The relationship between fear of COVID-19 infection, fear of COVID-19 vaccination and Big Five personality traits: a mediation model

BACKGROUND The primary objective of our correlational, cross-sectional study was to determine the relationship between fear of COVID-19 infection and fear of COVID-19 vaccination and the role of the Big Five personality traits in this re-lationship.PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE The study sample consisted of 462 participants, including 286 women and 176 men, aged 18 to 75, recruited from the general population. The Big Five personality traits were di-agnosed using the Polish version of the Ten-Item Personal-ity Inventory. We used an 11-point numerical rating scale to measure the intensity of fear of COVID-19 infection as well as fear of COVID-19 vaccination.RESULTS The results indicate that fear of infection has a weak posi-tive correlation with fear of vaccination. Both types of fear have a weak negative correlation with emotional sta-bility and openness to experience. People diagnosed with COVID-19 have significantly higher levels of fear of vac-cination and lower levels of emotional stability compared to those without a COVID-19 diagnosis. Fear of infection proves a good predictor of fear of vaccination and a likely mediator between emotional stability and fear of vaccina-tion against COVID-19.CONCLUSIONS The results may increase our understanding of the role of personality traits, such as emotional stability, in the fear of infection and COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy.

Pandemics related-demands upon managers and job crafting in the production sector in Poland

Managers' behaviour is an important determinant of operational performance of manufacturing companies as it is crucial for workforce management. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, this group of workers is particularly exposed to high occupational overload, so there is a need to focus on the ways they can proactively activate personal resources to deal with crisis demands. Proactivity and job crafting are among the key elements ensuring the efficient and effective functioning of managers in conditions of high demands. Drawing on the job demands-resources theory (JD-R), this study investigates how distinct new demands upon managers and managers' organizational identification impact on the managers' job crafting. Data were collected during pandemics' outburst using the computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) with 147 middle and senior managers from manufacturing companies in Poland, while SEM used to test hypothesized research model. The results show that COVID-19 hindering demands related to general overload increase job crafting only when managers possess high level of organizational identification, while challenging demands connected to information and communications technology use directly leverage job crafting. The findings guide manufacturers that they should be very careful in applying hindering demands in unprecedented environmental changes and always focus on managers' additional personal resources in that context. There should be also more awareness of different types of excessive demands and different psychological mechanism they trigger.

Experimenting during the shift to virtual team work: Learnings from how teams adapted their activities during the COVID-19 pandemic

Past research has focused on understanding the characteristics of work that are fully virtual or fully collocated. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of team work by studying knowledge workers? experiences as they were suddenly forced to transition to a fully virtual environment. During the height of the US lockdown from April to June 2020, we interviewed 51 knowledge workers employed on teams at the same professional services firm. Drawing from in situ reflections about teams? lived experiences, this paper explores how the shift to virtual work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the fundamental activities that team work requires, facilitated and undermined the performance of team activities, and prompted employees to adapt and reflect on their use of digital technology to perform these activities. Using the shift to virtual work as a unique learning opportunity, our findings demonstrate that team work entails several core activities (task, process, and relationship interactions) that require additional adjustments to successfully enact in the virtual (vs. collocated) environment.