Organizational characteristics and their effect on health

There is a complex relationship between work, employee health, and successful business results. At the individual level, multiple factors including physical, psychological, and social aspects of the work environment affect workers' health and well-being. At the organizational level, the consequences of unhealthy work environments may be traced to a decrease in the quality of service and products, and a loss in productivity. A brief overview of the contemporary literature on workplace stressors is presented to help identify future research directions.     

Project Management Learning: A Comparative Study Between Engineering Students’ Experiences in South Africa and the United Kingdom

This study explores how engineering students studying project management perceive their learning experiences. To facilitate an understanding of the constituent components of engineering students’ experiences and to understand how these experiences influence preferred learning styles, a comparative study of university students studying engineering in South Africa and the United Kingdom is conducted. The study finds no significant demographic differences in learning experiences across the two student cohorts. However, the South African cohort reports higher levels of overall experiences. They also report higher usage of online learning materials but lower levels of blended learning and individual critical evaluation skills experiences.     

Exploring technology readiness for mobile payment app users

ABSTRACT

The study aims to better understand the various technology readiness segments by assessing how their readiness relates to demographics variables and their adoption, attitude, ease-of-use, usefulness and continuance intention to use mobile payment apps using the technology readiness index. Using a convenience sample of 416 from a consumer panel, a two-step cluster analysis shared similarities with three of the original technology readiness segments (pioneers, paranoids and explorers) while the other two segments clustered together into a fourth segment, hesitant-sceptics. The results indicate that South African mobile users are ready to use mobile payment applications, with the ‘explorer’ emerging as the best segment to target due to optimism levels, while the hesitant-sceptic segment represent the key to unlocking the real potential value of mobile payment apps. Understanding different segments provides marketers with the opportunity to select viable segments and to customise strategies to increase uptake and continued use according to customer needs.     

The stability of risk and benefit perceptions: a longitudinal study assessing the perception of biotechnology

The study of public perceptions is considered to be important for making sound policy decisions, since the public decides which products will enter and sustain in the market. Stability of public perceptions is important for policy-makers; only if public attitudes and perceptions remain constant, policy-makers will be able to take them into account. The aim of the present study was to examine the stability of participants’ risk and benefit perceptions of gene technology over a period of two years. In spring, 2008 and in spring, 2010, the same sample of participants filled out an identical questionnaire. Results of structural equation modelling show that risk and benefit perceptions of gene technology applications are moderately stable (r = .5–.7). Furthermore, results show that people distinguish between medical, plant and food applications and applications involving animals when evaluating the risk of gene technology. When evaluating the benefits, participants also take consumer-related benefits into account, such as enhancement of functional properties. Results of the present study suggest that risk research should regularly examine people’s risk perceptions in order to gain a clearer picture of the dynamics of people’s perception and preferences not only of novel technologies, but also of entrenched technologies.     

Disability and Perceptions of Work and Management

Matched employee–employer data from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey are used to examine differences in work‐related perceptions between disabled and non‐disabled employees. Even after accounting for differences in personal, job and workplace characteristics, disabled employees are found to hold more negative views on the treatment of workers by managers and, consistent with this, they express less job satisfaction and commitment towards their organization. The influence of disability is also examined across workplaces defined by sector, the presence of disability‐related policies and practices, and employee views of management to explore the role of corporate culture.     

Job Anxiety,Work‐Related Psychological Illness and Workplace Performance

This article uses matched employee–employer data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the relationship between employee psychological health and workplace performance in 2004 and 2011. Using two measures of work‐related psychological health — namely employee‐reported job anxiety and manager‐reported workforce stress, depression and anxiety — we find a positive relationship between psychological ill‐health and absence, but not quits. The association between psychological ill‐health and labour productivity is less clear, with estimates sensitive to sector, time period and the measure of psychological health. The 2004–2011 panel is further used to explore the extent to which change in psychological health is related to change in performance.     

为财务报告“瘦身”

如果我们任由公司的财务报告往不断复杂的方向发展,那么这些报告将可能失去其本来的意义--与股东有效的沟通.这种风险的存在,促使英国财务报告委员会决定对公司的报告体系进行一次调查,目的是使公司报告的编制者和相关使用者能够了解报告的复杂程度,并提出可行性意见,以便找到切实可行的办法来简化它们.     

The emotions of top managers and key persons in cross-border M&As: Evidence from a longitudinal case study

Building on prior research on emotions in M&A, this paper analyses the post-M&A emotions of top managers and key persons from the acquired company by examining what triggers emotions during the post-acquisition integration stage, and what the consequences of those emotions are. This study applies cognitive appraisal and affective event theories with empirical evidence based on a longitudinal, single case study of an Indian–Finnish acquisition. The main findings imply that M&As are very emotional for top managers and key persons. Our findings reveal that they experience a wide range of positive and negative emotions triggered by individual and company-level triggers. Interestingly various triggers can have different and opposite appraisal outcomes in the short and long-term. In addition, top managers and key persons are often restricted in the range of behavioural outcomes caused by emotions.     

There and back again – estimating equivalence scales with measurement error

Using income satisfaction data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find large differences in the equivalence weight of a partner when it is being estimated by direct and reverse regressions. We argue that neither of the two models will produce consistent estimates when there is stochastic error in satisfaction and measurement error in incomes. We propose a correction of mismeasured incomes using a constructed alternative income measure. The corrected results are relatively close to those obtained from direct regression. We do not find evidence that previous studies, using the direct regression method, severely suffer from measurement error in incomes.