Preventing employee burnout during episodic organizational changes

Who's more vulnerable? A generational investigation of COVID-19 perceptions' effect on Organisational citizenship Behaviours in the MENA region: job insecurity, burnout and job satisfaction as mediators

BACKGROUND

This paper is an empirical investigation that examines a path model linking COVID-19 perceptions to organisational citizenship behaviour (OCBs) via three mediators: job insecurity, burnout, and job satisfaction. The research examines the path model invariance spanning Generations X, Y, and Z. Three countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were the focus of the study.

METHODS

The data was collected from a sample of employees in service companies (n = 578). We used a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the data.

RESULTS

Our findings reveal that COVID-19 perceptions positively predict job insecurity, which positively impacts burnout levels. Burnout negatively predicts job satisfaction. The findings established that job satisfaction positively predicts OCBs. The mediation analysis determined that job insecurity, burnout and job satisfaction convey the indirect effects of COVID-19 perceptions onto OCBs. Finally, our hypothesised model is non-equivalent across Generations X, Y and Z. In that regard, our multi-group analysis revealed that the indirect effects of COVID-19 perceptions on OCBs were only valid amongst younger generations, i.e., Generation Y and Generation Z. Specifically, younger generations are substantially more vulnerable to the indirect effects of COVID-19 perceptions on their engagement in OCBs than Generation X whose job satisfaction blocks the effects of COVID-19 perceptions on OCBs.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study extends our knowledge of workplace generational differences in responding to the perceptions of crises or pandemics. It offers evidence that suggests that burnout, job attitudes and organisational outcomes change differently across generations in pandemic times.

Change and Innovation in Healthcare: Findings from Literature

BACKGROUND

Change is an ongoing process in any organizations. Over years, healthcare organizations have been exposed to multiple external stimuli to change (eg, ageing population, increasing incidence of chronic diseases, ongoing Sars-Cov-2 pandemic) that pointed out the need to convert the current healthcare organizational model. Nowadays, the topic is extremely relevant, rendering organizational change an urgency. The work is structured on a double level of analysis. In the beginning, the paper collects the overall literature on the topic of organisational change in order to identify, on the basis of the citation network, the main existing theoretical approaches. Secondly, the analysis attempts to isolate the scientific production related to the healthcare context, by analysing the body of literature outside the identified citation network, divided by clusters of related studies.

METHODOLOGY

This review adopted a quantitative-based method that employs jointly systematic literature review and bibliographic network analysis. Specifically, the study applied a citation network analysis (CNA) and a co-occurrence keywords analysis. The CNA allowed detecting the most relevant papers published over time, identifying the research streams in literature.

RESULTS

The study showed four main findings. Firstly, consistent with past studies, works reviewed pointed out a convergence on the micro-level perspective for change's analysis. Secondly, an organic viewpoint whereby individual, organization and change's outcome contribute to any organizational change's action has been found in its early stage. Thirdly, works reported change combined with innovation's concept, although the structure of the relationship has not been outlined. Fourth, interestingly, contributions have been limited within the healthcare context.

CONCLUSION

Human dimension is the primary criticality to be managed to impede failure of the re-organizational path. Individuals are not passive recipients of change: individual change acceptance has been found a key input. Few papers discussed healthcare professionals' behaviour, and those available focused on technology-led changes perspective. In this view, individual acceptance of change within the healthcare context resulted being undeveloped and offers rooms for further analyses.

On the transposability of change management research results: a systematic scoping review of studies published in JOCM and JCM

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to assess the transposability of study results published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management (JOCM) and the Journal of Change Management (JCM) between 2000 and 2019 for change-management practitioners and researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic scoping review of a large sample of articles published in both journals was undertaken: 122 studies were considered for analysis and coded by two independent coders using an inductive grid.

Findings

Findings show that few studies (1) describe the nature of changes undertaken by organizations; (2) explain the contextual elements that characterize the environment at the moment when these same transformations are deployed; or (3) nuance their observations according to the change operation.

Research limitations/implications

Information on the type of change undertaken by the organization and about how change has been implemented is useful when communicating new scientific knowledge to practitioners. Nevertheless, the way in which studies are sometimes described masks some important nuances to be considered when interpreting or replicating certain results.

Practical implications

The relevance of these issues is enhanced by the fact that researchers or practitioners (as knowledge users) are likely to reproduce some of the actions carried out in previous studies in order to deepen research avenues or to facilitate the implementation of change initiatives in workplaces.

Originality/value

This research is among the first to assess the transferability of change-management study results published in both journals over such a long period. Its relevance also speaks to the importance of contextualizing results to ease their transposability by researchers and practitioners.