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Organizational approaches to racial inequality have provided contextual insight into a host of traditional stratification outcomes (e.g., hiring, earnings, authority). This chapter extends the organizational approach by drawing on the health-stress framework to explore how organizational context affects experiential and health-related outcomes – discrimination, social support, and psychological distress. Drawing on a sample of Black workers in the United States, we examine the relationship between workplace racial composition and psychological distress, as well as two potential mediators – racial discrimination and workplace social support. Our findings reveal that psychological distress is similar for Black workers in token (<25% Black coworkers), tilted other race (25–49.99% Black coworkers), and tilted same race (50–74.99% Black coworkers) job contexts. Workers in Black-dominated jobs (>75% Black coworkers), however, experience significantly less psychological distress than other compositional thresholds, net of individual, job, and workplace characteristics. This relationship is not explained by either racial discrimination experiences or supervisor and coworker social support. This finding suggests that researchers need to theorize and examine other protective factors stemming from coworker racial similarity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-researched dynamics of gender, workplace support, and perceived job demands in two different contexts, the United States and India.

The paper draws from two studies conducted in different contexts (the United States and India) via different methodological approaches (quantitative and qualitative, respectively). In Study I of this paper, data was collected using questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of adult workers in the United States. In Study II, interviews were conducted with 48 workers in India, selected using convenience sampling.

It was found that both in the United States and India, women perceived considerably greater job demands than men. In terms of workplace support, both the studies found that workplace culture and supervisors’ support influenced the perception of job demands, but the same was not true for coworkers’ support, which mainly helped in coping rather than actually reducing the perception of job demands.

The article contributes to research by concluding that job demands as a construct are not clearly segregated from gender demands or expectations, especially in the way women “perceive” it. Women construct job demands as “job-family” demands and workplace support as “job-family” support. Moreover, being a woman in the workplace, women feel the “burden” of gender.

It would be useful for organizations and policy makers to understand that women remain “conscious” of their gender in the workplace, and for them, the meaning of job demands and workplace support are “job-family” demands and “work-family” support, respectively.

This research intends to contribute toward thinking about gender relations and empowerment of people within organizational and work settings from a new light.

The present study provides an alternative way of thinking about gender, job demands, and workplace support. Its value underlies in the way it raises the voices of women workers.

Emerging research calls for the exploration of the potential negative side of organisational embeddedness. It is important to assess such negative aspects to fully understand the power of embeddedness, and how to address the potential undesirable effects on employees and organisations. The purpose of this paper is to answer this call by assessing the extent to which organisational embeddedness can negatively influence the perceived organisational support-workplace deviance and the organisational trust–deviance relationships.

A sample of 969 employees across the financial services sector in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad is used, with a two-wave research design. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the research relationships.

The findings support the propositions that organisational support and trust each negatively predicts workplace deviance and organisational embeddedness moderates each of these relationships in an undesirable way, such that, higher embeddedness weakens the desirable relationships between support, trust and deviance.

This study addresses a clear gap since limited studies explore the potential negative impact of organisational embeddedness on various work perceptions and behaviours. Embeddedness is largely considered a predictor of various desirable employee and organisational outcomes.

Based on organizational support theory, the aim of this paper is to examine the associations among perceived organizational support, successful aging in the workplace, job satisfaction, and the intentions to stay in organization among older workers.

In total, 242 employees, aged over 45 years, were recruited to participate in a study from May to September 2009.

Correlation showed that perceived organizational support and all five dimensions of successful aging in the workplace, (i.e. adaptability and health, positive relationship, occupational growth, personal security, and continued focus on goals), were significantly related to the intentions to stay in the organization. Structural equation modeling showed that perceived organizational support was positively related to successful aging in the workplace, and the latter is related to the intentions to stay, both directly and via the mediation of job satisfaction.

All data were self‐reported and collected at one time point. Thus, common method variance may be an issue and causal inferences are not warranted.

Successful aging in the workplace was significantly related to older workers' intentions to stay. Managers may provide a wide range of organizational support and enhance successful aging in the workplace for older workers.

This is the first study to empirically test the relations between successful aging in the workplace and intentions to stay among older workers. Implications of these findings, the limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this research is to more deeply understand how stress impacts the physical and mental health of employees and what management can do to attenuate the impact of stress on employee health. While the relationship between stress and employee health has received some empirical support in the literature (e.g. Cooper and Cartwright, 1994), less is known about workplace variables that may mitigate the negative effects of stress on health. This study aims to contribute to the literature by exploring three important workplace variables that could lessen the negative effects of stress on health.

A diverse group of employees from two healthcare organizations in the United States of America were surveyed about their work environments, job stress, mental health and physical health. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to investigate three unique workplace mitigators of the stress-health relationship.

Results support perceived organizational support, procedural justice and managerial perspective-taking as variables that serve to make individuals hardier to the health consequences of stressful work. However, different moderating processes seem to account for mental health (perceived organizational support) and physical health (perspective-taking), while procedural justice mitigates the effect of stress on both mental and physical health.

This study contributes to an enhanced understanding of the relationships between stress and mental and physical health in the workplace. In particular, three workplace factors associated with managerial practices were identified that organizations can utilize to protect employees from the negative health consequences of stressful work. These findings can assist managers and organizations who are interested in improving employee health.

The purpose of this study is to examine the differential association of three different workplace conflicts on employee-related outcomes, such as loneliness and well-being. Further, the study pursues to explore the perceived social support at the workplace as a conditional factor in the relation between different conflict types and employee loneliness.

The data were collected using a self-administered survey from 554 IT employees. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the study postulations.

The findings indicated that all three types of conflicts differently associate on both loneliness and well-being. Besides, it found that loneliness works as a mediator between conflict types and employee well-being. Further, perceived social support at the workplace moderates the relationship between different types of conflict, such as relationship, process, task conflicts and employee loneliness at work.

The study provides helpful directions to HR managers by providing a clear empirical understanding of the types of conflicts and its association on employee-related outcomes. Further, the study highlights the need for developing social support in an organisation during conflict episodes, to manage the adverse association of these conflicts on employee well-being and to restore employee well-being.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, a study has been conducted highlighting the differential association of workplace conflict and employee outcome and indicating its intervening mechanisms and conflict management conditions.

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to develop and test the relationship between workplace ostracism and the work-to-family conflict of a female employee. And, it assumes that the direct link between workplace ostracism and the work-to-family conflict of a female employee is moderated by perceived organizational support.

For this, this study used a survey method and multiple regression analyses with multi-source data from 226 Korean female employees.

The results suggest the following. First, workplace ostracism was positively associated with the work-to-family conflict of a female employee. Second, there was a stronger positive relationship between workplace ostracism and work-to-family conflict for female employees with low as opposed to those with high levels of perceived organizational support.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this study is the first one to examine the moderating effect of perceived organizational support on the relationship between workplace ostracism and the work-to-family conflict of a female employee.

Corporations balancing real estate holding (CRE) costs with recruitment-retention increasingly use activity-based flexible offices (AFO) to right-size environments for a mobile workforce. In this layout, workers have the option to select between a mix of unassigned workstations and alternative work settings (AWS) that support autonomy and mobility. The open layout encourages visibility and access to colleagues to enhance communication and collaboration. Nevertheless, studies into the effects of AFO environment attribute effects on worker needs and work outcome are sparse. Therefore, this study aims to focus on understanding how environmental features and psychological or job needs impact observed and perceived satisfaction, communication, collaboration and perceived productivity.

Data were collected in a case organization piloting an AFO before implementation across their CRE portfolio. A mixed-methods approach was used, including systematic observations, space syntax and surveys collecting information on the observed and perceived satisfaction, communication, collaboration and productivity.

Collaboration instances were higher in AWS, especially more visible and accessible open areas, supporting higher impromptu interactions and enhanced perceptions of productivity of team members and cross-team members. Privacy requirements linked to a greater demand for enclosed AWS. Team communication satisfaction depended on how easily teams were located. Almost half of the user teams clustered within workstation zones corresponding to territoriality needs. Job autonomy satisfaction depended on the availability of preferred workstation or AWS, enabling private, uninterrupted work that enhanced perceived productivity.

The case study findings indicated a correlation between the AFO environment and worker needs impacting workplace satisfaction, communication, collaboration and perceived productivity.

The findings form this case study indicated that a fit between the AFO environment and needs impacted workplace satisfaction, communication, collaboration and perceived productivity.

Perceived workplace support (PWS) is an employee’s perception of perceived organisational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS), perceived co-worker support (PCS) and perceived sufficient resource support (PSRS) to operate effectively. The purpose of this paper is to explore the development and validation of employee’s PWS instrument in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A total of 15 items of employees’ PWS instrument in SMEs were developed from the measurement base of earlier published research, concepts and theory. The instrument was applied to a cross-sectional study and data were collected as factor analyses to confirm and ascertain construct validity. Reliability was tested by measuring the internal consistency.

The instrument showed excellent reliability at 0.894. Four factors as “POS”, “PSS”, “PCS” and “PSRS” were extracted and confirmed from the confirmatory factor analysis.

PWS studies are often used by researchers, human resource departments and organisations to investigate the level of employee support. The instrument developed from this study will enable researchers, human resource departments and organisations to explore levels of POS, PSS, PCS and PSRS.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how various types of workplace social support from different support sources interact with occupational stressors to predict the psychological well‐being of university professors.

A total of 99 full‐time professors participated via an online or paper questionnaire.

Using moderated hierarchical multiple regressions, the results support the hypotheses that the effects of occupational stressors on professors’ psychological well‐being vary depending on the level of perceived workplace social support. However, although workplace social support buffered the effects of some occupational stressors (i.e. work overload), social support exacerbated the adverse effects of others (i.e. decision‐making ambiguity).

The dichotomous effects of social support suggest that the impact of social support may be moderated by another variable, such as perceived control over the stressor at hand. The present findings echo calls for further refinements to models of social support to examine how individuals’ situational appraisals shape the variable interactive effects of stressors and social support on individuals’ health and well‐being.

This study provides new insight into academic work stress by systematically examining the effects of workplace social support on professors’ work stress experience. This study also extends our current understanding of the relationships among stressors, strains, and social support by providing empirical evidence that workplace social support is neither consistently beneficial nor a unidimensional construct.