Journal of Vocational Behavior最新文献

Post-maternity leave reentry, the period when mothers return to work following a maternity leave, is a profound transition in a woman's life that often sets the foundation for her work and career progression. While scholars have looked at the intraindividual aspects of this transition, the experience of reentry extends beyond the returning mother. This transition occurs in a dynamic relational and organizational system that impacts a returning mother's adjustment to work. In this study, we bring relational dynamics to the forefront of this transition as we examine how and why returning mothers' work-based relationships shift during reentry and the implications this has for returning mothers' readjustment. Drawing on qualitative data from academic mothers' retrospective accounts of their reentry transitions, our findings reveal that returning mothers experience relational movement, defined as perceived shifts in one's relational experiences. Our findings provide evidence of how relational movement plays a role in facilitating returning mothers' well-being as they readjust to work. Our theorizing of how and why relational movement occurs during reentry transitions brings to focus the complex, changing nature of women's relationships with colleagues during this time, as well as implications for women's broader workplace and career experiences.

In the face of extreme and enduring stressors, a self-protection coping mode can be entered to conserve resources (Conservation of Resources (COR) theory principle 4). Self-protection coping is underexplored in COR theory yet may offer insights about how people deal with the significant challenges posed by work today. We investigate this using a large-group collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) with 15 academic workers during a period when resources were severely stretched or exhausted (the first four months of the Covid-19 lockdown). We identify three defensive coping strategies, applied in self-protection mode, that are akin to Karen Horney's neurotic trends of ‘moving away from’, ‘moving against’ and ‘moving towards’ others. We also identify that, even when in self-protection mode, workers engage in resource (re)investment activities, in an attempt to (re)gain control of, and (re)build resources. These multiple self-protection coping strategies are applied in a seemingly haphazard and interchangeable way but appear to serve an adaptive function for trying out how best to conserve resources, defend the self, and extend resources towards recovery. Our findings emphasize the need for organizations and society to provide support and resources at times of adversity, to help people rebuild their work, their lives and their well-being.

This study proposes a theoretical model of challenge/hindrance stressors of hybrid work on emotional and behavioral reactions based on the conservation of resources theory. We investigate a mediation model by incorporating emotional exhaustion as a mediator to connect the relationship between two stressors and psychological withdrawal behavior. In addition, we identify proactive personality as a key personal resource to moderator the above mediating effects. The two-wave panel data was collected through online questionnaire surveys with a one-month interval. This study targeted at employees worked in the United States and 213 valid questionnaires were collected. Our results show that: (1) challenge/hindrance stressors of hybrid work are positively related to emotional exhaustion; (2) emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between challenge/hindrance stressors of hybrid work and psychological withdrawal behavior; (3) proactive personality weakens the positive relationship between challenge stressors of hybrid work and emotional exhaustion. However, the moderating effect of proactive personality on the indirect effect of hindrance stressors of hybrid work on psychological withdrawal behavior via emotional exhaustion was not found. The implications of this study for theory and practice are discussed.

Even though person-job fit (PJ fit) is a crucial predictor of employees' overall engagement and performance in their jobs, few studies have identified the mechanisms that enhance PJ fit during the employment relationship. Further, the models that do predict how PJ fit evolves over time are predominantly based on the idea that fit improves through individual adjustment processes by workers. This paper provides a new lens on PJ fit that is based on strengths theory, proposing that strengths-based leaders play a critical role in enhancing both dimensions of PJ fit, i.e. needs-supplies (NS) and demands-abilities (DA) fit, by encouraging employees to use their unique strengths. Furthermore, based on theorizing on substitutes for leadership, proactive career management, and situational strength theory we test the idea that high levels of proactive personality and job autonomy may partly compensate for a lack of strengths-based leadership. We collected three waves of data with two-month time lags from a representative sample of 308 Dutch workers, resulting in 906 datapoints. Results of multi-level path modeling indicate that strengths-based leadership is indeed positively related to both DA fit and NS fit and mediated by strengths use at the within-person level. Further, our results indicate that the combination of high job autonomy and high proactive personality partly compensates for the absence of strengths-based leadership on the within-person level. We conclude that strengths-based leadership is particularly important to facilitate strengths use and PJ fit of employees who have a low propensity to be proactive and/or do not have a high degree of autonomy in their job. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

The conceptualization of work and careers has evolved with technological advancements. From the steam engine to the internet, and now to digital technologies like AI and robotics, each era has redefined employment. These innovations offer safer, more meaningful work and broaden access. However, they also bring challenges such as the need for new skills and constant adaptation. This special issue includes nine papers exploring themes like lifelong learning, access to work, human agency, and ethical dimensions. The research highlights the need for continuous skill development, equitable access, and informed policy-making to harness the benefits of technology while mitigating its risks.

Family caregivers, who are managing the demands of work while simultaneously giving care to an adult family member, are a growing segment of the workforce. The current paper explores the struggle and joys of family caregiving employees, who manage work demands while simultaneously caring for an adult family member. We developed and tested a theoretical model of 311 family caregivers in the U.S. workforce that considered the simultaneous demands (burdens) and resources (gains) paths using the theoretical framework of the work-home resources model (ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Further, we consider the role that these play as the family domain spilled over into the work domain and had both behavioral and affective outcomes. We found that family caregiving operated on simultaneous separate paths, confirming the bittersweet nature of the phenomenon. Through a demands path we found caregiving burdens contributed to experiences of family-work conflict and required greater work concessions (job and career) while also reducing job satisfaction. At the same time, through a resources path we found caregiving gains contributed to experiences of family-work enrichment and contributed to satisfaction (job and life) but did not reduce the need for work concessions. As such, considering caregiving burdens and gains simultaneously helps us to understand that, although caregiving results in more work concessions, it also improves employees' overall satisfaction.