This research explores whether a firm's psychosocial stressors contribute to strains or outcomes important to the organization. The psychosocial stressors chosen for study include: role conflict and ambiguity, workload (qualitative and quantitative), participative decision making, autonomy, and security. Independent variables were the emotional strains of job satisfaction and job commitment. The independent variables for behavioral strains included injury, lost days, workers' compensation claims, and absenteeism. Three moderators: age, gender, and social support were evaluated for interaction effects. The study sampled 77 occupationally injured and 81 non-injured employees from one medium sized Army community hospital. This study uses multivariate hierarchical multiple set regression as its principal analytical method. The hierarchial procedure orders the sets into an a priori hierarchy and enters each set sequentially from the hierarchy, evaluating the increase in $\rm R\sp2.$ The results suggest that psychosocial stressors are significant variables to consider when investigating workers' emotional and behavioral strains. For example, age, participation, and satisfaction were found statistically significant in differentiating between the occupationally injured and the non-injured samples. The study also found that ambiguity, participation, and autonomy influenced emotional strains. Additionally, age and social support appear to moderate the relationship between some psychosocial factors and emotional and behavioral strains. Age moderated the relationship with only emotional strains, while social support moderated both emotional and behavioral strains. Further, social support was found to have a main effect on the emotional strains of satisfaction and commitment, but not on any behavioral ones. Age was found to have a direct effect on the behavioral strains of workers' compensation claims. Finally, although not statistically significant when entered as a set and evaluated using the statistical analysis techniques in this study, a relationship between age and workers' compensation claims and qualitative workload and absenteeism were suggested. The economic and human costs associated with occupational injury are staggering. These findings suggest that attention to psychosocial factors within control of the employer, can promote good management outcomes, improve employee quality of worklife, and contain costs.

It is estimated that by 2018, workers age 55 or older will compose nearly a quarter of the labor force (Tossi, 2009). The aging workforce is dramatically affecting the nursing workforce. Indeed, the nursing workforce is expected to face staffing shortages of epidemic proportions because of the impending retirement of nurses who are Baby Boomers (Buerhaus, et al., 2006). Moreover, the nursing shortage is exacerbated by younger nurses' greater willingness to turn over (Aiken et al., 2001). Consequently, investigating how the workplace context affects retention of nurses is important. The present study sought to address the nursing shortage concern through examining how the workplace climate associated with age-related worker treatment and individual characteristics affect nurse retention. In this study, I developed and validated new ageism climate measures, which include younger worker, older worker, and general ageism climates. I examined how ageism climates affect people's job withdrawal intentions, organizational commitment, and work engagement. Additionally, I investigated whether Core Self-Evaluation (CSE; Judge, Locke, Durham, 1998) moderates the ageism climates relationships with the outcome variables. During the scale development and validation process, I found that assessments of younger and older worker ageism climates depend on the age of the respondent, whereas general ageism climate did not have this dependency. Because younger and older ageism climates displayed measurement non-equivalence across age groups, I tested each of my hypotheses using three sample variations (under 40, 40 and older, and combined sample). In the under 40 sample, CSE buffered the negative effects of negative older and younger worker ageism climates, and CSE enhanced the positive effects of a positive general age climate on turnover intentions and organizational commitment. In the 40 and older sample, I found that less ageist younger and older worker climates were associated with decreased turnover intentions and increased affective commitment. Finally, in the combined sample, I observed that a less ageist general ageism climate was associated with lower turnover intentions and greater affective commitment. The results contribute to our understanding of how perceptions of age-related treatment affect important workplace outcomes. The findings also support ageism climates as separate measures. However, additional measure development and validation is needed because this was the initial study to investigate ageism climate. This study has implications for the relational demography paradigm (Tsui & O'Reilly, 1989) in that people's age group identification may affect their ageism climate perceptions. This potentially explains the differential relationships among the ageism climates on the outcomes between the under 40 and 40 and older age groups. From a practical perspective, improving ageism climates in the workplace could positively affect nurse retention, which could alleviate some of the nursing shortage concerns.

As contemporary organizations are met with increasing demands and uncertainty, their continued success relies on employees' willingness and ability to think proactively and take action in the face of challenges. Some scholars have reasoned that stressors in the work environment may serve as indicators, to employees, that change is needed, therefore promoting proactive work behavior. However, current theories related to work stress assert that demands in the environment may exert effects dependent on the degree to which resources are available to cope with demands. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model and others, the present research examines the interplay between psychological resources, work stressors, and proactive work behavior in a sample of 229 preschool teachers in Germany. Specifically, the focus is on the moderating role of state-level psychological resources (e.g., enthusiasm, self-assurance, attentiveness, and feeling recovered) in the relationship between work stressors and proactive work behavior. Data was collected at three time points and included both self- and co-worker reports of proactive work behavior. Results indicate that psychological resources, characterized by positive mood and high energy, play an important motivational role in the face of work stressors. Findings support the importance of considering individual factors (e.g. availability of psychological resources) when examining relationships between environmental factors and proactive behavior. Implications for future research are discussed.

No description available.

This study examines the relationship between work and leisure satisfaction using Shepard's Status Recognition Model. The sample was made up of two groups of health services personnel each of which contained three work levels or groups: a support group, a clinical group, and an administrative group. Assuming that status recognition would be different for the low status jobs (support) and high status jobs (clinical and administrative), it was hypothesized that the high status group would display low work related alienation and thus show a positive correlation between work and leisure satisfaction (evidence of a spillover mechanism). The lower status group was hypothesized to display high work related alienation and thus show a satisfaction (evidence of a compensatory mechanism). Analysis of 85 questionnaires confirmed the primary hypothesis that high status workers would display a spillover mechanism between work and leisure attitudes. The low negative correlation between overall work and leisure satisfaction in the support group was indicative of a compensatory mechanism, particularly when controlled for whether individuals were leaders or participants in their leisure roles. Results were discussed in the context of work centrality, and a modified version of Shepard's Status Recognition Model was proposed.

Rating scale techniques have been recommended for mental workload assessment. The Modified Cooper-Harper (MCH) Scale is a decision tree scale which has proven to be a reliable indicator of workload. Five additional rating scales were developed to examine rating scale features including a) number of rating scale alternatives, b) decision tree format, c) decision tree hierarchy, and d) (two) computer-implementation(s). The purpose of this study was to improve the sensitivity of the MCH Scale and to try to identify what aspects of the scale contribute to its effectiveness. A simulated flight task emphasizing mediational (cognitive) behavior was used to present low, medium, and high levels of loading to 6 student and thirty licensed pilots. In a Singer-Link GAT-1B flight simulator, the pilots performed three counterbalanced load level flights. After each simulated flight, a rating scale and questionnaire was administered. The results indicated that the paper rating scale having 15 response alternatives and the original decision tree was the most sensitive to load. Both 10-point modifications, the computerized version of the MCH Scale and the version with the decision tree format removed, were somewhat superior to the original MCH Scale, which was also sensitive to load. These findings, however, are not consistent with those obtained in a companion study of communications tasks, indicating that these rating scale measures are task dependent. Use of the MCH Scale is recommended since it alone has consistently demonstrated sensitivity to load across tasks and across studies. / M.S.

The study examined the number of significant factors in the Hackman and Oldham (1980) job characteristics model. The original factors were: Skill Variety, Task Significance, Task Identity, Autonomy, and Feedback. Scores on these dimensions for 84 employees of the University of Central Florida (21 supervisory and 63 non-supervisory subjects) were used as the basis for this study through a mail administration of the Hackman and Oldham Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and their Job Rating Form (JRF). It was hypothesized that: (a) only four significant job dimensions would emerge from factor analysis of the data; (b) that the motivating potential ratings from job incumbents would be significantly different from those provided by supervisors; and (c) that these motivating potential scores would be significantly lower than the norm for the job families into which those positions fell. the data failed to lend support to any of the preceding hypotheses. First, only one significant factor (Skill Variety) was extracted from the non-supervisory data while two factors (Skill Variety and Task Identity) were extracted from the supervisory data. Second, incumbents' ratings were not significantly different from those of their supervisors and third, the motivating potential scores of incumbents were found to be higher than the norm for most of the job families sampled in the study.

Of the subjective rating scales utilized in workload research the Cooper-Harper scale is the most popular. This decision tree rating scale and modifications of the scale have provided sensitive measurements by discriminating among various mental workload levels. This research is an investigation into the characteristics of a Modified Cooper-Harper rating scale (MCH) developed by Wierwille and Casali (1983). Six rating scale designs emphasizing major characteristics which might cause the MCH scale to be a sensitive measure of mental workload were used in this study. The aims of the research were to discover modifications of the MCH might make it more sensitive. A communications task developed by Casali and Wierwille (1983) was manipulated to present 36 subject pilots, both private and student, with three communications loading levels. The pilots were distributed into the six rating scales by experience level. Six different experience levels were represented in each of the rating scale groupings. Using the communications loading, the presence of a decision tree in the scales appeared to improve the scale's ability to discriminate among loading levels. The expansion of the MCH scale to 15 categories decreased the sensitivity of the MCH rating scale. The standard 10-point MCH rating scale was the most consistent of the six rating scales and attained a high ability to discriminate among loading levels. Finally, a companion mediational task study by Rieger (1983) using the same six rating scales resulted in substantially different results, suggesting that subjective rating scales are extremely task dependent. / M.S.

This investigation determines students' attitudes toward a "humanized" work climate. The possibility that attitudes developed before entering the labor force contribute to the lack of such environments is the basis of the research design. A review of motivation theories, relevant research and experiences of some "humanized" firms precedes the development of a model for a humanized climate. The three main elements of the model--team activity, the product, and the self-concept--are interconnected by elements such as self-control, job performance, autonomy, goal definition, and learning. The research questionnaire, a thirty-onestatement, Likert-type instrument, elicits attitudes about the time-task aspect of Kahn's "Work-Module." A Cronbach Alpha Coefficient of 0.74 indicates an acceptable reliability. The subjects, all male, were seventy senior business students at North Texas State University, fifty-six high school senior academic students from the Richardson, Texas ISD, thirty-two high school vocational students from the Garland, Texas ISD, and twenty-nine college vocational students from the El Centro Branch of the Dallas County Community College System. A 2 x 2 analysis of variance revealed a significant difference (P = 0.0038) between attitudes of vocational and non-vocational students. Vocational students apparently value an autonomous work situation. They prefer a job which permits them to develop and use four or five work skills, because that type of job appeals to their self-concept and promises economic and vocational security. However, students in academic programs consider their economic and job security best protected by structured and specialized jobs. Individuals who aspire to own their own business also prefer the structured climate; others prefer the autonomous environment. The difference in attitude between the two education levels was significant at P < 0.20. The education process appears to be associated with preference for a more structured work climate, in the case of both academic and vocational students. Education also appears to reduce the difference of opinion between academic and vocational students. The study concludes that the two major elements of the human resource begin their work lives with perceptual differences learned from experiences outside the work environment. Organization-change activities are impeded, and to some extent controlled, by these differences. The relationship of the attitudes, given the traditional manager-employee relationship, can contribute to the scarcity of "humanized" firms.

A conceptual model examining the antecedents and outcomes of occupational self-efficacy among the older workforce is presented. Proposed antecedents to occupational self-efficacy included self-perceived stereotypes and work demands.