The after-effects of youth unemployment: More vulnerable persons are less likely to succeed in Youth Guarantee programmes

This article investigates unemployed adolescents’ success in re-employment programmes. It proposes that not being in employment, education, or training indicates a setback in the achievement of important life goals, which affects mental health and success in re-employment programmes. Adolescents who are more affected by the experience of unemployment will be even less likely to succeed. An analysis of longitudinal archival records of 300 adolescents in a Youth Guarantee apprenticeship scheme confirms the expectations. Adolescents who were more vulnerable during unemployment and who had a worse relationship with their parents when starting the apprenticeship were more likely to drop out within the first year. The effect of age was moderated by relationship quality. The results show that taking the prior experience of not being in employment, education and training into account can offer a new understanding for the success of re-employment programmes. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed

How does job insecurity affect performance and political outcomes? Social identity plays a role

Can job insecurity, performance and political attitudes be connected? The presented study draws from social identity theory to propose that fearing to lose ones job can threaten a person’s identity as an employed person. This identity threat can then lead people to disengage at their work and also shift their political attitudes. A longitudinal survey study among n = 632 British workers was carried to test these assumptions. Results of time stable, cross-lagged structural equation modelling indicate that people who felt more job insecure, also reported less attachment to the general working population and more similarity to the unemployed population at a later time point. At work, this identity threat was related to less persistency. Outside work, it was related to less endorsement of values of group inequality and a shift in self-identified political standing, more to the politically left. The results illustrate that job insecurity is not only relevant for behavior at work and organizational outcomes, but that they can have wider, societally relevant consequences. By including social identity we offer a theoretically well-established explanatory mechanisms to account for this effect. This study broadens current literature in organizational behavior by connecting it to wider outcomes, outside the work context

Perceptions of corruption: An empirical study controlling for survey bias

Survey data on corruption are widely used to construct corruption indices, but the underlying data are hardly questioned. How do individual experiences shape perceptions of corruption? Do more work-engaged respondents perceive corruption as a bigger obstacle to business operations than others? What role does answer bias play in corruption surveys? This article brings together several strands of literature to discuss these questions and test them empirically with survey data from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We find that individuals who are more work engaged report corruption as a bigger obstacle. So did respondents who were previously exposed to corruption. We control for possible answer bias by implementing a randomized response technique, and find that corruption tends to be under-reported. The effects of work engagement and prior exposure on corruption are more pronounced when the bias indicator is considered, and again become stronger once we control for answer bias affecting past experiences with corruption

(How) Do work placements work? Scrutinizing the quantitative evidence for a theory-driven future research agenda

While supervised work placements are increasingly popular in higher education, evidence regarding their effects on career outcomes remain somewhat sparse and atheoretical. The aim of this systematic literature review is to evaluate the effectiveness of placements for career outcomes and to identify any underpinning core psychological processes and to offer a theoretically grounded framework for future research. Drawing on transition theory (Schlossberg, 1981) and career construction theory (Savickas, 1997), we argue that supervised work experiences are central transition experiences that enable social learning processes and trigger changes in a person's identity development as a professional, thereby increasing career resources and employability which in turn affect future career outcomes positively. We screened 2394 systematically selected abstracts across several databases and disciplines. Only quantitative studies that either offered a control-group or a longitudinal design were included, resulting in an in-depth review of 40 studies, applying a rigorous evaluation protocol. Placement participation elicits an overall positive (but small) effect on career outcomes: Graduates who completed a work placement found employment more quickly. Work placements also changed students' perceptions of self-efficacy, their knowledge, skills, and attitudes. We suggest that these changes could be seen as indicative of the proposed social learning processes and identity changes that positively affect career resources. Our review points to several gaps in the literature, and building on existing career theories, we develop a theoretical model and offer new avenues for future research to integrate the heterogenic field of placement research and inform career research in other areas

Toward an understanding of a healthy organizational change process: A three-wave longitudinal study among university employees

© 2019 American Psychological Association. This study aimed to improve our understanding of what constitutes a healthy organizational change process among university employees. Positive attitudes and proactive participation toward organizational change were presumed to affect and be affected by personality resources measured via core selfevaluations and work-related motivational well-being (vigor). The study used 3-wave longitudinal data collected in 2 large Finnish universities during their recent process of organizational change (N = 926). Structural equation modeling was used to establish the direction of the relationships between the variables. The results showed that high levels of both core self-evaluations and vigor were associated with more favorable perceptions of organizational change: employees high in core self-evaluations and vigor were more satisfied with the changes and the information provided about the changes, and were also more likely to be actively involved in the change process. It was further found that positive attitudes to change mediated the relation between vigor and core self-evaluations: vigorous employees perceived the organizational changes more positively, which in turn strengthened their internal self-evaluations. Overall, these longitudinal results show that, among university employees, core self-evaluations and vigor are both important resource factors influencing perceptions and reactions to organizational changes

How much of a nuisance is greasing the palms? A study on job dedication and attitudes towards corruption reports under answer bias control

This article studies how prior exposure and individual respondent’s work attitudes affect the degree to which corruption is perceived as an obstacle to business operations. Survey questions about sensitive topics like corruption are susceptible to answer bias, for which we control by implementing a randomised response technique. The results suggest that corruption tends to be under-reported. Individuals who are more dedicated to their work report corruption as a bigger obstacle. So did respondents who were previously exposed to corruption. This effect becomes significantly stronger once we control for endogeneity issues related to answer bias that affects past experiences with corruption over and above answer bias that affects reports of corruption as an obstacle to business operations. We find that individual experiences, in addition to contextual variables, shape corruption data available from surveys

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: A Functional-Identity Perspective

The impact of the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) on workers’ experiences remains underexamined. Although AI-enhanced processes can benefit workers (e.g., by assisting with exhausting or dangerous tasks), they can also elicit psychological harm (e.g., by causing job loss or degrading work quality). Given AI’s uniqueness among other technologies, resulting from its expanding capabilities and capacity for autonomous learning, we propose a functional-identity framework to examine AI’s effects on people’s work-related self-understandings and the social environment at work. We argue that the conditions for AI to either enhance or threaten workers’ sense of identity derived from their work depends on how the technology is functionally deployed (by complementing tasks, replacing tasks, and/or generating new tasks) and how it affects the social fabric of work. Also, how AI is implemented and the broader social-validation context play a role. We conclude by outlining future research directions and potential application of the proposed framework to organizational practice

The psychological effects of poverty: current perspectives [Abstract]

This is the abstract of an invited keynote conference paper presented at the 2022 Salzburg Conference in Interdisciplinary Poverty Research (SCIPR 2022), Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research (CEPR), University of Salzburg, Austria, 12th-13th September 2022.</p

The consequences of precarity: Understanding poverty as a stressor [Abstract]

This is a conference keynote abstract.</p

How does job insecurity affect performance and political outcomes? Social identity plays a role.

Can job insecurity, performance and political attitudes be connected? The presented study draws from social identity theory to propose that fearing to lose ones job can threaten a person’s identity as an employed person. This identity threat can then lead people to disengage at their work and also shift their political attitudes. A longitudinal survey study among n = 632 British workers was carried to test these assumptions. Results of time stable, cross-lagged structural equation modelling indicate that people who felt more job insecure, also reported less attachment to the general working population and more similarity to the unemployed population at a later time point. At work, this identity threat was related to less persistency. Outside work, it was related to less endorsement of values of group inequality and a shift in self-identified political standing, more to the politically left. The results illustrate that job insecurity is not only relevant for behavior at work and organizational outcomes, but that they can have wider, societally relevant consequences. By including social identity we offer a theoretically well-established explanatory mechanisms to account for this effect. This study broadens current literature in organizational behavior by connecting it to wider outcomes, outside the work context.status: publishe