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The aim of the study was to understand the social and organisational factors in the workplace that shape managers' actions and attitudes towards workers with repeated short-term sickness absence.

This was a qualitative interview study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 managers at 15 different workplaces. The analysis had an abductive approach, using thematic analysis which focused on the latent content of managers attitudes towards employees with repeated short-term sickness absence.

Results indicate that the managers' views of people on short-term sick leave shift and move through several phases, which was analysed as they were acts in a play, where their given roles are prescribing which actions to take given the available resources for acting these parts. These acts depict an increasingly controlling attitude, where the sick leave is ultimately seen as an individual problem best managed by repressive tactics.

Role theory offers the possibility to analyse managers' attitudes and behaviours by considering the workplace and the manager-employee relationship as regulated by norms and organisational factors.

This paper aims to propose a novel way of using textual clustering as a feature selection method. It is applied to identify the most important keywords in the profile classification. The method is demonstrated through the problem of sick-leave promoters on Twitter.

Four machine learning classifiers were used on a total of 35,578 tweets posted on Twitter. The data were manually labeled into two categories: promoter and nonpromoter. Classification performance was compared when the proposed clustering feature selection approach and the standard feature selection were applied.

Radom forest achieved the highest accuracy of 95.91% higher than similar work compared. Furthermore, using clustering as a feature selection method improved the Sensitivity of the model from 73.83% to 98.79%. Sensitivity (recall) is the most important measure of classifier performance when detecting promoters’ accounts that have spam-like behavior.

The method applied is novel, more testing is needed in other datasets before generalizing its results.

The model applied can be used by Saudi authorities to report on the accounts that sell sick-leaves online.

The research is proposing a new way textual clustering can be used in feature selection.

To investigate the effects of payor–provider integration on the operational performance of health service provision. The research explores whether integration governs agency problems and tilts the incentives of diverse actors toward more systematic outcomes.

A two stage multimethod case study of occupational health services. A qualitative stage aimed to understand the reasons, mechanisms, and outcomes of payor–provider integration. A quantitative stage evaluated the performance of the integrated hospital against fee-for-service partner hospitals with a sample of 2,726 patients.

Payor–provider integration mitigates agency problems on multiple levels of the service system by complementing formal governance mechanisms with informal mechanisms. Compared to partner hospitals, the integrated hospital yielded 9% lower the total costs of occupational injuries achieved primarily by emphasizing conservative care and faster recovery.

Focuses on occupational health services in Finland. Provides initial evidence of the effects of payor–provider integration on the operational performance.

Vertical integration may provide systematic outcomes but requires mindful implementation of multiple mechanisms. Rigorous change management initiative is advised.

For patients, the research shows payor–provider integration of health services can be implemented in a manner that it reduces care costs while not compromising care quality and customer satisfaction.

This study provides a rare longitudinal analysis of payor–provider integration in health-care operations management. The study adds to the knowledge of operational performance improvement of health services.

This paper aims to analyze the determinants on job satisfaction in the Egyptian labor market, using Egypt’s Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), the wave of 2012.

Several determinants are analyzed including the wage level, the paid and sick leaves, the medical and social insurance, job stability among other individual and job characteristics. To this end, an ordered logit model is estimated to assess the significance of these different variables as determinants for job satisfaction.

The empirical findings indicate that wages and stability are major determinants for job satisfaction for the sample of wage workers. However, the results change according to gender; the hourly wage level affects men’s level of job satisfaction, while it does not affect that of females. Furthermore, the job satisfaction of women is determined more by the job characteristics rather than the monetary compensation.

The empirical findings shed light on the importance of formalizing jobs, as it has an effect on the level of job satisfaction of both women and men.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the determinants of job satisfaction for wage workers in Egypt using the ELMPS data.

This paper presents the findings of assessing the strategies required for improved work-life balance (WLB) of construction workers in Eswatini. This was done to improve the work-life relationship of construction workers and, in turn, improve the service delivery of the construction industry in the country.

The study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in the country. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, Mann–Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings revealed that the level of implementation of WLB initiatives in the Eswatini construction industry is still low. Following the attaining of several model fitness, the study found that the key strategies needed for effective WLB can be classified into four significant components, namely: (1) leave, (2) health and wellness, (3) work flexibility, and; (4) days off/shared work.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction participants as the adoption of the identified critical strategies can lead to the fulfilment of WLB of the construction workforce and by extension, the construction industry can benefit from better job performance.

This study is the first to assess the strategies needed for improved WLB of construction workers in Eswatini. Furthermore, the study offers a theoretical platform for future discourse on WLB in Eswatini, a country that has not gained significant attention in past WLB literature.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how migration affects the care of older people in Italy.

The paper is based on anthropological fieldwork by one of the authors. This consisted of in-depth interviews with 20 “badanti” (migrant caregivers), with relatives of older people and with social workers in the city of Verona, Italy. It further included extensive study of secondary materials on the topic of migrant care of older people.

Badanti, Italian families and older people find themselves locked in an uneasy contract: badanti because they are exploited and often unable to find better, formal employment; Italian families because they are aware that they fail to render their moral duty to their aged parents and grandparents; and older people because they feel neglected and maltreated by their children. Yet the three parties also rely on each other to make the best of a precarious situation. The relationship between badanti and Italian elderly highlights the contradictions within Italian politics on care and migration. This case study shows how migrants help Italian families to hold on to the tradition of family care for ageing parents.

The small sample of badanti and families provides a detailed and profound insight of the complexity of elder care in Italy but does not allow generalisation for developments in the country as a whole.

Policy makers should take notice of the indispensability of informal migrant care in present day Italy.

The originality of the paper lies in the in-depth conversations with badanti and in the way in which elderly care is contextualised in the Italian tradition of care and present day politics.

Despite many efforts within organizations toward business process orientation (BPO), research on real-world experiences remains in its infancy. The purpose of this paper is to redress the existing knowledge gap by analyzing a Swedish public housing company that has made notable effects regarding BPO and to explore lessons learned from the BPO journey (from 1998 to 2013).

The point of departure is principles in the BPO foundation, principles of successful BPM and effects in empirically based literature. The reconstruction of the narrative case study describes milestones and critical junctions, as well as effects based on quantitative and qualitative data.

Effects in BPO are demonstrated in terms of higher customer satisfaction, increased innovative ability, improved operational performance, higher employee satisfaction and, as a result of these, increased profitability. Theoretical constructs with implications for the theory building on BPO are suggested in a three-layer management framework – with capabilities and abilities emerging from the case study used as an illustrative example.

Lessons are learned regarding critical practices related to advancement in BPO. A strategy-building process based on eight design propositions is suggested to define the pre-conditions for BPO in an organization.

This is the first longitudinal case study to provide a comprehensive view and detailed insights of a BPO journey and top management performance toward a business process-oriented organization. Practitioners and BPM community get valuable insights into how the temporality and the context shape the BPO maturity process in terms of new organizational structure and roles during the journey.

This paper investigates the determinants of subjective well-being in Europe using the European Living, Working and COVID-19 (ELWC) Survey carried out by Eurofound (2021). Socio-demographics characteristics, employment status, measures of economic distress, inequality and work life balance are considered. Particular attention is paid to how quality of government support (QGS), that considers the dimensions of good governance such as integrity, fairness, reliability, responsiveness and influences subjective mental well-being (WHO-5) through the mediation of trust in other people and in institutions.

To this end, the authors estimate a moderated mediation model for analysing the indirect role of QGS on WHO-5 through institutional trust and trust in people.

The results support the hypothesis that the reduction in WHO-5 in the European population during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID--19), particularly marked in the 18–34 age group, is related to the perceived inadequacy of government interventions in managing economic and social uncertainty through supportive measures. This outcome is also due to reduced trust in institutions and other people, as both are significant mediators that reinforce the impact of public support on WHO-5.

Government should pay greater attention to this relationship amongst good governance, trust and mental health of citizens because a healthy human capital is a significant factor for the long-run economic growth, in a special way when the authors refer to the young workforce with a greater life expectancy.

In the literature, the role of trust as a mediator has been analysed in the relationship between individual economic situations and subjective well-being before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no studies have examined the role of perceived QGS on subjective mental well-being using the mediating and backing effects of trust in people and institutions.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0549.

Employees in elderly care have a high rate of sick leave. One explanation is that employees that experience a low level of meaning of work are at a higher risk for long-term sick leave. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This qualitative interview study aims to examine what employees in residential care facilities experience as the meaningful aspects of their work tasks. Interviews with 14 persons employed in residential care facilities were conducted.

The findings show that meaningful work tasks are about organizing the work to make use of the creativity and knowledge of the staff in order to support relations with older people.

The knowledge about what constitutes a healthy work environment is not as comprehensive as it is about what constitutes health risks. Furthermore, these issues have been considered by only a few qualitative studies about social care in the field of sick leave. Therefore, this qualitative interview study examines what employees in residential care facilities experience as meaningful aspects of their work tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the perspective of the management group regarding how they reasoned when deciding to engage in a model focussing on systematic work environment management, and what motives that influenced their decision.

This qualitative study with semi-structured interviews includes 18 representatives from the management groups in 18 Swedish municipalities. Data were analysed with a constant comparative method.

The participants described two aspects that were of importance when making the decision; establishing commitment before making the decision and establishing strategies to legitimise the decision. Furthermore, they expressed motives that were linked both to their individual expectations and wishes and to policies and facts in their organisations. The participants experienced the model as a valuable tool in their organisations to increase employee participation and to provide structured support to their first-line managers.

The managers’ motives were linked to individual expectations and external directives. These were often intertwined and influenced their decisions. When implementing this type of model, it is important to discuss decisions in a larger group to avoid building an organisational initiative on one person’s expectations. Furthermore, it is important to support the management’s work to establish commitment for the model in the municipal organisation.

This study adds to knowledge of the complexity of deciding and implementing models to support systematic work environment management in organisations.