Work Relationships (work + relationships)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Work Relationships in Telephone Call Centres: Understanding Emotional Exhaustion and Employee Withdrawal

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 4 2002
Stephen Deery
This paper examines the nature of employment and the conditions of work in five telephone call centres in the telecommunications industry in Australia. Call centre work typically requires high levels of sustained interpersonal interaction with customers which can lead to burnout and employee withdrawal. Customer service staff can also become targets of customer hostility and abuse. In addition, this form of work tends to involve extensive employee monitoring and surveillance with little job discretion or variety of tasks. The paper draws upon survey data from 480 telephone service operators to identify the factors that are associated with emotional exhaustion and the frequency of absence amongst the employees. A modelling of the data using LISREL VIII revealed that a number of job and work-setting variables affected the level of emotional exhaustion of employees. These included interactions with the customer, a high workload and a lack of variety of work tasks. Moreover, higher rates of absence were associated with emotional exhaustion. [source]


Relating information-needs to the cancer experience.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CANCER CARE, Issue 1 2000

This paper is based on a phenomenological study that used narratives to explore lived cancer experiences. The aim of the study was to determine the important issues for people with cancer that arose out of their cancer experience, and to place their information-needs within the stages of the cancer trajectory. The literature highlights the importance of information-giving; however, many problems are encountered with its provision. People with cancer frequently express dissatisfaction with the information given to them and experience difficulty in retaining and processing information. Six individuals were invited to tell the story of their cancer experience through in-depth interviews and narrative analysis uncovered thematic aspects of the lived experience. One interview in particular stood out as capturing the essence of a lived experience. Jenny's narrative had a beginning, a middle and an end, features that are traditionally associated with stories. This paper focuses on her story in depth, and illustrates the extent to which cancer can impinge on normal coping mechanisms. A diagnosis of cancer cannot be isolated from the other events in an individual's life, and themes emerged which showed that cancer impacts on different aspects of an individual's self-identity, including body image, family, social and work relationships. The cancer experience invariably begins before the point of diagnosis and information-needs clearly change over time. [source]


Teaching and Learning with Therapists Who Work with Street Children and Their Families

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 3 2010
JANINE ROBERTS ED.D.
Providing training for people working with some of the most marginalized families in Guatemala and Peru meant establishing credibility as a facilitator; entering organizations as a learner; cocreating training agendas; and working in a format that paralleled a strength-based, resilience focus in therapy. Strategies used for different phases of the work are detailed: multiple ways to gather information, shadowing staff, delivering topics on demand, and creating learning environments with a focus on families as teachers. Key processes included moving in and out of the role of facilitator and participant, entering into the trainings from different vantage points within the organizations, and designing activities with an eye to how they would impact work relationships of staff and clients. RESUMEN Brindar capacitación a personas que trabajan con algunas de las familias más marginadas de Guatemala y Perú implicó establecer credibilidad como facilitador; ingresar en organizaciones como alumno; co-crear agendas de capacitación y trabajar en un formato análogo a un enfoque basado en las virtudes y la resiliencia en terapia. Se detallan las estrategias utilizadas en las diferentes fases del trabajo: distintas maneras de reunir información, observación del personal, charlas a pedido, y creación de ambientes de aprendizaje haciendo hincapié en las familias como maestras. Los procesos clave consistieron en asumir y abandonar el rol de facilitador y participante, iniciar las capacitaciones desde diferentes posiciones de ventaja dentro de las organizaciones y diseñar actividades con miras a cómo repercutirían sobre las relaciones laborales del personal y los clientes. Palabras clave: capacitación colaborativa, niños que trabajan en la calle, terapia familiar en Latinoamérica [source]


The Importance and Place of Neuroticism in Predicting Burnout in Employment Service Case Managers

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
Richard Goddard
This study investigated the ability of neuroticism to explain variance in burnout scores obtained from a sample of Australian case managers who work with individuals experiencing unemployment. Using a longitudinal survey methodology, 70 case managers completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996) on 2 occasions. Case managers also completed the Work Environment Scale (Moos, 1994) and the short form of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) on the first occasion. In a series of hierarchical regression analyses, neuroticism added significantly to the explanation of variance in all 3 MBI subscales after summary scores describing work stress and work relationships had been entered at an earlier step. An investigation of whether emotional exhaustion mediated the influence of neuroticism on depersonalization found that emotional exhaustion satisfied the criteria for complete mediation. [source]


Organizational level as a moderator of the relationship between justice perceptions and work-related reactions

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Issue 6 2006
Thomas M. Begley
In this study, we examined the role of organizational level as a moderator of the relationships of procedural and distributive justice with seven employee attitudes and behaviors. Based on social identity and resource allocation theories, we suggested an allocational model of authority in organizations. We posited that lower rank encourages a more process-oriented perspective that emphasizes procedural concerns while higher rank imbues a more result-oriented perspective that emphasizes distributive outcomes. We considered the cultural context that characterized work relationships in our sample of respondents from a Chinese state-owned enterprise. Significant sets of interactions supported the predicted relationships of procedural justice with three outcomes at lower levels and distributive justice with four outcomes at higher levels. Implications and extensions of these findings are considered. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Gender and professional identity in psychiatric nursing practice in Alberta, Canada, 1930,75

NURSING INQUIRY, Issue 4 2005
Geertje Boschma
This paper examines gender-specific transformations of nursing practice in institutional mental health-care in Alberta, Canada, based on archival records on two psychiatric hospitals, Alberta Hospital Ponoka and Alberta Hospital Edmonton, and on oral histories with psychiatric mental health nurses in Alberta. The paper explores class and gender as interrelated influences shaping the work and professional identity of psychiatric mental health nurses from the 1930s until the mid-1970s. Training schools for nurses in psychiatric hospitals emerged in Alberta in the 1930s under the influence of the mental hygiene movement, evolving quite differently for female nurses compared to untrained aides and male attendants. The latter group resisted their exclusion from the title ,nurse' and successfully helped to organize a separate association of psychiatric nurses in the 1950s. Post-World War II, reconstruction of health-care and a de-institutionalization policy further transformed nurses' practice in the institutions. Using social history methods of analysis, the paper demonstrates how nurses responded to their circumstances in complex ways, actively participating in the reconstruction of their practice and finding new ways of professional organization that fit the local context. After the Second World War more sophisticated therapeutic roles emerged and nurses engaged in new rehabilitative practices and group therapies, reconstructing their professional identities and transgressing gender boundaries. Nurses' own stories help us to understand the striving toward psychiatric nursing professionalism in the broader context of changing gender identities and work relationships, as well as shifting perspectives on psychiatric care. [source]


Test of a Dynamic Stress Model for Organisational Change: Do Males and Females Require Different Models?

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
Jennifer M. Kohler
Cette étude a opérationnalisé et mis à l'épreuve un modèle dynamique du stress adapté au changement organisationnel en tenant compte de l'impact du sexe sur le modèle. L'échantillon était composé de 804 employés de cinq centres médicaux pour anciens combattants. Le modèle, inspiré de celui de Mack, Nelson & Quick (1998) comprenait: l'importance des retombées du changement organisationnel sur le rôle professionnel, les relations et l'environnement de travail, les opportunités, la carrière, l'incertitude et l'évaluation des problèmes à résoudre, le stress perçu et les réactions de contrôle-évitement. On est parti de l'idée que l'évaluation jouerait un rôle de médiateur entre l'importance du changement et le stress perçu et que les réactions agiraient directement sur les évaluations et le stress perçu. L'analyse en pistes causales confirma le modèle de changement proposé sous réserve de quelques modifications, mais montra que les hommes et les femmes pouvaient revendiquer leur propre modèle. Les différences dues au sexe apparaissent dans la relation entre la perception et l'évaluation du changement; et chaque sexe présente des sources spécifiques de stress. L'évaluation jouait un rôle partiel de médiateur entre l'importance du changement et le stress perçu. Le contrôle de la situation était une stratégie plus pertinente que l'évitement aussi bien pour les hommes que pour les femmes. On réfléchit aux conséquences de ce travail pour les chercheurs et les organisations. The present study operationalised and tested a dynamic stress model for organisational change, including the interaction effect of sex on the model, on 804 employees at five VA medical centers. The model, an adaptation of Mack, Nelson, and Quick's (1998) model included: the amount of organisational change within job role, work relationships, job context, facility, and career; uncertainty and challenge appraisal; perceived stress; and control and avoidance coping. It was proposed that appraisal would act as a mediator between amount of change and perceived stress and that coping would have direct effects on appraisals and perceived stress. Path analyses supported the proposed change model with some modification, but indicated that males and females may require unique models. Sex differences emerged in relationships between perceptions and appraisal of change, and males and females had unique sources of stress. Appraisal acted as a partial mediator between amount of change and perceived stress. Control coping emerged as a more adaptive strategy than avoidance coping for both males and females. Implications for researchers and organisations are discussed. [source]