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1 – 10 of 735Jorge de Andres-Sanchez, Angel Belzunegui-Eraso and Amaya Erro-Garcés
This paper aims to shed light on the perception of the consequences of implementing home teleworking (TW) for employers and employees amid the pandemic. By doing so, the research…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to shed light on the perception of the consequences of implementing home teleworking (TW) for employers and employees amid the pandemic. By doing so, the research analyzes the factors that explain employers' and employees' perceptions of home TW and the symmetry of their impact on its acceptance and rejection.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is done over the survey “Trends in the digital society during SARS-COV-2 crisis in Spain” by the Spanish “Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.” The explanatory variables were selected and classified using the well-known taxonomy of Baruch and Nicholson (i.e. individual factors, family/home, organizational and job-related).
Findings
The global judgment of HTW is positive, but factors such as gender, age, children in care or being an employer nuance that perception. While some factors, such as the attitude of employees toward information communication technologies (ICTs), perceived productivity or the distance from home to work, have a significant link with both positive and negative perceptions of HTW, other factors can only explain either positive or negative perceptions. Likewise, the authors observed that being female and having children on care had a detrimental influence on opinions about HTW.
Practical implications
A clearer regulation of TW is needed to prevent imbalances in rights and obligations between companies and employees. The authors also highlight the potentially favorable effects of telecommuting on mitigating depopulation in rural areas.
Originality/value
The authors have also measured not only the significance of assessed factors on the overall judgment of HTW for firms and workers but also whether these factors impact acceptance and resistance attitudes toward TW symmetrically.
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Lisa M. Young and Swapnil Rajendra Gavade
The purpose of this paper is to use the data analysis method of sentiment analysis to improve the understanding of a large data set of employee comments from an annual employee…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use the data analysis method of sentiment analysis to improve the understanding of a large data set of employee comments from an annual employee job satisfaction survey of a US hospitality organization.
Design/methodology/approach
Sentiment analysis is used to examine the employee comments by identifying meaningful patterns, frequently used words and emotions. The statistical computing language, R, uses the sentiment analysis process to scan each employee survey comment, compare the words with the predefined word dictionary and classify the employee comments into the appropriate emotion category.
Findings
Employee responses written in English and in Spanish are compared with significant differences identified between the two groups, triggering further investigation of the Spanish comments. Sentiment analysis was then conducted on the Spanish comments comparing two groups, front-of-house vs back-of-house employees and employees with male supervisors vs female supervisors. Results from the analysis of employee comments written in Spanish point to higher scores for job sadness and anger. The negative comments referred to desires for improved healthcare, requests for increased wages and frustration with difficult supervisor relationships. The findings from this study add to the growing body of literature that has begun to focus on the unique work experiences of Latino employees in the USA.
Originality/value
This is the first study to examine a large unstructured English and Spanish text database from a hospitality organization’s employee job satisfaction surveys using sentiment analysis. Applying this big data analytics process to advance new insights into the human capital aspects of hospitality management is intriguing to many researchers. The results of this study demonstrate an issue that needs to be further investigated particularly considering the hospitality industry’s employee demographics.
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Mª Ángeles Minguela-Recover, Consuelo López-Fernández, José Antonio López-Sánchez and Juan Manuel Picardo-García
This study aims to analyze the well-being experience of home care workers regardless of the service management model. It also aims to analyze their emotional experiences of their…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the well-being experience of home care workers regardless of the service management model. It also aims to analyze their emotional experiences of their activity and working conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study, using a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis, allows a combined analysis for a better understanding of the well-being experience of home care workers.
Findings
Home care workers experience intrinsic job satisfaction and demonstrate this with positive emotions regardless of their work situation.
Practical implications
Caring for the carer should be a business value. Measures oriented toward workers’ comfort generate greater happiness and commitment, which is automatically transferred to the quality of the care provided and reduces the psychosocial risks of their professional activity.
Social implications
Visualizing the social reality of an essential profession through research generates verifiable evidence that will help to improve the working conditions of home care workers in Spain.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this pioneering study in Spain introduces a greater understanding of how home care workers in Spain experience their work reality.
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Tamara Bueno Doral, María Lara and Noelia García‐Castillo
In the past months, the authors have experienced an exceptional global situation that especially affects the most vulnerable population. This paper aims to analyse the needs…
Abstract
Purpose
In the past months, the authors have experienced an exceptional global situation that especially affects the most vulnerable population. This paper aims to analyse the needs, strengths and good practices of the organisations that have continued to study with the migrant population during the health crisis. The main objective was to determine how the health, social and communication crisis has affected the management of the organisation itself, the communications with its direct beneficiaries, the communications with the rest of society, as well as the perception that organisations specialised in migration have about how media has communicated the information of COVID-19 and migrant population.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have circulated a questionnaire with open questions that covered the four dimensions previously mentioned.
Findings
The results show the analysis of the answers of 11 of the most important national and international organisations in the field of migration and refuge that operate in Spain.
Originality/value
Key issues have emerged related not only to the principal management concerns, internal digital communication, the adaptability of external communication and the major effort required to provide information about migration but also to innovative good practices. That other third sector organisations focussed on migration will be able to apply in the future and in other geographic areas.
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Javier Andrades, Domingo Martinez-Martinez and Manuel Larrán
Relying on institutional theory and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the different strategies adopted by Spanish public…
Abstract
Purpose
Relying on institutional theory and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the different strategies adopted by Spanish public universities to respond to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as a series of email-structured interviews with key personnel from universities, a qualitative analysis of sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university.
Findings
The findings reveal that Spanish public universities have responded to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting by adopting acquiescence, compromise, avoidance and defiance strategies. The variety of strategic responses adopted by Spanish public universities suggests that these organizations have not fully adhered to institutional pressures.
Practical implications
The results of this paper would be useful for practitioners since it tries to demonstrate whether universities, which are facing increasing institutional pressures and demands from stakeholders, have been developing sustainability reporting practices.
Social implications
Universities have a remarkable social impact that could be used to promote sustainability practices. This paper investigates how these organizations can contribute to sustainability reporting as they should reproduce social norms.
Originality/value
The sustainability reporting context is in a phase of change. This paper tries to contribute to the accounting research by analyzing the extent to which universities are engaged in sustainability reporting. Relying on these premises, Oliver’s (1991) framework might be an insightful theoretical perspective to examine the responses provided by universities to institutional pressures.
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Giovanni Amerigo Giuliani and Roberto Rizza
The article explores to what extent party politics has influenced the different trajectories in Spain and Italy in terms of gendered active social policies (ASPs) (i.e. ALMPs and…
Abstract
Purpose
The article explores to what extent party politics has influenced the different trajectories in Spain and Italy in terms of gendered active social policies (ASPs) (i.e. ALMPs and WLBPs). Second, it investigates how social and political modernization in the two countries has facilitated or hindered party competition on gendered ASPs.
Design/methodology/approach
To investigate to what extent parties support gendered ASPs, the article relies on an original content analysis of party manifestos issued during the 2010s national elections. A total of 1387 quasi-sentences have been coded. The results were then quantified to graphically show how positions differentiate across parties and countries.
Findings
The content analysis of party manifestos displays that party politics matters: gendered ASPs are backed in a very different way by the Spanish and Italian parties. While in Spain all political parties have strongly championed ALMPs and WLBPs, this is not the case for the Italian parties. The research has also stressed that the specific path of social and political modernization is an important intervening variable that alters positively or negatively parties' support for gendered ASPs.
Originality/value
The article contributes to widen theoretically and empirically the literature on ASPs in the Southern European countries. Theoretically, it questions the supposed homogeneity of the Southern social model and investigated the alleged bifurcation between Italy and Spain, focusing on those policies – ASPs – that constitute the foundations of the Southern model: familialism and dualization. Furthermore, this bifurcation was analyzed adopting a gender perspective, and exploring adherence to or departure from the Southern model. Third, the article focuses on the politics of ASPs demonstrating that inspecting the political arena can contribute to explain policy change.
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Laura Rienda, Lorena Ruiz-Fernández and Rosario Andreu
The harmonisation of university degrees at the European level leads us to believe that training needs are addressed in the same way in different countries. However, the inevitable…
Abstract
Purpose
The harmonisation of university degrees at the European level leads us to believe that training needs are addressed in the same way in different countries. However, the inevitable adaptation to the changing environment faced by companies requires a continuous adjustment between training and future needs, according to the sector. The aim of this paper is to compare two leading and culturally similar countries in the tourism sector in order to determine whether training is being provided homogeneously in tourism higher education and whether more specific training is desired to meet the needs of the sector in each country.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is part of the European Next Tourism Generation (NTG) Project, the first European partnership to foster a collaborative and productive relationship between the education system and the tourism industry. A mixed research study was conducted with the purpose of development, i.e. with the intention that the results of one method (qualitative) are used to assist the development of the other method (quantitative) and an exploratory sequential design. Both qualitative (29 interviews) and quantitative (509 tourism organisations) methods are used.
Findings
For a sector that has undergone significant changes in recent years, the results show the differences between countries around the current level of soft skills of employees, the level they will need to develop in the future and the gaps that those responsible for training future employees in the sector need to focus on for the 2030 horizon.
Practical implications
Several recommendations have emerged from this paper: to complement higher education, to achieve a better link between the business world and future workers; to provide much more incentives for international student mobility, which will allow students to develop intercultural soft skills before they enter the world of work, and to propose the creation of a social network to share, communicate and learn about resources specific to the tourism industry.
Originality/value
Since the Bologna Plan, higher education institutions have been tasked with preparing students for the world of work and developing the employability of graduates. The link between the professional world (companies) and the educational world (training centres) is a crucial factor in determining students' future skills and needs. When educational programmes respond to the needs of industry, the university can gain a competitive advantage. Therefore, some authors suggest the need for coordination and regular communication between business and training centres, thus improving the competitiveness of companies and reducing the gap that currently exists. In this paper, comparing two culturally similar countries with a recognised trajectory in the tourism sector, we will try to observe this gap and propose interesting options for the future of the sector.
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