ABSTRACT
Purpose: The objective of our study was to investigate how organizational learning climate (measured as developmental opportunities and team support for learning), career commitment, and age are related to employees' self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability (e.g., their sustainable employability). Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective building upon the notion that sustainable employability is a function of both the person (P) and the environment (E) and tests a three-way interaction between organizational learning climate, career commitment, and age. Design: In total, 211 members of the support staff of a Dutch university completed a survey. Hierarchical stepwise regression analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings: Only one of the two dimensions of organizational learning climate that we measured, namely the developmental opportunities, appeared to be associated with all indicators of sustainable employability. Career commitment only had a direct positive relationship with vitality. Age was negatively related to self-perceived employability and to work ability, but not to vitality. The relationship between developmental opportunities and vitality was negatively influenced by career commitment (a negative two-way interaction effect), while a positive three-way interaction effect was found between career commitment, age, and development opportunities, and with self-perceived employability as the outcome. Theoretical and practical implications: Our findings confirmed the relevance of adopting a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability, and of considering the possible role of age in this. It requires more detailed analyses in future research to unravel the role of age in the shared responsibility for sustainable employability. In practice, the results of our study imply that organizations should provide all employees with a working context that facilitates learning, however, with a special focus on older employees, for whom it is a particular challenge to protect their sustainable employability, possibly due to age-related stereotyping. Originality: Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability and examined the association between organizational learning climate and all three components of sustainable employability: self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability. Moreover, it investigated whether and how the employee's career commitment and age influence this relationship.
ABSTRACT
The main goal of this study was to develop a scale for measuring Disengaging Leader-ship (DEL) behaviors and to provide preliminary evidence for the validity of this new instrument. Developing such new measures is needed given current concepts that tap into negative leadership behaviors are rarely based on a sound theoretical framework. Drawing on the core premises of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) regarding employees' basic needs and, more specifically, building on its more recent extended framework, including employees' needs frustration, we derived four dimensions that constitute Disengaging Leadership behaviors (coercive disengaging leadership, isolating disengaging leadership, eroding disengaging leadership, and demotivating disengaging leadership). To examine the factor structure and psychometric properties of the new Disengaging Leadership Scale (DLS), Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and reliability analyses were conducted. Results supported the hypothesized four-factor structure of the DLS and showed that this factorial structure remained invariant across employees occupying blue-collar, white-collar, or managerial positions. Finally, we successfully tested convergent, divergent, and construct validity of DLS. We established that DEL is associated with employees' needs frustration and with their experiences of emotional exhaustion. It is concluded that the DLS has sound psychometric properties and can be used in future research on the dark side of leadership.
