Ambivalent identification mediates the relationship between organizational justice and stress.

The present study aims to examine the relationship between organizational justice and employee stress through the lenses of social identity theory and the ambivalent identification process. The research hypotheses assume that employees working in organizational environments with low levels of justice could experience more stress, and this relationship is also mediated by ambivalent identification. In other words, the mediating mechanism of this relation posited that low levels of organizational justice were associated with high levels of ambivalent identification, which in turn increased levels of work-related stress. Across a field study in several organizations from healthcare sectors, results confirmed that employees treated with less fairness experienced high ambivalence toward their organization, which increased their perception of stress, i.e., work-related burnout, client-related burnout, physical symptoms, and interpersonal strain at work. Furthermore, results supported only a full mediation model, in which the direct relationship between organizational justice and stress was not significant. The present results make an important contribution to the research literature on justice: the inclusion of the mediator variable, namely, ambivalent identification, drops the expected direct effect of organizational justice on stress, suggesting a call for action in adopting the social identity perspective in addition to organizational justice models, and specifically introducing the study of a detrimental form of identification, such as ambivalent identification. Limitations and practical implications of the study were discussed.

Demand-Resource Profiles and Job Satisfaction in the Healthcare Sector: A Person-Centered Examination Using Bayesian Informative Hypothesis Testing.

Work characteristics may independently and jointly affect well-being, so that whether job demands deplete or energize employees depends on the resources available in the job. However, contradictory results on their joint effects have emerged so far in the literature. We argue that these inconsistencies can be partially explained by two arguments in the contemporary literature in the field. First, most studies in the job design domain are based on classic variable-centered methodologies which, although informative, are not well suited to investigate complex patterns of interactions among multiple variables. Second, these studies have mainly focused on generic work characteristics (e.g., workload, control, support), and are lacking in occupational specificity. Thus, to overcome these limitations, in the current research we include generic and occupation-specific work characteristics and adopt a person-centered approach to (a) identify different patterns of interactions of job demands and resources in a sample of healthcare employees, and (b) determine the degree to which these patterns are associated with employee well-being. We involved a sample of 1513 Italian healthcare providers and collected data on key job demands (workload, emotional dissonance, patient demands and physical demands) and resources (control, management support and peers' support). We focused on job satisfaction as a broad indicator of well-being. Latent profile analysis revealed four profiles of job demands and resources: high strain-isolated, resourceless, resourceful and active job on the ward. The results of Bayesian informative hypothesis testing showed the highest support for the hypothesis stating that healthcare employees belonging to the active job on the ward profile (medium-high demands, high resources) were the most satisfied. Conversely, employees belonging to the high strain-isolated profile (high demands, low resources) and the resourceless profile (medium-low demands, low resources) were the least satisfied. Overall, our study confirms the key role played by job resources in determining well-being in high-risk sectors, demonstrating that job satisfaction can develop both in challenging and less demanding situations. On a practical level, mapping the complexity of the healthcare psychosocial work environment has important implications, allowing for a better assessment process of employee well-being and helping to identify the most effective and fitting interventions.

Integrated Patterns of Subjective Job Insecurity: A Multigroup Person-Centered Study.

Past research attests to the pivotal role of subjective job insecurity (JI) as a major stressor within the workplace. However, most of this research has used a variable-centered approach to evaluate the relative importance of one (or more) JI facets in explaining employee physical and psychological well-being. Relatively few studies have adopted a person-centered approach to investigate how different appraisals of JI co-occur within employees and how these might lead to the emergence of distinct latent profiles of JI, and, moreover, how those profiles might covary with well-being, personal resources, and performance. Using conservation of resources (COR) theory as our overarching theoretical framework and latent profile analysis as our methodological approach, we sought to fill this gap. To evaluate the external validity of our study results, we used employee sample data from two different countries (Italy and the USA) with, respectively, n = 743 and n = 494 employees. Results suggested the emergence of three profiles (i.e., the "secure", the "average type", and the "insecure") in both country samples. The "secure" group systematically displayed a less vulnerable profile in terms of physical and psychological well-being, self-rated job performance, positive orientation, and self-efficacy beliefs than the "insecure" group, while the "average" type position on the outcomes' continua was narrower. Theoretically, this supports COR's notion of loss spirals by suggesting that differing forms of JI appraisals tend to covary within-person. Practical implications in light of labor market trends and the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

The Interplay among Age and Employment Status on the Perceptions of Psychosocial Risk Factors at Work.

While the role of individual differences in shaping primary appraisals of psychosocial working conditions has been well investigated, less is known about how objective characteristics of the employee profile (e.g., age) are associated with different perceptions of psychosocial risk factors. Moreover, previous research on the link between employment status (i.e., work contract) and such perceptions has provided mixed results, leading to contradictory conclusions. The present study was conducted on a nationally representative sample of theItalian employed workforce surveyed with computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) methodology. The principal aim of the study is to bridge this gap in the extant literature by investigating the interplay between two key characteristics of the employee profile (i.e., age and work contract) in shaping employees' perceptions of psychosocial risk factors. Given the disparate literature scenario on the interplay between age and employment status in shaping primary appraisals of psychosocial stressors, we formulated and compared multiple competitive informative hypotheses. Consistent with the principles of the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we found that older contingent employees reported a higher level of psychosocial risk than their permanent peers who, in turn, were more vulnerable than middle-aged and younger workers (regardless of their employment status). These results highlight the importance of simultaneously assessing multipleobjective variables of the employee profile (i.e., age and employment status) which may act to shape subjective perceptions of psychosocial risk factors for work-related stress. Given our findings, employers and policy makers should consider older contingent employees as one of the workforce sub-populationsmost vulnerable to negative work environments.

Shared identity in organizational stress and change.

The social identity approach has been found very useful for the understanding of a range of phenomena within and across organizations. It has been applied in particular to analyze employees' stress and well-being at work and their reactions to organizational change. In this paper, we argue that there is a mismatch between the theoretical notion of shared identities in teams and organizations and empirical research, which largely focuses on the individual employee's identification with his or her social categories at work. We briefly review the literature in the two areas of stress and change and conclude with an agenda for future research.