The moderating role of overcommitment in the relationship between psychological contract breach and employee mental health

Reimann M. The moderating role of overcommitment in the relationship between psychological contract breach and employee mental health. JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH. 2016;58(4-5):425-433.Objectives: This study investigated whether the association between perceived psychological contract breach (PCB) and employee mental health is moderated by the cognitive-motivational pattern of overcommitment (OC). Linking the psychological contract approach to the effort-reward imbalance model, this study examines PCB as an imbalance in employment relationships that acts as a psychosocial stressor in the work environment and is associated with stress reactions that in turn negatively affect mental health. Methods: The analyses were based on a sample of 3,667 employees who participated in a longitudinal linked employer employee survey representative of large organizations (with at least 500 employees who are subject so social security contributions) in Germany. Fixed-effects regression models, including PCB and OC, were estimated for employee mental health, and interaction effects between PCB and OC were assessed. Results: The multivariate fixed-effects regression analyses showed a significant negative association between PCB and employee mental health. The results also confirmed that OC does indeed significantly increase the negative effect of PCB on mental health and that OC itself has a significant and negative effect on mental health. Conclusions: The results suggest that employees characterized by the cognitive-motivational pattern of OC are at an increased risk of developing poor mental health if they experience PCB compared with employees who are not overly committed to their work. The results of this study support the assumption that psychosocial work stressors play an important role in employee mental health

Early Gender Gaps Among University Graduates

We use data from six cohorts of university graduates in Germany to assess the extent of gender gaps in college and labor market performance twelve to eighteen months after graduation. Men and women enter college in roughly equal numbers, but more women than men complete their degrees. Women enter college with slightly better high school grades, but women leave university with slightly lower marks. Immediately following university completion, male and female full-timers work very similar number of hours per week, but men earn more than women across the pay distribution, with an unadjusted gender gap in full-time monthly earnings of about 20 log points on average. Including a large set of controls reduces the gap to 5-10 log points. The single most important proximate factor that explains the gap is field of study at university

Breaking With Neoliberalization by Restricting The Housing Market:Novel Urban Policies and the Case of Hamburg

Hamburg currently exemplifies the departure from a straightforward neoliberal urban track. The city's neoliberal path only moved into full swing in the first decade of the 2000s. During this period, urban development was primarily subject to property market mechanismswith projects being granted to the highest bidderprompting effects such as rapidly rising rents, deepened social segregation and increased property-led displacement. Since 2009, however, the city's entrepreneurial urban policy encountered comprehensive resistance movements that eventually led to the rediscovery of a political will for a new housing policy and interventionist policy instruments. This article focuses on the turning point of neoliberal policies and examines the wider scope of the contemporary urban agenda in Hamburg. We first conceptualize potential limits of the neoliberal city in general and then discuss three momentous local policy experimentsthe International Building Exhibition, promising improvement without displacement'; the rediscovery of housing regulations through the Social Preservation Statute'; and the Alliance for Housing', aiming to tackle the housing shortage. We discuss these approaches as funding, regulation, and actor-based approaches to limiting the neoliberal city

Attributes of legitimate venture failure impressions

The current research investigates the effectiveness of impression management strategies available to entrepreneurs to foster social legitimacy with stakeholders following venture failure. We use a conjoint experiment to examine how different attributions of causes of failure influence the general public's legitimacy judgments. The most effective strategy proves to be the entrepreneurs distancing themselves from the failure, in that they attribute the failure to external factors that are not under the entrepreneurs' volitional control, and brought about by circumstances that are unlikely to reoccur. Our analysis also considers how the audience members' dispositional agreeableness and general self-efficacy influence judgment formation