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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between job characteristics that foster learning (experience with and demand for continuous learning at work, skills variety and autonomy) as potential predictors of self-reported outcomes, such as future learning ability and employee disengagement at work for a cohort of employees with no or very limited job change experience. Further consideration was given to employees’ experiences at work (meaningfulness and recognition at work) as potential mediators in this relationship between job characteristics and employee outcomes.

A cross-sectional design was applied. Participants (N = 284) were recruited from Northern Germany and asked to complete a paper-and-pencil survey. The results were subsequently analyzed using path models to examine direct and indirect effects associated with mediation.

Path model analysis indicated that job characteristics promoting learning at work are positive predictors of self-reported future learning ability and negative predictors of disengagement. Both meaningfulness and recognition predict future learning ability as well. However, these variables only operated as significant mediators in the relationship between job characteristics and employee disengagement (but not self-reported future learning ability).

The study outlines the importance of job characteristics and employee experience to understand employees’ beliefs about their learning ability and engagement at work. The findings highlight the importance of meaningfulness and recognition for employees, as well as the role of learning-supportive job characteristics.

The purpose of the study is to identify the soft skills and abilities that are crucial to success in the fields of operations management (OM) and supply chain management (SCM), using the O*NET database and the classification of a set of professional figures integrating values for task skills and abilities needed to operate successfully in these professions.

The study used the O*NET database to identify the soft skills and abilities required for success in OM and SCM industries. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the tasks required for the job roles and their characteristics in terms of abilities and soft skills. ANOVA analysis was used to validate the findings. The study aims to help companies define specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the job position.

As a result of the work, a set of soft skills and abilities was defined that allow, through correlation analysis, to explain a large number of activities required to work in the operations and SCM (OSCM) environment.

The work is inherently affected by the database used for the professional figures mapped and the scores that are attributed within O*NET to the analyzed elements.

The information resulting from this study can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for the roles of OM and SCM to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. The study aims to address the need to identify soft skills in the human sphere and determine which of them have the most significant impact on the OM and SCM professions.

The originality of this study lies in its approach to identify the set of soft skills and abilities that determine success in the OM and SCM industries. The study used the O*NET database to correlate the tasks required for specific job roles with their corresponding soft skills and abilities. Furthermore, the study used ANOVA analysis to validate the findings in other sectors mapped by the same database. The identified soft skills and abilities can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. In addressing the necessity for enhanced clarity in the domain of human factor, this study contributes to identifying key success factors. Subsequent research can further investigate their practical application within companies to formulate targeted growth strategies and make appropriate resource selections for vacant positions.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

In the literature there is limited knowledge about how to prepare students for a corporate entrepreneurial career. The purpose is therefore to develop a framework for understanding the role corporate development projects play in corporate entrepreneurship education, and to examine the potential role of the design of the project. The study defines a corporate development project as a project being part of an academic education to provide students with working experiences situated in an experiential learning process.

Based on work-integrated learning literature, the authors first develop a conceptual framework. Thereafter, they undertake a multiple case study using data from a Master's Program in Corporate Entrepreneurship. Starting from the conceptual framework, the authors employ deductive thematic analysis in order to analyze data and finally to develop an elaborated framework.

In the framework, the authors identify and label five categories of learning outcomes from the corporate development project. The framework helps understand the interplay between the different learning outcomes in students' learning process and shows how the design of the project shapes the learning process.

The framework can assist educators in designing and integrating the corporate development project as a key module within a corporate entrepreneurship academic program.

Based on the framework, the study develops the knowledge about the design of corporate entrepreneurship education. Future research should test the framework using data from other academic programs in corporate entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint some key variables that help shape the notion of older workers as a source of organizational wisdom capital.

Toward that end, the paper reviews a selective bibliography in order to support its arguments.

The evidence garnered throughout this paper – fundamentally through different lens of analysis – suggests that older workers may be considered as valuable assets. Furthermore, a sizeable number of members of this cohort continue, even in the latter stages of their careers, to be willing, well-equipped, and able to enhance, if properly utilized, companies to achieve other patterns of performance. Accordingly, it is advocated here that their knowledge and expertise constitutes an authentic source of organizational wisdom capital that deserves careful attention from organizations to maintain by means of suitable incentives and training.

This paper highlights other aspects that should not be disdained by organizations such as career-ending, work characteristics, and mastery-avoidance goals. Thus, companies that are interested in keeping older talents must be attuned to their wishes and aspirations, as well as being proactive by offering tailor-made job-products to them.

Given the trend of aging workforce, it is likely that organizations will be increasingly impacted by societal demands and public policies toward benefiting and respecting older talents.

This paper advocates that older workers are usually living memories of organizational life. Rather, they tend to keep in their minds those failures and successful ideas, projects, initiatives, and leaderships, which added or not value throughout their trajectories, as well as things that worked out or not. Fundamentally, they are able to provide answers to vital questions.

Past studies highlight a wide range of labour-related problems resulting in productivity loss in the construction industry of many developing countries. This study aims to quantify the impacts of labour-related factors on the productivity of construction operations in Sri Lankan building projects based on the viewpoint of engineers and construction managers for upgrading management/organisational policies and practices.

Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to identify the critical factors. Further, a series of industry consultative discussions were conducted through problem-based communication approaches to analyse the actions required.

A total of 21 factors were determined as critical, where skills shortage, labourers’ thinking abilities, work experience, knowledge in construction works and discipline were leading in the list. The statistical tests and the experts’ discussion outcomes ensured the validity and reliability of the study findings.

The study outcomes will contribute to finding out better ways for directing labour in the industry practices and revising organisational policies towards achieving higher productivity levels in construction operations. Though the study findings are limited to the Sri Lankan context, some findings may be tested in other developing countries in similar scenarios.

The study findings show why the identified factors are critical, how those influence construction practices and what actions need to be considered for addressing the industry’s productivity-related challenges. These can play a key role in upgrading the construction management practices and organisational policies to the near-future stages.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

The community-managed mental health sector needs to meet growing workforce demands. Yet, limited research has explored professional development opportunities and effective recruitment and retention strategies to support sector growth. One strategy is the use of a scholarship program to increase skills and training, via a University qualification. The purpose of this paper is to explore the progress of 19 mental health scholarship students and the impact of the scholarship on career intentions.

A mixed-methods approach comprising scholarship applications, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews was used to explore the students’ university experiences between February 2013 and January 2015. Course convenors of the Mental Health Program were interviewed. Data were collected across three time-points over 24 months, with each collection informing the next research phase. Data analysis involved thematic analysis and descriptive statistics.

Deeper knowledge, recognition of experience, new career pathways and improved work practice were benefits. Managing time and study, and work-life balance were the greatest challenges. Completing students displayed a range of internal attributes and accessed external supports. At the time of the study, the scholarships maintained student motivation and intention to work in the sector.

This research provides a deeper understanding of the demographics of the sector’s workforce. Insight into the attributes of completing students was obtained. The benefits realized and the challenges faced by the scholarship recipients will inform ongoing workforce development programs for the community-managed mental health sector.

This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of work-related well-being and its association with background variables, working conditions, work engagement, sense of coherence and burnout.

An electronic survey design was used. Data was collected between December 2015 and May 2016 with an instrument that included demographic questions and four internationally validated scales: the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, QPS Nordic 34+, the shortened Sense of Coherence scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Data was analysed using statistical methods.

A total of 155 nurse leaders completed the questionnaire, giving a 44% response rate. Most of them worked as nurse managers (89%). Participants’ work-related well-being scores ranged from 8 to 10. Statistically significant relationships were found between participants’ work-related well-being and their leadership skills, current position, sense of coherence and levels of burnout. In addition, there were statistically significant relationships between work-related well-being and all dimensions of working conditions.

This study underlines the fact that work-related well-being should not be evaluated based on a single factor. The participants’ perceived work-related well-being was high, although almost half of them reported always or often experiencing stress. The results suggest that nurse leaders may have resources such as good leadership and problem-solving skills, supportive working conditions and a high sense of coherence that prevent the experienced stress from adversely affecting their work-related well-being.

This study aims to develop a reliable and valid German/Deutsch version of the management standards indicator tool (MSIT-D) to broaden the pool of instruments available to practitioners and to support international collaborations regarding this workplace management issue.

The MSIT-D was translated from English to German, then its psychometric properties examined using data from British employees (n = 321) and German employees (n = 358). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were used to evaluate the internal structure and measurement invariance, and Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess internal consistency. Comparisons were made with the German language risk assessment tool Fragebogen zur Gefährdungsbeurteilung psychischer Belastungen (FGBU) to examine concurrent and incremental validity. Criterion validity was checked using established measures of work-related health.

The MSIT-D has an equivalent seven-factor structure (demands, control, managerial support, peer support, relationships, role and change) as the original; the analyses confirmed configural and metric measurement invariance with the original scale. The internal consistency of the scales ranged from 0.82 to 0.91. Regarding criterion validity, the MSIT-D was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints and negatively correlated with work engagement and workability. The analyses yielded meaningful correlations between the MSIT-D dimensions and the FGBU.

This is the first study to develop a German version of the MSIT and confirm metric measurement invariance. This will allow a comparison of MSIT scores with related constructs between German- and English-speaking samples. As a reliable and valid instrument for assessing work-related stressors, the outcome of this study presents opportunities for developing a unified surveillance system for work-related stress at the European level.