Quality of Working Life and Employee Outcomes: A Literature Review

Quality of working life (QWL) is a research field studied since the 1970s, which has grown considerably since then (Grote & Guest, 2017). QWL covers an employee’s feelings about various dimensions of his or her work (Mosadeghrad, Ferlie & Rosenberg, 2011) and includes dimensions related with home-work interface, working condition, job and career satisfaction, control at work, stress at work, employee commitment and general well-being (Fontinha, Van Laar & Easton, 2016). At an individual level, positive outcomes of QWL include reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, improved job satisfaction, improved individual productivity (Mosadeghrad, Ferlie & Rosenberg, 2011), but studies that analyze, in a systematic way, all the employee outcomes associated to QWL are scarce. Following the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology, this article aims to identify the employee outcomes associated to the QWL construct. This article specifically explores research studies that have examined the QWL and consequences of it to individuals in a given organizational setting. Since our focus was to gain insight on the empirical investigation about QWL, we exclude studies with a primary focus on model development or testing measurement instruments. Extensive research has been performed at PROQUEST and EBSCO databases. The terms included the following on the title of the document: quality of life at work, work-related quality of life, quality of working life, working-life quality. Only the work-related consequences of QWL have been considered. The search has been limited to peer reviewed articles, theses, and conference papers published in the English language, between 1970 and 2017. The results show how a higher level of quality of life at work can improve several and relevant employee outcomes at work.CIEQV- Centro de Investigação em Qualidade de Vidainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mapping the Evolution of "Clusters": A Meta-analysis

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the “cluster literature” contained in scientific journals from 1969 to 2007. Thanks to an original database we study the evolution of a stream of literature which focuses on a research object which is both a theoretical puzzle and an empirical widespread evidence. We identify different growth stages, from take-off to development and maturity. We test the existence of a life-cycle within the authorships and we discover the existence of a substitutability relation between different collaborative behaviours. We study the relationships between a “spatial” and an “industrial” approach within the textual corpus of cluster literature and we show the existence of a “predatory” interaction. We detect the relevance of clustering behaviours in the location of authors working on clusters and in measuring the influence of geographical distance in co-authorship. We measure the extent of a convergence process of the vocabulary of scientists working on clusters.Cluster, Life-Cycle, Cluster Literature, Textual Analysis, Agglomeration, Co-Authorship

Can age discrimination be justified with a lower productivity of older workers?

The connection between age and productivity is a widely discussed topic in the empirical literature. The present paper's aim is to contribute to the explanation of an apparant lower productivity of older individuals. If we introduce uncertainty about the future working conditions depending on present success, a decrease of productivity over the working life can be observed despite a constant a priori productivity.age discrimination, productivity

Defining the Millennial Superwoman: Strategies for Work-Life Integration

Defining the Millennial Superwoman: Strategies for Work-Life Integration uncovers the perceptions of millennial females and contrasts them with the perceptions of working women in other generations. This research determines how millennial females are different in their search for work-life integration – the act of mixing work and personal life – and explains what this difference means for companies in the upcoming years. Historically, there has been much literature focused on women fighting for equality to get into the workforce, as well as why highly educated and successful women began taking themselves out of the workforce. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding why and how millennial women are different from their past counterparts, as well as what this discrepancy means for companies. This capstone includes a research paper and short film which highlights why women perceive work-life integration differently across generations; additionally, it offers insight into what strategies will best suit millennial women in their search for work-life integration

Labor society in the Poems of M. Metha

Literature emerges from social life. Literature takes its theme from various values and cultural elements found in the collective life of the people. The author's social vision is the basis for a literature in describing about various aspects of social life. Working people are the basic reason for the development of a country. Working people progress in their life. All races in the world are working. But there is only one worker in the human race and the person who exploits it is another person. Work is the only thing that takes this world to the next stage. On that basis, the purpose of this article is to examine the thoughts expressed by M. Metha in his poems about the working class people and labor society

Master\u27s Project: Tending to Joy

If we dare to hope for the thriving of humans and all of life, then joy must hold a solid place in our imagination. The purpose of this project was to breathe joy into my own life and into the world around me. Following a literature review, I carried out three mini-projects – creating crowd-sourced collages out of what brings people joy, sending daily text messages with quotes about joy, and providing cookies to groups working on social change efforts. The projects succeeded in spreading delight, raising spirits, and inspiring reflection. The journey towards cultivating joy in my own life was substantially messier and remains completely unresolved. I conclude this project not yet able but still aspiring to fully say “yes” to life

Changing identity: Retiring from unemployment

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984-2009, we follow persons from their working life into their retirement years and find that, on average, employed people maintain their life satisfaction upon retirement, while long-term unemployed people report a substantial increase in their life satisfaction when they retire. These results are robust to controlling for changes in other life circumstances and suggest that retiring is associated with a switch in the relevant social norms that causes an increase in identity utility for the formerly unemployed. This is supportive of the idea that, by including identity in the utility function, results from the empirical life satisfaction literature can be reconciled with the economic theory of individual utility. --life satisfaction,retirement,unemployment,identity,social norm

Changing Identity: Retiring from Unemployment

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984-2009, we follow persons from their working life into their retirement years and find that, on average, employed people maintain their life satisfaction upon retirement, while long-term unemployed people report a substantial increase in their life satisfaction when they retire. These results are robust to controlling for changes in other life circumstances and suggest that retiring is associated with a switch in the relevant social norms that causes an increase in identity utility for the formerly unemployed. This is supportive of the idea that, by including identity in the utility function, results from the empirical life satisfaction literature can be reconciled with the economic theory of individual utility.life satisfaction, retirement, unemployment, identity, social norm

The perceived impact of flexible working hours on work-life balance in the educational sector in Finland: a qualitative research study

Objectives The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between flexible working hours and work-life balance in the educational sector in Finland. Furthermore, researching this main objective was done by analyzing and critically reviewing the literature on the flexibility and work-life balance, by interviewing teachers about their work flexibility and by theoretically analyzing and by interpreting the data gathered from the interviews. Summary This study examines the perceived impact of flexible working hours on work-life balance in the educational sector in Finland. The literature review explains the history and development of work-life balance practices and flexible working arrangements. It talks about teaching as a profession and reveals the perceived teacher workload and work-life balance. Furthermore, a qualitative research was conducted in Finland which aimed to provide new, in-depth information and understanding about the relationship between flexible working hours and work-life balance. Conclusions The findings of the research indicated that the perceived teacher work-life balance in Finland is satisfactory. However, teacher workload has increased significantly. Teachers’ work is also very seasonal since there are busier periods such as exam weeks, which increase considerably work, stress and pressure. Therefore, work-life balance fluctuates as well as the amount of flexibility. One finding is that teachers perceived flexible working hours to be a positive thing. However, it was found that flexibility is more beneficial for the work life than for the non-work life. Flexible working hours can be risky since flexibility can easily lead to work colonializing the other aspects of life. Therefore, flexible working hours do not necessarily affect positively work-life balance. In addition, strategies were found to have a decisive role when utilizing flexible working hours to maintain a good work-life balance