Integrating Employment Contracts and Comparisons: What One Can Teach Us about the Other

This study examines the events that trigger individuals to consider the social exchanges involved in their employment relationships. Integrating social comparison and psychological contract literature streams, a parallel is drawn between system-referent comparisons and psychological contract evaluations. We hypothesize that self- and other-referent comparisons may be human triggers for engaging in this type of comparison. A variety of structural triggers are also proposed to influence psychological contract evaluations. This field study examines these primary and secondary contract makers as social comparison triggers. Results support the hypotheses that the triggers identified predict psychological contract evaluation and that psychological contract breach is correlated with these evaluations. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed

Behavioral integrity for safety, priority of safety, psychological safety, and patient safety: a team-level study

This article clarifies how leader behavioral integrity for safety helps solve follower's double bind between adhering to safety protocols and speaking up about mistakes against protocols. Path modeling of survey data in 54 nursing teams showed that head nurse behavioral integrity for safety positively relates to both team priority of safety and psychological safety. In turn, team priority of safety and team psychological safety were, respectively, negatively and positively related with the number of treatment errors that were reported to head nurses. We further demonstrated an interaction effect between team priority of safety and psychological safety on reported errors such that the relationship between team priority of safety and the number of errors was stronger for higher levels of team psychological safety. Finally, we showed that both team priority of safety and team psychological safety mediated the relationship between leader behavioral integrity for safety and reported treatment errors. These results suggest that although adhering to safety protocols and admitting mistakes against those protocols show opposite relations to reported treatment errors, both are important to improving patient safety and both are fostered by leaders who walk their safety talk

Promoting Ethical Corporate Behavior in a Global Context

The goal of this paper is to provide executives with actionable strategies for promoting ethical corporate behavior through the recognition, understanding, and management of the social comparison process. To that end, we discuss how social comparison may influence the behavior of managers in ethical contexts and particularly how errors in social comparison (like pluralistic ignorance and false consensus) may increase the number of ethical dilemmas in organizations. We suggest that the appropriate management of social comparison could limit the occurrence of unethical behavior in organizations. We conclude with recommendations for executive actions to initiate programs that may facilitate the development of an ethical corporate culture by emphasizing managerial accountability

Designing and evaluating resource-oriented interventions to enhance employee well-being and health

peer-reviewedThis editorial introduces JOOP’s special issue on designing and evaluating resource-oriented interventions to enhance employees’ well-being and health. This special issue aims to stimulate research on resource-oriented interventions by bringing together examples of original intervention research, literature reviews on specific resources, and guidelines on how to design and evaluate resource-oriented interventions. We begin with a reflection on current issues pertaining to definition, design and focus of resource-oriented interventions at work, followed by a brief outline of the papers included in this special issue. Four papers examine how resource-oriented interventions can develop personal and job resources, thereby evaluating their effect on well-being, health, and to a lesser extent, performance. Two papers provide guidance on how to design and evaluate resource-oriented interventions in the workplace. The special issue concludes with a critical reflection on the current state of the field by Baumeister and Alghamdi, which points to the challenges and limitations of resourcebased intervention research, with the aim to inspire and advance future research in this field

Qualitative study exploring the phenomenon of multiple electronic prescribing systems within single hospital organisations

BACKGROUND: A previous census of electronic prescribing (EP) systems in England showed that more than half of hospitals with EP reported more than one EP system within the same hospital. Our objectives were to describe the rationale for having multiple EP systems within a single hospital, and to explore perceptions of stakeholders about the advantages and disadvantages of multiple systems including any impact on patient safety. METHODS: Hospitals were selected from previous census respondents. A decision matrix was developed to achieve a maximum variation sample, and snowball sampling used to recruit stakeholders of different professional backgrounds. We then used an a priori framework to guide and analyse semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: Ten participants, comprising pharmacists and doctors and a nurse, were interviewed from four hospitals. The findings suggest that use of multiple EP systems was not strategically planned. Three co-existing models of EP systems adoption in hospitals were identified: organisation-led, clinician-led and clinical network-led, which may have contributed to multiple systems use. Although there were some perceived benefits of multiple EP systems, particularly in niche specialities, many disadvantages were described. These included issues related to access, staff training, workflow, work duplication, and system interfacing. Fragmentation of documentation of the patient's journey was a major safety concern. DISCUSSION: The complexity of EP systems' adoption and deficiencies in IT strategic planning may have contributed to multiple EP systems use in the NHS. In the near to mid-term, multiple EP systems may remain in place in many English hospitals, which may create challenges to quality and patient safety.Peer reviewe

Forging Partnerships in Health Care: Process and Measuring Benefits

Universally, there is concern that much academic learning has dealt mainly in theory, removing knowledge from context with a resultant lack of practical experience. Here, the catalyst for strengthening university-community engagement, emanated from a desire to foster greater propensity within students to make connections between their academic courses and responsibility toward the community and people in need, and thus develop enhanced skills in social interaction, teamwork and effectiveness. This paper explores a variety of models of university-community engagement that aim to achieve and model good practice in policy making and planning around healthcare education and service development. Ways of integrating teaching and learning with community engagement, so there is reciprocal learning with significant benefits to the community, students, the university and industry are described. The communities of engagement for a transdisciplinary approach in healthcare are defined and the types of collaborative partnerships are outlined, including public/private partnerships, service learning approaches and regional campus engagement. The processes for initiating innovation in this field, forging sustainable partnerships, providing cooperative leadership and building shared vision are detailed. Measuring shared and sustained benefits for all participants is examined in the context of effecting changes in working relationships as well as the impact on students in terms of increased personal and social responsibility, confidence and competence. For the health professions, it is considered vital to adopt this approach in order to deliver graduates who feel aware of community needs, believe they can make a difference, and have a greater sense of community responsibility, ethic of service and more sophisticated understandings of social contexts. In the longer term, it is proposed the strategy will deliver a future healthcare workforce that is more likely to have a strengthened sense of community, social and personal responsibility and thus effect positive social change

Chief Executive Officers’ Perceptions of Collective Organizational Engagement and Patient Experience in Acute Care Hospitals

The concept of employee engagement has garnered considerable attention in acute care hospitals because of the many positive benefits that research has found when clinicians are individually engaged. However, limited, if any, research has examined the effects of engaging all hospital employees (including housekeeping, cafeteria, and admissions staff) in a collective manner and how this may impact patient experience, an important measure of hospital performance. Therefore, this quantitative online survey-based study examines the association between 60 chief executive officers\u27 (CEOs\u27) perceptions of the collective organizational engagement (COE) of all hospital employees and patient experience. A summary measure of the US Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey scores was used to assess patient experience at each of the 60 hospitals represented in the study. A multiple linear regression model was tested using structural equation modeling. The findings of the research suggest that CEOs\u27 perceptions of COE explain a significant amount of variability in patient experience at acute care hospitals. Practical implications for CEOs and other hospital leaders are provided that discuss how COE can be used as an organizational capability to influence organizational performance

Examining conscientiousness as a key resource in resisting email interruptions : implications for volatile resources and goal achievement

Within the context of the conservation of resources model, when a resource is deployed, it is depleted - albeit temporarily. However, when a 'key', stable resource, such as Conscientiousness, is activated (e.g., using a self-control strategy, such as resisting an email interruption), we predicted that (1) another, more volatile resource (affective well-being) would be impacted and that (2) this strategy would be deployed as a trade-off, allowing one to satisfy task goals, at the expense of well-being goals. We conducted an experience‐sampling field study with 52 email-users dealing with their normal email as it interrupted them over the course of a half‐day period. This amounted to a total of 376 email reported across the sample. Results were analysed using random coefficient hierarchical linear modelling and included cross-level interactions for Conscientiousness with strategy and well-being. Our first prediction was supported - deploying the stable, key resource of Conscientiousness depletes the volatile, fluctuating resource of affective well-being. However, our second prediction was not fully realized. Although resisting or avoiding an email interruption was perceived to hinder well-being goal achievement by Conscientious people, it had neither a positive nor negative impact on task goal achievement. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Practitioner points: It may be necessary for highly Conscientious people to turn off their email interruption alerts at work, in order to avoid the strain that results from an activation-resistance mechanism afforded by the arrival of a new email. Deploying key resources means that volatile resources may be differentially spent, depending on one's natural tendencies and how these interact with the work task and context. This suggests that the relationship between demands and resources is not always direct and predictable. Practitioners may wish to appraise the strategies they use to deal with demands such as email at work, to identify if these strategies are assisting with task or well-being goal achievement, or whether they have become defunct through automation

Doing good buffers against feeling bad: Prosocial impact compensates for negative task and self-evaluations

Although evidence suggests that negative task and self-evaluations are associated with emotional exhaustion, little research has examined factors that buffer against these affects. We propose that perceived prosocial impact, the experience of helping others, compensates for negative task and self-evaluations by focusing attention on positive outcomes for others. In Study 1, perceived prosocial impact attenuated the associations of low intrinsic motivation and core self-evaluations with emotional exhaustion among professional fundraisers. Study 2 replicated these results among public sanitation employees and extended them to supervisor performance ratings. Mediated moderation analyses indicated that by protecting against emotional exhaustion, perceived prosocial impact compensated for low intrinsic motivation and core self-evaluations to predict higher performance ratings. Our studies extend theory and research on burnout, helping, and citizenship

The buffering effect of perceived organizational support on the relationship between work engagement and behavioral outcomes

The present study examined the commonly held assumption that a low level of work engagement leads to higher turnover intentions and employee deviant behavior. Employee survey results (n=175) from a manufacturing organization in the United Kingdom showed that employee work engagement correlates negatively with lagged measures of turnover intentions and deviant work behavior directed towards the organization. The results suggest that perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between work engagement and turnover intentions and deviant behaviors directed towards the organization, such that perceived organizational support compensates for relatively low levels of work engagement