Experienced discrimination amongst European old citizens

This study analyses the experienced age discrimination of old European citizens and the factors related to this discrimination. Differences in experienced discrimination between old citizens of different European countries are explored. Data from the 2008 ESS survey are used. Old age is defined as being 62 years or older. The survey data come from 28 European countries and 14,364 old-age citizens. Their average age is 72 years. Factor analysis is used to construct the core variable ‘experienced discrimination’. The influence of the independent variables on experienced discrimination is analysed using linear regression analysis. About one-quarter of old European citizens sometimes or frequently experience discrimination because of their age. Gender, education, income and belonging to a minority are related to experienced age discrimination. Satisfaction with life and subjective health are strongly associated with experienced age discrimination, as is trust in other people and the seriousness of age discrimination in the country. Large, significant differences in experienced discrimination due to old age exist between European countries. A north-west versus south-east European gradient is found in experienced discrimination due to old age. The socio-cultural context is important in explaining experienced age discrimination in old European citizens. Old-age discrimination is experienced less frequently in countries with social security arrangements. Further research is needed to understand the variation in (old) age discrimination between European countries. Measures recommended include increasing public awareness about the value of ageing for communities and changing public attitudes towards the old in a positive way

Personality, personnel selection, and job performance

Job Performance: The term job performance can either refer to the objective or subjective outcomes one achieves in a specific job (e.g., the profit of a sales persons, the number of publications of a scientist, the number of successful operations of a surgeon) or to work-related activities (e.g., writing an article, conducting specific surgical acts). In the majority of research on this topic, job performance as an outcome is used. Personnel selection: Personnel selection refers to the process of selecting the best employees for specific jobs. Introduction One major application of personality research is in the area of personnel selection. The key question in this area is to which extent personality can predict how well a candidate will perform on the job he or she is applying for. Most scholars in this area acknowledge that personality has predictive validity for job performance. In line with this, personality assessment is part of the selection procedure in many organizations

Are groups more rational than individuals? A review of interactive decision making in groups

Many decisions are interactive; the outcome of one party depends not only on its decisions or on acts of nature but also on the decisions of others. In the present article, we review the literature on decision making made by groups of the past 25 years. Researchers have compared the strategic behavior of groups and individuals in many games: prisoner's dilemma, dictator, ultimatum, trust, centipede and principal-agent games, among others. Our review suggests that results are quite consistent in revealing that groups behave closer to the game-theoretical assumption of rationality and selfishness than individuals. We conclude by discussing future research avenues in this area

Explaining the willingness of public professionals to implement new policies: A policy alienation framework

Nowadays, many public policies focus on economic values, such as efficiency and client choice. Public professionals often show resistance to implementing such policies. We analyse this problem using an interdisciplinary approach. From public administration, we draw on the policy alienation concept, which consists of five dimensions: strategic powerlessness, tactical powerlessness, operational powerlessness, societal meaninglessness and client meaninglessness. These are considered as factors that influence the willingness of professionals to implement policies (change willingness - a concept drawn from the change management literature). We test this model in a survey among 478 Dutch healthcare professionals implementing a new reimbursement policy. The first finding was that perceived autonomy (operational powerlessness) significantly influenced change willingness, whereas strategic and tactical powerlessness were not found to be significant. Second, both the meaninglessness dimensions proved highly significant. We conclude that clarifying the value of a policy is important in getting professionals to willingly implement a policy, whereas their participation on the strategic or tactical levels seems less of a motivational factor. These insights help in understanding why public professionals embrace or resist the implementation of particular policies. Points for practitioners Policymakers develop public policies which, nowadays, tend to focus strongly on economic values, such as increasing efficiency or offering citizens the opportunity to choose among suppliers of public services. Public professionals, who have to implement these policies, are often reluctant to do so. This study shows that the causes of this resistance are unlikely to be found in the lack of influence these professionals have in the shaping of the policy at the national or organizational level. Rather, professionals might resist implementing policies because they do not see them as meaningful for society, or for their own clients. Therefore, policymakers should focus on this perceived meaninglessness and adopt ways to counter this, for example by intensively communicating the value associated with a policy

Tomorrow’s Digital Worker : A Critical Review and Agenda for Building Digital Competency Models

In competency management studies, scholars call for the importance of digital savviness to hire, train, and develop new digital workers. Yet, the knowledge about the development of such a competence is still scarce. For this endeavor, we followed a systematic literature review to identify a sample of 103 published scientific articles and book chapters dealing with the development and implementation of competency tools in the past 10 years. To our surprise, our review suggests that the landscape of competency tools is surprisingly obsolete and that contemporary requirements of digitization have not yet been incorporated into updated usable competency tools. Through this review our hope is to provide competency managers and researchers with a framework to advance and upgrade their competency tools to address the gap between existing know how and the needed expertise of the digital world.© 2020 Springer. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Advances in Human Factors, Business Management and Leadership Proceedings of the AHFE 2020 Virtual Conferences on Human Factors, Business Management and Society, and Human Factors in Management and Leadership, July 16-20, 2020, USA. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50791-6_14fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Put My Skills to Use? Understanding the Joint Effect of Job Security and Skill Utilization on Job Satisfaction Between Skilled Migrants and Australian Born Workers in Australia

The topic of skilled migrants has gained importance in the past decade as they are increasingly becoming one of the main drivers for labor supply in developed countries like Australia. Although there is research on skilled migrants, most have been studied from the perspectives of (un)employment, wage and over-education. Some evidence suggests that skilled migrants are often less satisfied with their job compared to their local counterparts, yet little is known about why these differences exist. Using a nationally representative sample of Australian workers, we examine how two important job characteristics, job security and skill utilization, exert their differential interaction effect on job satisfaction for skilled migrants and Australian born workers. We found a differential moderation effect between job security and skill utilization for skilled migrants and Australian born workers. For skilled migrants, high job security did not lead to positive reaction (i.e., job satisfaction), as this effect was dependent on their skill utilization; while such moderation effect was not present for Australian born workers. This study highlights the need to take a more fine-tuned approach by understanding target sample groups (e.g., skilled migrants) when study the relationship between key job characteristics and job satisfaction. Furthermore, it highlights the importance for organizations to revisit their human resource management strategies and policies to recognize the needs for enhancing skill utilization for skilled migrants

Are we under-utilizing the talents of primary care personnel? A job analytic examination

BACKGROUND: Primary care staffing decisions are often made unsystematically, potentially leading to increased costs, dissatisfaction, turnover, and reduced quality of care. This article aims to (1) catalogue the domain of primary care tasks, (2) explore the complexity associated with these tasks, and (3) examine how tasks performed by different job titles differ in function and complexity, using Functional Job Analysis to develop a new tool for making evidence-based staffing decisions. METHODS: Seventy-seven primary care personnel from six US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers, representing six job titles, participated in two-day focus groups to generate 243 unique task statements describing the content of VA primary care. Certified job analysts rated tasks on ten dimensions representing task complexity, skills, autonomy, and error consequence. Two hundred and twenty-four primary care personnel from the same clinics then completed a survey indicating whether they performed each task. Tasks were catalogued using an adaptation of an existing classification scheme; complexity differences were tested via analysis of variance. RESULTS: Objective one: Task statements were categorized into four functions: service delivery (65%), administrative duties (15%), logistic support (9%), and workforce management (11%). Objective two: Consistent with expectations, 80% of tasks received ratings at or below the mid-scale value on all ten scales. Objective three: Service delivery and workforce management tasks received higher ratings on eight of ten scales (multiple functional complexity dimensions, autonomy, human error consequence) than administrative and logistic support tasks. Similarly, tasks performed by more highly trained job titles received higher ratings on six of ten scales than tasks performed by lower trained job titles. Contrary to expectations, the distribution of tasks across functions did not significantly vary by job title. CONCLUSION: Primary care personnel are not being utilized to the extent of their training; most personnel perform many tasks that could reasonably be performed by personnel with less training. Primary care clinics should use evidence-based information to optimize job-person fit, adjusting clinic staff mix and allocation of work across staff to enhance efficiency and effectiveness

A longitudinal analysis of motivation profiles at work

This paper examines the multidimensional nature of workplace motivation and the importance of a continuum structure in self-determination theory through application of complementary variable- and person-centered approaches. This approach is taken to simultaneously model the complexity of motivation and highlight interactions between motivational factors. Additionally, this study represents an initial test of the temporal stability of work motivation profiles. A sample of 510 full-time employees were recruited from a range of occupations. Results support the central importance of a general factor representing self-determination as the most influential factor in an employee’s motivation profile. However, smaller effects associated with the motivation subscales, especially identified regulation, were also noticed. Importantly, motivation profiles were found to be highly stable over the 4-month duration of this study. Results lend support to the theoretical position that while general self-determination is an essential component of motivation, it alone does not fully describe an employee’s motivation