Safeguarding Health at the Workplace: A Study of Work Engagement, Authenticity and Subjective Wellbeing among Religious Workers

: Research in work and organizational psychology has paid little attention to religious workers, something certainly surprising as faith-based organizations play a key role in the welfare state of many countries. This research shows that religious workers in a Catholic order present a high degree of subjective wellbeing, both in terms of flourishing and satisfaction with life in general, and a positive balance of positive and negative feelings. More specifically, this study examines the relationship between authenticity and wellbeing amongst religious workers. Survey responses from 142 religious workers in Spain were analyzed using partial least squares path modelling. The results reveal that subjective wellbeing at work is positively related to authenticity. In addition, this relationship is mediated by their level of work engagement

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

Servant Leadership in a Social Religious Organization: An Analysis of Work Engagement, Authenticity, and Spirituality at Work

Religious organizations represent a main part of the third sector and the social economy. Social faith-based institutions have some unique features that, in some respects, differentiate them from other entities, as they are characterized and defined not only by the services they provide, but also by how they provide them. It is part of their mission to convey the values that prevail in their institutional culture while developing their activities, being attractive to those workers who identify with their values. From this point of view, a key element of these entities’ success is that their employees feel identified with their work so that they are engaged in the institution and its values. The style of leadership exercised in such organizations is critical to fostering these attitudes and their long-term survival. This paper aims to study the link between perceived servant leadership by followers and work engagement, as well as the mediating role of authenticity and spirituality at work in this relationship. To this end, 270 workers from a Spanish Catholic organization in the social sector were surveyed. These data were processed by PLS (partial least squares). The results show that a servant leadership style by itself does not directly promote work engagement among employees of the target organization. The engagement of these workers comes through two mediating variables: authenticity and spirituality at work. This study covers a gap in the literature because although there are studies arguing that a strategy of servant leadership is critical to these organizations, to our knowledge, they do not finish demonstrating the fundamental roles that attitudes of authenticity and spirituality at work play in the perception of this type of leadership, achieving greater work engagement

Human Values and Work Engagement: The Mediating Role of Authenticity Among Workers in a Spanish Religious Organization

Nowadays religious organizations play a leading role in the third sector, contributing to maintaining the welfare state in a large number of countries in sectors such as health, education or social services, among others. These organizations provide a service to their users, aiming to transmit the predominant values in their mission statement and simultaneously promote both authenticity and work engagement in their employees. Indeed, the purpose of this article is to evaluate the link between human values and work engagement, as well as the mediating role of authenticity in this relationship. To this end, 938 workers of a Catholic religious organization, which constitutes a relatively unexplored context, is employed. To test the research model and hypotheses, this investigation uses PLS (Partial Least Squares). It covers two notable research gaps. First, the results confirm the direct links between human values, authenticity and work engagement within the context of religious organizations. Second, they provide evidence of the mediating role exercised by authenticity in the relationship between human values and work engagement

Work Engagement and Flourishing at Work Among Nuns: The Moderating Role of Human Values

Faith-based organizations are a key player in major sectors of activity for maintaining the welfare state, including health, education, and social services. This paper uses a multivariate regression model in an attempt to identify the factors that affect the relationship between work engagement and flourishing. The paper also discusses the empirical research gap that has been identified in the literature about the moderated effect of human values on this relationship. This study is based on a sample of 142 nuns of a congregation belonging to a religious organization with an international scope and a Catholic inspiration. The case of religious women who have chosen to live a life consistent with the charism of the congregation constitutes a paradigmatic and unique environment to investigate the potential alignment of personal values with professional activity. This work unveils two main findings. First, the more engaged nuns are in their work (social action to serve the poorest and most disadvantaged people), the more they flourish in their working environment and in their personal lives. Second, Schwartz’s values reinforce the relationship between the professional role (work engagement) and the personal role (flourishing at work). In conclusion, flourishing at work could be improved through work engagement and this relationship is moderated by human values. These results add insights to better know the relationship among life and work domains

Development and validation of a spanish short servant leadership survey (SSLS6-3F) among spanish workers in religious non-profit organizations

Religious non-profit organizations are becoming increasingly important in the third sector in a wide range of countries, where they are currently leading players in different areas, such as education, healthcare, and social work. These organizations have the peculiarity of providing a service to their users while transmitting them the values of their mission statement. An usually employed and effective management strategy for these institutions is a servant leadership style. This article seeks to introduce a theoretical discussion of this leadership approach by providing a Spanish version of an instrument for measuring servant leadership in Spanish religious non-profit institutions. To this end, workers of different Spanish faith-based non-profit organizations of the third sector, a relatively unexplored context, were analyzed after obtaining 463 valid questionnaires. This study used the Spanish translation of a seven-item and three-factor servant leadership scale. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed. The results confirm that the six-item and three-factor servant leadership scale was the most effective scale to measure this construct. In conclusion, this research covers a notable research gap by providing a reliable and valid Spanish short version of the servant leadership scale for workers of Spanish religious non-profit organizations

Special Issue “Rethinking the Subjective Wellbeing for a New Workplace Scenario”

From the public health policies’ view, promoting subjective wellbeing is a must because it positively influences employee health and longevity. In addition, the International Labour Organization (ILO) promotes changes to achieve decent jobs, and one of the main challenges is to mitigate the intense pressure to adapt workplace conditions to meet new organizational goals. Subjective wellbeing has been widely addressed in the literature. For example, in 1999, Diener et al. reviewed three decades of work on this topic, and Danna and Griffith conceptualized previous research on wellbeing in the workplace. Twenty years later, Diener quantified more than 170,000 articles and books concerning this topic published in academia

Effect of a Job Demand-Control-Social Support Model on Accounting Professionals' Health Perception

The Job Demand-Control and Job Demand-Control-Support (JDCS) models constitute the theoretical approaches used to analyze the relationship between the characteristics of labor and occupational health. Few studies have investigated the main effects and multiplicative model in relation to the perceived occupational health of professional accountants. Accountants are subject to various types of pressure in performing their work; this pressure influences their health and, ultimately, their ability to perform a job well. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of job demands on the occupational health of 739 accountants, as well as the role of the moderator that internal resources (locus of control) and external resources (social support) have in occupational health. The proposed hypotheses are tested by applying different models of neural networks using the algorithm of the Extreme Learning Machine. The results confirm the relationship between certain stress factors that affect the health of the accountants, as well as the direct effect that the recognition of superiors in occupational health has. Additionally, the results highlight the moderating effect of professional development and the support of superiors on the job’s demands

Accountancy as a meaningful work. Main determinants from a job quality and optimization algorithm approach

The primary purpose of the accounting profession is to provide quality information to the market that facilitates the allocation of resources. The context in which it operates must attend to some stressors that can affect the professional’s meaning of the work. Meaningful work (MW) is based on the concept of valuable work and work well done, so it is directly related to the concept of quality at work, which is a constant concern in the accounting profession. The method used to determine meaningful work identifies the set of job quality indexes, as defined by the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), related to the MW. This paper has used an integer programming genetic algorithm (GA) to determine the JQIs and the statistically significant combinations. The findings showed that JQIs, skills development and discretion (SD), and physical environment (PE) positively and intensely relate to MW. Likewise, reduction of the work intensity (WI) and improvement of the social environment (SE) are related in the same direction as the MW. On the other hand, the results showed different indicator weightings depending on the age of the accountants. This paper shows the importance that accountants attribute to professional competence and how, throughout their careers, the JQI that most relate to MW is changing, from a social vision to preferences where the care of personal time also prevails

Promoting work Engagement in the Accounting Profession: a Machine Learning Approach

In this paper, a non-linear multi-dimensional (machine learning-based) index for accountants that relates work engagement scores (according to accountants’ perceptions) with the seven Job Quality Indices (JQI) (proposed by Eurofound) has been proposed. The goal of the research is two-fold, namely, (i) to quantify the extent to which the JQI variables explain the work engagement scores, and (ii) to determine which JQI variables most afect the work engagement scores. The best performing regression model achieved a competitive root mean square percentage, highlighting that the selected variables primarily determine the work engagement values. Other important fndings include (i) that the work engagement index is mainly infuenced by the social environment index and (ii) that the skills and discretion and prospects indices are also crucial in the promotion of the work engagement of accountants. The instrument implemented could be employed by human resources practitioners to propose efcient human resources strategies that improve both individual wellbeing and company performance in the accounting sector