Over the last 20 years systematic quality work has become the main tool for developing Swedish schools (Håkansson & Adolfson, 2022). According to the Education Act (2010:800), quality work – at the local educational authority level as well as in the schools themselves – should be conducted in a systematic and continuous way, with respect to planning, follow-up, analyses, and actions taken to develop education. By continuous assessments and evaluations, the goal of the systematic quality work is to identify and address issues that need improvement for students to achieve the educational goals (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012a). A review of the literature reveals the problematic aspects of evaluation practices and quality management, such as the risk to focus on what is measurable rather than what is desirable as well as the diverse definitions of quality (Lundström, 2015). However, what the local quality systems consist of, how they have been designed, and what practices and perceptions of quality they entail is less understood.

Previous research has primarily focused on individual schools’ quality work (Håkansson, 2013; Jarl, et al., 2017) , while less attention has been paid to the way the local educational authorities conduct systematic quality work. Thus, the aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating how the ideas of systematic quality work in the Swedish Education Act's requirements are interpreted, translated, and materialized at the local education authority level.

The following research questions will guide our study:

1. How do local educational authorities interpret and translate the systematic quality work regulations and requirements in the Education Act?

2. How do these interpretations och translations materialize in the local quality work practices?

Theoretically we approach the phenomena of systematic quality management within the Swedish school sector from an organizing (Czarniawska, 2014) and practice-oriented perspective (Gherardi, 2019; Nicolini, 2009; 2012). These theoretical perspectives provide us a framework to analyse how the institutionalized ideas (as mental images that are well spread within the society) of systematic quality management - through authorities, policies, regulations, and quality models - are translated and materialized (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996) into the local quality work organization and practices. The latter refers to the practices of doing and saying something related to the ideas of systematic quality management in different social contexts and time (Gherardi, 2019; Nicolini, 2009; 2012). Although the national guidelines involve the entire school system, these are interpreted, translated, and materialized by actors operating in a local context, which means that quality is understood in different ways and that the systematic quality work is conducted in different ways. An organizational perspective also includes aspects related to the tensions that arise when different interests and logics collide (for example between political, administrative, and professional interests and logics; see Czarniawska, 2014).

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this project five Swedish municipalities have participated in a study of what systematic quality work means at a local education authority level and what practices materialize from the national regulations. At the heart of the study is the recognition that quality systems are locally designed to meet the national requirements, thereby allowing diverse interpretations and translations to occur.

The local education authorities can be understood as mediators, partly between state and municipal control, partly between needs and agendas at different levels in the chain of command. This understanding also characterizes the design of the study. The empirical data has been collected through three complementary methods: document studies, observations, and interviews. The document studies consist of analysing different central documents, e.g., quality reports, provided by the local education authorities covering the past two years. We have also observed meetings related to the systematic quality work (so called “quality-dialogues”). Besides the local education authorities, the key actors in these meetings were the principals, assistant principals, and teacher representatives of the school being followed up. 

The interviews were conducted with key persons in five different local Swedish education authorities individually by the authors. The duration of the interviews was approximately one hour, and they were conducted either face-to-face, via Zoom, or telephone. The interviews were based on an interview guide including questions about the participants’ role, their experiences, and activities in relation to the systematic quality work, the expected and actual effects, as well as challenges and potential for improvement of systematic quality work. The interviews were recorded with informed consent and were later transcribed verbatim.

All the research material described above is now gathered and will be analysed during the Spring 2023. As a tool for data analyses, we will apply Bacchi´s (2012) method “What is the problem represented to be?”.

Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsEqual education for all is includes three fundamental aspects: equal access to education, equal quality of education and the compensatory nature of education (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012b). All students should receive an equivalent education, regardless of the area they live in, the socio-economic conditions they come from, or their functional variations. But study after study shows that Swedish students' schooling is not equal, and that who you are and where you live play a decisive role in the quality of the education you receive. Many of the last decade's school policy reforms and targeted initiatives have had as their overarching goal to address this lack of equality, so far with few concrete results. In order to break this trend, there has been an increasing focus on the local educational authorities’ responsibility for the individual school's shortcomings, quality, and development. Furthermore, lack of equality is a problem within rather than between different local educational authorities. Although there is paucity of research, the limited results show that schools are often isolated with their problems and that there is a lack of supportive structures and a functional systematic quality work (Jarl, et al., 2017; Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2021).

The paper will present results from the ongoing study, results that we believe will have relevance both in the Swedish, Nordic and in a wider European context. Through our investigation we will contribute knowledge regarding how the National Educational Act's requirements for systematic quality work are interpreted, translated, and materialized at the local level, and how this in turn shapes, promotes or hinders the quality work of individual schools.

Background Identifying occupational health hazards among Registered Nurses (RNs) and other health personneland implementing effective preventive measures are crucial to the long-term sustainability of health services. Theobjectives of this study were (1) to assess the 12-month prevalence rates of exposure to workplace aggression,including physical violence, threats of violence, sexual harassment, and bullying; (2) to identify whether theperpetrators were colleagues, managers, subordinates, or patients and their relatives; (3) to determine whetherprevious exposure to these hazards was associated with RNs’ current turnover intention; and (4) to frame workplaceaggression from an occupational health and safety perspective.Methods The third version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III) was used to assess RNs’exposure to workplace aggression and turnover intention. A national sample of 8,800 RNs in Norway, representative ofthe entire population of registered nurses in terms of gender and geography, was analysed. Binary and ordinal logisticregression analyses were conducted, and odds for exposure and intention to leave are presented, with and withoutcontrols for RNs’ gender, age, and the type of health service they work in.Results The 12-month prevalence rates for exposure were 17.0% for physical violence, 32.5% for threats of violence,12.6% for sexual harassment, and 10.5% for bullying. In total, 42.6% of the RNs had experienced at least one of thesetypes of exposure during the past 12 months, and exposure to more than one of these hazards was common.Most perpetrators who committed physical acts and sexual harassment were patients, while bullying was usuallycommitted by colleagues. There was a strong statistical association between exposure to all types of workplaceaggression and RNs’ intention to leave. The strongest association was for bullying, which greatly increased the odds oflooking for work elsewhere.Conclusions Efforts to prevent exposure to workplace aggression should be emphasised to retain health personneland to secure the supply of skilled healthcare workers. The results indicate a need for improvements. To ensure thesustainability of health services, labour and health authorities should join forces to develop effective workplace.

Bystanders can affect workplace bullying by engaging in active or passive behaviours. However, there is a knowledge gapregarding how perceived work environment factors relate to bystander behaviour. The study aim was to investigate how job demands, and job resources are associated with bystander behaviour in workplace bullying. An online questionnaire wasdistributed to a sample of health care workers at two time points. Longitudinal data were obtained from 1144 respondents. Cross-lagged panel models were used to investigate associations between job demands, job resources, and bystander behaviours over time. The results showed that social support was positively related to active behaviours, whereas influence at work was negatively related to both active and passive behaviours. Perceived illegitimate tasks were negatively related to active and positively related to passive behaviours, whereas emotional demands had an unanticipated opposite pattern of relationships. The findings provide new information about how factors in the organisational and social work environment are associated with active and passive bystander behaviours in workplace bullying. Specifically, the results expand current understanding of workplace bullying by relating bystander behaviour to the organisational context.

BACKGROUND: Employers are legally obligated to ensure the safety and health of employees, including the organizational and psychosocial working environment. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III) covers multiple dimensions of the work environment. COPSOQ III has three parts: a) work environment b) conflicts and offensive behaviours and c) health and welfare. We translated all three parts into Norwegian and evaluated the statistical properties of the 28 work environment dimensions in part a), using a sample of registered nurses.

METHODS: The original English version was translated into Norwegian and back translated into English; the two versions were compared, and adjustments made. In total, 86 of 99 items from the translated version were included in a survey to which 8804 registered nurses responded. Item response theory models designed for ordinal manifest variables were used to evaluate construct validity and identify potential redundant items. A standard confirmatory factor analysis was performed to verify the latent dimensionality established in the original version, and a more exploratory factor analysis without restrictions is included to determine dependency between items and to identify separable dimensions.

RESULTS: The measure of sampling adequacy shows that the data are well suited for factor analyses. The latent dimensionality in the original version is confirmed in the Norwegian translated version and the scale reliability is high for all dimensions except 'Demands for Hiding Emotions'. In this homogenous sample, eight of the 28 dimensions are found not to be separate dimensions as items covering these dimensions loaded onto the same factor. Moreover, little information is provided at the low and high ends of exposure for some dimensions in this sample. Of the 86 items included, 14 are found to be potential candidates for removal to obtain a shorter Norwegian version.

CONCLUSION: The established Norwegian translation of COPSOQ III can be used in further research about working environment factors and health and wellbeing in Norway. The extended use of the instrument internationally enables comparative studies, which can increase the knowledge and understanding of similarities and differences between labour markets in different countries. This first validation study shows that the Norwegian version has strong statistical properties like the original, and can be used to assess work environment factors, including relational and emotional risk factors and resources available at the workplace.

Many island municipalities depend upon the tourist industry, but this industry can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it provides a source of income to people in the region, using the natural resources they have. On the other hand, the low-skill services that are connected to tourism have low wages and productivity, and the possibilities of productivity increases are low. This article aimed to analyse the possibilities for economic development in the Croatian islands, using a conceptual model inspired by Harris and Todaro’s theoretical outline (Harris & Todaro, 1970; Todaro, 1969). We analysed 18 municipalities located on the islands. The conceptual model classified municipalities by three criteria: unemployment rate, employment growth, and wage. We found 18 island municipalities that have low unemployment, high employment growth, but still low wages, which is a contradiction in neo-classical economic theory. However, it can be explained by the existence of amenities and the tourist industry being low-skilled and therefore having a low wage level. We used population data to analyse demographic trends and the propensity to move from these municipalities. Regardless of the high quality of life on islands, employment possibilities are very limited, particularly for persons with tertiary educational attainment. Therefore, in the past, people born on islands have had to seek education and employment on the mainland. However, telework and digital nomadism have dramatically changed the situation. With digitalisation and flexible work, there are new possibilities for the islands to attract people to both work and spend leisure time. This has led to a number of issues, not least the question of taxation.

Research goals and why the work was worth doing

Over the past two decades, research has demonstrated that workplace incivility is a ubiquitous work environment issue, which can have deleterious consequences for both individuals and organizations (Schilpzand et al., 2016; Cortina et al., 2017). Workplace incivility refers to low-intensity rude behavior in the workplace (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). The effects of incivility can be far-reaching, as it may spread in the workplace (Foulk et al., 2016; Holm et al., 2021). 

One promising avenue to address incivility has been the use of civility interventions. Actively promoting civility in the workplace may reduce the risk for incivility, and increase civility and respect (Leiter et al., 2011; 2012). However, recent research has shown less consistent results of civility interventions when applied in other cultural contexts than North America (e.g., Sawada et al., 2021), or in other workplaces than hospitals (e.g., Grantham, 2019). More information is therefore needed on the effects of implementing civility interventions in the workplace, particularly exploring mechanisms and moderators in the intervention process. The aim of the present study is to test the effects of an intervention aimed to increase civility in Swedish workplaces.

Theoretical background

The present study is based on the principles developed in the Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace (CREW) intervention (Osatuke et al., 2013).  CREW was developed by the United States Department of Veteran Affairs in 2005. CREW was a culture-based workplace intervention promoting civility in the workplace in the departments’ VA-hospitals, with documented successful outcomes (Osatuke et al., 2009). Two research studies tested the effect of the CREW intervention in hospitals in North America, showing both short- and long-term effects of the intervention on workplace behavior, attitudes, and absence (Leiter et al., 2011; 2012). However, little is still known about how civility interventions operate in other contexts than hospitals, and which mechanisms or boundary conditions that influence the impact of civility interventions.  

Design/Methodology/Approach/Intervention

The present study has a quasi-experimental waitlist-control design. Participating workplaces are assigned to one of two conditions, an intervention condition or waitlist. The intervention group participates in a series of monthly workshops during the period of September 2022 – January 2023. The workshops address topics such as workplace culture, with the aim to promote workplace civility and reduce the risk of workplace incivility. The waitlist serves as the control group. Pre- and post-surveys are conducted to investigate possible effects of the intervention on measures of workplace (in)civility, norms for civility, social work environment factors, as well as work-related well-being. 

Results (expected)

Baseline survey data have currently been gathered from about 200 individuals across 13 workplaces in a Swedish municipality. The intervention group is currently undergoing the workshop series. The follow up post-survey is planned for January of 2023. When post-measures have been completed, possible change in measures of workplace civility, norms for civility, and workplace incivility will be explored. Change in social work environment factors, as well as work-related well-being, will also be explored. The intervention is expected to result in increased civility and norms for civility, as well as reduced incivility over time. 

Limitations

Workplaces were not assigned to the intervention or control condition via cluster randomization. Instead, it was based on practical aspects such as feasibility and scheduling in the participating organizations. Moreover, the follow-up measure is carried out only a few weeks after completion of the final workshop. Possible effects on behavior or well-being may take longer time to develop. Lastly, the measures are self-reported by participants.

Conclusions – research and or practical implications/Originality/Value

Results from the post-measure surveys will be presented at the congress. The originality of the project lies in exploring the effects of an updated version of a civility intervention, in a context outside of hospital settings in North America. The study will also provide information about potential mechanisms and moderators involved in the intervention process. Practically, the knowledge that results from the study could be of use in future attempts to improve the social work environment in workplaces by working with the workplace culture.

Relevance to the Congress Theme

The study is relevant to several of the congress themes, e.g. 6. Group dynamics, 8. Organizational design and development, 15. Stress and dysfunction, and 18. Well-being.

Relevant UN SDGs

Goal 3. Good health and well-being

Goal 8. Decent work and economic growth

BACKGROUND: Workplace violence is a global threat to healthcare professionals' occupational health and safety and the situation has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to explore workplace violence directed against assistant and registered nurses working on surgical wards in Sweden.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in April 2022. Using a convenience sampling procedure, 198 assistant and registered nurses responded to an online questionnaire developed for this specific study. The questionnaire comprised 52 items and included, among other items, subscales from validated and previously used instruments. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, the chi-square test, and independent-samples t-test.

RESULTS: The most frequently reported type of workplace violence was humiliation (28.8%), followed by physical violence (24.2%), threats (17.7%), and unwanted sexual attention (12.1%). Patients and patients' visitors were reported as the main perpetrators of all kinds of exposure. Additionally, one third of the respondents had experienced humiliation from colleagues. Both threats and humiliation showed negative associations with work motivation and health (p < 0.05). Respondents classified as working in a high- or moderate-risk environment were more frequently exposed to threats (p = 0.025) and humiliation (p = 0.003). Meanwhile, half of the respondents were unaware of any action plans or training regarding workplace violence. However, of those who indicated that they had been exposed to workplace violence, the majority had received quite a lot or a lot of support, mainly from colleagues (range 70.8-80.8%).

CONCLUSION: Despite a high prevalence of workplace violence, and especially of humiliating acts, there appeared to be low preparedness within the hospital organizations to prevent and/or handle such incidents. To improve these conditions, hospital organizations should place more emphasis on preventive measures as part of their systematic work environment management. To help inform such initiatives, it is suggested that future research should focus on the identification of suitable measures regarding different types of incidents, perpetrators, and settings.

The purpose of the study was to explore employees’ appraisals and coping responses to workplace incivility in the foodservice industry. Five group interviews with foodservice workers were conducted. 13 different types of experienced or witnessed incivility were identified. Positive-benign, irrelevant, and negative appraisals were found, as well as four major coping themes. These were active, passive, and proactive coping as well as reappraisal, encompassing twelve forms of coping behaviors. Additionally, workplace incivility was described as a daily stressor which can be expressed as a part of the workplace culture in the foodservice industry.

BackgroundWorkplace bullying is widespread in the healthcare sector and the negative effects are well known. However, less attention has been paid to bystanders who witness bullying in the workplace. Bystanders can affect the bullying process by engaging in active, passive, or destructive behaviors. There is a need to study work-related and organizational consequences of witnessing bullying and bystander behaviors.ObjectiveThe aim was to explore how witnessed workplace bullying and bystander behaviors are associated with work-related and organizational consequences, such as perceived quality of care, work engagement, and turnover intentions, among healthcare workers over time.DesignLongitudinal design. An online questionnaire was administered twice over the course of six months.Setting(s)Employees in the healthcare sector in Sweden, such as physicians, nurses, and assistant nurses, responded to the questionnaire.Participants1144 participants provided longitudinal data.MethodsStructural equation modeling was used to explore the associations between witnessed bullying, bystander behavior, work-related and organizational factors over time.ResultsWitnessed workplace bullying (B = − 0.18, 95 % CI [− 0.23 to − 0.12]) and the bystander outsider role (B = − 0.24, 95 % CI [− 0.29 to − 0.19]) were statistically significantly related to a decrease in perceived quality of care. Work engagement was statistically significantly predicted by all three bystander roles over time; positively by the defender role (B = 0.11, 95 % CI [0.05–0.17]), and negatively by the outsider role (B = − 0.23, 95 % CI [− 0.29 to − 0.16]), and the assistant role (B = − 0.32, 95 % CI [− 0.41 to − 0.24]). The outsider role (B = 0.12, 95 % CI [0.02–0.22]), the assistant role (B = 0.17, 95 % CI [0.03–0.30]), and witnessed workplace bullying (B = 0.18, 95 % CI [0.08–0.29]), all positively predicted increased turnover intentions at a subsequent time point.ConclusionsIn addition to the direct negative impact workplace bullying has on those targeted by it, witnessing bullying and taking different bystander roles can have work-related and organizational consequences by influencing perceived care quality, employees' work engagement, and their intention to leave the organization.

OBJECTIVES: Dental caries is a health problem that can be prevented. The aim of this study is to analyse if the quality of leadership, in Swedish Public Dental Health clinics, influences the extent to which patients with caries receive preventive care, and if any such effect is mediated through a collaborative work climate, clear role expectations and a low average level of burnout among staff.

METHODS: The multilevel cross-sectional design includes work environment data from surveys of 75 general public dental clinics, register-based data on preventive measures provided to 5398 patients who received a dental filling due to a caries diagnosis, and patient demographics. Using a multilevel path analysis with logistic regression, we tested a model with one direct and three indirect pathways, controlling for the potential confounding effect of patient demographic factors.

RESULTS: Leadership quality, as assessed by the staff at the clinic, was associated with increased odds of patients with caries receiving prevention, controlling for patient demographic factors. Leadership quality was also positively related to a collaborative work climate, clear role expectations and a low average level of burnout among staff. Against expectations, however, no indirect effect from leadership quality on prevention through the other work environment factors was found.

CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the quality of leadership in Swedish Public Dental Health clinics was positively related to a good work environment for staff and to delivery of preventive care to patients experiencing caries.

Introduction

As part of the welfare sector, Swedish schools have undergone several reforms during the past few decades resulting in increasing and often conflicting demands on principals. Additional to implementing new grading systems and curricula, the sector has been impacted by market-oriented logic (new public management), resulting in a mix of professional and bureaucratic governance structures. Many of these reforms demand daily responses because principals are the key actors in both organizing and leading pedagogical practices, being the head of business and main respondent to local political initiatives. Hence, principals’ work environments have gradually deteriorated, with many experiencing high stress levels, which has led to high turnover and difficulty recruiting and retaining principals.  

Aim

Using JD-R theory as the point of departure, the aim of this study is to examine principals’ organizational and social work environment and attempt to answer the following research question: which job demands and job resources are related to principals’ job satisfaction and their intention to leave the job, and how do these job demands and job resources relate to changes within the institutional landscape as a result of the major political reforms the Swedish school sector has undergone over the last few decades?  

Method

We use a mixed methods approach combining responses to questionnaires (466 participants) and interviews (15 participants).  Participants were principals who were members of the school leader section (Lärarförbundet Skolledare) of the Swedish Teachers Union.  

Results

The questionnaire responses indicated that job resources such as role clarity, influence, meaningfulness, and social community with senior managers were related to job satisfaction, while a lack of job resources (influence, social community with senior managers) and role conflict were associated with higher intention to leave the profession. The interviews deepened the understanding of the shift in institutional logic within the school sector that has created boundaries between principals’ professional and managerial roles in accordance with new public management thinking. The separation of their professional and managerial roles has contributed to the development of a blind spot in principals’ organizational and social work environments. This is a problem for principals and a risk factor for the organizations themselves because stress and ill-health experienced by leaders tend to affect the entire organization. 

Background and objectives: The global aging workforce necessitates new approaches in designing work environments to cater to the needs of increasingly age-diverse work groups. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has in reaction outlined that organizations need to provide age-inclusive work environments that support the needs of their multigenerational workforce, to ensure their sustainability and profitability. To capture the age inclusiveness of the work environment, the present study proposes and validates an age-inclusive "environment check" for organizations referred to as the Age-Inclusive Work Environment Instrument (AIWEI), which covers discrimination, inclusion, and development opportunities.

Research design and methods: We validate the 9-item AIWEI using cross-sectional and multilevel data from 2,892 Swedish workers across 101 workplaces who completed an online survey, using confirmatory factor analyses across young, middle-age, and older workers. Using a nomological approach, we also evaluate the concurrent validity of the AIWEI with a 2-1-1 path analysis.

Results: The factor analyses supported a 3-factor model comprising of inclusion, discrimination, and development opportunities, across 3 age groups (i.e., young, middle-age, and older workers). These 3 factors had high Intraclass Coefficient (ICC) scores showing consistency in responding in the workplace. In accordance with the nomological approach, the factors of the AIWEI were linked with Psychosocial Safety Climate, burnout, and engagement, demonstrating concurrent validity for the AIWEI.

Discussion and implications: This new "environment check" provides a way to capture age-inclusive work environments for both younger and older workers, in an age-diverse workforce. In the validation process, age-inclusive work environments were found to exist as a group phenomenon, through shared perceptions within an organization, as well as an individual phenomenon, as experiences specific to an individual. This is important for the development and implementation of policies and strategies designed to benefit workers and organizations.

Background: The aim of the present study is to explore whether (experienced and witnessed) workplace incivility is a risk factor for (experienced and witnessed) workplace bullying. An additional aim is to explore whether experienced workplace incivility is associated with psychological well-being above and beyond the influence of (experienced and witnessed) workplace bullying on well-being.

Methods: A survey was distributed via e-mail to a panel of Swedish engineers. The survey was administered at three time points over one year. In total, N = 1005 engineers responded to the survey. Of these, N = 341 responded to more than one survey, providing longitudinal data. N = 111 responded to all three surveys.

Results: The results showed that the likelihood of being targeted by workplace bullying was higher for those who had previously experienced incivility, even when taking previous bullying exposure into account. There was also partial support for a higher likelihood of witnessing bullying at a later time point for those that had previously witnessed incivility. Additionally, the results showed that experienced workplace incivility was negatively related to psychological well-being over time, even when controlling for previous levels of experienced and witnessed workplace bullying and well-being. However, this result was only found over one of the two time lags.

Conclusion: The findings of the present study suggests that workplace incivility can be a risk factor for future bullying. In addition, the findings suggest that experienced workplace incivility exerts a unique negative effect on psychological well-being, even when accounting for exposure to workplace bullying. 

Swedish municipalities are the main employer for the staff in eldercare, a sector where sick leave rates are high and work environment deficiencies are reported. This qualitative grounded theory study aimed to explore how the politicians accountable for eldercare in Sweden perceived their collaboration with civil servants, their understanding of the financing of eldercare, and views regarding their own existing knowledge of their assignment within eldercare. The study comprised interviews with 41 politicians from municipalities across Sweden. Three categories emerged: (1) holding a position of power, (2) lacking finance of eldercare, and (3) wanting to increase their knowledge base. The strongest finding showed that the civil servants can be viewed as holding a position of power in relation to the politicians. Politicians relied on the civil servants to gather and present information regarding eldercare so they could make accurate decisions; at the same time, they were aware that information might be incomplete. Most of the accountable politicians believe that the financial resources allocated for eldercare were insufficient. The politicians also believed they needed to increase their own knowledge base and expressed a desire to learn more about eldercare and the employees’ work environment. Further studies should explore the role of the first line managers of staff in the eldercare organization and their work environment, and how they perceived their collaboration with civil servants and the accountable politicians.

The aim of this study was to investigate staff-assessed care quality at the clinic as a predictorof stress and as a moderator between job demands (quantitative demands and role conflict) and stressamong dental professionals as an example of human service workers. Cross-sectional questionnairedata from 1012 dental professionals (i.e., dentists, dental hygienists and dental nurses) working at99 clinics were analysed by confirmatory factor analysis and a two-level hierarchical linear model.Stress, quantitative demands and role conflict were measured by the Swedish standard version ofCOPSOQ III and care quality was measured by three proprietary items. The results showed thatstaff-assessed care quality at the clinic was of importance for the individual workers’ experiencesof stress. Furthermore, the staff’s joint assessment of the care quality at the clinic mitigated thenegative effect of role conflict on stress among dental nurses. These results indicate that a high levelof staff-assessed care quality at the clinic can contribute to reduced stress in dental professionals.

Background and Aims

Workplace bullying is a severe global problem that affect individuals, organizations and society (e.g. Salin & Notelears, 2020). Studies have indicated that workplace bullying is more prevalent in health care than in other sectors. According to a recent systematic review of bullying among health care employees, up to one in four health care professionals are exposed to bullying regularly (Lever et al., 2018).

There has been a growing interest in the area of bystanders of workplace bullying (Coyne et al. 2017), but the role of the bystander, and research focusing on understanding the rationale for bystander behavior, remains an important area of investigation (Thompson et al., 2020). Specifically, additional research is needed in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the connection between the organizational context and bystanders’ behavior. Consequently, the aim of this study is to investigate how different organizational factors relate to bystanders’ behavior in a bullying situation.

In order to analyze the organizational context in relation to workplace bullying and bystanders’ behavior, the Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R; Bakker & Demerouti, 2017), and the theory of Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC; Dollard & Bakker, 2010) form the theoretical framework for the study.

Design/Methodology

The present study is a quantitative survey study conducted in the health care sector, with physicians, nurses and assistant nurses as participants. Longitudinal data have been collected through questionnaires at two occasions, about six months apart (N = 1144 responded at both t1 and t2). Demographic questions, as well as scales from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ II; Pejtersen et al., 2010), and measures of bystander behavior in response to witnessed bullying (Salmivalli et al., 1996; 2011), were included in the survey at both time points. Longitudinal structural equation modelling was conducted to investigate associations between psychosocial factors and bystander behavior over time.

Results

Results indicated that PSC was positively associated with bystanders’ reports of defending the victim. Social support from coworkers, social community at work and perceived illegitimate tasks predicted constructive, passive, and destructive bystander behaviors in expected directions. Conversely, influence, as well as quantitative and emotional demands were counterintuitively related to bystander behaviors over time.

Practical Implications

It is predicted that the health care sector will have a substantial need for staff in the future, while many of the current employees, especially nurses, leave their occupation. Providing a good work environment will be one of the key issues in order to attract, recruit and retain staff in the future. The study generates knowledge that creates opportunities for managers and organizations to work preventively, and increases their ability to understand and handle different types of bullying situations from both the victim’s and witnesses’ perspective.

Originality/Value

This study adds knowledge to the area of bystander behavior in the health care sector, by relating bystander behavior to the organizational context.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has severely affected workers, workplaces, and working practices. In the higher education setting, universities have shifted to distance learning, resulting in profound changes in academics' work. In this study, we aimed to describe academics' job demands and resources related to changes in working conditions during the pandemic, and to examine how these changes have affected the perceived occupational wellbeing of academics. Additionally, we aimed to investigate academics' expectations and concerns for future academic working practices following the pandemic. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 26 academics working at various universities in Sweden. A content analysis was used to identify the key themes from the transcribed interviews. The results indicated that academics experienced a lack of face-to-face communication, absence of an academic environment, work overload, and work-home interference as demanding during the pandemic. In relation to resources, online communication options, appropriate working conditions, organizational-social support, and individual factors were perceived as important. Most respondents perceived negative occupational wellbeing outcomes. However, academics who had the appropriate resources were less likely to be affected by job demands. Academics' expectations for future academic work included continuation of working online, flexibility in the choice of workspace, and strengthened digital capacity. Their concerns were related to a lack of face-to-face interaction, management actions and economic implications, and pure digital education. This paper contributes to the literature by illustrating the complexity and diversity of experiences and preferences among academics that are important for universities to consider when organizing and managing future academic work.

Workplace bullying is a severe problem that affects individuals, organizations, and society. Although there is a growing research interest in bystanders of workplace bullying, the rationale underlying bystanders' behavior in healthcare settings requires further investigation. The aim of the current study is to explore factors that influence the behavior of bystanders to workplace bullying in the healthcare sector. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with 32 staff members in the healthcare sector in Sweden. Data were collected between March 2019 and September 2020 and were analyzed with thematic analysis. The participants experienced that bystanders of bullying, both colleagues and managers, were in many situations acting in a passive way. Organizational factors such as dysfunctional organizational culture and deficiencies in management affected how actively the bystanders could intervene. Additionally, a fear of negative consequences, lack of awareness of what was going on, bullying behavior being excused, and the bystander not being a member of the dominant group were social factors contributing to bystanders' passive behavior. For bystander intervention to be successful, the organization must consider bullying as a serious issue, take action, and show support for both the target and the bystander.

Purpose

Using observational and experimental designs, the purpose of this study was to explore if the power relation between the offender and the victim of incivility and the level of perceived severity of the incivility were associated with bystanders’ intentions to help when witnessing workplace incivility.

Design/methodology/approach

In Study 1, 160 participants completed a questionnaire where they described a recent uncivil incident they had witnessed, and completed measures of perceived severity and measures of their behavioural response as bystanders. In Study 2, 183 participants were randomised to read one of two vignettes (a manager being uncivil towards a subordinate or vice versa), and completed measures of perceived severity and of their motivation to intervene. The authors investigated whether the power relation between perpetrator and victim, and the perceived severity of the uncivil exchange, were associated with prosocial bystander behaviours in Study 1 and with motivation to defend the victim of incivility in Study 2.

Findings

Higher perpetrator power was significantly associated with the incident being perceived as more severe, and higher perpetrator power was directly related to greater tendency to confront, and lower tendency to avoid, the perpetrator. Perpetrator power was indirectly associated with social support according to the perceived severity. A supervisor acting in an uncivil manner was rated as more severe than a subordinate acting in such a way. Perceived severity mediated the relationship between perpetrator power and the witness’s introjected, identified and intrinsic motivation to intervene.

Originality/value

This study extends previous work by investigating how the perpetrator’s power influences both the bystander’s prosocial behaviour and their motivation to defend the victim. Furthermore, previous research has not considered how perceptions of severity might mediate the relationship between power, behaviour and motivation.

AIM: The aims of the study are to explore workplace violence perpetrated by patients or visitors from the perspective of hospital ward managers and to describe how ward managers perceive their leadership role and manage related incidents.

BACKGROUND: Few studies focus on workplace violence from the perspective of ward managers even though they are the closest managers to the operational staff.

METHOD: Fifteen semistructured interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

RESULTS: Four categories emerged: the face of workplace violence, a two-fold assignment, strive towards readiness to act, and managing incidents.

CONCLUSION: While the most common acts of workplace violence are considered less serious and related to patients' medical conditions or dissatisfied visitors, hospital organizations focus on serious but rarely occurring incidents. Consequently, ward managers have limited opportunities to ensure a safe work environment on an everyday basis.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: To support ward managers' occupational safety and health management, workplace violence prevention and management should be acknowledged as an important responsibility for senior management in hospitals. It is important to identify incidents that most likely will occur at the wards and to create strategies related to those incidents. Strategies could include risk assessments, prevention, evaluation, education and reflection combined with, for example, scenario training.

Today’s ambition to adapt and individualize welfare delivery poses a challenge to human service organizations at the same time seeking to standardize clients, with consequences for street-level bureaucrats. In this article, the implementation of an instrument for standardized assessment of income support (IA) in Swedish social services is used to investigate what strategies street-level bureaucrats use to cope with tensions between standardization and individualization. Results from six focus groups in two organizations show how job coaches cope by individualizing their practice towards the client, while caseworkers equally often cope through standardization, which could work towards or against the client, in order to keep their discretion and handle organizational demands. Results point to a loose coupling between IA as an organizational tool for legitimacy, and as a pragmatically used questionnaire. Conflicts and contradictions are left to street-level bureaucrats to deal with.

This article contributes to the further understanding of how (service) design can engage with organisational change. It does so by applying translation theory and building on the insights from a 7-year-long collaboration with a public agency, during which three attempts at introducing new ways of working were carried out. Translation theory understands organisational change as an intentional and contingent process through which ideas are materialised in possible translation objects that intervene in organisational practices, structures, and assumptions. The longitudinal study highlights how to bring about change, translation processes, and the objects needed to balance the reproduction and challenging of existing practices, structures, and assumptions within organisations. Moreover, translation processes interact with existing power dynamics, which cause reactions to change interventions by, among other things, influencing the legitimacy and mandate of the processes. Therefore, in addition to the mobilisation of internal organisational knowledge, (service) design that engages with organisational change needs to be aware of both power dynamics and to develop approaches and sensibilities to be able to listen and respond to the consequences that interventions in these dynamics might create. 

The aims of this qualitative grounded theory study were to explore how politicians accountable for Swedish elderly care viewed their assignment, their beliefs and knowledge regarding the psychosocial work environment for elderly care employees, the factors affecting their work environment, and how these politicians regarded elderly care during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study consisted of 41 interviews with politicians in municipalities across Sweden. Three categories emerged from the analysis: (1) interpretation of the assignment directs the focus; (2) recognizing shortfalls in the employees’ work environment; and (3) exposing deficiencies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The strongest category was identified as interpretation of the assignment directs the focus and was described as the delivery of good and quality care. Nevertheless, this study highlights shortfalls in the delivery of care services where the employees’ work environment, especially in the home care sector, was frequently described as stressful. The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the work situation for staff in elderly care. In that setting, staff shortage and lack of competency were common. Nurses were particularly affected by high workload and responsibility. Further research should explore civil servant roles in the elderly care sector and how these actors view their collaboration with municipality politicians.

This chapter explores various meanings of organizational peripheries in the extent literature on Swedish mining companies from an intersectional perspective. Drawing on Acker’s thoughts on organizational inequality regimes, and the fluidity of organizational boundaries, enables a focus on how inequalities are produces in the leaking entanglement between the imagined margins of organizations and their surroundings. Two empirical examples are used. The first example explores inequalities at the centre of mining work and major mining companies, and the second investigates inequalities at the margins of mining work and scrutinizes the mine as a ‘multi-employer work site’. The findings suggest complex ways in which the organizing of work and people are entangled together in relations of power and spatial dimensions of interdependency, relating to intersections of gender, class and place in the mining industry and its surroundings. The chapter concludes that going to the ‘margins’ of mine work help to nuance understanding of the processes and practices that produce inequalities at both the centre and margins of large industrial mining organizations.

Testing assumptions of the widely used demand–control (DC) model in occupational psychosocial epidemiology, we investigated (a) interaction, i.e., whether the combined effect of low job control and high psychological demands on depressive symptoms was stronger than the sum of their single effects (i.e., superadditivity) and (b) whether subscales of psychological demands and job control had similar associations with depressive symptoms. Logistic longitudinal regression analyses of the 5-year cohort of the German Study of Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) 2011/12–2017 of 2212 employees were conducted. The observed combined effect of low job control and high psychological demands on depressive symptoms did not indicate interaction (RERI = −0.26, 95% CI = −0.91; 0.40). When dichotomizing subscales at the median, differential effects of subscales were not found. When dividing subscales into categories based on value ranges, differential effects for job control subscales (namely, decision authority and skill discretion) were found (p = 0.04). This study does not support all assumptions of the DC model: (1) it corroborates previous studies not finding an interaction of psychological demands and job control; and (2) signs of differential subscale effects were found regarding job control. Too few prospective studies have been carried out regarding differential subscale effects. 

BACKGROUND: Welfare societies like Sweden face challenges in balancing the budget while meeting the demand for good quality healthcare. The aim of this study was to analyse whether care quality, operationalized as survival of dental fillings, is predicted by workplace social capital and if this effect is direct or indirect (through stress and/or job satisfaction among staff at the clinic), controlling for patient demographics.

METHODS: The prospective design includes A) work environment data from surveys of 75 general public dental clinics (aggregated data based on 872 individual ratings), and B) register-based survival of 9381dental fillings performed during a 3-month period around the time of the survey, and C) patient demographics (age, gender, income level and birth place). Using a multi-level discrete-time proportional hazard model, we tested whether clinic-level social capital, stress, and job satisfaction could predict tooth-level filling failure, controlling for patient demographics. One direct and two indirect pathways, moderated by filling tooth, location, and filling type, were tested.

RESULTS: High workplace social capital reduced the risk of early failure of fillings in molar teeth, mediated by group-perceived job satisfaction (indirect path: OR = 0.93, p < .05, direct path from job satisfaction: OR = 0.89, p < .05). Contrary to expectations, we found no support for a direct effect from social capital on care quality or for the indirect pathway via stress at the clinic level.

CONCLUSIONS: Workplace social capital boosted the quality of dental fillings through increased levels of job satisfaction. In addition, staff at clinics with higher social capital reported less stress and higher levels of job satisfaction. These results indicate that promotion of social capital may improve both occupational health and care quality.

In this paper, we explore the idea of managerial struggle and pedagogy as modes of manoeuvring in our examination of prolonged organizational transition and change inertia in the wake of privatisation of a Scandinavian telecommunications company (Telco). There is a lack of studies that, from the perspective of (middle) managers, attempt to understand seemingly inefficient leadership and how managers manoeuvre the complexities of change inertia, including how managers seek to gain control when they face difficult and complex and paradoxical conditions of leadership (Denis et al., 2010; Lüscher and Lewis, 2008; Filstad et al., 2020; Gatenby et al., 2015; McCabe, 2014; Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003). We suggest a Bourdieusian conceptualisation of manoeuvring using Bourdieu’s (1990) concepts of field, habitus, symbolic violence and pedagogy, where we see pedagogy as an overlooked part of managers manoeuvring practices that emphasises the use of power and relations of power in managerial practice (Kamoche and Pinnington, 2012; Tomlinson et al., 2013). We develop our arguments through empirical studies of seemingly inefficient leadership by a team of frontline managers in the operations department of Telco. Comprising 185 hours of participant observation studies and 25 interviews with the regional director, frontline managers, and technicians, our study examines how the frontline managers struggle to manage during prolonged attempts at organisational transition from state-owned monopoly to shareholder-owned corporation. The capitalist visions and ideas of the American owners contrast sharply with the socalled Nordic Model of work and welfare according to which the company had been run and whose central features are a high rate of unionization among employees, a national hierarchical system of collective bargaining, and the powerful presence of trade unions at workplace and national policy making levels (Ervasti et al., 2008; Kettunen, 2012). The shift to a more active and intervening role has placed the frontline managers in the eye of a storm. We show how the frontline managers perceive themselves as tasked with supplying the technicians with the understandings, beliefs and dispositions for action that will enable them to meet demands associated with corporate neoliberal capitalism (Visser, 2020; Arturo, 1994) and how they must respond to outspoken yet subtle contradictions in their manoeuvring space (Filstad et al., 2020) or their possibilities for ‘playing the game’(Bourdieu, 1990). The idea of managerial pedagogy as practices of inculcation of beliefs and dispositions, in particular, and its connection to relations of power and symbolic violence (Lakomski, 1984; Tomlinson et al., 2013; Kerr and Robinson, 2009; Kamoche and Pinnington, 2012), allows us to extend the use of Bourdieu in studies of management and organization when we provide new insights into prolonged organizational change inertia and managerial struggle. We argue that pedagogy, as part of middle managerial manoeuvring, enables a vision of the multitude of power relations at play in organizational change, and beyond, including the fastening of these power relations in structural and historical conditions of the field in which the organization is embedded.

The Covid-19 pandemic pushes organizations to innovate, adapt, and be responsive to new conditions. These demands are exacerbated as organizations respond to the triple sustainability challenge of social and environmental issues alongside economic recovery. These combined factors highlight the need for an inclusive definition of organizational resilience, the increased agility to adapt, learn, and transform to rapidlyshifting external and internal conditions. This paper explores a gendered perspective of organizational resilience and the implications for degendering the concept to incorporate masculine and feminine constructs equally valuable to the theory and practices oforganizational resilience during times of crisis. Viewing the organizational demands of crisis and the expectations of the millennial workforce through the degendering lens elucidates conceptualizations of gender constructions and power that limit inclusivepractices and processes of organizational resilience. Data was used from focus groups of men and women between the ages of 21–35 (millennials) who have experience in the workplace and a shared knowledge of sustainability including social aspects of gender equity and inclusion. The Degendering Organizational Resilience model (DOR) was used for analysis to reveal barriers to inclusive, resilient organizational practices.The data was organized according to the three aspects of the DOR, power structures, gendering practices, and language. A unique contribution of this study is that it explores a cross-cultural gender perspective of organizational resilience focused on a specific cohortgroup, the millennials. Based on the findings three organizational recommendations for practice were identified. These include recommendations for policies and practices that deconstruct inequitable practices and co-create more agile structures, practices, and narratives for sustainable and resilient organizations.

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore aspects that are important for the integration of preceptorship and processes for recruitment and retention of nurses.

BACKGROUND: Shortage of nurses is a global concern that has a major impact on healthcare systems around the world. However, earlier research has not considered whether preceptorship of nursing students can be an integral part of recruitment and retention of nurses.

METHOD: A descriptive design with a qualitative approach was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten preceptors and six ward managers in different healthcare specialties in Sweden.

RESULTS: Three aspects were found central for integrating preceptorship with recruitment and retention: perceptions of preceptorship, the organization of preceptorship, and the way preceptorship operates in relation to recruitment and retention strategies.

CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that preceptorship and recruitment strategies could both benefit from being integrated.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: It is central for nursing managers to develop organizational practices that enable the integration of preceptorship with recruitment and retention of nurses. This could increase the quality of both preceptorship and the work environment in general.

Purpose - The aim of the current interview study was to investigate how the university staff and their immediate managers perceived the academic work environment after a transition to activity-based workplaces (ABW). Design/methodology/approach - Interviews were conducted with 11 university lecturers/researchers and 12 academic middle managers, that is, heads of departments or units in a Swedish university. Findings The qualitative content analysis revealed four central themes indicating how the academic environment had been affected: challenges related to decision-making and implementation of ABW, interpersonal relations and communication, consequences for academic identity and issues related to the physical work environment. Research limitations/implications - The non-purposive sampling of participants coming from a single university is a limitation of the current study. More studies are needed to deepen the knowledge and to further corroborate the transferability of the findings. Practical implications - The savings the universities expect to achieve in terms of reduced costs for premises, when introducing ABW, may lead to other kinds of costs, such as jeopardizing employee performance, comfort and well-being. It is therefore important that the academic staff is empowered and involved during the planning and implementation process of new offices. Originality/value- The study contributes new knowledge concerning implementation of ABW and its consequences for the academic work environment.

Network recruitment has become an essential part of the modern labour market. However, there are significant research gaps: 1) the development of social media has been crucial to the growth of social networks, yet we know little about its influence on network recruitment; 2) studies on network recruitment generally focus on employees’ rather than employers’ perspectives; 3) the context of most research is the US labour market, which then identifies a need for contributions relating to other countries. The aim of this study is to analyse and discuss recruiters’ use of SNS to evaluate the networks of potential candidates. To understand how and why recruiters assess online networks, we used qualitative data from a Swedish study. Our analysis showed that recruiters search the internet either to find information that helps them ascertain the candidate as trustworthy, or to evaluate the candidate’s social capital through the size and composition of their networks. For certain job positions especially, active management of one’s online networks thus becomes crucial. Finally, this study illustrates how network connections may undermine rather than build trust, and thereby challenges a belief in the positive impact of networks.

This chapter offers an analysis of organizational change management in a Scandinavian telecom from a historical perspective. Based on an ethnographic study, we investigate how the past was appropriated by managers for the purpose of implementing performance management in the company’s operations department. By combining Bourdieusian theory with a narrative approach to analysis, the chapter provides an alternative view on the impact of history to organizational change management studies by bridging objective and subjective elements of history. This is achieved by illustrating how practice brings together two modes of existence of history in action—that is, how habitus and field dialectically adjust to each other while endowing actors with a “practical sense” that allows them to appropriate history in practice. We show how actors’ inclination to appropriate and narrate history in certain ways was itself a product of historical acquisition derived from their experience in the departmental field of struggle

This research commentary introduces a Bourdieusian perspective to studying the strategic organization of time in organizations. Since the millennium, time, temporality, and historyhave moved from backstage to frontstage in organization and management research. Particularly ,studies ascribing to a strategic organization of time perspective have made important strides in moving the research field beyond objective notions of time as clock-time towards more subjective notions of time. Practice-based perceptions of time have contributed significantly to these promising developments. However, more work remains to be done and Bourdieu’s conceptual framework has, so far, remained underutilized. This article, therefore, discussesthe potential of Bourdieu’s work to advance strategic organization of time research within four significant areas, integration of subjective and objective time, temporal experience, embodied history, and reflexivity. The article places emphasis on Bourdieu’s constructs of habitus, field, hysteresis, practice as temporalization, temporal logic of practice, and participant objectivation.

MI, motivational interviewing, is a counselling method for increasing a person’s motivation for behaviour change that is prevalent in social work. MI emphasizes building trusting social worker-client relationships and is presented as concrete and simple to follow. The benefit of MI is limited by actual opportunities for change through poverty, the labour market and health. The article aims to critically examine the usefulness of MI in connection with the handling of social assistance. It is based on a study of the use of an assessment instrument and of individual action plans (contracts) in a municipality where MI is a central tool. The study is based on analyses of documents, individual interviews and group interviews with staff as well as observations of meetings and training. The results show that MI has been integrated into a comprehensive implementation of other elements to standardize initiatives within income support. The client’s obligations are emphasized through a strong individual focus, although extensive efforts may be needed from surrounding actors. The action plans have inherent problems in terms of clarity and legal certainty. The authors argue that it is paradoxical to use a method based on alliances and collaboration in connection with conditional decisions. The use of MI becomes a commitment that lacks reciprocity and whose activation of self-technologies can be questioned.

The purpose of the present study was to validate the short version of The Psychosocial Safety Climate questionnaire (PSC-4, Dollard, 2019) and to establish benchmarks indicating risk levels for use in Sweden. Cross-sectional data from (1) a random sample of employees in Sweden aged 25–65 years (n = 2847) and (2) a convenience sample of non-managerial employees from 94 workplaces (n = 3066) were analyzed. Benchmarks for three PSC risk levels were developed using organizational compliance with Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) regulations as criterion. The results support the validity and usefulness of the Swedish PSC-4 as an instrument to indicate good, fair, and poor OSH practices. The recommended benchmark for indicating good OSH practices is an average score of >12.0, while the proposed cutoff for poor OSH practices is a score of ≤8.0 on the PSC-4. Scores between these benchmarks indicate fair OSH practices. Furthermore, aggregated data on PSC-4 supported its reliability as a workplace level construct and its association with quantitative demands, quality of leadership, commitment to the workplace, work engagement, job satisfaction, as well as stress and burnout. Thus, the Swedish version of PSC-4 can be regarded as a valid and reliable measure for both research and practical use for risk assessment at workplaces.

This study investigates how formal equality is “done” in 48 individual action plans for social assistance. We use a street-level perspective to understand how policy is “done” to enhance equality for social assistance applicants. The analysis is based on the theory of street-level bureaucracy as well as on the concept of equality. Formal equality was inhibited by weak legal security, vague rights and duties, the inability to advocate for one’s own case, and difficulties with ambiguous and incomprehensible language in individual action plans. Establishing formal equality is made even more difficult because of the individual means testing used to determine social assistance. We argue that applicants of social assistance might experience inequality that is greater than the inequality they experienced before the implementation of their individual action plans, despite the intent of these plans to decrease inequality.

There has been an increased interest in the study of emotional demands (ED) at work and its impact on workers' well-being. However, ED have been conceptualized as a unitary concept, focused on interactions with clients, and excluding other potential sources of ED at work. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to explore the relation between ED from different relational sources (clients/patients/customers and colleagues, supervisors, and employees) and service workers' exhaustion and engagement. Cross-sectional data from a sample of 2742 service workers were analysed using structural equation modelling. Results showed that ED from both sources (clients and colleagues) were associated with more emotional exhaustion, particularly if dealing with clients was not an integrated part of the role. Further, ED from clients' relations were negatively associated with engagement for managers with staff responsibility, but positively for managers without staff responsibility. We also found moderating effects of psychosocial safety climate (PSC), whereby ED had the strongest effect on emotional exhaustion when PSC was low. This study suggests that different relational sources of ED at work have a different impact on employees' well-being. Strategies that promote a reduction of extra-role ED, and the development of a PSC in the organization, could therefore offer possible solutions to promote employees' psychological well-being and motivation.

Background: Globally, nurses are at high risk of exposure to workplace bullying, and there is a growing body of literature addressing bullying in the nursing profession. Yet, our understanding of cross-cultural variations in bullying among nurses is lacking. An analysis of what is currently known about bullying in different parts of the world is critical for our understanding of cross-cultural effects of bullying among nurses.

Objectives: We aimed to examine workplace bullying research among nurses with the focus on sources, antecedents, outcomes and coping responses from a cross-cultural perspective during the years 2001– 2019. Design: This is a scoping review of published literature on workplace bullying among nurses.

Data sources: A literature search was conducted using the CINAHL, PubMed, PsychINFO and Web of Sci- ence databases. A total of 166 articles provided data from the following cultural clusters: Anglo, Latin Europe, Eastern Europe, Nordic Europe, Middle East, Latin America, Confucian Asia, Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Procedure: Studies were identified through a database search. Relevant data were extracted using a narra- tive approach. Categories were thematically organized according to the study topics. Cultural differences regarding the variation in the perceptions of and responses to bullying were analysed in relation to the cultural dimensions: power distance, assertiveness, in-group collectivism and performance orientation. Results: Research was mostly conducted in the Anglo cluster. Antecedents and outcomes of bullying were the most often studied topics across all cultural clusters. Vertical bullying was most prevalent in higher power distance cultures, whereas horizontal bullying was either more or equally prevalent in lower power distance cultures. The risk of bullying decreased as nurses’ length of service and age increased in most of the clusters. Individual antecedents were more frequently reported in high in-group collec- tivist cultures. Organizational antecedents such as lack of bullying prevention measures, unsupportive leadership and stressful work characteristics were frequently reported across different cultural clusters. Yet, an organizational culture that tolerates bullying was most commonly addressed in Anglo, a highly performance-oriented culture. Negative outcomes of bullying were very similar across the world. Nurses used emotion-focused coping strategies more frequently almost in all clusters; yet, there were reports of problem-focused coping strategies especially in relatively higher assertiveness cultures.

Conclusions: Analysis revealed both similarities and differences in the nurses’ reports of bullying by world region. Cultural factors were found to be important for understanding the variation in the nurses’ per- ceptions of and responses to bullying.

As part of society, religious organizations are exposed to contextual conditions and challenges. However, adapting to external conditions is an act of balance since too much compromising may risk having a negative effect on employees' perception of organizational authenticity and, in turn, employees' well-being and attitudes toward work. In this study, we examined how specific characteristics of the work, in terms of job demands (role conflict and emotional demands) and job resources (influence at work and social community at work), as well as employees' credence in the organization's ability to respond to change, relate to employee well-being within the Church of Sweden. In total 2,112 employees (58% participation rate) answered a web-based survey. The results of regression analyses showed that job resources and credence in the organization's ability to respond to change provided a clear contribution to the explanation of variance in work engagement and, especially, job satisfaction. However, the contribution of job demands was less clear. Moreover, to further the understanding of the association between employees' credence in the organization's ability to respond to change and employee well-being, the mediating effect of job resources was tested. The results showed that the association between credence and well-being is in part mediated by job resources. In sum, the study demonstrate that employees' credence in the organization's ability to respond to change is important to consider for understanding employee well-being within religious organizations. In conclusion, our study suggest that organizations that are built up on strong values and institutionalized beliefs, such as religious and faith-based organizations, need to tread carefully in the process of adapting to conformal pressure for change. This, since the actions and choices of the organization are important for employees' credence in the organization and, in turn, employee well-being. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.