Teacher Technostress in the Chilean School System

The expanded use of information technology in education has led to the emergence of technostress due to a lack of adaptation to the technological environment. The purpose of this study is to identify the levels of technostress in primary and secondary education in 428 teachers using a RED-TIC questionnaire, of which skepticism, fatigue, anxiety, and inefficiency are the main components. For the empirical analysis of the data, principal component analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used. The results show that 12% of Chilean teachers participating in the study feel techno-fatigued, 13% feel techno-anxious, and 11% present both conditions. Male teachers show a higher incidence of techno-anxiety and techno-fatigue than their female peers. It can be concluded that the questionnaire used is a reliable tool to evaluate the presence of technostress, and it manifests itself importantly in its components of techno-anxiety and techno-fatigue in Chilean teachers.

Relationships between psychological contract violation, stress and well-being in firefighters

Purpose

Negative emotions resulting from the broken promises by the organisation or employers, as perceived by an employee are called psychological contract (PC) violation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between perceived feelings of violation, work-related stress, anxiety and depression. Fairness and self-efficacy are used as mediators to understand the underlying mechanism of associations.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 97 firefighters completed an online-survey and structural equation modelling was used to examine the multiple mediation models.

Findings

PC violation was positively associated with occupational stress and job-related well-being. Together, fairness and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between feelings of violation and job-related depression. Therefore, the results partially supported the hypotheses.

Originality/value

As the first quantitative study of its kind, this study makes an important contribution to the firefighters literature by investigating the potential influence of PC violation on their work-related stress and well-being. Also, previous studies have failed to identify fairness and self-efficacy as potential mediators of the PC violation.

"I Can Only Work So Hard Before I Burn Out." A Time Sensitive Conceptual Integration of Ideological Psychological Contract Breach, Work Effort, and Burnout

Employees often draw meaning from personal experiences and contributions in their work, particularly when engaging in organizational activities that align with their personal identity or values. However, recent empirical findings have demonstrated how meaningful work can also have a negative effect on employee’s well-being as employees feel so invested in their work, they push themselves beyond their limits resulting in strain and susceptibility to burnout. We develop a framework to understand this “double edged” role of meaningful work by drawing from ideological psychological contracts (iPCs), which are characterized by employees and their employer who are working to contribute to a shared ideology or set of values. Limited iPC research has demonstrated employees may actually work harder in response to an iPC breach. In light of these counterintuitive findings, we propose the following conceptual model to theoretically connect our understanding of iPCs, perceptions of breach, increases in work effort, and the potential “dark side” of repeated occurrences of iPC breach. We argue that time plays a central role in the unfolding process of employees’ reactions to iPC breach over time. Further, we propose how perceptions of iPC breach relate to strain and, eventually, burnout. This model contributes to our understanding of the role of time in iPC development and maintenance, expands our exploration of ideology in the PC literature, and provides a framework to understanding why certain occupations are more susceptible to instances of strain and burnout. This framework has the potential to guide future employment interventions in ideology-infused organizations to help mitigate negative employee outcomes.

One Big Happy Family? Unraveling the Relationship between Shared Perceptions of Team Psychological Contracts, Person-Team Fit and Team Performance

With the knowledge that team work is not always associated with high(er) performance, we draw from the Multi-Level Theory of Psychological Contracts, Person-Environment Fit Theory, and Optimal Distinctiveness Theory to study shared perceptions of psychological contract (PC) breach in relation to shared perceptions of complementary and supplementary fit to explain why some teams perform better than other teams. We collected three repeated survey measures in a sample of 128 respondents across 46 teams. After having made sure that we met all statistical criteria, we aggregated our focal variables to the team-level and analyzed our data by means of a longitudinal three-wave autoregressive moderated-mediation model in which each relationship was one-time lag apart. We found that shared perceptions of PC breach were directly negatively related to team output and negatively related to perceived team member effectiveness through a decrease in shared perceptions of supplementary fit. However, we also demonstrated a beneficial process in that shared perceptions of PC breach were positively related to shared perceptions of complementary fit, which in turn were positively related to team output. Moreover, best team output appeared in teams that could combine high shared perceptions of complementary fit with modest to high shared perceptions of supplementary fit. Overall, our findings seem to indicate that in terms of team output there may be a bright side to perceptions of PC breach and that perceived person-team fit may play an important role in this process.

Hearing the Call: A Phenomenological Study of Religion in Career Choice

While traditional forms of career counseling are effective for many individuals, some clients may perceive a strong religious or spiritual call to a career and may therefore require a different understanding of career counseling. This qualitative study sought to describe the process through which individuals perceive and follow a religious or spiritual call to a career, for a small sample of Roman Catholic participants. Themes emerging from the study included a sense of career choice arising from a mutual relationship with God, and struggles both with faith and with being called. Participants described various sources of support as well as challenges in following their calling. The results of the study can assist psychologists and career counselors when working with religious clients who want to incorporate religion and spirituality into the career decision-making process.

Losing sleep over organizational injustice: attenuating insomniac reactions to underpayment inequity with supervisory training in interactional justice

Self-reports of insomnia were collected among 467 nurses working at 4 hospitals. At 2 of these hospitals, a change in pay policy resulted in reduced pay for all nurses, whereas nurses' pay was unchanged at the other 2 hospitals. Nursing supervisors at 1 hospital in each group received training in promoting interactional justice, whereas no training was provided at the other 2 hospitals. Reflecting the stressful nature of underpayment, insomnia was significantly greater among nurses whose pay was reduced than among those whose pay remained unchanged. However, the degree of insomnia was significantly lower among nurses whose supervisors were trained in interactional justice, both immediately after training and 6 months later. These findings demonstrate the buffering effects of interactionally fair treatment on reactions to underpayment.