on work-to-family conflict (WFC) because ‘the spillover from family to work is real, […] but not as pronounced or severe as the opposite dynamic, in which work spills over into the home’ ( Jacobs and Gerson, 2004 : 92). This is particularly salient in fast-growing technologically driven economies, such as Taiwan’s, which encourages devotion to work 24/7 ( Meyer and Jacob, 2008 ). Numerous studies draw on the job demands-resources model (JD-R), which shows that job demands (the aspects of the job that require sustained mental and/or physical effort) increase WFC
89 International Journal of Care and Caring • vol 2 • no 1 • 89–108 • © Policy Press 2018 Print ISSN 2397-8821 • Online ISSN 2397-883X • https://doi.org/10.1332/239788218X15187915863909 article Job demand, control and unresolved stress within the emotional work of long-term care in England Shereen Hussein, shereen.hussein@kcl.ac.uk King’s College London, UK Long-term care work is known for its difficult working conditions, with potential implications for workers’ well being. In England, long-term care policies are moving progressively towards marketisation
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
In this enlightening study of modern working lives in Britain, leading experts on the sociology of work draw on detailed statistical analyses to assess job quality and job satisfaction.
Drawing on decades of research data on hundreds of occupational groups, the authors challenge conventional notions of ‘good work’ and consider them afresh through the lens of workers themselves. With examples from many professions, the book examines why some occupations feel more rewarding than others, regardless of factors like pay and security.
Exploring fresh policies to promote the agenda for fulfilling employment, it builds an important case for genuine and sustained satisfaction in working lives.
Legal professionals are thought to have higher levels of mental health issues and lower levels of wellbeing than the general population.
Drawing on qualitative data from new research with legal practitioners, this in-depth study of mental health and wellbeing in the UK and Republic of Ireland’s legal sector is a timely contribution to the urgent international debate on these issues.
The authors present a comprehensive discussion of the cultural, structural and other causes of legal professionals’ compromised wellbeing. They explore the everyday demands and difficulties of the legal working environment and consider the impacts on individuals, the legal profession and wider society.
Making comparisons with systems overseas, this is an invaluable resource that provides evidence-based suggestions for swift and effective organisational and policy-related interventions in the legal sector.
Can your job change your personality?
While traditionally personality has been considered fixed and stable, recent thinking indicates that this is not the case. Personality can be changed by various work and vocational experiences, such as employment conditions, career roles, job characteristics and training or interventions.
Drawing on a wide array of research in the field, Wang and Wu provide a conceptual overview on how personality can be changed at work by societal, organisational and job-related factors, while considering how individuals can take an active approach in changing their personality at work.
The rapid economic growth of the past few decades has radically transformed India’s labour market, bringing millions of former agricultural workers into manufacturing industries, and, more recently, the expanding service industries, such as call centres and IT companies.
Alongside this employment shift has come a change in health and health problems, as communicable diseases have become less common, while non-communicable diseases, like cardiovascular problems, and mental health issues such as stress, have increased.
This interdisciplinary work connects those two trends to offer an analysis of the impact of working conditions on the health of Indian workers that is unprecedented in scope and depth.
Does flexible working really provide a better work-life balance?
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume offers an original examination of flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India. Rather than providing a better work-life balance, the book reveals how flexible working can lead to exploitation, which manifests differently for women and men, such as more care responsibilities or increased working hours.
Taking a critical stance, this book investigates the potential risks and benefits of flexible working and provides crucial policy recommendations for overcoming the negative consequences.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Individuals’ behaviours at work are known to be shaped by cold, or cognitive-motivational, processes as well as hot, or affect-motivational, processes. To date, employee proactivity research has mainly focused on the ‘cold’ side. But emotion has been proposed to ‘energize’ employees’ proactivity, especially in interdependent and uncertain work environments.
In this pioneering work, expert scholars offer new thinking on the process by examining how emotion can drive employees’ proactivity in the workplace and how, in turn, that proactivity can shape one’s emotional experiences.
It is vital for healthcare leaders to have a clear sense of which leadership ideas and practices are rooted in sound theory and convincing evidence, and which are more speculative. This book provides a coherent set of six lenses through which to scrutinise the leadership literature relevant to healthcare - leadership concepts, characteristics, contexts, challenges, capabilities and consequences. It offers a view of leadership beyond the traditional focus on the individual, and argues instead that leadership has to be understood and developed as a complex set of practices by many people within specific organisational and inter-organisational contexts and cultures.
The relationship between health and work is widely recognised as complex and multifaceted. In the context of an ageing population our ability to enable people with health issues to continue working is becoming more critical. This multi-disciplinary volume brings together original research from diverse disciplinary backgrounds investigating how we can define and operationalise a bio-psychosocial model of ill-health to improve work participation in middle and later life.
