SummaryResource theories of occupational stress argue that employees' personal and environmental resources protect them from too much distress or strain during stressful work experiences. We examined four resources (emotional stability, previous experience, low drain on pre-existing resources, and workgroup quality) available to soldiers at the beginning of a stressful 3-month training experience as predictors of the trajectories of their strains over that period of time. Based on conservation of resources theory and the job demands-resources model, we predicted that the trends of strains would be more favorable (would increase more slowly or decline more quickly) if participants started the training with greater resources. The resources, primarily emotional stability and lack of pre-existing resource drain, tended to be negatively related to strains, consistent with the idea that they can reduce strains. Significant interactions predicting trends were found predicting two of the three strains (post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression, but not reports of physical health). Contrary to expectations, however, the three resources that significantly predicted trends over time (emotional stability, previous experience, and low pre-existing resource drain) were associated with worsening rather than improving strains.
Soldiers deployed to combat zones are likely to experience some stressful situations that can result in individual strains or ill health. In addition to the stressors originating in situ, problems at home can also affect soldiers' strains and attitudes about deployment. However, they may also possess resources in the form of social support from both their comrades and family that, based on resources theories of occupational stress, can lessen strains or enhance attitudes. A serious problem in examining this issue is the difficulty of studying their occupational stress, because collecting data in their work situation-a combat zone-is inherently complicated. Most studies rely on past recollection of the deployment situation in postdeployment data collections, with some studies including a pre-deployment measure or one data collection during deployment. The present study was the first to collect data from soldiers periodically (monthly) over the course of their entire deployment to a combat zone, which has the advantage of providing more accurate tracking of stressor and resource effects on both their strains and positive deployment attitudes closer to real time. This monthly diary study found that, consistent with resource theories of occupational stress, the previous month's combat stressors had a detrimental effect on many outcomes, and the resource of social support from work and home during the previous month improved physical health and depression, respectively. Future research should not only replicate this approach to data collection but also extend the measurement periods to examine soldiers' readjustment process after returning home.
Today's global job market requires a worker-oriented focus that emphasises individuals' competencies and is steadily phasing out the task-oriented model that once dominated most work environments. Also impacting the world of work is the pressure to eliminate all forms of waste in manufacturing as companies strive to compete on a global scale. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), considered to be the next generation of lean thinking, shows great promise as a means of managing and tracking products through their entire lifecycle, from design through recycling. This paper proposes the creation of a competency model for engineers functioning in a PLM environment.
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