Appreciation at Work and its Consequences

In today's difficult global economy, work related stress is high. Stress — along with other health impairing factors — can affect work productivity, satisfaction, safety, absenteeism, turnover, and even workplace violence, which is why organizations are increasingly turning to occupational health psychology to develop, maintain, and promote the health of employees. In occupational health psychology, one of the core assumptions is that conditions at work affect employee well-being. Appreciation is one of the positive aspects of work, which can promote optimal human functioning and well-being. The current Swiss National Foundation project is embedded in this context. The four main goals of the project whereas follow: 1) Longitudinally test, if appreciation predicts well-being; 2) investigate if some sources of appreciation are more important than others; 3) to test if appreciation interacts with stressors, such that the effects of stressors are attenuated if appreciation is high; and 4) investigate the short-term effects of appreciation on well-being through diary methods and analyze the interaction with positive and negative daily experiences. The first and third paper written in the course of this project present longitudinal data and confirm the positive effects of appreciation over time (first objective). Furthermore, we tried to disentangle within-person and between-person effects, confirming previous findings that an effect happening at one level, cannot automatically be assumed to happen at another. The second objective of this dissertational project was to investigate if different sources of appreciation are more important than others. Our results clearly showed, that supervisors, followed by work colleagues, where the most important sources of appreciation (papers I-III). The third aim of the project was to test if appreciation interacts with stressors, such that the effects of stressors are attenuated if appreciation is high. In our first and second paper we find partial confirmation for this hypothesis. Appreciation did buffer the negative effect of illegitimate tasks on affective well-being, but only on a within-person level (paper I). On a daily level, appreciation did also work as a buffer for negative daily experiences (paper II). The fourth aim of the study was to investigate appreciation and the short-term consequences on well-being on an inter-individual level. We also wanted to find out, if there was an interplay with positive and negative daily experiences at work. In our second article we present data from our diary study, where we captured the short-term fluctuations in appreciation, indicators of well-being as well as how many positive and negative experiences participants made daily. Again, appreciation from supervisors had the strongest effect on well-being. Also, appreciation from colleagues had a significant effect on well-being after work, but only when participants were confronted with negative experiences that day. Furthermore, we found that appreciation from supervisors buffered the negative impact of daily negative events. Appreciation from colleagues did not

The farmer, the worker and the MP: The digital divide and territorial paradoxes in Switzerland

The territorial dimension of the digital divide is usually considered as a phenomenon that penalizes the peripheral regions, especially in terms of regional economic development. Taking into account the territorial networking of ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) infrastructures—particularly high-speed networks—provides what is probably the principal reason for such a perception. This is particularly true considering that the most-peripheral regions and those with the smallest population densities are also the poorest in terms of ICT infrastructures. In Western countries, however, the digital divide is no longer the result of network-related problems. Nowadays, the issue of the skills required to adequately exploit the potential of ICT is at the forefront. Yet this evolution is likely to lead to an inversion of the inequalities between the centre and the periphery, as populations without such skills—recent immigrants, the unemployed, the illiterate, people with little education or on low incomes and other socially marginalized people—are generally concentrated in urban centres. Consequently, the priority for reducing inequalities of access to ICT resources is no longer the provision of high-performance ICT infrastructures for peripheral regions, but rather the implementation of continuing education and social action policies within the urban centre

Stratégies intégrées d’insertion en emploi de personnes vivant en logement social : Analyse d’expériences nord-américaines et françaises – Rapport synthèse

Ce rapport est issu d'une recherche intitulée Stratégies intégrées d'insertion résidentielle et professionnelle: analyse d'expériences nord-américaines et européennes, menée à la demande et avec la collaboration de Nicole Forget-Bashonga de la Cuisine collective d'Hochelaga-Maisonneuve et du Conseil pour le développement local et communautaire d'Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, de Jean-François Gilker du GRT Bâtir son quartier, de Jean- Pierre Racette de la Société d'habitation populaire de l'Est de Montréal (SHAPEM) et de Céline Vézina de la Corporation de développement de l'Est (CDEST). À l'occasion, se sont aussi joints aux discussions, Patrice Rodriguez, consultant en économie sociale, Adrien Sansregret de l'Office municipal d'habitation de Montréal (OMHM) et Vincent van Schendel de l'ARUC-Économie sociale. Ce projet de recherche a également été accrédité par le CAP-Logement communautaire de l'Alliance de Recherche Universités-Communautés (ARUC) - Économie sociale. Nous tenons enfin à souligner l’aimable collaboration de Madame Barbara Maass, bibliothécaire à la Société d’habitation du Québec, à Montréal, ainsi que des personnes que nous avons rencontrées à titre d’informateurs-clés et dont les noms sont mentionnés à la section 1 du présent rapport.Le projet de recherche a obtenu, à l'origine, l'appui technique de Vincent van Schendel, alors aux Services aux collectivités de l'UQAM, et une recommandation favorable du Comité des services aux collectivités (CSAC) auprès du Comité d'aide financière aux chercheures-chercheurs (CAFACC) de l’UQAM. Ce dernier a jugé favorablement le projet et lui a octroyé une subvention dans le cadre du Programme d'aide financière à la recherche à la création (PAFARC) de l'UQAM - Volet 2: Recherche dans le cadre des services aux collectivités

Saturated areas through the lens: 2. Spatio-temporal variability of streamflow generation and its relationship with surface saturation

Investigating the spatio-temporal variability of streamflow generation is fundamental to interpret the hydrological and biochemical functioning of catchments. In humid temperate environments, streamflow generation is often linked to the occurrence of near stream surface saturated areas, which mediate hydrological connectivity between hillslopes and streams. In this second contribution of a series of two papers, we used salt dilution gauging to investigate the spatio-temporal variability of streamflow in different subcatchments and for different reaches in the Weierbach catchment (0.42 km2) and explored the topographical controls on streamflow variability. Moreover, we mapped stream network expansion and contraction dynamics. Finally, we combined the information on the spatio-temporal variability of streamflow with the characterization of riparian surface saturation dynamics of seven different areas within the catchment (mapped with thermal infrared imagery, as presented in our first manuscript). We found heterogeneities in the streamflow contribution from different portions of the catchment. Although the size of the contributing area could explain differences in subcatchments' and reaches' net discharge, no clear topographic controls could be found when considering the area-normalized discharge. This suggests that some local conditions exert control on the variability of specific discharge (e.g., local bedrock characteristics and occurrence of perennial springs). Stream network dynamics were found not to be very responsive to changes in catchment's discharge (i.e., total active stream length vs. stream outlet discharge relationship could be described through a power law function with exponent = 0.0195). On the contrary, surface saturation dynamics were found to be in agreement with the level of streamflow contribution from the correspondent reach in some of the investigated riparian areas. This study represents an example of how the combination of different techniques can be used to characterize the internal heterogeneity of the catchment and thus improve our understanding of how hydrological connectivity is established and streamflow is generated.</p