigate the factors that can influence the transfer process of training in open skills, i.e. non-technical skills (NTS). Specifically, according to the model of the transfer process, the aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of both personal (e.g. self-efficacy) and work environment (e.g. safety leadership styles) antecedents of intention to transfer.

A total of 88 workers belonging to two different plants of the same chemical company filled in a questionnaire at the beginning (T1) and at the end (T2) of the training intervention. The majority of the sample was composed of men (95.5 per cent), with the mean age being 45.19 years old, and they had worked in the same company for an average of 17.2 years. Personal (self-efficacy) and organizational (transformational and passive leadership) factors were measured at T1, while intention to transfer was measured at T2. To investigate the combined effect of both personal and environmental characteristics on the transfer process, a moderation analysis was conducted following the Preacher and Hayes approach.

Results showed that all the antecedents investigated (except for passive leadership) impacted on the intention to transfer. Furthermore, high levels of self-efficacy combined with higher levels of transformational leadership resulted in higher levels of intention to transfer.

The sample size is quite small, and effective transfer of NTS has not been measured.

Results suggest that organizations should focus on fostering self-efficacy of the trainees and transformational leadership of the supervisors so as to facilitate the transfer process of NTS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has considered both individual and contextual characteristics to analyse the transfer process of NTS.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between two sub-constructs of heavy work investment: work engagement and workaholism.

The authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize and critically assess existing research on the relationship between these concepts.

The review revealed three major shortcomings of the extant literature: a dichotomous perspective, variations in measurements and the unaddressed complexity of the relationship.

Based on these findings, this study provides a discussion on the limitations and suggestions for future research on work engagement and workaholism, including using a person-centered approach.