Feng Hsia Kao and Chen-Ching Kao
Interpersonal stressors are a major source of stress for East Asian workers. It is still a major management issue in hospital management. This study focuses on clarifying the…
Abstract
Purpose
Interpersonal stressors are a major source of stress for East Asian workers. It is still a major management issue in hospital management. This study focuses on clarifying the stress response processes of interpersonal stressors. The moderating effects of gratitude and employee assistance programs were considered.
Design/methodology/approach
Questionnaires were distributed to hospital workers in a regional hospital in the city; a total of 288 valid and matched surveys were collected.
Findings
The results showed interpersonal stressors negatively affected job satisfaction, and interpersonal resources positively affected intention to stay and job satisfaction. In addition, gratitude had a moderating effect on the relationship between interpersonal stressors and emotional burnout, and awareness of employee assistant programs had a moderating effect on the relationship between interpersonal resources and work engagement.
Originality/value
This study seeks to elucidate the working conditions of nurses and may serve as a reference for hospitals in implementing or drafting labor conditions and policies for stress management.
Details
Keywords
The demand for efficient and flexible workers is growing in the service industry, with the promise of enhanced revenue generation and customer retention. The purpose of this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The demand for efficient and flexible workers is growing in the service industry, with the promise of enhanced revenue generation and customer retention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents (i.e. intrinsic motivation (IM)) and consequences (i.e. service performance (SP)) of front line employees’ ambidextrous behaviours, as well as the moderating roles of a proactive personality (PP), emotional intelligence (EI) and extrinsic reward (ER) in the IM-individual ambidexterity (IA) relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
A self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect empirical data from 205 flight attendants working at a Taiwanese airline company. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the proposed relationships and estimate factor affecting employees’ SP.
Findings
The results confirm that IM is positively related to ambidextrous behaviour, which in turn improves SP. EI positively moderates the relationship between IM and IA, while a PP and ER negatively moderate it.
Practical implications
This paper entails useful implications for service providers to better understand front line employees’ ambidextrous behaviours and determine effective recruitment and reward management strategies that reflect the differing employee characteristic.
Originality/value
This study addresses the important issue of ambidextrous behaviours in a service-oriented context by examining whether and how PP, EI and ER moderate the relationships among IM, IA and SP.
Details
Keywords
Taiwan experiences frequent seismic activity. Major earthquakes in recent history have seriously damaged the school buildings. School buildings in Taiwan are intended to serve…
Abstract
Purpose
Taiwan experiences frequent seismic activity. Major earthquakes in recent history have seriously damaged the school buildings. School buildings in Taiwan are intended to serve both as places of education and as temporary shelters in the aftermath of major earthquakes. Therefore, the seismic performance assessments of school buildings are critical issues that deserve investigation.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops a methodology that uses principal component analysis to generalize the seismic factors from the basic seismic parameters of school buildings, uses data mining to cluster different school building sizes and uses grey theory to analyze the relationship between seismic factors and the seismic performance of school buildings. Additionally, this paper employs the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to deduce the seismic assessment model for school buildings. Finally, it adopts support vector machine to validate the ANN’s deductive results.
Findings
An empirical study was conducted on 326 school buildings in the central area of Taichung City, Taiwan, to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Results show that thickness of wall and width of middle-row column relate significantly with school-building seismic performance.
Originality/value
This paper provides a model that structural engineers or architects may use to design school buildings that are adequately resistant to earthquakes as well as a reference for future academic research.
Details
Keywords
Shu-Chuan Chen and Ching-Fu Chen
Healthcare is recognized as a fertile field for service research, and due to the fact that nurses are stressed physically and emotionally, reducing burnout among frontline…
Abstract
Purpose
Healthcare is recognized as a fertile field for service research, and due to the fact that nurses are stressed physically and emotionally, reducing burnout among frontline healthcare staff is an emerging and important research issue. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible antecedents and consequences of nurses’ burnout and to examine the moderating effects of personal trait and work-environment issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Bagozzi’s (1992) reformulation of attitude theory (appraisal→emotional response→behavior), data from a survey of 807 nurses working in a major hospital in Taiwan were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique and hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
The results reveal the positive causality between job stressors and nurses’ burnout, whereas supervisor support negatively relates to burnout. In addition, the full moderating effects of leadership effectiveness and partly moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationships among job demands, job resources, and burnout are confirmed.
Practical implications
The findings provide practical insight regarding how supervisors play an essential role in alleviating nurses’ burnout. The supportive attitude and leadership effectiveness are recommended to be effectual managerial strategies.
Originality/value
The empirical results support the job demands-resources model by applying reformulation of attitude theory. The work-environment issue surpasses the personal trait in moderating the relationships among job demands, job resources, and burnout.