Humane Orientation, Work–Family Conflict, and Positive Spillover Across Cultures

Although cross-national work–family research has made great strides in recent decades, knowledge accumulation on the impact of culture on the work–family interface has been hampered by a limited geographical and cultural scope that has excluded countries where cultural expectations regarding work, family, and support may differ. We advance this literature by investigating work–family relationships in a broad range of cultures, including understudied regions of the world (i.e., Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia). We focus on humane orientation (HO), an overlooked cultural dimension that is however central to the study of social support and higher in those regions. We explore its moderating effect on relationships between work and family social support, work–family conflict, and work–family positive spillover. Building on the congruence and compensation perspectives of fit theory, we test alternative hypotheses on a sample of 10,307 participants from 30 countries/territories. We find HO has mostly a compensatory role in the relationships between workplace support and work-to-family conflict. Specifically, supervisor and coworker supports were most strongly and negatively related to conflict in cultures in which support is most needed (i.e., lower HO cultures). Regarding positive spillover, HO has mostly an amplifying role. Coworker (but not supervisor) support was most strongly and positively related to work-to-family positive spillover in higher HO cultures, where providing social support at work is consistent with the societal practice of providing support to one another. Likewise, instrumental (but not emotional) family support was most strongly and positively related to family-to-work positive spillover in higher HO cultures

Digital labourers’ proactivity and the venture for meaningful work: Fruitful or fruitless?

Digital Labor, taking up flexible but small-scale employment arrangements on onlineintermediary platforms, with few constraints on how much, when, and where work isperformed, are becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Scholars have arguedthat this type of work is inherently demeaning. We seek to explore the worker’sperspective and how theirlong-term perspective aligns or misaligns with their actual workarrangement. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job–careercongruence model suggesting that when workers’ cognitive presentations of theirmicrowork as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience theirwork as meaningful. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from twomicroworking platforms support the negative effect of an incongruent job–career schemaon workers’ experience of meaningful work. Additionally, results demonstrate that evenworkers who are proactive in nature, seem unable to excel in these fluid work settingswhen their job-career schema are not aligned

From crafting what you do to building resilience for career commitment in the gig economy

The present study investigates how individual and collaborative job crafting may help digital labourers to build resilience and career commitment in the gig economy. Results based on a time-lagged survey from 334 digital labourers indicate that those who engaged in higher individual job crafting reported subsequently higher resilience at the outset. Moreover, high collaborative job crafting compensated for low individual crafting efforts in reaching higher resilience and subsequently higher career commitment in the gig economy. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable careers in the gig economy are discussed

From crafting what you do to building resilience for career commitment in the gig economy

he present study investigates how individual and collaborative job crafting may help digital labourers to build resilience and career commitment in the gig economy. Results based on a time-lagged survey from 334 digital labourers indicate that those who engaged in higher individual job crafting reported subsequently higher resilience at the outset. Moreover, high collaborative job crafting compensated for low individual crafting efforts in reaching higher resilience and subsequently higher career commitment in the gig economy. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable careers in the gig economy are discussed

Digital labourers’ proactivity and the venture for meaningful work: Fruitful or fruitless?

Digital Labor, taking up flexible but small-scale employment arrangements on online intermediary platforms, with few constraints on how much, when, and where work is performed, are becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Scholars have argued that this type of work is inherently demeaning. We seek to explore the worker’s perspective and how their long-term perspective aligns or misaligns with their actual workarrangement. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job–career congruence model suggesting that when workers’ cognitive presentations of their microwork as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience their work as meaningful. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from two microworking platforms support the negative effect of an incongruent job–career schema on workers’ experience of meaningful work. Additionally, results demonstrate that even workers who are proactive in nature, seem unable to excel in these fluid work settings when their job-career schema are not aligned

Boundaryless careers in the gig economy: An oxymoron?

Advocates of the boundaryless career perspective have relied to a great extent on the assumption that actors take responsibility for their own career development and that they consequently take charge of developing their career competencies. In this provocation piece, we debate the obstructions to and potential ways to promote boundaryless careers in the gig economy, which—despite appearing on the surface to offer suitable conditions for boundaryless careers—suffers from numerous conditions that hinder such careers. Thus, boundaryless careers in the gig economy could be an oxymoron. In particular, we conjecture that intraorganisational and interorganisational career boundaries restrict gig workers' development of relevant career competencies and thus limit their mobility. We then put forward the notion that we have to consider moving away from traditional, employer‐centric human resource management and introduce new forms of network‐based and self‐organised human resource management practices (in the form of collaborative communities of practice) in order to diminish these boundaries