Who Cares for Those Who Take Care? Risks and Resources of Work in Care Homes

Abstract

Over the years – due to the aging population, the process of corporatisation and a demand for a higher quality of services – professionals who work in Care Homes have been exposed to an increasing risk of physical and emotional malaise because of the number of challenges they’ve been asked to manage. Given these factors, there is a growing interest in the study and understanding of professions in geriatric care settings. In the literature there is a prevalence of quantitative studies offering an overview in terms of indicators – at the individual or group or organizational level – concerning the potential development of situations of professional malaise. Conversely, there is a lack of qualitative studies exploring the risk and protection factors. For this reason, in this study we decided to use a qualitative approach to explore “more up close” this kind of organizational context and to keep together the different levels in systemic terms in order to identify – according to professionals’ perceptions – resource factors (in order to leverage these aspects) and fatigue factors (to identify them and treat them). Three Italian Care Homes were involved and the interview’s sample was composed of 45 professionals – 15 nurses, 30 total Patient Care Assistants (PCAs) and Auxiliary Care Assistants (ACAs), of these, 17 males and 28 females, with an average age of 43 years (SD = 0.78) – selected using a sampling of maximum variability. From the analysis of the materials there seem to be four profiles of the professionals involved. Implications to ensure a functional human resource management are discussed for the purpose of promote the well-being of the various professionals, and, as a result, an increasing quality of service.

The Living and Working Together Perspective on Creativity in Organizations

“…Finally we would like to emphasize that in previous qualitative studies (Gozzoli et al, 2014(Gozzoli et al, , 2018aScaratti et al, 2014Scaratti et al, , 2017Frascaroli et al, 2016;Gorli et al, 2016;Marta et al, 2016;Saita et al, 2016;Tamanza et al, 2016) we found that the living and working together style that characterizes an organization determines the organizational generative possibility in creative and relational terms. Having found that only a non-destructive living and working together style can protect this generative dynamic, we believe that it is important to continue our studies to better understand what happens in destructive living and working together styles.…”

“…In this sense, Gozzoli's (2016a,b) perspective on "Living and working together in organizations" (from now on LWTO) could be significant to enrich the scientific dialogue on organizational creativity. This perspective, as emerges from various empirical qualitative studies (Gozzoli and Frascaroli, 2012;Gozzoli et al, 2014Gozzoli et al, , 2018aScaratti et al, 2014Scaratti et al, , 2017Frascaroli et al, 2016;Gorli et al, 2016;Marta et al, 2016;Saita et al, 2016;Tamanza et al, 2016;D' Angelo et al, 2018), aims to consider variables of interaction and relationship involved in the definition of the living and working together style to better understand their influence on creativity and innovative processes. In fact, a generative living and working together environment, where professionals are allowed to deal with the Otherness with an open dialogue, is itself directly linked to creativity and innovation processes.…”

Organisational Welfare in Italian SMEs: The Process of Valorising Human Resources

“…Therefore, besides mapping the more "conventional" forms of welfare, one of the first useful guidelines that emerged from this study is that it is important to allow these more implicit dimensions to emerge and have an awareness of them. It is also worth specifying that this does not just imply mapping and highlighting actions, but also understanding the representations related to welfare and the connection with the organisational life in which these actions collocate themselves [2,[33][34][35][36][37]. The challenge that arises-especially for SMEs-is to preserve what is known, "familiar" and that gives security, which maintains a stable identity, and acknowledge the urge to change and evolve to respond to new internal and external demands.…”

Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

“…To be sustainable, in this sense, every organizational/managerial process and practice should be underpinned by specific "pillars" [19,20], such as participation, equity and justice [21], co-creation of value [22], individual and collective capital promotion and regeneration [23,24]. Rather than aiming at avoiding exploitation, depletion and irreparable alteration, from this perspective sustainability focuses on the promotion of individual and collective well-being [25][26][27], and is concerned with stakeholder engagement and value generation on multiple fronts [28]. Further, sustainability requires the construction of "authentic meanings for individuals and communities, underlining the importance of connections, meaning and purpose" [25] (p. 2).…”