Quête identitaire des cadres intermédiaires hospitaliers

Cet article porte sur les tiraillements identitaires des cadres intermédiaires des hôpitaux romands. Face à des réformes hospitalières nombreuses et de grande ampleur, les cadres intermédiaires sont contraints d'endosser un rôle managérial remettant en cause leur attachement à leur groupe professionnel d'origine. De multiples tensions professionnelles les conduisent à accepter une managérialisation de leur rôle, d'une part, tout en continuant à défendre leur corporation professionnelle, d'autre part

Stress among public middle managers dealing with reforms

Purpose: This study aims to identify social and organizational antecedents of stress. This paper also investigates whether attitudes toward organizational changes and reforms might explain stress perception and mediate the relationships between social and organizational job characteristics and stress perception. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative approach is used to identify the relationships between our research variables. The investigated population is composed of middle managers working in Swiss public hospitals (N = 720), which are currently being confronted by major reforms. Findings: The findings show that perceived social support (work relationships with and support from colleagues), as well as several job characteristics (autonomy in performing tasks; flexibility in the organization of working time; degree of conflict) are significantly related to stress perception. Moreover, positive attitudes toward change are negatively related to stress, and mediate the relationships between perceived social support as well as job characteristics and stress perception. Originality/value: The innovation of this paper is grounded in the specific population we investigate, as our empirical inquiry concerns middle managers working in public hospitals. Moreover, this research highlights the central role of job characteristics and attitudes toward change in explaining stress perception. Practical implications: This paper sheds light on several job characteristics which could contribute to mitigating stress perception among middle managers. The findings could therefore guide HRM specialists in their efforts to create a favorable work environment so as to facilitate middle managers' activities

Politique publique et management public, de nouvelles frontières ?

Introduction à un cahier spécial portant sur les relations entre politique publique et management public

Hierarchical controls of endophyte-mediated drought tolerance : ecological, physiological, and molecular

Symbiotic interactions influence many community and ecosystem processes, via their role in nutrient cycling, water acquisition, and pathogen protection. Symbiotic associations can range from antagonisms to mutualisms and depend on multiple levels of control: ecological controls driving species distributions, the physiological interaction of host and symbiont, and molecular regulation of symbiotic interactions. Using horizontally-transmitted endophytes and their associations with C4 grasses, I examined the ecological, physiological and molecular drivers of symbiotic interactions. Horizontally transmitted fungal endophytes reside within the tissues of nearly all studied plants and can alter plant physiology in response to drought. Most climate models predict an increase in the frequency and severity of drought in upcoming decades. If the drivers of endophyte-mediated drought tolerance can be used to predict the outcomes of plant- endophyte interactions more generally, it may have large ecological and economic implications. Throughout my dissertation, I characterized the ecological, physiological and molecular controls of plant fungal symbioses. To identify the ecological drivers of endophyte distributions, I characterized the plant and endophyte communities across a precipitation gradient, finding that historical and current climate explained most of the variation in community composition. Biotic factors, including host specificity and host traits, were substantially less predictive than biotic factors. To understand the physiological controls of plant-endophyte interactions, I characterized both functional traits of endophytes in culture and their effect on their plant host in symbiosis. Fungal resource use and stress tolerance were strongly predictive of the outcome of symbioses under stress, but less so under non-stressed conditions. To understand the molecular regulation of plant-fungal symbioses, I identified differentially expressed plant genes under differing environmental conditions. I found that, while certain pathogen and drought response genes correlated with plant response to fungal colonization, overall, beneficial fungi affected expression of a smaller number of genes than antagonistic fungi. Together, the results of these experiments emphasize the potential of multiple levels of regulation (ecological, physiological, and molecular) to regulate the outcome of symbioses.Plant Biolog