The present thesis investigates the issue of work-family conflict and facilitation in a sanitarian contest, using the DISC Model (De Jonge and Dormann, 2003, 2006). The general aim has been declined in two empirical studies reported in this dissertation chapters. Chapter 1 reporting the psychometric properties of the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation Questionnaire. Although the empirical evidence on the DISC Model has received a fair amount of attention in literature both for the theoretical principles and for the instrument developed to display them (DISQ; De Jonge, Dormann, Van Vegchel, Von Nordheim, Dollard, Cotton and Van den Tooren, 2007) there are no studies based solely on psychometric investigation of the instrument. In addition, no previous studies have ever used the DISC as a model or measurement instrument in an Italian context. Thus the first chapter of the present dissertation was based on psychometric investigation of the DISQ. Chapter 2 reporting a longitudinal study contribution. The purpose was to examine, using the DISC model, the relationship between emotional job characteristics, work-family interface and emotional exhaustion among a health care population. We started testing the Triple Match Principle of the DISC Model using solely the emotional dimension of the strain-stress process (i.e. emotional demands, emotional resources and emotional exhaustion). Then we investigated the mediator role played by w-f conflict and w-f facilitation in relation to emotional job characteristics and emotional exhaustion. Finally we compared the mediator model across workers involved in chronic illness home demands and workers who are not involved. Finally, a general conclusion, integrated and discussed the main findings of the studies reported in this dissertation.

Social networks are one of the “hot” themes in people’s life and contemporary social research. Considering our “embeddedness” in a thick web of social relations is a study perspective that could unveil a number of explanations of how people may manage their personal and social resources. Looking at people’s behaviors of building and managing their social networks, seems to be an effective way to find some possible rationalization about how to help people getting the best from their resources . The main aim of this dissertation is to give a closer look at the role of networking behaviors. Antecedents, motivations, different steps and measures about networking behaviors and outcomes are analyzed and discussed. Results seem to confirm, in a different setting and time perspective, that networking behaviors include different types and goals that change over time. Effects of networking behaviors seem to find empirical confirmation through social network analysis methods. Both personality and situational self-efficacy seem to predict networking behaviors. Different types of motivational drivers seem to be related to diverse networking behaviors.

The market’s challenges bring firms to collaborate with other organizations in order to create Joint Ventures, Alliances and Consortia that are defined as “Interorganizational Networks” (IONs) (Provan, Fish and Sydow; 2007). Some of these IONs are managed through a shared partecipant governance (Provan and Kenis, 2008): a team composed by entrepreneurs and/or directors of each firm of an ION. The research is focused on these kind of management teams and it is based on an input-process-output model: some input variables (work group’s diversity, intra-team's friendship network density) have a direct influence on the process (team identification, shared leadership, interorganizational trust, team trust and intra-team's communication network density), which influence some team outputs, individual innovation behaviors and team effectiveness (team performance, work group satisfaction and ION affective commitment). Data was collected on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs grouped in 28 ION’s government teams and the research hypotheses are tested trough the path analysis and the multilevel models. As expected trust in team and shared leadership are positively and directly related to team effectiveness while team identification and interorganizational trust are indirectly related to the team outputs. The friendship network density among the team’s members has got positive effects on the trust in team and on the communication network density, and also, through the communication network density it improves the level of the teammates ION affective commitment. The shared leadership and its effects on the team effectiveness are fostered from higher level of team identification and weakened from higher level of work group diversity, specifically gender diversity. Finally, the communication network density and shared leadership at the individual level are related to the frequency of individual innovative behaviors. The dissertation’s results give a wider and more precise indication about the management of interfirm network through “shared” form of governance.

This dissertation focuses on “organizational efficacy”, in particular on employees’ beliefs of organizational capacity to be efficacious. Organizational efficacy is considered from two perspectives – competing values approach and collective efficacy, and evaluated in internationalized companies. The dissertation is composed of three studies. The data were collected in thirteen Italian companies on different stages of internationalization for a total number of respondents is 358. In the first study the factorial validity of the competing values instrument (Rohrbaugh, 1981) was investigated and confirmed. Two scales were used to measure collective efficacy: a general collective efficacy scale (Bohn, 2010), and a specific collective efficacy scale, developed following suggestions of Borgogni et al. (2001), it evaluates employees’ beliefs of efficacy of organizations in the international market. The findings suggest that competing values and collective organizational efficacy instruments may provide a multi-faceted measurement of employees’ beliefs of organizational efficacy. The second study examined the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. To measure collective work engagement the UWES-9 (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) was adapted at the group level; its factor structure and reliability were similar to the standard UWES-9. The findings suggest that organizational efficacy fully predicts collective work engagement. Also we investigated whether leadership moderates the relationship between organizational efficacy and collective work engagement. We operationalized leadership style with MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995); the results suggest that intellectual stimulation and idealized influence (transformational leadership) and contingent reward (transactional leadership) enhance the impact of organizational efficacy on collective work engagement. In the third study we investigated organizational efficacy and collective work engagement in internationalized companies. The findings show that beliefs of organizational efficacy vary across companies in different stages of internationalization, while no significant difference was found for collective work engagement. Limitations, practical implications and future studies are discussed in the conclusion.

Workaholism is defined as the combination of two underlying dimensions: working excessively and working compulsively. The present thesis aims at achieving the following purposes: 1) to test whether the interaction between environmental and personal antecedents may enhance workaholism; 2) to develop a questionnaire aimed to assess overwork climate in the workplace; 3) to contrast focal employees’ and coworkers’ perceptions of employees’ workaholism and engagement. Concerning the first purpose, the interaction between overwork climate and person characteristics (achievement motivation, perfectionism, conscientiousness, self-efficacy) was explored on a sample of 333 Dutch employees. The results of moderated regression analyses showed that the interaction between overwork climate and person characteristics is related to workaholism. The second purpose was pursued with two interrelated studies. In Study 1 the Overwork Climate Scale (OWCS) was developed and tested using a principal component analysis (N = 395) and a confirmatory factor analysis (N = 396). Two overwork climate dimensions were distinguished, overwork endorsement and lacking overwork rewards. In Study 2 the total sample (N = 791) was used to explore the association of overwork climate with two types of working hard: work engagement and workaholism. Lacking overwork rewards was negatively associated with engagement, whereas overwork endorsement showed a positive association with workaholism. Concerning the third purpose, using a sample of 73 dyads composed by focal employees and their coworkers, a multitrait-multimethod matrix and a correlated trait-correlated method model, i.e. the CT-C(M–1) model, were examined. Our results showed a considerable agreement between raters on focal employees' engagement and workaholism. In contrast, we observed a significant difference concerning the cognitive dimension of workaholism, working compulsively. Moreover, we provided further evidence for the discriminant validity between engagement and workaholism. Overall, workaholism appears as a negative work-related state that could be better explained by assuming a multi-causal and multi-rater approach.

This dissertation proposes the discussion of four empirical studies which show the validity of a new perspective within the social identity approach – the expanded model of organizational identification – and its applications in organizations. The social identity literature provides an important framework for understanding the reciprocal relationships between organizations and their employees, but traditional identity approach has largely neglected a new notion of organizational identification that includes other forms of attachment to the organization. Thus, the purpose of the present contribution is twofold: first, examining the validity of this new expanded perspective, which integrates organizational identification with other notions of identification, namely ambivalent identification, neutral identification and disidentification; and second, investigating its applications in organizational contexts, specifically by investigating how this approach is related to individuals’ outcomes. The first empirical study aims to provide further evidence for this model and to show discriminability and reliability of an Italian-language translation of Kreiner and Ashforth’s scales of a short version of the expanded model of organizational identification (EMOI) in an Italian speaking sample. Results provide good scale reliabilities, and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrate the good factorial validity of the short measure. We also tested the discriminant validity between organizational identification and affective commitment and we examined several antecedents of the four forms of identification. The second empirical study contributes to the understanding of the role of organizational identification for work-related stress by exploring the interactions between organizational identification and the other "problematic" dimensions of the expanded model in predicting employee strain. We hypothesized that ambivalent identification, neutral identification, and disidentification would moderate the negative relationship between organizational identification and exhaustion and ego depletion, such that the link between identification and strain would be stronger when the other dimensions are low. Results largely supported the hypotheses and show reliable interactions for disidentification and neutral identification and marginally significant moderation effects for ambivalent identification. Finally, we tested the interaction effects with a different outcome. Specifically, in the third study, we predicted a negative relationship between organizational identification and counterproductive work behaviors and a moderation of this link by ambivalent identification. We explored both overall counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) and also CWBs toward the organization (CWB-O), and CWBs toward other individuals (CWB-I). A survey-based study of 198 German employees revealed a moderating effect of ambivalent identification on the negative relationship between organizational identification and CWB, and CWB-O. Employees highly identified with their organization reported lower levels of CWB and CWB-O but - and as predicted - only when ambivalent identification was low. We then replicated the study examining CWB, and a scenario study of 228 American employees supported the previous findings: when organizational identification was high, participants in the low ambivalent condition reported lower levels of CWB-O than participants in the high ambivalent condition. The moderating effect of ambivalent and organizational identification was not significant on CWB-I in both studies. These findings provide new evidence for the positive influence of organizational identification under conditions of low ambivalence on counterproductive behaviors toward the organization. Limitations and practical implications of all studies are discussed.

The world’s population is changing rapidly. At the same time older workers are encouraged to continue being professionally active and younger workers face postponed and precarious entry to the world of work. Moreover, there is a growing problem of generational division (e.g., Shore, 2008) and skills shortage (Hertel, van der Heijden, de Lange, & Deller, 2013). Therefore, contemporary policy makers, companies and workers are facing a challenge of building a long-term productive and engaged age-diverse workforce. One way of adressing this issue is studying factors that contribute to age-neutral vs. age-biased evaluations in selection (paper 1) and job performance evaluations (paper 2) or studying the joint effects of age and working environment on work engagement (paper 3). Specifically, paper 1 investigated effects of rater overt-explicit age bias and covert-implicit age bias towards both older to younger workers on resume evaluations of applicants in different age. Paper 2, examined effects of rater conscientiousness on the performance evaluations of younger and older “typical” worker (Study 1) and an actual coworker (Study 2). Third paper, tested the effects of age on the relation between person-environment fit and work engagement.

The thesis consists of five empirical studies on the topic of workplace aggression, in which the phenomenon is investigated by using both the target's perspective and the actor's perspective.

Oggetto della tesi, fondata sull’integrazione tra metodologie qualitative e quantitative nella ricerca applicata nelle organizzazioni, sono gli effetti di fattori organizzativi e personali sul benessere organizzativo e sulla performance dei lavoratori atipici. La tesi è composta da due parti. Nella prima viene condotta un’analisi approfondita dei contenuti della letteratura riguardo alle tematiche del benessere organizzativo e della performance, specialmente in relazione al lavoro atipico. La seconda parte si compone di tre studi empirici. Il primo, condotto con metodologie quantitative presso organizzazioni pubbliche e private evidenzia il ruolo di elementi personali – come ad esempio la scelta della condizione di atipicità – e di elementi organizzativi – come ad esempio il settore (pubblico vs. privato) dell’organizzazione – nel determinare un ampio numero di elementi di benessere e performance. Il secondo studio, basato su metodologie qualitative, mette in luce elementi dell’esperienza del lavoro atipico rilevati tramite 12 focus groups, come ad esempio la precarietà e la marginalità dei lavoratori atipici nelle organizzazioni. Il terzo studio, progettato in base ai risultati del secondo, misura con strumenti quantitativi alcuni elementi emersi tramite le tecniche qualitative, in primo luogo il ruolo delle abilità (skills) nel determinare i livelli di benessere e performance. / The effects of personal and organizational factors on well-being and organizational performance of atypical workers organizational are the object of this dissertation which is based on the integration of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in applied research in organizations. The thesis is composed of two parts. The first consists in an analysis of the literature regarding organizational well-being and performance, especially with regard to atypical employment. The second part consists of three empirical studies. The first, conducted with quantitative methods in public and private organizations, concerns the role of personal factors - such as the choice of atypical employment - and organizational elements - such as the sector (public vs. private) of the organization - in determining a large number of dimensions of well-being and performance. The second study, based on qualitative methodologies, highlights elements of the experience of atypical employment, observed using 12 focus groups, such as insecurity and marginalization of atypical workers in organizations. The third study, designed on the basis of the results of the second one, measures with quantitative tools some elements emerged through qualitative methods, such as the role of skills in determining levels of well-being and performance.

Il presente lavoro di ricerca prende le mosse dall’intersezione di due ambiti disciplinali: lo studio dell’identità adulta entro i contesti di lavoro, e gli studi di psicologia applicata allo sport riguardanti la figura dell’allenatore. Gli studi su come si evolve e genera il processo di costruzione dell’identità lavorativa entro il contesto attuale, sempre più caratterizzato da fluidità, complessità e mutevolezza, occupano la prima parte del lavoro. La proposta di un modello teorico rappresenta lo sguardo con cui si è scelto di avvicinarsi ad uno specifico contesto professionale, quello dei settori giovanili. Il ruolo dell’allenatore è riconosciuto come uno dei ruoli centrali e critici che favoriscono lo sviluppo sano dei giovani atleti, una figura chiave nel processo di connessione tra diversi attori: atleti, famiglie, dirigenti sportivi, sponsor, ecc. Per questo la parte empirica del lavoro rappresenta un approfondimento su questa figura professionale. Il primo studio, secondo una finalità esplorativa, mira a delineare le caratteristiche e i tratti distintivi dell’identità lavorativa di allenatori di calcio giovanili, al fine di metterne a fuoco i principali elementi di fatica e di risorsa. Il secondo studio rappresenta una proposta metodologica nuova per indagare il costrutto dell’identità lavorativa in generale, mediante uno strumento grafico-simbolico, il Disegno Simbolico dello Spazio di Vita Professionale (DSSVP). Applicato agli allenatori giovanili lo studio evidenzia potenzialità e limiti di tale strumento nello studio dell’identità lavorativa. Infine il terzo studio, partendo dalla constatazione della situazione di difficoltà e crisi professionale in cui si trovano molti allenatori giovanili oggi, proporrà l’analisi di un percorso di formazione-ricerca come contesto di accompagnamento e supporto di tali professionisti. / This work originates from the intersection of two fields of studies: that ones about the work identity construction, and the sport psychology studies about coaches. The first part of the work deepens the work identity process of construction in nowadays work organizations, characterized by fluidity and complexity. The proposal of a theoretic model of work identity is the way through which comes close to a specific work context in sport, the youth sectors. The coach’ role is recognized as central and critical at the same time in promoting athletes’ healthy development through sport, as well as in connecting all the actors involved in youth sport practice (athletes, parents, managers, sponsors, etc.). For this reason the empirical part of the work is an in depth examination about this professionals, youth coaches. The first study aims to explore and outline the features of youth soccer coaches’ work identity and to focus the main risks and resources of this. It involved 20 youth soccer coaches in semi-structured interviews and a focus-group The second study is a methodological proposal to better understand the work identity process. It presents a new research instrument the Professional Life Space Drawing (DSVP – Disegno dello Spazio di Vita Professionale in Italian), which allows collecting relevant information about the inner representation of professional space using a graphic-symbolic level. Finally the third study, starting from the crisis situation of these professionals, analyses a training-research project (which involved 11 coaches) to supporting youth coaches work identity.