Search results

As exposure to psychosocial hazard at work represents a substantial risk factor for employee health in many modern occupations, being able to accurately assess how employees cope with their working environment is crucial. The workplace is generally accepted as being a dynamic environment, therefore, consideration should be given to the interaction between employees and the acute environmental characteristics of their workplace. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of both acute demand and chronic work-related psychosocial hazard upon employees through ambulatory assessment of heart rate variability and blood pressure.

A within-subjects repeated measures design was used to investigate the relationship between exposure to work-related psychosocial hazard and ambulatory heart rate variability and blood pressure in a cohort of higher education employees. Additionally the effect of acute variation in perceived work-related demand was investigated.

Two dimensions of the Management Standards were found to demonstrate an association with heart rate variability; more hazardous levels of “demand” and “relationships” were associated with decreased standard deviation of the normal-to-normal interval. Significant changes in blood pressure and indices of heart rate variability were observed with increased acute demand.

This is the first attempt to combine the Health and Safety Management Standards Indicator Tool with physiological assessment of employees. The results provide evidence of associations between scores on the indicator tool and ambulatory heart rate variability as well as demonstrating that variation in acute perceived work-related demand is associated with alterations to autonomic and cardiovascular function. This has implications not only for employee health and workplace design but also for future studies employing ambulatory physiological monitoring.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to reveal the relationship between perceived bullying and the features of a favourable working environment; and second, to indicate bullying factors that especially worsen the working environment and working environment factors that contribute to the bullying experiences.

In Spring 2014, 864 staff members—including teachers, researchers, administrators, project workers and service staff—from nine Estonian universities answered an e-mail questionnaire.

It was revealed that “professional understating”, “unreasonable work-related demands” and “work-related malpractice” are forms of bullying that negatively affect the working atmosphere. “Appreciation”, “vertical trust”, “predictability” and “quality of leadership” are working environment factors that contribute to the experiences of bullying. Experiences of “professional understating” seem to reduce feelings related to all features of a favourable working atmosphere. A lack of “appreciation” appears to be a key environment feature that also plays a role in workplace bullying.

In Estonian universities, first, “professional understating” negatively affects the feelings of “appreciation”; in contrast, a lack of “appreciation” contributes to feelings of “professional understating”. Second, “unreasonable work-related demands” is a sign of a shortage of “vertical trust” and the opposite of “trust” between management and employees, which obviously decreases perceived “workload”. The present results can be applied in at least three contexts: cultural and institutional studies, leadership practices and personal work control.

The detailed examination showed that it is possible to reveal certain bullying factors that specifically affect certain environment factors and find out particular working environment features that contribute specifically to certain kinds of bullying.

Increased concern about the extensive use of information and communication technology (ICT) has led to widespread research on its effects on employees. This study aims to examine the effect of ICT use and demand on employee-related outcomes, particularly work-life balance, job satisfaction, personal burnout and intention to leave.

The developed model was tested using a survey questionnaire distributed among academics and administrative employees working in the higher education (HE) sector in Qatar. New statistical tools were adopted to analyze the study data (i.e. PLSpredict and partial least squares structural equation modeling for unobserved heterogeneity).

The results confirmed that ICT use affects ICT demand and ICT demand significantly influences employee-related outcomes.

The findings will help HE institutes to carefully examine the negative effect of ICT use and come up with practical ways to avoid such effects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the rare papers that inspect the negative effect of ICT use in the HE sector. Furthermore, it is the only paper inspecting such relationship in Gulf region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between perceived bullying, work engagement and work performance among Estonian academics. Specifically, it details what forms of bullying affect work engagement and performance. Moreover, the study explores the relationship between engagement and performance among bullied academics.

A total of 864 faculty members from nine Estonian universities participated in an e-mail survey in Spring 2014. Bullying was measured using the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R22), and work engagement was assessed using the nine-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Respondents’ perceived performance and productivity were measured on a ten-point rating scale. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the relationship between bullying, engagement and performance.

Perceived bullying – especially “professional understating” – decreased work engagement and work performance among Estonian academics. The decrease in performance preceded the decrease in engagement or vice versa. The decrease in engagement was followed by lowered performance.

A longitudinal study is needed to prove the specific one-way effect of (decreased) performance (because of perceived bullying) on engagement.

Preventing bullying and further increasing engagement and performance among Estonian academics requires getting out of policy of professional understating.

The authors need to determine why Estonian academics experience professional understating, which includes being ordered to perform tasks below one’s level of competence and having key areas of responsibility removed or replaced with more trivial or unpleasant tasks.

The present results prove that it is possible to differentiate between specific forms of bullying in a specific context and further reveal those factors specifically that affect work performance and work engagement. Among Estonian academics – revealed in this study – “professional understating” seems to be such a factor.

Whilst significant evidence of western work-life balance (WLB) challenges exists, studies that explore Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to explore how organisational culture in Nigerian medical organisations influences doctors’ WLB and examine the implications of supportive and unsupportive cultures on doctors’ WLB.

The paper uses qualitative data gleaned from semi-structured interviews of 60 medical doctors across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria in order to elicit WLB challenges within the context of organisational culture.

The findings show that organisational culture strongly influences employees’ abilities to use WLB policies. Unsupportive culture resulting from a lack of support from managers, supervisors, and colleagues together with long working hours influenced by shift work patterns, a required physical presence in the workplace, and organisational time expectations exacerbate the challenges that Nigerian medical doctors face in coping with work demands and non-work-related responsibilities. The findings emphasise how ICT and institutions also influence WLB.

The paper addresses the underresearched SSA context of WLB and emphasises how human resource management policies and practices are influenced by the complex interaction of organisational, cultural, and institutional settings.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and work engagement and the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the POS–work engagement relationship.

A questionnaire survey was developed and distributed to a sample of primary school teachers drawn from the education industry.

Analysis of the data supports a strong positive relationship between the extent of POS and work engagement. This study also found that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between POS and work engagement.

This study has important implications for managers. First, it motivates managers, by providing justification for provision of support to employees for increased engagement at work. Based on the results of this study, POS is associated with enhanced work engagement levels. Second, evidence from this study illustrates to the organization the importance of developing an environment of support to further enhance work engagement. When employees do not acknowledge and feel supported from their respective organizations, work engagement levels may be sub-optimal. This research is limited, as the data were collected at one point of time, and this has implications for employees and organizations.

There is increasing recognition of the importance of POS in enhanced work engagement levels. Within this context, no previous research has empirically examined the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between POS and work engagement in the setting of primary education sector.

This study aims to develop a model for female expatriate work adjustment from the identity conflict perspective.

This is a theoretical paper that focuses on integrating the existing literature and proposing new constructive relationships.

We study female expatriates' adjustment processes in the work domain from the identity conflict perspective. Specifically, we categorize female expatriates' identities in the work domain into their gender identity and a work-related role identity cluster and propose that when gender identity is salient, unsupportive national and organizational cultures will lead to gender–work role identity conflicts and eventually result in maladjustment in the work domain.

First, we suggest that female expatriates' work role identities can form a cluster that includes expatriate role, managerial role and occupational role identity. We further theorize how the gender role identity and the work-related role identity cluster of female expatriates interact to influence how they adjust to their work. Second, we explore two contingency factors – host organizational culture and host national culture–and explain how they influence the interaction between female expatriates' gender identity and work-related role identities. Finally, we introduce the concept of gender–work role identity conflict and theorize how it serves as the underlying mechanism linking female expatriate identity patterns and work adjustment.

The ability of employees to handle work-related demands, structure their own work and manage workflow is highly important in today’s complex organisations. This paper aims to explore the impact of the office environment on employees’ ability to control interaction, structure their own work processes and handle work-related demands. The focus is on the influence of the physical premises, especially on how work within private, privileged and public work zones may affect perceptions of, and possibilities to control, customer interactions and other work-related demands.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a Norwegian finance corporation. The core method was semi-structured interviews, carried out with 29 employees and managers. The triangulated research design included observations, field notes, user logs and document analyses.

The findings indicate that, in a customer-centred work process, separate zones for customer-related work and for internal work provide employees with increased scope to handle work demands and perceive control in their work. Zoning helped structure the workflow and provided employees with new resources in customer interaction and other work tasks.

Broadening the focus on environmental control and work-related demands from individual coping to social interaction may provide more insight into factors influencing work processes and employee well-being in emerging workplace concepts.