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The purpose of this paper is to examine the causes and consequences of job stress in Malaysia and make a comparison between Western and Eastern perspectives.

A grounded theory approach was used to develop a lay representation of Malay people's descriptions of their experiences at work, including job stress. Interviews were conducted with 48 employees in Malaysia, using six semi‐structured interview questions adopted from Kinman and Jones and translated into the Malay language, as a guide.

Although most respondents perceived that individual factors play an important role in work stress, organizational factors seemed to be the dominant factor identified that contributes to work stress. Respondents also perceived the individual as key to stress reduction rather than management interventions. A new concept emerged in this study that was related to external factors impinging on work (such as globalization).

Organizations should formulate strategies to prevent job stress among employees. They must also be alert to the impact of external factors that are now common in the Malay workplace.

Research of job stress in employees in Eastern cultures is rare. The paper provides in‐depth preliminary research which will lead to further investigations of job stress in Eastern workplace settings.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on home care organization employees, and examine how the interaction between job demands (emotional demands, patient harassment, workload, and physical demands) and job resources (autonomy, social support, performance feedback, and opportunities for professional development) affect the core dimensions of burnout (exhaustion and cynicism).

Hypotheses were tested with a cross‐sectional design among 747 Dutch employees from two home care organizations.

Results of moderated structural equation modeling analyses partially supported the hypotheses as 21 out of 32 (66 per cent) possible two‐way interactions were significant and in the expected direction. In addition, job resources were stronger buffers of the relationship between emotional demands/patient harassment and burnout, than of the relationship between workload/physical demands and burnout.

The conclusions may be particularly useful for occupational settings, including home care organizations, where reducing or redesigning demands is difficult.

The findings confirm the JD‐R model by showing that several job resources can buffer the relationship between job demands and burnout.

The central aim of this study is to incorporate two core personality factors (neuroticism and extroversion) in the job demands‐resources (JD‐R) model.

It was hypothesized that neuroticism would be most strongly related to the health impairment process, and that extroversion would be most strongly related to the motivational process. The hypotheses were tested in a sample of 3,753 Australian academics, who filled out a questionnaire including job demands and resources, personality, health indicators, and commitment.

Results were generally in line with predictions. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that job demands predicted health impairment, while job resources predicted organizational commitment. Also, neuroticism predicted health impairment, both directly and indirectly through its effect on job demands, while extroversion predicted organizational commitment, both directly and indirectly through its effect on job resources.

These findings demonstrate the capacity of the JD‐R model to integrate work environment and individual perspectives within a single model of occupational wellbeing.

The study shows that working conditions are related to health and commitment, also after controlling for personality. This suggests that workplace interventions can be used to take care of employee wellbeing.

The paper contributes to the literature by integrating personality in the JD‐R model, and shows how an expanded model explains employee wellbeing.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of both directions of work‐family conflict (WFC), work interference with family (WIF) and family interference with work (FIW) in an Eastern culture. Findings are compared with those of 14 other Western studies and the relationships among WIF, FIW and job, family, community and life satisfaction are explored.

This study is conducted in Malaysia, a country with Islam as the official religion. Data are obtained from 506 employees in three public and three private sector organizations. Questionnaires are distributed via human resource managers.

Results show that similar to Western studies, WIF scores are higher than FIW scores. Malaysians are significantly lower on WIF than Westerners. Nevertheless, Malaysians score significantly higher on FIW than all Western samples. Within the Malaysian sample, FIW also has a stronger negative relationship with all facets of satisfaction and WIF has a positive relationship with family satisfaction.

Cross‐sectional data are presented which could result in common method bias.

Organizations can assist in minimizing WIF and FIW by providing family‐friendly policies and parenting related programmes. The importance of family in an individual's life in Eastern cultures is different than in Western cultures. Therefore multi‐national companies operating in Eastern settings would be well‐advised to take cultural aspects such as collectivism into consideration.

The study provides insights into Eastern experiences of WIF and FIW compared with Western experiences. The study expands previous studies by measuring both directions of WFC and employing a heterogeneous sample (e.g. not just female, those married, those with children).

This paper aims to raise some important questions for cross‐cultural research on occupational stress and well‐being and sets the stage for the five papers in the special issue.

This paper reviews some previous literature on cross‐cultural understanding of occupational stress and well‐being, why such research is difficult to undertake, and summarizes the five original manuscripts that comprise this special issue.

Manuscripts in this special issue represent authors from several countries and report data collected from over a dozen countries. Some contributions attempt to replicate previous North American and European research findings in other countries while others undertake comparative studies of two or more countries.

It is important to undertake more cross‐cultural comparative research of the effects of occupational stress and well‐being to determine whether any boundary conditions exist for previous results based in North American and European samples. In addition, future research should include assessments of some national culture values.

During the past decade, there has been increased attention into bullying behaviours in workplaces. Research to date has varied in design, the definition of what constitutes bullying behaviour, as well as the methods used to collect data and measure bullying incidence and prevalence. Nonetheless, studies demonstrate that bullying is a significant issue, which warrants an increased research focus to develop greater understanding of the concept, its effects and implications in, and for, the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to focus on capturing a range of international and Australian literature regarding workplace bullying behaviours in a health context from a management perspective. As a result, this paper identified the gaps in the literature when expanded specifically to an Australian health context.

The purpose of this review is to summarise the existing literature, both internationally and in Australia which examines workplace bullying behaviours in a health context from a management perspective. This describes the review of the literature on workplace bullying in a health context undertaken from January to April 2014. The “Preferred Reporting Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” method was used to structure the review, which covered a wide range of literature from databases including MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and InformIT, as well as reports, and grey literature.

The review included 62 studies that met the inclusion criteria and reported either: factors contributing to workplace bullying, at least one significant example of workplace bullying behaviour or the impact of workplace bullying behaviours in a health context.

There is limited data on workplace bullying behaviours in an Australian health context. The literature supports there is value in future research to develop consistent definitions, policies, procedures and frameworks, which could help to prevent or address workplace bullying behaviours based on work being undertaken internationally.