Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being––people’s evaluations and feelings about their lives. Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust. We argue that economic indicators were extremely important in the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillment of basic needs was the main issue. As societies grow wealthy,

Traditional approaches to requirements elicitation stress systematic and rational analysis and representation of organizational context and system requirements. This paper argues that the introduction of any computer-based system to an organization transforms the organization and changes the work patterns of the system’s users in the organization. These changes interact with the users ’ values and beliefs and trigger emotional responses which are sometimes directed against the computerbased system and its proponents. The paper debunks myths about how smoothly such organizational transformations take place, describes case studies showing how organizational transformation really takes place, and introduces and confirms by case studies some guidelines for eliciting requirements and the relevant emotional issues for a computer-based system that is being introduced into an organization to change its work patterns. 1

Employees' Organizational Identification (OI) is measured in a customer service organization. Particularly the effects of employee communication and perceived external prestige (PEP) on OI were evaluated. Results show that employee communication affects OI more strongly than PEP. One aspect of employee communication, the communication climate, appears to play a central role: it mediates the impact on OI of the content of employee communication. These results suggest that the importance of how an organization communicates internally is even more vital than the question what is being communicated. Consequences of the results for managing and synchronizing internal and external communication are discussed. Employees who identify strongly with their organization are more likely to show a supportive attitude toward it (Ashforth & Mael, 1989), and to make decisions that are consistent with organizational objectives (Simon, 1997: 284). Organizational identification may induce employees to...

www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed Job strain, e€ort-reward imbalance and employee wellbeing: a large-scale cross-sectional study

The advent of the call centre workplace phenomenon has re-kindled debate within labour process theory, particularly in relation to control issues concerning service sector work and routinisation of clerical and white-collar labour. There has been rather more limited discussion of employment relations matters emanating from the call centre labour process. This paper considers issues such as absenteeism and labour turnover, management control, work intensification, union and organisational commitment within a banking services call centre based in Liverpool, UK. The main findings of the research indicate that employees or ‘agents ’ were frustrated and bored with repetitive and standardised work operations; that there were high levels of managerial control and surveillance and that there was little opportunity for exercising creativity and autonomy in the work situation. The commitment of agents to their organisation was, not surprisingly in the light of these findings, correspondingly low. Agents, who were unionised, were moderately committed to their trade union despite some disappointment concerning the apparent inability of local union representatives to pursue and process grievances effectively. The paper concludes that the ‘sweatshop ’ image of call centres is to some extent

Föreliggande rapport är en sammanställning av utvärderingsmetoder inom arbetsmiljöområdet

The purpose of this study was twofold. One, the study was to document facet-specific and general levels of job satisfaction of community college chairpersons in the United States. Two, the influence of selected personal and unit-related characteristics on general job satisfaction was investigated. A sample of 807 chairs was systematically selected from a population of 9,866 chairs. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, Long Form (MSQ) was chosen to measure satisfaction levels of 20 job facets and general job satisfaction. A data form was used to collect information about selected personal and unit characteristics. Frequencies, percentages and appropriate summary statistics were computed for the personal and unit-related characteristics. The reliability and content validity of the MSQ were determined. Cronbach's alpha was computed to measure the internal consistency of the 20 MSQ facet scales and the general job satisfaction scale. A factor analysis was conducted to explore the instrument's content validity. A hierarchy of the 20 facet-specific MSQ scales was constructed. The mean and standard deviation for each facet scale were documented in addition to the frequencies, percentages, and summary statistics for the general job satisfaction scale. A multiple regression model was constructed to describe the relationship between selected personal and unit characteristics and general job satisfaction. The findings of the study indicated that each of the 21 MSQ scale scores has adequate internal consistency. The results of the factor analysis supported the instrument's content validity. Job facets of relatively greater satisfaction included social service, creativity, and achievement as reflected by respective means of 22.30, 21.28, and 21.26. Job facets of relatively le...

Traditional approaches to requirements elicitation stress systematic and rational analysis and representation of organizational context and system requirements. This paper argues that (1) for an organization, a software system implements a shared vision of a future work reality and that (2) understanding the emotions, feelings, values, beliefs, and interests that drive organizational human action is needed in order to invent the requirements of such a software system. This paper debunks some myths about how organizations transform themselves through the adoption of Information and Communication Technology; describes the concepts of emotion, feeling, value, and belief; and presents some constructionist guidelines for the process of eliciting requirements for a software system that helps an organization to fundamentally change its work patterns.

This paper relates a series of current development in the literature of economics and psychology as they relate to decision making by households and business firms. The first part of the paper reviews recent literature dealing with happiness and subjective wellbeing. In the second part of the paper recent developments in management science that make use of intuition and mental focus are related to firm profitability and improved economic efficiency. Both of these recent developments can provide critical insights into improving the “bottom line ” performance of policy makers, managers and society as a whole at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. These ideas are then used to design to and develop a series of policy suggestions that refocus attention on the concept of subjective well being or happiness as opposed to economic utility maximization as well as the role of intuition and the concept of “flow ” in the decision making process. of top managers. We can summarize these ideas succinctly by focusing on two sets of variables relating to decision making and decision outcome in a two by two matrix summarized in the Table

Agricultural communications is an academic program area that has evolved from its early beginnings in print-based agricultural journalism. Due to the changing nature of technology and the need to communicate to diverse, increasingly urbanized audiences, agricultural communications has evolved to include public relations, marketing, broadcasting and Webbased communications, consequently impacting the role and responsibilities of many professional agricultural communicators. Although most of the research that has been conducted on agricultural communicators has focused on their perceptions as to how to improve educational programs and curricula, few studies have looked at the job satisfaction of graduates once they leave the programs that prepared them for their subsequent careers. A descriptive survey of a population of recent graduates of the University of Florida’s agricultural communications program was conducted to assess how satisfied respondents were with their jobs, as well as explore the relationships between facets of job satisfaction and graduates’ perceptions as to the effectiveness of their educational preparation. Results of the study indicated that the majority of respondents were generally satisfied with their positions. Respondents ’ perceptions of their opportunities for promotion, their co-workers and the work itself were also positively correlated with their evaluations of the effectiveness of the university’s educational preparation.