A sizeable portion of the United States (U.S.) population works within the criminal legal system, and individuals who have legal involvement are a highly stigmatized population. Research suggests working with stigmatized populations can result in the transfer of stigma to professionals, referred to as associative stigma. While qualitative studies indicate there are negative perceptions related to working in criminal legal settings, there is no quantitative research on criminal legal staff’s experience with associative stigma and how it impacts job-related factors. The purpose of this study was to 1) examine the psychometrics of an adapted measure to quantitatively assess associative stigma among criminal legal staff, 2) explore individual differences in staff’s associative stigma, and 3) investigate associative stigma’s relationship with influential job factors. An online sample of criminal legal staff in the U.S. (n=198) were recruited to complete an adapted version of the Clinician Associative Stigma Scale (Yanos et al., 2017) along with measures of demographics, stigmatizing attitudes toward justice-involved people, and job-related factors (e.g., orientation toward punishment, burnout). An exploratory factor analysis identified two factors in the adapted-CASS named “negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings” and “discomfort with disclosure.” Regarding individual differences in associative stigma, those who were younger, worked fewer years with justice-involved individuals, and worked in probation agencies reported experiencing more negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings. Staff who had daily (as opposed to less frequent) contact with justice-involved individuals reported more discomfort with disclosure. Regarding associative stigma’s impact on job-related factors, experiences with negative stereotypes of working in criminal legal settings and discomfort with disclosure were related to greater emotional exhaustion. Further, as staff endorsed more discomfort with disclosure, they indicated greater punitive orientation, turnover intention, plans to leave their jobs, and less job satisfaction. Overall, results suggest that associative stigma has a negative impact on job-related factors among criminal legal staff. Therefore, examining ways to support staff and reduce associative stigma’s impact may address some of the challenges of working in the criminal legal system.

The front-line homeless-sector workforce provides an essential service in an often emotionally-taxing environment that leads to high turnover. However, there has been limited research focused on front-line homeless sector workers or the supervisory support needed to mitigate the stressful nature of their work. A web-based survey of front-line homeless-sector workers (n=82) was conducted to compare the relative effects of transformational and supportive leadership on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in front-line homeless sector workers. Established and validated measures were used for each of the variables in the study; the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for transformational leadership, the Inventory of Supportive and Unsupportive Managerial Behaviours for supportive leadership, the Maslach Burnout Inventory for emotional exhaustion, and the TIS-6 Turnover Intention Scale for turnover intention. Correlational analysis and multivariate multiple regression were used to analyze the relative effects. It was found that although transformational leadership has a correlational association with emotional exhaustion, it does not have a significant association with turnover intention. It also does not have a predictive relationship with either emotional exhaustion or turnover intention in front-line homeless-sector workers. Supportive leadership, however, had significant correlational associations and significant predictive relationships with both emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in the respondents. Implications for homeless-serving agencies and for supervisory support for front-line homeless-sector workers are discussed. / Graduate

Ambivalence is the experience of both positive and negative evaluations regarding an object such as a person or an event. Although interest in leadership ambivalence has been growing among researchers, there is still little understanding of what distinguishes it from poor leadership. The goal of this dissertation was to contribute to the leadership ambivalence literature by examining ambivalence in the leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship through the lens of occupational stress. Specifically, I used the job demands-resources model as a theoretical foundation and presented leadership ambivalence as a unique job demand that is associated with emotional exhaustion as a symptom of strain after controlling for LMX quality. I also examined the mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of various personal resources. While leadership ambivalence was not a significant direct predictor of emotional exhaustion, the results supported rumination as a mediator of a significant indirect relationship between the two variables. Optimism, tolerance for ambiguity, and neuroticism were not significant moderators of the effect of leadership ambivalence. However, internal locus of control moderated the relationship between leadership ambivalence and rumination such that the relationship was stronger for those with low internality. In further supplementary analysis, the results were validated using an alternative measure of leadership ambivalence.

No / Contrary to its original conceptualization, research has found that emotional demands do not lead to burnout in nurses. According to psychoanalytic theory, unconscious defense mechanisms may protect nurses from conscious awareness of work-related anxiety. This prevents self-report and may explain research findings. The maturity of defense style influences how anxiety is managed. Immature defenses prevent the conscious processing necessary for resolution of anxiety. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the use of immature defenses will lead to emotional exhaustion. This cross-sectional study used questionnaires to explore the defense mechanisms of 87 Intensive Therapy Unit nurses. Although the sample endorsed a predominantly mature defense style, the use of immature defenses predicted emotional exhaustion. Also, lower levels of reported stress associated with emotional demands predicted emotional exhaustion. Although this strongly implies the mediating role of immature defense mechanisms, the results were not statistically significant.

Research has shown that self-efficacy is one of the most important personal resources in the work context. However, research on working life has mainly focused on a cognitive and task-oriented dimension of self-efficacy representing employees’ perceptions of their capacity to successfully complete work tasks. Thus, little is known about the influence that believing in one’s social and emotional competence could have. This thesis aims to expand previous theory regarding self-efficacy in the workplace by investigating social, emotional, and cognitive self-efficacy dimensions in relation to leadership, health, and well-being.   The thesis rests on four empirical studies, all related to health and well-being, and including at least one self-efficacy dimension. Study I employed questionnaire data from 169 Swedish high school students. The other three studies were based on questionnaire data obtained during a three-year international health-promoting leadership research project. These participants were employees and leaders from 229 different teams in 12 organizations in Sweden and Germany representing a wide range of occupations. Study I supported the idea that emotional self-efficacy is an important antecedent to prosocial behaviour and also highlighted the value of differentiating between different dimensions of self-efficacy. Study II validated the new work-related Occupational Social and Emotional Self-efficacy Scales; and indicated that these dimensions are positively related to well-being. However, Study III showed that emotional exhaustion in followers crossed over to leaders when the leaders’ emotional self-efficacy was high. Study IV revealed that transformational leadership and social self-efficacy can be positive for team climate. The main theoretical contribution of this thesis is to expand previous theory regarding self-efficacy in the workplace by incorporating social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. The main practical implication is that the new Occupational Social and Emotional Self-efficacy Scales can be used to promote health and well-being in the workplace through activities such as recruitment, staff development, and team-building. This thesis suggests that (a) training managers to exert transformational leadership behaviours may simultaneously promote team climate, and this process may be mediated by social self-efficacy, (b) it may be counterproductive to enhance leaders’ emotional abilities in a team of exhausted followers, since the result can be an exhausted leader rather than an exhilarated team, (c) interventions aimed at improving health and well-being should be specific to each work setting, and (d) a more holistic approach where the mutual influence between leaders and followers is considered may be beneficial for healthier work environments.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how emotional exhaustion (EE) impacts a boundary spanning employee's usage of service sabotage behaviors (SSB). This dissertation also investigates how perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisory support (PSS) alleviate a boundary spanning employee's EE and SSB. Furthermore, this dissertation examines how extraversion (EXT) and imagination (IMAG) moderates the relationship between POS and SSB and between PSS and SSB. A boundary spanning employee is any organizational employee who "engages in job-related interactions with a person who is considered part of the environment, who is not a member of the organization" (Robertson 1995, p. 75). These employees are important as research has shown that consumers use the attitudes and behaviors of these employees to positively or negatively impact their perceptions of the service encounter (e.g. Bitner 1990; Bowen and Schneider 1985; Pugh 2001). SSB are overt or covert behaviors which negatively affect the relationship between the organization and the customer (Harris and Ogbonna 2006, 2002). Rather than the boundary spanning employee engaging in negative behaviors towards other employees or the organization as a whole, SSB are acted upon the customer. EE occurs when an employee believes they are overextended by their work (Maslach and Jackson 1981). Boundary spanning employees are forced to display organizationally desired emotions even when encountering negative customers (Cordes and Dougherty 1993; Mulki, Jaramillo and Locander 2006). This interaction between the customer and employee may result in discontent and the employee may engage in SSB as a way to show this discontent. A boundary spanner's EE is hypothesized to positively impact SSB; therefore, it is important to investigate what will reduce or mitigate a boundary spanner's EE. Two constructs that are hypothesized to reduce both EE and SSB are POS and PSS. In order to test the hypotheses developed in this dissertation, 490 non-management retail sales and customer service employees across a variety of organizations were sampled. Results found that EE positively impacts SSB. EE also partially mediates the relationship between POS and SSB. The hypotheses associated with PSS, EXT and IMAG were not supported.

Canadian statistics on patient safety in acute care hospitals are alarming. Hospital safety concerns are not isolated to patient safety. Occupational safety is also important. With increasing shortages of nurses, stress in the work place is growing. Nurses report high levels of absenteeism of 14.5 days per year. The importance of a just and fair culture and the role of nurse leaders have been emphasized in safety literature. Although deemed important, studies of nurse leaders and patient outcomes are limited. The influence of interactional justice in the workplace on nurse and patient safety has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to test and refine a model developed from the literature which explains the impact of perceived interactional justice, relational leadership, and quality of nurse manager – clinical nurse relationships on the nursing work environment and ultimately patient and nurse safety outcomes. The model was tested on a random sample of 266 Ontario acute care registered nurses. Findings indicated the model reasonably fit the observed data, however could benefit from further refinement. The addition of 2 pathways (span of control to nurses’ intent to leave and number of medication errors to nurse emotional exhaustion) and trimming of the insignificant paths improved the overall model fit. The resulting model indicates that resonant leadership style and interactional justice improves the quality of nurse leader-nurse relationships which in turn improves quality of the nurses’ work environment and safety climate. A positive safety climate led to a decrease in the number medication errors and nurses’ intentions to leave their unit. A higher quality work environment predicted lower nurse emotional exhaustion. Additionally, higher numbers of medication errors led to an increase in nurse emotional exhaustion. This suggests that distress may be associated with making a medication error or fear of consequences. As well, larger manager spans were associated with less nurse intent to leave. As the span increased, the number of support personnel also increased. Contrary to other research findings, this result suggests that supportive personnel may mitigate the effect of large manager spans of control on nurses’ intent to leave their units.

Canadian statistics on patient safety in acute care hospitals are alarming. Hospital safety concerns are not isolated to patient safety. Occupational safety is also important. With increasing shortages of nurses, stress in the work place is growing. Nurses report high levels of absenteeism of 14.5 days per year. The importance of a just and fair culture and the role of nurse leaders have been emphasized in safety literature. Although deemed important, studies of nurse leaders and patient outcomes are limited. The influence of interactional justice in the workplace on nurse and patient safety has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to test and refine a model developed from the literature which explains the impact of perceived interactional justice, relational leadership, and quality of nurse manager – clinical nurse relationships on the nursing work environment and ultimately patient and nurse safety outcomes. The model was tested on a random sample of 266 Ontario acute care registered nurses. Findings indicated the model reasonably fit the observed data, however could benefit from further refinement. The addition of 2 pathways (span of control to nurses’ intent to leave and number of medication errors to nurse emotional exhaustion) and trimming of the insignificant paths improved the overall model fit. The resulting model indicates that resonant leadership style and interactional justice improves the quality of nurse leader-nurse relationships which in turn improves quality of the nurses’ work environment and safety climate. A positive safety climate led to a decrease in the number medication errors and nurses’ intentions to leave their unit. A higher quality work environment predicted lower nurse emotional exhaustion. Additionally, higher numbers of medication errors led to an increase in nurse emotional exhaustion. This suggests that distress may be associated with making a medication error or fear of consequences. As well, larger manager spans were associated with less nurse intent to leave. As the span increased, the number of support personnel also increased. Contrary to other research findings, this result suggests that supportive personnel may mitigate the effect of large manager spans of control on nurses’ intent to leave their units.

Die vorliegende Arbeit setzt sich aus zwei Teilstudien zusammen. In Teilstudie 1 wird die Stabilität eines allgemeinen Modells zu den Zusammenhängen zwischen Über- und Unterforderungsmerkmalen, sozialen Belastungen, Anforderungen und organisationalen Ressourcen einerseits sowie den Fehlbeanspruchungen emotionale Erschöpfung und Klientenaversion bzw. Distanzierungstendenzen andererseits für personenbezogene Dienstleistungstätigkeiten untersucht. Einbezogen wurden Ärztinnen und Ärzte, Pflegende und Mitarbeitende aus dem paramedizinischen Bereich sowie Lehrkräfte. Die deutlichsten positiven Zusammenhänge zeigen sich zwischen den Belastungen und der emotionalen Erschöpfung, wobei für die quantitative Überforderung die stabilsten Ergebnisse resultieren. Die Belastungen weisen über die emotionale Erschöpfung hinaus signifikante Zusammenhänge mit aversiven Gefühlen gegen Klientinnen und Klienten auf. Hinsichtlich der modellimplizierten Annahmen zu den positiven Zusammenhängen zwischen den Belastungen und der Distanzierung können in dieser Untersuchung zwar signifikante Ergebnisse, aber keine über die Stichproben hinweg stabilen Zusammenhänge gefunden werden. Die Annahmen zu einem negativen Zusammenhang zwischen den Anforderungen/Ressourcen und der Distanzierung können nur für die Anforderungsmerkmale bestätigt werden. In Teilstudie 2 erfolgte auf der Basis des in Teilstudie 1 entwickelten Arbeitsmodells eine vertiefte Betrachtung der Lehrkräftetätigkeit. Dabei wurden sowohl verschiedene Schulsystemebenen einbezogen als auch verschiedene Aufgabentypen unterschieden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass auf organisationaler Ebene Gratifikationskrisen und mangelnde kollektive Selbstwirksamkeitserwartungen fehlbeanspruchungsrelevant sein können. Besonders deutliche Zusammenhänge mit den Fehlbeanspruchungen und der Distanzierung zeigen sich für die primäraufgabenbezogenen Belastungen. Auch die Reziprozitätseinschätzungen in Bezug auf Schülerinnen und Eltern zeigen diesbezüglich ähnliche, wenn auch weniger deutliche, Zusammenhänge. Die Ergebnisse zu den Personmerkmalen lassen darauf schliessen, dass die Rolle der Person bei der Burnoutentwicklung nicht unterschätzt werde sollte. Als praktische Implikationen der Untersuchungsergebnisse werden u.a. Vorschläge für eine Stärkung der unterrichtsbezogenen und der klassenübergreifenden Kooperation, für eine Optimierung der Organisationsstruktur und eine „Professionalisierung“ der Organisation sowie für eine weiterführende Erarbeitung schulhausspezifischer Konzepte und Leitlinien gemacht. Es wird die Frage gestellt, ob die Lehrkräftetätigkeit sinnvollerweise als Lebensberuf verstanden werden sollte. Schliesslich wird auf die Bedeutung der Distanzierungsfähigkeit und der Selbstwirksamkeitserwartungen der Lehrkräfte hingewiesen. / The present work comprises two parts to a study. In the first part, the stability of a model on the associations between workload (i.e. quantitative overload), task requirements (i.e. variety, completeness), organisational resources (i.e. decision possibilities) and strain as well as tendencies toward disengagement in human service work was investigated. This included four samples: assistant physicians, senior physicians, nursing and paramedic workers and teachers. The clearest positive associations are shown between stressors and emotional exhaustion, whereas the quantitative overload reached the most stable results. The stressors show beyond the emotional exhaustion significant associations with aversion to clients. Regarding the associations between workload and disengagement, there were some significantly positive coefficients, yet no stable associations over the four samples. The assumptions of a negative association betweend task requirements/resources and disengagement can only be confirmed for the task requirements. The second part to the study involved a deeper look into teachers' work based on the working model developed in part 1 of the study. Different school system levels were included and distinctions were made between different types of tasks. The results of this analysis showed that on an organizationl level, the effort-reward imbalance and the (lacking) of collective self-efficacy were associated with strain. Particularly clear associations have been demonstrated for primary task-related workload with strain and disengagement. Also, but not as clear, the reciprocity estimates relating to students and parents show similar associations. The results on the personal characteristics lead to the conclusion that the role of the person in the development of burnout should not be underestimated. Based on the results of the analyses, there are different implications for in practice. There was allusion to the possibilities for reinforcing teaching-related and inter-class cooperation. Further important implications are the "professionalisation" of the organisation school, combined with an optimisation of the school organisation and school management. The fundamental question arises, whether one would have to refrain from portraying teacher activities as a lifetime career. Finally the importance of the abilty to distance onself and the self-efficacy of teachers is pointed out.

Bakalauro darbe analizuojama socioedukacinę pagalbą teikiančių darbuotojų psichofizinės būklės pokyčių ypatumai. Tyrime dalyvavo socioedukacinę pagalbą teikiantys darbuotojai – socialiniai pedagogai / socialiniai darbuotojai. Bakalauro darbo objektas – socioedukacinę pagalbą teikiančių darbuotojų patiriamų psichofizinės būklės pokyčių patirtys. Tyrimo tikslas – ištirti socioedukacinę pagalbą teikiančių darbuotojų psichofizinės būklės pokyčių ypatumus socioedukacinės pagalbos kontekste. / The final thesis „Pecularities of psychophysical state changes of social care personnel“ studies various peculiarities of psychophysical state changes of social care personnel which they are coping with during their work process. The objective of the thesis is the analysis of psychophysical state changes of social care personnel, which they face during their work, from a problem perspective. The aim of the thesis is to investigate state changes of psychophysical peculiarities of social care personnel in the context of social support. The social care personnel were part of the investigation analyzed in the thesis. The data of the investigation was collected by closed questionnaire and summarized by using descriptive statistics.