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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether a successful implementation of an intervention could result in an effect evaluated independently from a process evaluation. It was achieved by evaluating the effects of an intervention, the “employeeship program,” designed to strengthen the psychosocial work environment through raising employees’ awareness and competence in interpersonal relationships and increasing their responsibility for their everyday work and working environment.

An employeeship intervention program was developed to improve the psychosocial work environment through reducing conflict among employees and strengthening the social community, empowering leadership, and increasing trust in management. An earlier process evaluation of the program found that it had been implemented successfully. The present effect evaluation supplemented this by examining its effect on the psychosocial work environment using two waves of the organization’s internal survey and comparing changes in the intervention unit at two points and against the rest of the organization.

The intervention was effective in improving the psychosocial work environment through reducing conflicts among employees and strengthening the social community, empowering leadership, and increasing trust in management.

More attention should be paid to developing and increasing positive psychosocial experiences while simultaneously reducing negative psychosocial experiences, as this employeeship intervention demonstrated.

An intervention focusing on employeeship is an effective way to achieve a healthier psychosocial work environment with demonstrable benefits for individuals and the working unit.

Although organizational-level interventions are complex processes, evaluations that focus on process and effect can offer insights into the workings of successful interventions.

Although visible leader support is an essential ingredient for successful organizational health interventions, knowledge on how leaders at different hierarchical levels engage with interventions is underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is to explore leader engagement by drawing from the experiences of the intervention team.

Data from semi-structured interviews with the team responsible for implementing an organizational health intervention in two large UK organizations were used to examine how leaders at strategic (senior management) and operational (line managers) positions engaged with the intervention.

Thematic analysis uncovered 6 themes and 16 sub-themes covering the leaders’ initial reactions to the intervention, barriers to leader engagement, ways in which the intervention team dealt with these barriers, factors facilitating and factors accelerating leader engagement, and differences in engagement between leadership levels.

This study can inform research into the conditions for optimizing leader engagement in organizational health interventions and beyond. Insights also emerged on the roles of leaders at different hierarchical levels and the value of perspective taking for intervention implementation.

Recommendations for bolstering the engagement of leaders in interventions are offered, that apply to all leaders or separately to leaders at strategic or operational levels.

The experiences of the intervention team who sought to engage leaders at different organizational levels to support the intervention are invaluable. Understanding how leader engagement can be maximized can better equip intervention teams for delivering successful interventions.

Research into job design and employee outcomes has tended to examine job design in isolation of the wider organizational context, leading to calls to attend to the context in which work is embedded. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the interaction between job design and psychological climate on job satisfaction.

Cognitive dissonance theory was used to explore the nature of this relationship and its effect on job satisfaction. The authors hypothesized that psychological climate (autonomy, competence, relatedness dimensions) augments favorable perceptions of job demands and control when there is consistency between them (augmentation effect) and compensates for unfavorable perceptions when they are inconsistent (compensation effect).

Analysis of data from 3,587 individuals partially supported the hypotheses. Compensation effects were observed for job demands under a high autonomy and competence climate and for job control under a low competence climate. Augmentation effects were observed for job demands under a high relatedness climate.

When designing jobs managers should take into account the effects of psychological climate on employee outcomes.

This study has offered a way to bridge the job design and psychological climate fields and demonstrated that the call for more attention to the context in which jobs are embedded is worth heeding.

The purpose of this study is to examine the protective effect of social support on psychological health and how it differs by gender in the context of part-time employment.

The sample consisted of 22,786 employees from four service sector organisations. Structural equation modelling was used to test a moderated mediation model assessing the relationship between employment status (part-time vs full-time) and psychological health mediated by social support (from management and colleagues) and moderated by gender.

Social support from management and colleagues was associated with fewer symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression. Notably, management support had a stronger association than that of colleagues’ support on each of the three health-related variables. Social support was also found to be a mediator of part-time working on health such that lower social support led to increased health symptoms. Moreover, we found moderating gender effects between social support and psychological health such that colleague support had a stronger effect on reduced depression and stress among men than women whilst management support had a stronger effect on reduced anxiety for women. Finally, significant moderated mediating paths were found, but further research is needed to identify other potential moderators of the mediating effects.

The findings suggest complex relationships between part-time employment, social support, psychological health and gender not examined in previous studies. It highlights the value of diverse sources of support and the necessity of addressing specific gender's needs for enhancing psychological health of part-time employees.

Complex and sudden change that healthcare organizations often have to respond to, such as during the recent pandemic, can create major disruptions and a prolonged state of alert. Although the impact of such crises can be predominantly negative, rapid adjustments during this time can also yield positive change that can support organizational response to crisis, if managed well. Using insights from organizational learning and organizational change theory, the aim of this study was to understand organizational learning during sudden change. Specifically, the authors aimed to understand the experiences and types of gains and losses in the processes of complex and disruptive change in one large healthcare organization in the UK.

Focus group data were used from 23 focus group discussions with 575 participants representing all functions and departments in one Healthcare Trust.

The participants revealed the rich gains, losses, and lessons experienced in response to sudden change that can promote organizational learning. Perceived losses are more likely to drive a desire to refreeze “back to normal” and perceived gains more likely to lead to an emphasis on embedding gains and changing to better. Therefore, on balance, the substantial, in number and variety, gains and learnings point to a learning organization. This is an essential attribute for responding to disruptive change successfully and facilitating organizational recovery in a post-pandemic world.

The findings highlight the importance of timely harnessing of the organizational learning emerging from crises and how this can inform a more resilient organization, as well as supporting sustainable organizational cross-learning.

By extending these insights on workers’ adaptation to sudden change, the findings can help to advance the science and practice of organizational learning and support organizational recovery, especially as they describe the new status in UK healthcare organizations.

This paper aims to evaluate whether training of managers at workplaces can improve organizational learning. Managers play a crucial role in providing opportunities to employees for learning. Although scholars have called for intervention research on the effects of leadership development on organizational learning, no such research is currently available.

The training program consisted of theoretical and practical elements aimed to improve line managers’ transformational leadership behaviors and, in turn, improve organizational learning. The study used a pre- and post-intervention evaluation survey. Line managers’ and their subordinates’ perceptions of organizational learning were measured with the Dimensions of Organizational Learning Questionnaire and with post-intervention single items on organizational learning.

Comparisons between pre- and post-intervention assessments revealed that managers’ ratings of continuous learning and employees’ ratings of empowerment and embedded systems improved significantly as a result of the training. The leadership training intervention had positive effects on managers’ perceptions of individual-level and on employees’ perceptions of organizational-level aspects of organizational learning.

The study provides empirical evidence that organizational learning can be improved through leadership training. Both line managers and their subordinates perceived that organizational learning had increased after the training intervention, albeit in different ways. Implications for developing leadership training programs and for evaluating these are discussed.

Organizational identification refers to a person’s sense of belonging within the organization in which they work. Despite the importance of organizational identification for work-related attitudes and organizational behavior, little research has directly examined the mechanisms that may link these. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how organizational identification relates to job satisfaction.

Adopting a social identity perspective, the authors present and test two models that describe work engagement and its constituent dimensions (vigor, dedication, absorption) as mediating the relationship between organizational identification and job satisfaction.

Bootstrapped mediation analyses provided support for full mediation whereby there is an indirect (via work engagement) and positive effect of organizational identification on job satisfaction. Analyses also provided support for the mediating effects of the three dimensions of work engagement, vigor, dedication, and absorption, in this relationship.

Although cross-sectional, this study provides a needed first step toward an understanding of the important role of organizational identification for job satisfaction and the mediating role of work engagement in this relationship.

The results provide valuable insights into the effects of organizational identification and address some of the gaps in understanding social identity as the context for work behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for strengthening employee engagement and enhancing organizational identification are discussed.