Suchergebnisse

We used a national sample of 100 Israeli enterprises to examine the prevalence and distribution of employee substance-related workplace problems, as well as the prevalence and distribution of alternative programs/policies aimed at addressing such problems among Israeli workplaces. Although 29% of the responding firms reported having handled one or more cases involving employee workplace substance use or impairment, across these firms, only 53 actual cases were reported. Given an average enterprise size of 325 employees, this suggests a workforce prevalence rate for such problems of 0.16%. Only 10% of the enterprises studied offered any type of substance-related employee assistance, and only 12% included a specific reference to substance use in their discipline policy. The social policy and workplace implications of these findings are discussed.

By distinguishing between empowerment cognitions and empowerment acts, the effect of gender is tested on (a) the impact of empowerment and disempowerment acts on subordinates' empowerment cognitions, and (b) the direct impact of these acts on subsequent job satisfaction and performance. A total of 135 master of business administration students participated in a three-session simulation of the empowerment process. Findings indicate that although empowerment cognitions are affected by empowerment and disempowerment acts for both men and women, the impact of empowerment acts on job satisfaction and performance varies by gender.

Although it is well established that workplace demands and culture can affect employee well-being, to what degree might these same factors have lingering implications on individual well-being after employees retire? To begin to answer this question, in this article we propose and test a model explaining how retiree alcohol consumption may depend on pre-retirement contextual conditions. Specifically, we propose and test a moderated-mediation model in which two ambient work-unit characteristics – work-unit stress climate and work-unit drinking norms – moderate the indirect effects of retirement, via distress, on modal alcohol consumption (i.e. the typical quantity and frequency of alcohol consumed). Using a prospective study design and a multi-level, zero-inflated negative binomial model for predicting modal alcohol consumption, our findings lend partial support for the proposed model. We found retirement (vs continued employment) to be associated with a heightened probability of being an abstainer after retirement eligibility (i.e. at Time 2), regardless of the hypothesized unit-level moderators. Still, retirement had mixed effects on the level of modal consumption among those not abstaining at Time 2, with these effects being partially mediated by distress and contingent upon unit-level stress climate and unit-level drinking norms.

We test hypotheses derived from two alternative perspectives regarding the association between supervisory abuse and subordinate problem drinking. Drawing from the employee resistance literature, we examine the degree to which such an association may be sensitive to variation in subordinate personality. Drawing from the stress literature, we examine the degree to which this association may be mediated by somatic stress. Multi-source data from 1473 blue-collar workers employed in 55 work units, indicates that while the main effect of abusive supervision on problem drinking is attenuated under conditions of high subordinate conscientiousness and agreeableness (consistent with a resistance-based explanation), the main effect is not mediated by somatic stress.

Using a random sample of 1,475 nonexempt workers, we explore the potential spillover effects of demographic dissimilarity on two key elements of members' union attachment, namely, union commitment and instrumentality. Consistent with similarity-attraction theory, our findings indicate that gender dissimilarity has a significant negative effect on union attachment. However, inconsistent with the findings of earlier studies focusing on dissimilarity and organizational attachment, our results indicate that increased dissimilarity alongother demographic dimensions may actually be associated with somewhat higher levels of union attachment, and that the effects of dissimilarity are not necessarily asymmetrical for majority and minority members of work groups.

Although peers have always played a critical role in referring co-workers to union-based alcohol and mental health programs, relatively little is known about those referral processes. This exploratory study fills that gap by reporting upon the role of peer referral networks in the Association of Flight Attendants Employee Assistance Program (AFA EAP.) Our exploratory findings suggest that the utilization rate of chemically-dependent co-workers is related to the size of the EAP's network of friends and supporters, quality of labor-management relations, and a positive belief in co-workers' recovery. Overall utilization is related to the union's multiple subcultures.

We generate and test a moderated mediation model of the effects of two retirement-related stressors (namely, financial and marital) on the severity of alcohol misuse among retirees. We posit that in addition to using alcohol to cope with stressors in retirement, alcohol may also be used to self-medicate the secondary, sleep-related effects of such stressors, and that gender serves as a key boundary condition, moderating the impact of such stressors on sleep-related problems, and of sleep-related problems on alcohol misuse. Using longitudinal data collected from a sample of 292 retirees, our findings generally support this model, suggesting that both stressors are associated with the severity of alcohol misuse among male retirees. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that – for male retirees – the effect of both stressors on the severity of alcohol misuse is to a large extent secondary to the stressors themselves, mediated by the sleep-related problems they may generate.

From a qualitative study of flight attendants volunteering as support providers in a peer-based employee assistance program, we derive a typology of the boundary management tactics used by peer-support providers to maintain a comfortable distance from help recipients and propose a grounded theory explaining providers' selection of tactics. After identifying two factors associated with tactic selection (personal experience and social structure), we demonstrate that support providers' cognitive orientations, or logics of action, mediate the relationship between these factors and tactic selection. We identify four types of support providers' logics of action and show how a provider's logic may predict his or her preference for a particular boundary management tactic.

Organizational researchers tend to explain the often high degree of unpredictability in managerial decision-making in terms of differences in the cognitive processes of decision-makers. However, the decision criteria used by managers remain relatively unexplored. Viewing the use of decision criteria as a method by which managers justify their decisions, we examine the logics of justification underlying an empirically-generated list of decision criteria. We then test a number of hypotheses regarding the impact of power-related individual and role characteristics on the decision criteria used by the 962 public sector managers in our sample. The results suggest that although managers may indeed use decision criteria based on two different underlying logics of justification (i.e., strategic and tactical), power-related characteristics of individuals and roles explain only a limited proportion of the variance in the use of decision criteria based upon strategic logics of justification, and explain an even smaller proportion of the variance in the use of decision criteria based upon tactical logics of justification.