Job stressors and turnover intention of IT executives in Malaysia: The mediating role of employee well-being.

BACKGROUND: Fear of losing psychological resources can lead to stress, impacting psychological health and behavioral outcomes like burnout, absenteeism, service sabotage, and turnover. OBJECTIVE: The study examined the impact of job stressors (time pressure, role ambiguity, role conflict) on employee well-being and turnover intentions. The study also investigated the mediating role of employee well-being between job stressors and turnover intention based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory. METHODS: Data from 396 IT executives in Malaysian IT firms were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. RESULTS: Results confirmed a significant negative correlation between time pressure (-0.296), role ambiguity (-0.423), role conflict (-0.104), and employee well-being. Similarly, employee well-being showed a significant negative relationship with turnover intentions (-0.410). The mediation analysis revealed that employee well-being mediates the relationship between time pressure (0.121), role ambiguity (0.173), role conflict (0.043), and turnover intentions. CONCLUSION: This paper aims to manifest the importance of designing employee well-being policies by firms to retain employees. Findings reflect the role of the managerial approach towards ensuring employee well-being for employee retention, thereby reducing recruitment and re-training costs.

Safety climate and safety behaviors: Adapting and validating a positively worded safety climate scale through the time-lagged approach.

BACKGROUND: Contemporary literature raises serious questions about the inclusion of negatively worded items in the safety climate scale. Despite these reservations, limited efforts have been made to address this shortcoming. OBJECTIVE: The present study aims to adapt and empirically validate the ten-items group-level safety climate scale with the purpose of replacing negatively worded items with positively worded ones after a thorough validation process. The present study is one of the first to propose an empirically validated group-level safety climate scale that uses positive items to measure the safety climate construct. METHODS: Study 1 was conducted using a sample of 135 participants. Study 2 used a time-lagged approach to validate the scale, with a sample of 173 production workers from six oil and gas organizations in Malaysia. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to test the hypothesized relationships. RESULTS: In Study 1, the results of the exploratory factor analysis showed good reliability for the revised scale. In Study 2, the results of the PLS-SEM analysis demonstrated a positive relationship between safety climate and safety behaviors, thereby validating the revised and translated scale of safety climate. CONCLUSION: The revised safety climate scale will not only improve data quality, but it will also increase response rates. Additionally, the revised scale will assist managers in understanding the true perceptions of safety climate in their organization, regardless of the cultural context in which the scale is used.

Copenhagen Psychosocial "Work Organization and Job Content" as a Higher-Order Construct in Relation to Workers' Health: The Moderating Role of Leadership Quality.

Originality/Purpose: The current study aims to investigate the novel approach of utilizing work organization and job content (WOJC) as a higher-order construct that is one of the domains of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ), examining its relationship with sleeping troubles and somatic stress, while also exploring the moderating effect of leadership quality. Sample/methods: Snowball sampling technique was used to collect the data in this study, with a population consisting of 360 workers employed in hazardous work environments at poultry feed mills. The structural equation modelling technique was applied to achieve the range of outcomes. Results: The results reveal that WOJC has a significant negative impact on both psychological (sleeping troubles) and physiological (somatic stress) health factors among poultry workers. Although leadership quality did not moderate the relationship between WOJC and physiological health factors, it did moderate the relationship between WOJC and psychological health factors. Conclusion/Implications: This study has significant implications for researchers, poultry feed mill owners, policymakers, and regulatory bodies. Additionally, the methodological contribution of utilizing WOJC as a higher-order construct provides unique insights for researchers. Limitations: Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the data was collected online from one province only; future studies should spread the sampling framework to all provinces with different domains of COPSOQ.

Rampart of Health-Specific Leadership and Social Support of Colleagues to Overcome Burnout in an Emotionally Demanding Situations: The Mediating Role of Stress.

Introduction: Past studies have neglected the role of resources that enhance motivation, such as health-specific leadership (H-SL) and social support colleagues (SSC), in dealing with the prerequisites of psychological health of workers, especially the duo of stress and burnout. Objective: This empirical study aimed to identify the impact of psychosocial job demands (emotional demands) and psychosocial job resources (health-specific leadership and social support of colleagues) on the psychological health (stress, burnout) of 284 Malaysian industrial workers (who participated both times). Methods: The Hierarchical regression analysis was employed to examine all study hypotheses and a time lagged study design was used with a lag of three months between T1 and T2 for data collection. Results: The survey data found a significant impact of emotional demands on stress and burnout, while we found insignificant findings of health-specific leadership and social support from colleagues on workers' psychological health. Future Directions: Future studies should consider the different formations of psychosocial job resources and higher dimensions of health promotion leadership.

Personality assessment in military - Bright and dark sides of the assessment measures: A review.

BACKGROUND: Personality assessment has its own bright and dark sides, especially in the military setting. It is at play since the emergence of clinical psychology and its application in the recruitment process during World War I and II. Change in personality assessment trends, the evolution of complex personality traits, and changing geopolitical settings across the world necessitate the development of cost-effective, time-efficient, and reliable assessment measures that overcome issues in current assessment measures and fulfil the needs of present timesOBJECTIVE:The objective of this paper is to explore the evolution of personality assessment measures and their uses in military settings along with the comparison of self-report and non-self-report measures. It would give directions for the development of new measures to overcome the issues and drawbacks associated with current measures of research. METHODS: The research question was formulated using the most valid SPIDER technique for a comprehensive search. PubMed, Google Scholar, and PsycNet databases were searched. 19 articles were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria out of 775 articles. RESULTS: Thematic analyses show that personality assessment in the military is done to a) detect psychopathology, b) detect aberrant responses, c) recruit new personnel, d) predict training and performance outcomes, and e) predict leadership. The research contributes to the body of knowledge by showing an integrated picture of the most widely used assessment tools and the purpose it serves. CONCLUSION: There is a need to develop assessment measures that are culture free and can assess more complex personality attributes.

High Safety Risk Assessment in the Time of Uncertainties (COVID-19): An Industrial Context.

Background: The complexities of the workplace environment in the downstream oil and gas industry contain several safety-risk factors. In particular, instituting stringent safety standards and management procedures are considered insufficient to address workplace safety risks. Most accident cases attribute to unsafe actions and human behaviors on the job, which raises serious concerns for safety professionals from physical to psychological particularly when the world is facing a life-threatening Pandemic situation, i.e., COVID-19. It is imperative to re-examine the safety management of facilities and employees' well-being in the downstream oil and gas production sector to establish a sustainable governance system. Understanding the inherent factors better that contribute to safety behavior management could significantly improve workplace safety features. Objective: This study investigates employees' safety behavior management model for the downstream oil and gas industry to consolidate the safety, health and wellbeing of employees in times of COVID-19. Methods: Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was first employed to screen primary behavioral factors from 10 workplace health and safety experts from Malaysia's downstream oil and gas industry. Consequently, 18 significant factors were identified for further inquiry. Next, the interpretive structural modeling technique was used to ascertain the complex interrelationships between these factors and proposed a Safety Behavioral Management Model for cleaner production. Results: This model shows that management commitment, employee knowledge and training, leadership, and regulations contribute significantly to several latent factors. Our findings support the Social Cognitive Theory, where employees, their environment, and their behaviors are related reciprocally. Conclusion: It is postulated that identifying safety factors and utilizing the proposed model guides various stakeholder groups in this industry, including practitioners and policymakers, for achieving long-term sustainability.

Celebrity endorsements, whitening products, and consumer purchase intentions: A review of literature.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine how much celebrity endorsement stimulates skin color racism in the cosmetics industry. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The data were collected from Google Scholar and Web of Science published articles, and researchers had chosen 45 research articles. Some of the research articles used a quantitative research approach while others had used qualitative research approach. And for the current study, content analysis has been used. FINDINGS: The study finds that celebrity endorsement does influence and promote racism, implying that when celebrities promote fairness products, people perceive themselves inferior due to darker skin tone that gives birth to the notion of racism. Brand Image intervenes in the relationship between Celebrity Endorsement and Racism, and also, intervenes in the relationship between Celebrity Endorsement and Purchase Intention. LIMITATIONS: This study is only limited to Google Scholar and Web of Science directory. Only forty-five articles were taken from 2001 to 2021 year. Real examples were taken from all over the world, but especially from the Less Developed countries like Pakistan and India due to the huge population, rising income, and surging cosmetics industry. Hence, the findings of this study cannot be generalized to the Technologically Advanced Countries. IMPLICATIONS: It is obvious that firms design advertisement campaigns that can get consumers' attention. For this purpose, they engage celebrities to evoke more interest and awareness as well as perception. The study will help the management of different brands to understand that how they can improve their advertisements in a way that does not promote racism. And the celebrities, signing contracts with brands that promote racism, will keep in mind the negative influence these endorsements have on society while companies will make sure that they are also not promoting racism by making such promotional campaigns.

Career adaptability as protagonist on contemporary rural migrant workers' turnover intention: The mediating effect of organization embeddedness and organizational identification.

BACKGROUND: Contemporary migrant workers from rural areas demonstrate high turnover behaviors in China and pose substantial threats to China's economic growth. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the causes of this short-term employment from the perspective of individual dispositions in terms of career adaptability. This study investigated organization embeddedness and organizational identification as underpinning mechanisms linking career adaptability to turnover intention. The hypotheses explanations were provided according to the Conservation of Resources theory. METHODS: Survey data were collected from 379 migrant workers from rural areas in the manufacturing sectors of China, and the structural equation modeling technique was used to find the range of outcomes. RESULTS: The empirical results demonstrate that career adaptability does not meaningfully predict turnover intention but is positively and significantly related to organization embeddedness and organizational identification. Organization embeddedness and organizational identification both negatively and significantly predicted turnover intention and also played as a conciliator in the association between career adaptability and turnover intention. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest management and human resource specialists can directly influence the turnover intention of contemporary rural migrant workers via paying attention to these two critical factors, namely, organization embeddedness and organizational identification.

Nuances of COVID-19 and Psychosocial Work Environment on Nurses' Wellbeing: The Mediating Role of Stress and Eustress in Lieu to JD-R Theory.

BACKGROUND: The global spread of COVID-19 makes Pakistan as vulnerable as any other developing country and the risk posed by the weak health system increases the fears in people's minds. The government is strategically expanding the scope of community ownership and increasing understanding in the population through risk communication and engagement; still, the situation remains very austere and is even affecting the psychological health of caregivers. We, therefore, sought to determine the impact of psychosocial job demands and resources associated with the psychological health of nurses in a time lag duration of 3 months, i.e., since the start of the pandemic, from January to March 2020. We hypothesized the significant mediating roles of stress and eustress in a direct relationship with psychosocial work environment job demands, job resources, and nurses' wellbeing. METHODS: In this cross-sectional self-administrated study, we distributed the survey in two parts by using a time-lag strategy to collect data at the start of pandemic (Time 1) and then again 3 months later (Time 2). Data on 53 items was collected from 208 female nurses who had participated in both the time phases and met the eligibility protocols of the study (such as being certified female nurses who have a registration number (RN) through the Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC), having 4 years of a generic nursing degree, and 2 years of nursing experience). FINDINGS: We have achieved three stages through our analytic study on the nurses' samples to determine the predictive abilities for the quality of the psychosocial work environment model. The coefficient of determination is R2, while the effect size is f2. We found 29.0% variance, 0.05 and 0.03 effect size, and 0.153 predictive abilities on stress as explained by job demands, and 53.4% variance, 0.19 and 0.39 effect size, and 0.275 predictive abilities on eustress as explained by job resources. And finally, there was 71.2% variance, 0.00, 0.02, 0.02, 0.03, 0.42, and 0.07 effect sizes, and 0.545 predictive abilities on our third endogenous construct, wellbeing, which is explained by both the psychosocial job demands and job resource variables. From partial to full mediation, stress and eustress significantly impact the psychosocial work environment of nurses.

Malay Validation of Copenhagen Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire in Context of Second Generation Statistical Techniques.

Psychosocial hazards present in workplaces are being actively investigated by researchers from multiple domains. More research and resources are required to investigate the debilitating consequences of these hazards in the developing and underdeveloped countries where this issue remains one of grave concern. This study aims at investigating the psychometric properties of Malaysian version of Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire for reliability and validity purpose. The Malaysian version of COPSOQ is a multidimensional questionnaire; it comprises of 7 major formative constructs and 28 variables with an additional inclusion of two variables which are organizational loyalty and physiological health biomarkers (blood pressure and body mass index) that explicate a reflective construct which has 93 items all catering to assess psychosocial determinants present in workplace environments. Each formative second-order construct is further categorized into different reflective first-order constructs. The focus of this study was only on first-order reflective constructs. Probability sampling was used for data collection from 300 respondents working in industries with a response rate of 100%; structural equation modeling technique was applied for data analysis. All psychometric analysis performed on reflective constructs gave reliable results which demonstrate the validity of Bahasa Melayu (BM-COPSOQ) and its comprehensiveness of including relevant dimensions particularly in context to Asian region. The BM-COPSOQ will fill up the knowledge gap and provide a bridge between researchers, work professionals and practitioners, and many other workplaces for the best understanding of psychosocial work environment.

Connotations of psychological and physiological health in the psychosocial work environment: An industrial context.

BACKGROUND: Psychological conditions are experiences of the conscious and unconscious elements of the work context, which revolve around workers' perceptions of feeling either engaged or disengaged with the assigned tasks. In the psychosocial work environment of hazardous industries like petrochemicals where production lasts twenty-four hours a day and continues seven-days-a-week, a psychologically available worker is extremely important. Psychological availability refers to when workers who are physically, emotionally and psychologically engaged at the moment of performing tasks. OBJECTIVE: The broad objective of this study was to investigate the direct and indirect effects of behavioral factors on the psychological and physiological health of workers. METHODS: The latest, second generation technique, which is structural equation modeling, is used to identify the relationships between behavioral antecedents and health outcomes. A total of 277 technical workers participated, aged between 20 and 49 and were healthy in all aspects. RESULTS: The study results showed quantitative demands, emotional demands, work-family conflict, and job insecurity were significantly associated with both psychological (stress) and physiological (Body Mass Index) factors. The social support of colleagues produced mixed findings with direct and indirect paths. Stress also significantly mediates the psychosocial factors and burnout of the workers. CONCLUSION: The study concluded that workers were physically available, but they experienced distractions as members of social systems, affecting their physiological and psychological health.

Does Psychosocial Work Environment Factors Predict Stress and Mean Arterial Pressure in the Malaysian Industry Workers?

Psychosocial risks are considered as a burning issue in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of psychosocial work environment factors on health of petrochemical industry workers of Malaysia. In lieu to job demands-resources theory, significant positive associations were found between quantitative demands, work-family conflict, and job insecurity with stress, while a significant negative association of role clarity as a resource factor with stress was detected. We also found that quantitative demands were significantly associated with the mean arterial pressure (MAP). Multistage sampling procedure was used to collect study sample. Structural Equation Modeling was used to identify relationship between the endogenous and exogenous variables. Finally, the empirically tested psychosocial work environment model will further help in providing a better risk assessment in different industries and enterprises.