What affects mental health in the New Era of Remote Work? The Impact of Self-Leadership and Social Identity on the Relationship between Stressors and Stress

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, most organizations have shifted from traditional office-based work to flexible working environments, allowing employees to choose between working from home or at the office. This transition has introduced new challenges in the modern world of work. The present research, based on five quantitative cross-sectional studies (four organizational samples and one German population sample), investigates the influence of self-leadership skills (individual strategies to regulate one’s own behavior and motivation) and social identity (a person’s sense of belonging to a group) on the relationship between modern working environments (including stressors and remote work) and employee strain, specifically stress and burnout. The results show that social identity does not play a significant role in this context but appears more relevant for positive outcomes like job satisfaction and engagement. In contrast, self-leadership skills moderate the relationship between stressors and stress by helping employees cope with high stressors, leading to lower perceived stress. Additionally, productivity and both, adaptive and maladaptive, forms of perfectionism contribute to explaining the moderating effect of self-leadership. These findings highlight the importance of developing employees’ self-leadership skills to improve occupational safety and mental health in organizations

What if we focus on developing commonalities across cultures? Transculturality as a relational approach for leadership, management and education

Purpose: Cultural diversity and the resulting cultural complexity it brings increasingly shape our world and are a central theme of relational economic theory (Wieland, 2020). The aim of this work is to rethink cooperation across cultures and to present the potential of a transcultural and relational approach to address cultural complexity and society’s grand challenges. In recent decades, research and practice have focussed primarily on cultural differences and their negative effects, without taking a closer look at the positive effects, the role of commonalities and relations as a reference point for cooperation across cultures. Methodology: An international and interdisciplinary Delphi study on transcultural competence with a panel of around 50 experts forms the starting point and basis for this work. The results of the Delphi study and its methodology (Article 1) were published in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations in 2022 (Baumann Montecinos & Grünfelder, 2022) and form the first article of this article-based dissertation. In addition, a strong focus is placed on the implications of the Delphi study for the field of global leadership (Article 2) and cross-cultural management (Article 3). Therefore, additional literature reviews were conducted to link the results of the Delphi study to the field of global leadership and cross-cultural management. Finally, the transcultural approach is applied to higher education and a framework is introduced for educators and students how to develop commonalities in cultural complexity (Article 4).Findings: The overall Delphi study findings include a relational view on cultural complexity with the nuance of the “beyond” emphasizing that, in contexts of cultural complexity, the ongoing development of commonalities is required to ensure the continuity of cooperation and shared value creation. By defining transcultural competence as the willingness and ability of individuals and organizations to develop commonalities while maintaining cultural diversity, this work contributes to the fields of intercultural communication, cross-cultural management and global leadership. The conceptualization of transcultural competence is the result of the Delphi study (Article 1). Moreover, transcultural competence becomes an important enabler and prerequisite for successful global leadership to initiate shared experiences, intentionally develop commonalities, foster a sense of belonging, and to co-create new forms of cooperation across cultures (Article 2). In addition, transcultural management aims to develop and expand cooperation corridors in contexts of cultural complexity that allow new commonalities to be created beyond existing realities, and thus enable the production of relational rents (Article 3). Finally, transcultural education based on a relational and experiential framework in higher education can promote the development of commonalities by focusing on the facilitation of shared experiences in concrete cooperative tasks (Article 4). Further research and implications: The conceptualisation of transcultural competence and the transfer to various fields can be seen as a first step that is in line with the relational turn in the social sciences. Overall, research with a more nuanced understanding of the role of culture including its positive effects and focus on relations is an emerging trend in the field of international business and requires more attention. Further research focussing on the implications of a transcultural and relational approach in collaboration with practitioners from international organizations to develop new global best practices for transcultural leadership and management seems promising. Practical implications: The practical implications of a transcultural and relational approach are manifold and can be found in the fields of education, professional trainings, leadership development, management practices, governance development, strategic management and stakeholder management. If individuals and organisation shift their focus towards the development of commonalities and relations, new forms of practice and learning can emerge. The focus shifts to how people in the context of cultural complexity are connected rather than trying to change people. This can be realised, for instance, in corresponding leadership development programs, transcultural learning and development programmes and governance structures. Originality: As the focus of the Delphi study was not only on consensus building, but also on aggregating ideas and connecting different perspectives by exchanging ideas and discussion, the results offer a variety of insights, implications and connections to various fields, and for further research. The originality of this work therefore lies in the idea, conception and implementation of the Delphi study with a careful qualitative and quantitative analysis and moderation as well as the derived implications for leadership, management and education. A comparable study on these topics and with this scope has not been conducted in recent years and this underlines the uniqueness of this project. Finally, the Delphi study method reflects the transcultural spirit of sharing, learning from and with each other, and co-creating meaning across cultures and disciplines. Overall, the findings and discussion of this work address multiple gaps and trends in the field of intercultural communication, global leadership and cross-cultural management