No abstract

SummaryThis study advances the limited research on work alignment and work engagement by investigating how perceived alignment of job tasks and organizational strategic priorities (strategic alignment) influences work engagement. Measures of job control and work social support were also included to enable comparisons between strategic alignment and other well-established job resources.

Drawing on the job demands-resources model, this research presents a quasi-experimental evaluation of an organizational intervention aiming to enhance upstream organizational resources via a leadership-development program. Repeated-measures data for perceptions of work-related characteristics, attitudes, and outcomes were collected four months before (Time 1/baseline) and seven months after (Time 2) the leadership-development intervention. Results indicated a positive effect of the leadership-development intervention on perceptions of work characteristics and well-being for the immediate subordinates of the leadership-development intervention participants, compared with a control group. Analysis of mediated effects indicated that the leadership-development intervention had a positive effect on subordinates’ perceptions of work-culture support and strategic alignment, which in turn had a positive effect on their job satisfaction and work engagement. This research successfully demonstrated that organizational interventions aiming to enhance upstream organizational resources (via leadership development) can effectively improve the psychosocial working environment for employees. Furthermore, this research addressed commonly cited limitations of intervention research, including the dearth of organizational-level interventions, lack of research focusing on positive outcomes, and failure to address mediating effects.

There is increasing evidence that work-life imbalance has a direct impact on societal issues, such as delayed parenting, declining fertility rates, ageing populations, and decreasing labour supply. It is documented that work-life balance policies are beneficial for individuals, their families, organisations, and society. However, other evidence demonstrates that the associated benefits are not always realised and work-life balance policies can result in reinforced gender inequities and increased levels of work-life conflict. This paper reviews the ability of work-life balance policies to actually influence some key social and organisational issues. Current developments, such as an increased casual workforce and the impact of changes in newly industrialised nations, are discussed. Recommendations for work-life balance to be addressed via a comprehensive multilevel approach are made.

The assessment of occupational stress is marred by an overwhelming adoption of simplistic research designs that generally fail to represent the complex reality of the occupational stress process. Informed by the theoretical tenants of both the transactional stress model and the job-demands-control-support model, this paper presents a rare simultaneous assessment of how two types of job demands (cognitive and emotional) are both moderated by job control and social support and mediated by coping for the prediction of work engagement and psychological strain over time. Self-report surveys were administered twice over 12 months to a sample of police-service workers and moderated mediation analyses were conducted on the matched sample of N = 2,481 respondents. The results offer support for the process of occupational stress by demonstrating how both accommodation and avoidance coping mediate the job-demands-outcome relationship over time. The results also demonstrate that this stressor-coping-strain process is simultaneously moderated by job support or job control. We found it interesting that this research also demonstrated that the estimation of work engagement was not unduly influenced by the type of job demands these police employees were exposed to. (PsycINFO Database Record