Search results

In 2006, Saks (2006) published one of the first empirical studies of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Since then dozens of studies on engagement have been published and most of them have used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure work engagement. The purpose of this paper is to revisit Saks (2006) to try and address some issues that have arisen during the last ten years and to assess the generalizability of his findings and model using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item measures of job and organization engagement.

Additional analyses was conducted using the data from Saks (2006) including measures of each job characteristic, the use of the UWES measure of work engagement, and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement. In addition, a review of engagement research was conducted as well as research that used Saks’ (2006) measures of job engagement and organization engagement.

The results indicate that skill variety is the main job characteristic that predicts job engagement. The results of the analysis using the UWES measure of work engagement found that job characteristics and perceived organizational support are significant predictors of work engagement, and work engagement predicts job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and intentions to quit and mediates the relationship between the antecedents and the consequences. Similar results were found using the single-item measures of job engagement and organization engagement. A review of the engagement literature indicates general support for the Saks (2006) model of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement and for his measures of job and organization engagement. A revised and updated model is provided with additional antecedents and consequences.

The results indicate that organizations can drive employee engagement by focusing on skill variety as well as providing social support, rewards and recognition, procedural and distributive fairness, and opportunities for learning and development. In addition, organizations can assess employee engagement more frequently and easily by using single-item measures of job and organization engagement.

This paper provides an update and revision of the Saks (2006) model of employee engagement and suggests that the main findings are similar when using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement.

There is dearth of studies in the literature which have discussed the relevance of personal and social resources of employees to protect them from adverse impacts of emotional job demands. However, interaction effect of these two resources on wellbeing of the employees in context to emotional work is inadequate. The present study is aimed to address the existing gap and investigate the relevance of personal and social resources as moderators in the presence of each other between emotional work and employee wellbeing.

The research work has focused on employees working on frontline profiles of civil aviation industry of north India. The responses of 720 frontline employees have been collected through pretested questionnaire. To understand the moderation effect of two variables, model number 3 developed by Hayes (2012) has been applied.

The findings have revealed that moderator role of social support between emotional work and employee wellbeing. However, research has pointed out that at high level of social support personal resources of employees' start to decline which subsequently reduces the wellbeing of employees.

The present research work has analysed the moderated moderation effect of personal and social resources between emotional work and employee wellbeing. Besides, the relative significance of personal resources vis-a vis social resources empirically in context of employee wellbeing in case of emotional work has also been highlighted in the work.

The results of the study have suggested the employees to receive less social support from friends, family and other significant relationships to protect their personal resources in emotional work settings. Moreover, research work has implicated for employers to draw out the various interventions through which personal resources of employees can be enhanced in emotional work settings. Also, the research has assisted in designing the key competencies for different job domains of emotional work setups.

The present study is very substantial in offering various parameters over which wellbeing policies for individuals can be framed. Also, the study has outlined the consequences of receiving different levels of social support which is applicable for that set of population who wants to enhance their personal resources for attaining high wellbeing.

The study has empirically investigated interaction effect of social and personal resources of employees between emotional work and employee wellbeing which is scarce in the literature. Besides, a dark side of social support in emotional work context has also been highlighted which was scarcely discussed in emotional work settings previously.

This chapter deals with different perspectives and structural transformations between capitalist society and indigenous ways of life. I approach the A’uwẽ-Xavante myth of the theft of the jaguar’s fire, one of many versions of the story of the bird-nester, which Lévi-Strauss interprets as the acquisition of culture through cooking technique. I compare it with Proudhon’s study on property as the theft of collective force which he treats as the groundwork of the manufacturing process in capitalist society. This highlights the difference between Proudhon’s ideal mutualism, based on free access to means of production and polytechnic education, and the A’uwẽ-Xavante’s acquisition of power and its technical reproduction. Proudhon’s mutualism envisages auto-organization of collective force in cooperative work favoring its collective appropriation by the workers; while in the A’uwẽ-Xavante way of life, there is an off-centered collective force from which technical acquisition is redistributed. In common with Proudhon’s ideal labor mutualism, A’uwẽ-Xavante’s ways welcome outsiders to their means of production of people; but unlike Proudhon’s, this welcome is not for free: they have to prove their generosity and personal commitment to the game.

Within the new public management (NPM) context, this paper aims to examine the inclusion of equity issues in pricing policy development and implementation in the water industry in Australia.

A review of literature relevant to the pricing of water shows equity issues have four dimensions which tend to be, at best, only implicitly considered. An empirical illustration employing a transaction cost framework is provided of a case in which change in pricing mechanisms was strongly suggested.

An equity paradox emerges as an explanation of why 63.7 per cent of Queensland urban water entities chose not to adopt the user-pays pricing mechanism for water. This suggests that the balance between “equity” and “efficiency” continues to be required in policy development for water pricing. Equity of access and that of distribution continue to be significant factors. As well, equity of interest and of return must be considered, especially under a user-pays pricing mechanism.

In respect of NPM considerations, it is argued that consideration of the four dimensions of equity in the implementation of a water pricing policy will resolve contradictions with, and paradoxes met in dealing with efficiency.

The argument used in the paper is interdisciplinary. References and terms used include those which are social, economic, and environmental from an accounting and management perspective.

Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e. through different devices, by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the globe. For such full‐fledged, complex software systems, a methodologically sound engineering approach in terms of model‐driven engineering (MDE) is crucial. Several modeling approaches have already been proposed that capture the ubiquitous nature of web applications, each of them having different origins, pursuing different goals and providing a pantheon of concepts. This paper aims to give an in‐depth comparison of seven modeling approaches supporting the development of UWAs.

This methodology is conducted by applying a detailed set of evaluation criteria and by demonstrating its applicability on basis of an exemplary tourism web application. In particular, five commonly found ubiquitous scenarios are investigated, thus providing initial insight into the modeling concepts of each approach as well as to facilitate their comparability.

The results gained indicate that many modeling approaches lack a proper MDE foundation in terms of meta‐models and tool support. The proposed modeling mechanisms for ubiquity are often limited, since they neither cover all relevant context factors in an explicit, self‐contained, and extensible way, nor allow for a wide spectrum of extensible adaptation operations. The provided modeling concepts frequently do not allow dealing with all different parts of a web application in terms of its content, hypertext, and presentation levels as well as their structural and behavioral features. Finally, current modeling approaches do not reflect the crosscutting nature of ubiquity but rather intermingle context and adaptation issues with the core parts of a web application, thus hampering maintainability and extensibility.

Different from other surveys in the area of modeling web applications, this paper specifically considers modeling concepts for their ubiquitous nature, together with an investigation of available support for MDD in a comprehensive way, using a well‐defined as well as fine‐grained catalogue of more than 30 evaluation criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to study the psychometric properties of different versions of Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) in the Indian context in terms of factorial validity, scale reliability, descriptive statistics and construct validity.

The data collected through a cross-sectional survey among 467 women employees from banking sector in India and structural equation modeling has been performed for the analysis.

Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a better fit for the three-factor model of UWES-9 than the other versions. Work engagement is positively related to in-role performance and negatively related to turnover intention.

The study recommends further longitudinal studies in this area.

More studies and practical investigations can be conducted in organizations, academics and societies since the current study explored the appropriate version of UWES in the Indian context.

This is a key study which analyses psychometric properties of UWES in Indian banking sector by considering all its versions.

This paper outlines the aims, activities and outcomes of a project to pilot a reciprocal borrowing scheme between public and academic libraries using existing cards, i.e. public library cards in the academic library and university ID cards in the public libraries.

This is a case study providing practical information about the establishment and promotion of the service, and recounting the feedback from surveys of participants, prospective users and library staff.

The project outcomes indicate that the reciprocal use of existing library cards between institutions and public libraries in a geographical area: was relatively simple once set up; was appreciated by all those who participated; had few teething problems; had had no appreciable impact on the availability of academic stock to University of the West of England (UWE) students; increased public library and academic library usage by target groups, e.g. school students 16 years and over, enabled the public library service to provide a significantly better offer of resources to its community, especially those who needed access to specialised stock, not normally available in a general public library service.

The partnership between LibrariesWest (led by South Gloucestershire Libraries) and UWE Bristol Library Services is not unusual. However, the approach taken, i.e. to allow borrowers to use their own libraries’ cards without any data sharing between the respective systems, is fairly unique. The processes involved and the evaluation of the scheme are of value to other prospective partnerships where organisations are geographically aligned.

This study aims to validate the 17-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-17) within Public Primary Healthcare Centers, addressing the need for a reliable measure of work engagement among health workers.

This study conducted a validity and reliability analysis of the UWES-17 among community health workers in Chile, exploring its psychometric properties and structure, focusing on its three-factor structure and examining the causal relationships between work engagement dimensions.

The UWES-17 demonstrated a valid and reliable three-factor structure among Chilean health workers, with a significant construct dependence among its dimensions –vigor, dedication and absorption – highlighting their interrelated nature.

While validated for community health workers in Chile, the UWES-17’s applicability across healthcare settings and professions warrants further investigation.

The validated UWES-17 can guide human resource practices in assessing and enhancing work engagement among health workers, potentially improving employee well-being and performance.

Addressing work engagement and burnout among health workers is vital for a resilient healthcare system. This validated measure contributes to efforts to improve health worker well-being and healthcare service quality.

This study contributes a validated measure of work engagement specifically tailored to public primary healthcare centers, offering valuable insights for future research on health workers' well-being and performance. This research enhances the understanding of organizational dynamics within public healthcare settings.

Geopolitical disruptions significantly impact the management of temporary healthcare supply chains (HSCs). Common across geopolitical disruptions is the interruption to the flow of supplies, calling for organizations to reconfigure their existing supply chains or set up temporary ones. We theoretically and empirically investigate how temporary HSCs are designed to ensure a resilient flow of vital healthcare products during a geopolitical disruption.

We investigated two different temporary HSCs – potable water and blood products – that experienced geopolitical disruptions. We purposefully sampled HSCs in deployed medical care where healthcare providers operate in resource-austere, politically volatile environments and timing and access to specialist expertise, medical equipment and medicines are critical. We built on rich datasets, including archival data, 12 expert workshops and 41 interviews.

The nature of temporary HSCs (e.g. urgency of demand and time-limited need) and product characteristics (e.g. perishability and strict storage conditions) lead to complexity in designing resilience for temporary HSCs. In contrast to permanent supply chains, temporary HSCs have limited flexibility and redundancy. Collaboration and agility are predominant strategies for enhancing resilience for temporary HSCs.

The study uncovers an urgent need for radical changes in how managers and policymakers responsible for HSC address resilience. During geopolitical disruptions, managers and policymakers need to review healthcare regulations across nations and prioritize by activating high levels of information- and knowledge-sharing between nations.

This study addresses an underresearched area of investigation by theoretically combining and empirically investigating the supply chain strategies employed by organizations to build up resilience in temporary HSCs.