The route to employability: a longitudinal study on a sample of Italian job seekers.

This study aimed to examine the main predictors of employability, building on a recent conceptual model on employability developed by Lo Presti and Pluviano (Organ Psychol Rev 6(2): 192-211, 2016). Survey based data were collected from a sample of 263 Italian job-seekers through a longitudinal study. The results revealed that employability was more strongly determined by personal dispositions than by external factors, such as life circumstances and that the variables with the most impact were proactive personality, core self-evaluations, and educational level, rather than employability culture, family employability support, and previous work experience. The paper reveals an understanding of the relative importance of antecedents that determine employability.

La route vers l'employabilité : Une étude longitudinale sur un échantillon de demandeurs d'emploi italiens Cette étude visait à examiner les principaux prédicteurs de l'employabilité, en s'appuyant sur un modèle conceptuel récent de l'employabilité développé par Lo Presti et Pluviano (Organ Psychol Rev 6(2): 192­211, 2016). Des données basées sur des enquêtes ont été recueillies auprès d'un échantillon de 263 demandeurs d'emploi italiens dans le cadre d'une étude longitudinale. Les résultats ont révélé que l'employabilité était plus fortement déterminée par les dispositions personnelles que par des facteurs externes, tels que les circonstances de la vie, et que les variables ayant le plus d'impact étaient la personnalité proactive, les auto-évaluations fondamentales/de base et le niveau d'éducation, plutôt que la culture de l'employabilité, le soutien familial à l'employabilité et l'expérience professionnelle antérieure. Le document révèle une compréhension de l'importance relative des antécédents qui déterminent l'employabilité.

El camino a la empleabilidad: Un estudio longitudinal con una muestra de desempleados italianos Este estudio pretende examinar los principales predictores de empleabilidad, construyendo un modelo conceptual de empleabilidad desarrollado por Lo Presti y Pluviano (Organ Psychol Rev 6(2): 192­211, 2016). La información fue recogida a través de una encuesta realizada a 263 Italianos en situación de búsqueda de empleo, a través de un estudio longitudinal. Los resultados revelaron que la empleabilidad estaba más fuertemente determinada por la disponibilidad personal que por factores externos como las circunstancias vitales. Las variables con más impacto fueron la personalidad proactiva, las autoevaluaciones básicas y el nivel educativo, y no tanto la cultura de ocupabilidad, el soporte familiar a la empleabilidad y las experiencias de trabajo previas. El artículo revela la importancia relativa de los antecedentes que determinan la empleabilidad.

The Association of Job and Family Resources and Demands with Life Satisfaction through Work-Family Balance: A Longitudinal Study among Italian Schoolteachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Successfully balancing between work and family domains represents a major issue to both employees and employers, especially during COVID-19 pandemic times during which employees are often forced to work from a distance and turn to home-schooling. An occupational group particularly affected by work changes due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions is represented by schoolteachers. We aimed at examining the associations between some job-related and family-related antecedents on the one hand and, on the other, life satisfaction as an outcome, including work-family balance as a mediator. A total of 357 Italian teachers completed a questionnaire at two different times: job control, coworkers support, supervisor support, workload, family support, and family workload were assessed at Time 1; and work-family balance and life satisfaction were assessed at Time 2. Both data collections were performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hypothesized direct and indirect relationships were tested by utilizing structural equation modeling. Significant and positive indirect effects of focal predictors towards life satisfaction through work-family balance were found for job control, supervisor support, and family support. The paper contributed to the literature by testing Grzywacz and Carlson's theoretical conceptualization of work-family balance and by attempting to delineate its repertoire of potential antecedents among schoolteachers. From a practical point of view, the present study emphasizes the crucial role that certain job antecedents and family antecedents play in promoting teachers' work-family balance and life satisfaction.

Gender Patterns in Mobbing Victims: Differences in Negative Act Perceptions, MMPI Personality Profile, Perceived Quality of Life, and Suicide Risk.

With the aim of investigating the impact of gender-related personality characteristics on bullying perceptions and outcomes, a correlational study was designed with 114 individuals who had used a public health service aimed at harassed workers identifying themselves as victims of mobbing in central Italy. The study was conducted using the following questionnaires: the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ), a measure of workplace bullying; the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), used to provide information to measure personality dimensions for workplace screening; the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BRIEF) which assesses four domains assumed to represent the quality of life construct; and the Suicidal Potential Scale (SPS) used to assess suicidal ideation. MMPI-2 profile results show a significant elevation of specific MMPI scales and gender differences. When compared to women, men who complain of being the victims of negative actions at work are more depressed, paranoid, introverted, anxious, and obsessive, and have higher anger levels and lower self-esteem. Many different MMPI-2 scales are also predictors of quality of life (QoL) perceptions and suicidal tendencies. The NAQ total score, however, predicts quality of life and suicide risk. Perceptions of negative actions have a serious effect on life outcomes. The results provide useful indications on personality profiles and gender differences, which can be understood as antecedents in the perception of negative events, and factors capable of modulating the effect of perceived bullying actions on outcomes.

A Time-Lagged Examination of the Greenhaus and Allen Work-Family Balance Model.

The work-family interface is a compelling topic that calls into question labor market dynamics and work processes, together with important social and family composition changes. The present study aimed at examining the antecedents of Work-Family Balance (WFB) in Italy consistent with Greenhaus and Allen's (2011) conceptual model in which the characteristics of work and family roles have an indirect impact on work-family balance through Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and Work-Family Enrichment (WFE), and where job and family satisfaction are considered as predictors of WFB. A total of 568 workers participated in a time-lagged correlational study, filling a questionnaire. The theoretical model was tested by assessing the mediating role of job and family satisfaction as well as related antecedents, conflict, and enrichment between the family and work contexts, through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results partially confirmed the theoretical model: work-to-family enrichment and work-to-family conflict predicted family satisfaction, which also mediated their association with WFB. The results in the family-to-work direction did not support the initial research hypotheses. The hypotheses about associations between demands and resources, conflict and enrichment in both directions, and of the moderating role of core self-evaluations were partially confirmed. The results highlighted that organizations need to carry out periodic assessments of WFC and WFE, in order to provide benefits and resources, to reduce conflict, and increase enrichment, through proper interventions (training activities, professional development, mentoring, and forms of flexibility).

Distributed Leadership Agency and Work Outcomes: Validation of the Italian DLA and Its Relations With Commitment, Trust, and Satisfaction.

Forms of collective leadership, such as distributed leadership, have become increasingly important. The need for measurement of the variables involved in the delegation processes represents a new challenge for organizations that want to ensure high-level working. The present study aimed to validate the Italian version of the distributed leadership agency (DLA). The study was carried out on 704 employees (doctors, nurses, clerks, staff workers, healthcare assistants, consultants, management) of an Italian public hospital, who were selected to complete a survey on organizational perceptions. Multiple confirmatory factor analyses (maximum likelihood) have been computed to explore the factorial structure of the DLA, along with associations with other work outcomes. Results about the Italian DLA confirmed the original trifactorial structure of the construct, suggested by Yukl (2002), through good fit indexes and reliability scores; moreover, consistent with the literature, DLA was strongly related to satisfaction, commitment, and trust. Results contribute to underline the robustness of the construct of DLA in different cultural sectors and provide a useful tool to be adopted in the Italian context.

Work-Family Organizational Support as a Predictor of Work-Family Conflict, Enrichment, and Balance: Crossover and Spillover Effects in Dual-Income Couples.

Dual-income families are challenged by several issues in terms of conciliation between the working environment, the family context and the management of children. This paper, consistently with spillover and crossover hypotheses, aimed at examining the intermediate role of work-family balance, linking on work-family organizational support, work-to-family enrichment and conflict as predictors, and on family-life satisfaction of dual-income families' both partners as final outcomes. It was expected that work-family organizational support would be related to lower work-to-family conflict and higher enrichment and, through them, with higher work-family balance; moreover, a positive association between work-family balance and family-life satisfaction of both partners was assumed. 390 double-income heterosexual couples participated in our study; 76.2% of the couples were parents. Structural equation modelling results showed that work-family balance was negatively predicted by work-to-family conflict and positively predicted by work-to-family enrichment. Furthermore, work-family organizational support positively predicted work-to-family enrichment, which also mediated its effect on work-family balance. Crossover and spillover effects were also confirmed, given that positive associations between work-family balance and family-life satisfaction of both partners were found. Implications for future research and organizational interventions aimed at both improving work-family balance and promoting greater satisfaction in family life are discussed.

Ethical Climate(s), Distributed Leadership, and Work Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Organizational Identification.

Organizational identification (OI) has increasingly attracted scholarly attention as a key factor in understanding organizational processes and in fostering efficient human resource (HR) management. Available evidence shows that organizational ethical climate crucially predicts OI, a key determinant of both employees' attitudes and behaviors. In the present paper, we examined the relationship between two specific ethical climates (self-interest vs. friendship), distributed leadership (DL), and employees' attitudes and behaviors, incorporating OI as a core underlying mechanism driving these relationships. Three hundred and forty-two employees filled out questionnaires to examine ethical climate, DL, OI, and a series of measures concerning attitudes and behaviors toward the organization. Structural equation modeling confirmed that a perception of an ethical climate of friendship (but not self-interest) fostered OI, which elicited higher commitment, perceived trust and recommendation, and lower turnover intention. Perception of DL further contributed to increasing OI. Our findings suggest that HR practices should carefully consider employee perceptions of a collectivistic (vs. individualistic) ethical climate, together with perceptions of DL, as key determinants of positive organizational outcomes. We discuss results in light of the social identity approach and present practical implications for HR management.

The Associations Between Workplace Bullying and Physical or Psychological Negative Symptoms: Anxiety and Depression as Mediators.

Workplace bullying is a critical issue for its negative consequences on victims' health and well-being. This study aimed at examining the intermediate roles of anxiety and depression, in the relations between workplace bullying as a predictor, and physical and psychological negative symptoms as outcomes. In particular, it was hypothesized that workplace bullying would be associated with higher anxiety and depression and, through them, with higher physical and psychological negative symptoms. We sampled 151 Italian employees, who called on a workplace bullying public clinical center as victims and filled a paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Results of bootstrapped regressions showed that only anxiety mediated the association of workplace bullying with negative physical symptoms while both anxiety and depression mediated its association with negative psychological symptoms. The results have implications for the development of appropriate intervention strategies for both prevention and clinical treatment. In particular, timely diagnosing and treating anxiety and depression could prevent subsequent problems related to psychological and physical symptoms such as colitis, headache, tiredness, nervousness, etc. Organizational interventions in terms of primary prevention are also discussed. From an empirical standpoint, the study contributed to disentangling the differential roles of anxiety and depression with respect to physical and psychological symptoms; moreover, overcoming a common limit of workplace bullying research, the current study was carried out on actual victims.

Corrigendum: A Crossover Study From a Gender Perspective: The Relationship Between Job Insecurity, Job Satisfaction, and Partners' Family Life Satisfaction.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01481.].

On the Effects of Ethical Climate(s) on Employees' Behavior: A Social Identity Approach.

The spread and publicity given to questionable practices in the corporate world during the last two decades have fostered an increasing interest about the importance of ethical work for organizations, practitioners, scholars and, last but not least, the wider public. Relying on the Social Identity Approach, we suggest that the effects of different ethical climates on employee behaviors are driven by affective identification with the organization and, in parallel, by cognitive moral (dis)engagement. We compared the effects of two particular ethical climates derived from the literature: An ethical organizational climate of self-interest, and an ethical organizational climate of friendship. Three hundred seventy-six workers completed measures of Ethical Climate, Organizational Identification, Moral Disengagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs), and Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs). Structural equation modeling confirmed that the two ethical climates considered were independently related to organizational identification and moral disengagement. These, in turn, mediated the effects of ethical climates on OCBs and CWBs. We discuss results in light of the social identity approach, and present some practical implications of our findings.

Occupations at Risk and Organizational Well-Being: An Empirical Test of a Job Insecurity Integrated Model.

One of the more visible effects of the societal changes is the increased feelings of uncertainty in the workforce. In fact, job insecurity represents a crucial occupational risk factor and a major job stressor that has negative consequences on both organizational well-being and individual health. Many studies have focused on the consequences about the fear and the perception of losing the job as a whole (called quantitative job insecurity), while more recently research has begun to examine more extensively the worries and the perceptions of losing valued job features (called qualitative job insecurity). The vast majority of the studies, however, have investigated the effects of quantitative and qualitative job insecurity separately. In this paper, we proposed the Job Insecurity Integrated Model aimed to examine the effects of quantitative job insecurity and qualitative job insecurity on their short-term and long-term outcomes. This model was empirically tested in two independent studies, hypothesizing that qualitative job insecurity mediated the effects of quantitative job insecurity on different outcomes, such as work engagement and organizational identification (Study 1), and job satisfaction, commitment, psychological stress and turnover intention (Study 2). Study 1 was conducted on 329 employees in private firms, while Study 2 on 278 employees in both public sector and private firms. Results robustly showed that qualitative job insecurity totally mediated the effects of quantitative on all the considered outcomes. By showing that the effects of quantitative job insecurity on its outcomes passed through qualitative job insecurity, the Job Insecurity Integrated Model contributes to clarifying previous findings in job insecurity research and puts forward a framework that could profitably produce new investigations with important theoretical and practical implications.

With a Little Help From My Family: A Mixed-Method Study on the Outcomes of Family Support and Workload.

Our aim was to investigate some predictors and outcomes of family-to-work enrichment (FWE) via a mixed-method approach. We sampled 447 married employees of an Italian factory. Survey results from Study 1 showed that emotional support from family positively predicted FWE, while this latter mediated the associations between the former on one side, and work engagement and life satisfaction on the other. Moreover, extra-household support directly associated positively with life satisfaction. Evidence from 20 anthropological in-depth interviews (Study 2) returned a more complex picture, highlighting the gendered role of partners inside couples, the importance of kinship support, the sense and the value of filiation and parenthood in their connection with job roles, the complex and continuous interplay between family and life domains. In combination, results from both studies stressed the importance of family support; additionally, evidences from Study 2 suggested that FWE could be better understood taking into account crossover dynamics and the compresence of work-to-family enrichment and conflict. In sum, these studies contributed to shed light on FWE dynamics, an under-researched topic in Italy, whose knowledge could be of great empirical and practical value.