Combining work and informal care: the importance of caring organisations

Population ageing and rising costs of long‐term care mean that organisations will be confronted in the future with a growing number of employees who combine paid work with providing informal care to a relative or non‐kin. Combining work and informal care successfully partly depends on job and care‐related features, but more information is needed on the importance of organisational aspects in this regard. The impact of organisational support on work outcomes (work–care balance and perceived need for job adaptations) was studied among 1,991 employed informal caregivers in 50 different organisations. Multilevel logistic regression analyses revealed that a heavy care burden decreased the odds of combining work and care successfully. Caregivers who felt supported by colleagues and supervisors, and who worked in supportive organisations had higher odds of good work outcomes. The findings imply that organisations should be explicit about their concern for informal caregivers and be particularly aware of colleagues with heavy care responsibilities.     

Social identification: linking high performance work systems,psychological empowerment and patient care

This paper examines the mediating effects of social identification on the relationship between high performance work systems (HPWS) and psychological empowerment and the direct relationship between psychological empowerment and clinician perceptions of quality of patient care. We use structural equation modelling on a sample of 254 health professionals from a large regional hospital in Australia. Results demonstrate, first, a strong effect of HPWS on social identification. Second, social identification mediates the relationship between HPWS and psychological empowerment and, third, psychological empowerment has a strong effect on clinician perceptions of quality of patient care. Implications are drawn for management theory and hospital managers.     

Learning organization and work engagement: the mediating role of employee resilience

Abstract

As automation and structural transformations mark the new digital realities of the twenty first century, contemporary organizations demand a highly resilient and engaged workforce to sustain their competitive edge. Despite an eminent literature revolving around learning organization in the management discourse, there is a lack of research investigating the effect of learning organization on employee resilience and work engagement. With this precept in mind, this study developed and tested a mediation model linking learning organization to employee resilience and work engagement. The present study draws on the tenets of Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory and conservation of resource theory for supporting the study results. This study used cross sectional surveys of 300 IT professionals in India. Structural equation modeling was used for empirically testing the study hypotheses. Additionally, the study utilized Preacher and Hayes mediation analyses to investigate the mediating effect of employee resilience on the relationship between learning organization and work engagement. The results revealed significant relationship between variables of the study and shows that learning organization positively effect employee resilience and work engagement. The findings suggest that employee resilience partially mediate the effect of learning organization on work engagement. This study offers concrete insights to HR managers for fostering employee resilience which in turn can play a key role in building a highly engaged workforce. Future implications for theory and HRM practitioners are discussed.     

Lean principles, learning, and knowledge work: Evidence from a software services provider

In this paper, we examine the applicability of lean production to knowledge work by investigating the implementation of a lean production system at an Indian software services firm. We first discuss specific aspects of knowledge work—task uncertainty, process invisibility, and architectural ambiguity—that call into question the relevance of lean production in this setting. Then, combining a detailed case study and empirical analysis, we find that lean software projects perform better than non-lean software projects at the company for most performance outcomes. We document the influence of the lean initiative on internal processes and examine how the techniques affect learning by improving both problem identification and problem resolution. Finally, we extend the lean production framework by highlighting the need to (1) identify problems early in the process and (2) keep problems and solutions together in time, space, and person.     

Client organizations and the management of professional agency work: The case of English health and social care

A growing reliance on agency workers can lead to significant risks for client organizations, especially in core organizational roles. It has been suggested while these risk can be mitigated through investments in human resource management (HRM) directed at agency workers, in reality these will be hard to implement. This article draws upon Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR architecture model and uses a comparative case study method to explore this issue, focusing on agency working in core nursing and qualified social worker roles. The findings illustrate how client organizations can become more involved in the management of agency workers than has previously been acknowledged. Our analysis also identifies the conditions that shape this client‐side involvement, including the nature of agency worker contracts, the role of temporary work agencies, competing organizational cost‐control priorities, and perceptions of the regulatory context. These conditions are brought together in a general model for understanding the largely neglected role that client organizations play in the HR management of agency workers.     

Effects of workplace bullying on work engagement and health: the mediating role of job insecurity

This study examined the effects of exposure to workplace bullying on work engagement and health problems. It is one of the few studies to treat job insecurity as an explanatory factor of the bullying–outcome relationship. Specifically, we perceive that job insecurity unfolds through an interpersonal process in which negative experiences, such as bullying, make employees feel less valuable in their workplace. By analyzing the data from employees in Korea using the latent factor approach, the tested mediation model explained that exposure to workplace bullying decreased the work engagement of employees and increased their health problems because of their high level of perceived job insecurity. The relationship between bullying and engagement would not be established without the job insecurity variable, thereby suggesting its indirect effect. Given the partial mediating effect of health problems, job insecurity is identified as an additional underlying mechanism that explains why bullying increases health problems. This finding does not contradict the widespread arguments on the health-impairing effect of workplace bullying. This study contributes to the literature and business practices by identifying an important underlying mechanism that helps us understand the association between exposure to workplace bullying and key work outcomes.     

Affective commitment among knowledge workers: the role of pay satisfaction and organization career management

Knowledge workers are highly sought after to help organizations establish their competitive advantage. However, getting them to want to stay with an organization is a challenge indeed. Furthermore, with claims that they are different from traditional workers, it remains unclear as to what will influence them to want to stay. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to determine whether pay satisfaction and career management (opportunity for skill enhancement and mentoring relationship) can influence the level of affective commitment among knowledge workers. Data measuring the abovementioned variables was gathered from 350 respondents representing varied occupation to ensure representation of all levels of knowledge work. Findings indicate that the proposed factors significantly influence the level of affective commitment among knowledge workers engaged in low knowledge work category. For their counterparts involved in high knowledge work, these factors had minimal influence. This paper implies that organizations should refrain from employing generic strategies to improve affective commitment among knowledge workers. Instead, attention should be paid onto the level of knowledge work when selecting the appropriate strategy. This paper incorporated the micro-level characteristic of knowledge work to traditional relationship with emphasis on how different strategies appeal to different knowledge work categories.     

麻醉恢复室护理工作程序化管理的探讨

目的:研究经过麻醉之后在恢复室进行程序化护理的效果。方法:选取我院2010年1月至2012年1月麻醉恢复室进行护理的患者资料进行回顾性分析。结果:经过在麻醉恢复室程序化护理,成功复苏率高达97.9%,并利于并发症及时的发现,提高围麻醉期的安全性。结论:通过程序化护理保证了患者接受系统治疗以及护理,护士对病情的观察和护理水平有很大提升,保证了护理质量,使管理更有效。     

Developing collaborative professionalism: an investigation of status differentiation in academic organizations in knowledge transfer partnerships

In recent years, there has been a significant growth in knowledge transfer partnerships to improve the quality and timeliness of health care. These activities require an increasing level of interdependence between academic and health care professionals, with important implications for human resource management. To understand these knowledge transfer partnerships, we conducted an in-depth longitudinal study based on 99 interviews and 5 focus group workshops across academic and health care professionals in nine university-based knowledge transfer partnerships in England. We explore how academic professionals of lower and higher status organizations develop a new form of professional work, based on the principles of collaborative professionalism, during their involvement in partnerships with health care professionals. We illuminate how the interdependent work between academic professionals and health care professionals in the development of a new academic specialization is shaped by the status of their organizations.     

Interactive identity work of professionals in management: a hospital case study

ABSTRACT

Hybrid professional managers appear less effective in introducing management into public professional settings than policymakers hope. To date, research has offered little understanding of professionals’ identity transition challenge and the role of social interactions underpinning this process. We studied the identity work of hybrid doctors inside a large public health-care organization, finding that it takes place through processes of familiarizing with management, rationalizing being a hybrid, and legitimizing the new role-identity. We contribute to the literature by showing that identity work is distributed and enabled by social interactions beyond the professional group. Implications for policymakers and executives are discussed.     

Improving home care: Knowledge creation through engagement and design

In this paper, we apply a design science approach to help a Northern European city improve the efficiency of its home care delivery system. Our proposed solution emerges as a synthesis of applying Goldratt's Theory of Constraints and the principles of variable-demand inventory replenishment. The improved system exhibits both more level resource utilization and higher productivity due to more efficient capacity utilization. In addition to improving system efficiency, we gain insights into how authentic operations management problems can be addressed through design research. A crucial aspect of empirically-rooted practical problems is that they always involve multiple stakeholders with only partially overlapping preferences. Consequently, one must not assume or ascribe an a priori system objective, instead, it must arise from explicit empirical analysis of the relevant stakeholders. Another characteristic of authentic problems is that they are always embedded in an institutional context that sets significant boundary conditions to the feasibility of solutions. These boundary conditions are an important reminder of the complexity of empirically-rooted managerial problems.     

Employee ambidexterity,high performance work systems and innovative work behaviour: How much balance do we need?

Abstract

This study examines whether and how innovative work behaviour is related to explorative and exploitative activities. Polynomial regression analyses are used to test the relationship between ambidexterity (being engaged in explorative and exploitative activities in equal amounts) and innovative work behaviour, as well as between specialisation (being engaged in either explorative or exploitative activities) and innovative work behaviour. Furthermore, we use moderated polynomial regression analyses to examine a possible moderating effect of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on these relationships. Results indicate that balance at a high level, as well as specialisation, are conducive to innovative work behaviour. A moderating effect of HPWS was not supported by our data.     

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery: A study based in China

Hospital efficiency and equity in health care delivery are two enduring research topics. Yet little research has been done to examine the relationship between them. This paper studies the impact of hospital efficiency on equity in health care delivery based on a proprietary dataset of hospital characteristics and 630,000 inpatient records from 149 public hospitals in a representative Chinese city. To measure the hospitals' efficiencies, this study takes the hospitals' operational features and case-mix indexes into account, and computes the efficiency levels using data envelopment analysis with bootstrapping. Through regressions that control for a variety of the patients’ personal characteristics (e.g., age, disease, residence, hospital visit frequency), this study shows that the gap between hospitalization expenses of urban and rural inpatients in more efficient hospitals is smaller than those in less efficient hospitals. Thus efficiency enhances equity in expenditure between urban and rural patients. But the dwindling urban-rural gap in expenditure is achieved by raising the spending of rural patients, thereby undermining their access to health care. This pattern is more conspicuous in large and sophisticated high-tier hospitals. Further analysis shows that hospital efficiency impacts equity of health care delivery by inducing different lengths of stay and uncovered parts of total expenditure for urban and rural groups. The findings imply that an efficiency-oriented health care policy may lead to social benefit loss.     

Comparing motivating work characteristics,job satisfaction,and turnover intention of knowledge workers and blue-collar workers,and testing a structural model of the variables' relationships in China and Japan

This research examines motivating work characteristics, job satisfaction, and turnover intention of knowledge workers and blue-collar workers in China and Japan. The differences in these three variables were, respectively, compared between knowledge workers and blue-collar workers in China and Japan. A structural model of the relationships among the three variables was particularly proposed and investigated. Based on data from an international survey, the characteristics of knowledge workers were first compared with those of blue-collar workers in the same country, and then compared with those of knowledge workers in the other country. Finally, the structural model of the three variables' relationships was examined using a multi-sample analysis of the LISREL method across the countries. There were many significant differences found between knowledge workers and blue-collar workers and between China and Japan. As fundamentally predicted, knowledge workers were found to have higher motivating work characteristics than blue-collar workers in each country. More importantly, a similar structural model of the relationships among the variables was found across the countries.     

Becoming a high-performance work organization: the role of security,employee involvement and training

The emerging employment system characterized by a high degree of employment security with flexible job assignments, employee involvement in problem solving and continuous improvement, and continuous training of employees is discussed. This model is called the SET system (for Security, Employee involvement and Training) and it is examined by means of case studies of five US firms that are attempting to establish or maintain a SET system. It is found that SET systems are difficult to implement in a gradual and partial manner. The three elements of SET reinforce one another and firms that are successful in adopting SET have made an investment to implement all three SET elements simultaneously. Four factors that impede implementation of a SET system are then identified.     

Coworker support as a double-edged sword: a moderated mediation model of job crafting,work engagement,and job performance

Abstract

This research aims to test the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between job crafting and job performance, as well as the moderating effects of two forms of coworker support on the job crafting–work engagement relationship. We collected survey-based data from two South Korean samples. Study 1 was conducted on 175 flight attendants. The results of Study 1 were then replicated in Study 2 wherein 181 hotel employees reported their own job crafting and work engagement, and their supervisors rated their job performance one month later. In both studies, work engagement fully mediated the relationship between job crafting and job performance. The positive association between job crafting and work engagement was more pronounced when coworker emotional support was high than when it was low. In contrast, the positive link between job crafting and work engagement was stronger when coworker instrumental support was low than when it was high. Coworker emotional and instrumental support further moderated the indirect effect of job crafting on job performance through work engagement.     

Managerial skill utilization: work environment,gender, and training incentive

Past studies have demonstrated that a supportive work environment can positively influence managerial skill utilization. Adopting the instrumentality-expressiveness perspective, the present study extended the past research by illustrating the moderating effect of gender on this relationship. It found that the relationship between the work environment and managerial skill utilization is stronger among female managers than among male managers and further, that this interactive effect is more pronounced in a low incentive situation than in a high incentive situation in terms of reaching a high level of training performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

军休老干部工作研究及思考

新形势下,老干部工作出现了许多新情况和新问题。本文首先阐述做好军休老干部工作的重要性。再结合实际工作,针对在新形势下如何做好军休老干部工作,提出来了几点思考和建议。     

Assessing social identity and collective efficacy as theories of group motivation at work

The increasing reliance globally on teams raises the question whether existing theories of work motivation remain applicable as bases for inspiring people to perform. There is some support for the view that well-known theories of work motivation were conceived with individuals as the unit of analysis, and that they may not apply for groups at work. Some authors have added a cultural dimension to this argument, contending that existing theories have ignored cultural practice in eastern countries, where collectivism at work is the normal mode. In light of arguments of this nature, this article critically examines the merits of two theories, social identity, and collective efficacy, as bases of group work motivation, and provides a model that can serve to organize studies on teamwork processes and outcomes, and for designing studies that compare the two types of groups, or that look individually at the workings of a particular type. The model includes four types of variables, namely contextual, independent, moderator, and dependent.     

Work experiences,work adjustment and psychological well-being of expatriate employees in Hong Kong

This study replicated and extended research on expatriate work adjustment by examining the antecedents of work adjustment and its outcomes in terms of psychological well-being. Data were obtained from a nationally heterogeneous sample (N = 184) of expatriate employees in Hong Kong using a structured questionnaire. Results of regression analysis revealed role conflict to be significantly negatively related to work adjustment, while role discretion, co-worker support and work-method ambiguity (clarity) were significantly positively related to work adjustment. Of the three hypothesized outcomes, work adjustment was significantly positively related only to job satisfaction but not to quality of life and marital adjustment. Though not the focus of this study, interaction adjustment was found to be significantly positively related to quality of life. Limitations of the study and implications of the findings are discussed.