Not all job demands are equal: differentiating job hindrances and job challenges in the Job Demands-Resources model

This study aimed to integrate the differentiation between two types of job demands, as made in previous studies, in the Job-Demands Resources (JD-R) model. Specifically, this study aimed to examine empirically whether the differentiation between job hindrances and job challenges, next to the category of job resources, accounts for the unexpected positive relationships between particular types of job demands (e.g., workload) and employees' work engagement. Results of confirmatory factor analyses supported the differentiation between the three categories of job characteristics in two samples (N1=261 and N2=441). Further, structural equation modelling confirmed the hypotheses that job hindrances associate positively with exhaustion (i.e., the main component of burnout) and negatively with vigour (i.e., the main component of work engagement). Job resources displayed the reversed pattern of relations. Job challenges were positively related to vigour. Rather unexpectedly, they were unrelated to exhaustion. Based on these findings, we discuss the importance of the differentiation between different types of job demands in the JD-R model for both theory and practice

Modelling job crafting behaviours: Implications for work engagement

In this study among 206 employees (103 dyads), we followed the job demands–resources approach of job crafting to investigate whether proactively changing one’s work environment influences employee’s (actor’s) own and colleague s (partner’s) work engagement. Using social cognitive theory, we hypothesized that employees would imitate each other’s job crafting behaviours, and therefore influence each other’s work engagement. Results showed that the crafting of social and structural job resources, and the crafting of challenge job demands was positively related to own work engagement, whereas decreasing hindrance job demands was unrelated to own engagement. As predicted, results showed a reciprocal relationship between dyad members’ job crafting behaviours – each of the actor’s job crafting behaviours was positively related to the partner’s job crafting behaviours. Finally, employee’s job crafting was related to colleague’s work engagement through colleague’s job crafting, suggesting a modelling process

Job Demands, Job Resources, and Well-being in Police Officers - a Resource-Oriented Approach

This study examined the association between job characteristics, namely job demands and job resources, and mental health outcomes in terms of emotional exhaustion and well-being among police officers. Eight hundred forty-three German police officers participated in a cross-sectional online survey. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the validity of the dual process model of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework in the context of police work. Job demands (verbal assaults by citizens, workload, and administrative stressors) predicted emotional exhaustion whereas job resources (team support, shared values, and perceived fairness) predicted well-being. Moreover, job resources were directly and negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. The findings confirm the capacity of job resources to simultaneously promote well-being and reduce emotional exhaustion. Work place interventions should thus not merely decrease job demands. To improve and protect police officers’ well-being, it is advisable to promote job resources. A supportive and fair organizational climate based on shared values is required to foster mental health in the context of police work

Does search boost efficiency?

Poaching externality, arising from job-to-job turnovers, implies that a planner should allocate fewer resources to costly job creations. However, these search efforts increase competition among employers, and this could in turn internalize the externality, whereas the congestion externality requires a unit-elastic matching function

The Subjective Well-Being Challenge in the Accounting Profession: The Role of Job Resources

The main activity of the accountant is the preparation and audit of the financial information of a company. The subjective well-being of the accountant is important to ensure a balanced professional judgment and to offer a positive image of the profession in the face of the incorporation and retention of talent. However, accountants are subjected to intense pressures that affect their well-being in the performance of their tasks. In this paper, the job demands–resources theoretical framework is adopted to analyze the relationships between job demands, job resources, and the subjective well-being of a large sample of 739 accounting experts at the European level. Applying a structural equations model, the results confirm, on the one hand, the direct effects provided in the theoretical framework and, on the other, a new mediating role of job demands–subjective well-being relationship resources

Time-constrained project scheduling with adjacent resources

We develop a decomposition method for the Time-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (TCPSP) with Adjacent Resources. For adjacent resources the resource units are ordered and the units assigned to a job have to be adjacent. On top of that, adjacent resources are not required by single jobs, but by job groups. As soon as a job of such a group starts, the adjacent resource units are occupied, and they are not released before all jobs of that group are completed. The developed decomposition method separates the adjacent resource assignment from the rest of the scheduling problem. Test results demonstrate the applicability of the decomposition method. The presented decomposition forms a first promising approach for the TCPSP with adjacent resources and may form a good basis to develop more elaborated methods

Prosecutors’ Offices: Where Gender Is Irrelevant

International audienceEfficiently exploiting the resources of data centers is a complex task that requires efficient and reliable load balancing and resource allocation algorithms. The former are in charge of assigning jobs to servers upon their arrival in the system, while the latter are responsible for sharing the server resources between their assigned jobs. These algorithms should adapt to various constraints, such as data locality, that restrict the feasible job assignments. In this paper, we propose a token-based algorithm that efficiently balances the load between the servers without requiring any knowledge on the job arrival rates and the server capacities. Assuming a balanced fair sharing of the server resources, we show that the resulting dynamic load balancing is insensitive to the job size distribution. Its performance is compared to that obtained under the best static load balancing and in an ideal system that would constantly optimize the resource utilization. We also make the connection with other token-based algorithms such as Join-Idle-Queue

The indirect effects of work-related antecedents to retirement on retirement adjustment quality via change in social resources : a resource-based dynamic perspective : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

The present investigation sought to address the paucity of longitudinal retirement adjustment research in relation to the social resources of retirees, and how change in these resources may affect the degree of retirement adjustment quality they experience. This study was a secondary analysis with an observational, repeated measures design conducted on the 2006 and 2014 data waves of the Health, Work, and Retirement (HWR) study (Alpass et al., 2007). From a resource-based dynamic perspective, retirement adjustment can be viewed as a longitudinal process which fluctuates as a function of given resources and changes in such resources (Wang, Henkens, & van Solinge, 2011). Guided by this theoretical framework, the primary focus of this investigation was to examine if change in perceived social support would mediate the relationships between job-related conditions (i.e., job satisfaction and job stress) and post-retirement psychological wellbeing across the period of 2006 – 2014. The sample (n = 435) was drawn from the HWR study’s 2006 nationally representative sub-sample of the general New Zealand older adult population. Participants were male and female New Zealanders, aged between 55 – 70 years in 2006, and were of New Zealand European, Māori, Asian, or other ethnicity. Participants were in paid employment at the time of the 2006 data wave, and had entered retirement at the time of the 2014 data wave. Cross-sectional analyses of the 2006 wave were also undertaken to determine whether the theorised relationships between the principal constructs were supported at the cusp of the retirement transition before participants retired. These analyses indicated the relationship between job satisfaction and psychological wellbeing appeared to operate indirectly via perceived social support, as did the relationship between job stress and psychological wellbeing. However, longitudinal mediation analyses did not support the resource-based dynamic model of retirement adjustment. Recommendations for measuring adjustment outcomes and resources at multiple assessment points, measure selection and construct domain sampling, improving capacity for causal inference, and using alternative data analytic strategies are made for future research adopting a resource-based dynamic perspective