ABSTRACT
Coping is a dynamic response to stressors that employees encounter in their work and nonwork roles. Scholars have argued that it is not just whether employees cope with work-nonwork stressors-but how they cope-that matters. Indeed, prior research assumes that adaptive coping strategies-planning, prioritizing, positive reframing, seeking emotional and instrumental support-are universally beneficial, suggesting that sustaining high levels of these strategies is ideal. By returning to the roots of coping theory, we adopt a person-centered, dynamic approach using latent profile analysis and latent transition analysis across three multiwave studies (N = 1,370) to consider whether employees combine coping strategies and how remaining in or shifting between such combinations also matters. In a pilot study (N = 361), we explored profiles and their transitions during a time frame punctuated with macrolevel transitions that amplified employees' work-nonwork stressors (i.e., COVID-19), which revealed three profiles at Time 1 (comprehensive copers, emotion-focused copers, and individualistic copers) and a fourth profile at Time 2 (surviving copers). In Study 1 (N = 648), across all three time points, we replicated three profiles and found evidence for constrained copers instead of emotion-focused copers. In Study 2 (N = 361), across both time points, we replicated all four profiles from Study 1 and tested hypotheses regarding the profiles, their transition patterns, and implications of such patterns for work, well-being, and social functioning outcomes. Altogether, our work suggests that maintaining high-coping depth or increasing depth is generally beneficial, whereas maintaining or increasing coping breadth is generally harmful. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
ABSTRACT
The authors propose a typology of "work schedule patching," the ongoing adjustments made to plug scheduling holes after employers post schedules. Patching occurs due to changes in employer work demands, or employee nonwork demands necessitating scheduling adjustments, which are reactive or proactive. Using qualitative data from eight health-care facilities, the authors identified three narratives justifying schedule patching implementation approaches (share-the-pain, work-life-needs, and reverse-status-rotation) with variation in formalization and improvisation. Exploratory analysis showed a suggestive link between improvised work-life scheduling and lower pressure ulcers. This article advances theory on balancing the "service triangle" of scheduling in-service economies including health care.
