A New Gain Spiral at Work: Relationships between Virtuous Organizational Practices, Psychological Capital, and Well-Being of Workers.

Identifying antecedents of well-being at work is an active field of research, focusing notably on organizational practices that promote employees' optimal health. To date, whereas studies have demonstrated that some organizational practices, considered in isolation, are positively associated with indicators of well-being, none tested the joint effect of a bundle of practices on these. Moreover, few studies have examined the psychological mechanisms underlying these relationships. The present study aimed to identify the relationships between virtuous organizational practices, a new psychological integrative construct, and three indicators of workers' hedonic, eudaimonic, and social well-being, namely job satisfaction, thriving at work, and work-life balance, and to test the mediational role of psychological capital in these relationships. The sample comprised 400 French employees working in non-profit, private, and public organizations. Structural equation modeling confirmed the direct effects of virtuous organizational practices on the three indicators of well-being, and a bootstrapping procedure demonstrated that psychological capital partially mediates these relationships. The results of this study have many practical applications because virtuous organizational practices can easily be implemented and optimized in work organizations to develop the individual resources of workers and, in detail, to promote their psychological well-being. Finally, the contributions of this study, avenues for future research, and limitations are discussed.

Virtuous Organizational Practices: A New Construct and a New Inventory.

Research on the identification of organizational practices that promote individual and organizational performance is now very extensive. However, several studies have revealed the dark side of these practices on employees' psychological health. Consequently, researchers have called on the scientific community to focus on the well-being of workers and to identify the organizational practices that promote it. Thus, the aim of the present research was to fill this gap by introducing a new conceptualization of organizational practices supporting the psychological health of employees and proposing a new improved measure to assess them. Drawing on the American Psychological Association's model of Psychologically healthy workplace, we first conceptualized the innovative multidimensional construct of virtuous organizational practices. We then conducted four studies (N = 1,407) to develop and validate the Virtuous Organizational Practices inventory. Results of exploratory statistical analyses provide strong evidence of the second-order factor structure of the inventory in different French samples and of the convergent, predictive and incremental validity of this tool. Implications for researchers, organizations and practitioners and avenues for future research are discussed.

Investigating the longitudinal effects of surface acting on managers' functioning through psychological needs.

This study is based on the premise that managers are expected to regulate their emotions in the form of surface acting. More specifically, drawing on self-determination theory, we explored the role of psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in explaining the influence of surface acting on supervisors' job satisfaction and work engagement over time. Data were collected at 2 time points, over a 3-month period, from a sample of 435 French managers working in the health care industry. Results revealed that surface acting negatively predicted managers' job satisfaction and work engagement over time, through the satisfaction of their psychological needs. However, managers' need thwarting did not explain these positive outcomes. Overall, these findings provide insight into the longitudinal adverse effects of managers' surface acting on their functioning and corroborate the distinct role of psychological need satisfaction and thwarting. Theoretical contributions and perspectives, as well as implications for practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Curvilinear effects of job characteristics on ill-being in the nursing profession: a cross-sectional study.

AIMS: To investigate the curvilinear associations between two job characteristics (i.e. task identity and information processing) and negative outcomes (i.e. nurse need for recovery and negative affect). BACKGROUND: Research has historically demonstrated the beneficial effects of motivational job characteristics on several individual and organizational consequences. These job characteristics were indeed found to be positively and linearly related to positive outcomes such as job satisfaction. However, another stream of research contends that job characteristics may have curvilinear effects on employee well-being. DESIGN: A cross-sectional correlational design was used. METHOD: Data were collected during June 2014, using a questionnaire survey. A convenience sample of French nurses and assistant nurses was recruited (n = 269). All participants were working in centres specialized in providing care to people with disabilities. RESULTS: This study demonstrated statistically significant curvilinear effects of job characteristics on nurses' ill-being, while controlling for their linear effects. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support that nurses' job characteristics are associated with their ill-being in complex ways and provide organizational and managerial applications for healthcare centres.