Job quality in Europe: the North-South divide

This paper examines the job quality in Europe. It is based on the results of the Fourth European Foundation Survey on working conditions covering different dimensions including work organisation, job content, autonomy at work, aspects of worker dignity, working time and work-life balance, working conditions and safety in the workplace. The results point to the existence of great diversity in the job quality across Europe and the north-south divide. The job quality differences are related to the variety of social and institutional contexts. The countries of Southern Europe, with their social and institutional contexts falling within the scope of the Mediterranean model, generally present indicators below the European average contrasting Nordic countries having the best job quality indicators.

The clothing industry as a globalized sector: implications for work organisation, quality of work and job content

The clothing sector in several countries is still seen, in many aspects as a traditional sector with some average characteristics, nevertheless is a very important sector in terms of labour market. Globalization and de-localization are having a strong impact in the organisation of work and in occupational careers. Very few companies are able to keep a position in the market without changes in organisation of work and workers, founding different ways to face this reality according to size, capital and position. We could find two main paths: one where companies outsource production to another territory, close and/ or dismissal the workers; other path, where companies up skilled their capacities. This paper will present some results from the European project WORKS – Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society (6th Framework Programme), focusing the Portuguese case studies in several clothing companies in a comparative analysis with some other European countrie

Facing unemployment after being at the top: impact, job search strategies and crucial competences

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Optimal job design in the presence of implicit contracts

We characterize the optimal job design in a multitasking environment when the firms rely on implicit incentive contracts (i.e., bonus payments). Two natural forms of job design are compared: (i) individual accountability, where each agent is assigned to a particular job and assumes full responsibility for its outcome; and (ii) team accountability, where a group of agents share responsibility for a job and are jointly accountable for its outcome. The key trade-off is that team accountability mitigates the multitasking problem but may weaken the implicit contracts. The optimal job design follows a cut-off rule: firms with high reputation concerns opt for team accountability, whereas firms with low reputation concerns opt for individual accountability. Team accountability is more likely the more acute the multitasking problem is. However, the cut-off rule need not hold if the firm combines implicit incentives with explicit pay-per-performance contracts.

Positive solutions to find a job: Cultural mismatches between companies and employees

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Managing talent through developmental job experiences (DJE): The mediating role of DJE between HPWS and employees' outcomes

In the competitive landscape of the 21st century, effectively managing human capital in firms is considered to be a potential source of sustainable performance. Therefore, in this study, we tested the influence of high-performance work systems, as a talent management tool, on employees’ experience of developmental jobs. Then, we tested the mediating effect of such experiences on employees’ engagement, exhaustion, performance and turnover intention. With a sample of 254 employees of a diversity of companies and sectors of activity, our findings demonstrated that high-performance practices increase engagement, via the promotion of developmental experiences of fit, which improves performance and decreases turnover intention. Besides, those practices do not control for the pressure dimension of the developmental job experiences that increases exhaustion and turnover intention despite not worsening performance.

A mediated moderation study to explain the negative relationship between job insecurity and employee supportive voice

Double degree

The impact of job insecurity on adaptive performance via burnout

Difficult and unpredictable times, due to economic instability, lead employees to feel high job insecurity. Organizations’ only way to subsistence is to search innovative ways of solving problems and find creative solutions. This study focuses on the impact that job insecurity has on adaptive performance, a recent measure integrating the response of creativity, reactivity in the face of emergencies, interpersonal adaptability, training effort, and handling work stress, and, mediated by burnout. From the responses of two questionnaires (????????1=252; ????????2=145), we conclude that job insecurity leads to exhaustion, but not to disengagement. In turn, it is the latter that demonstrates to have negative relations with some measures of adaptive performance. Thus, it is crucial to understand how organizations can minimize the inherent process.

An effective on-the-job training model-to facilitate strategy execution

Strategy execution has been a heated topic in the management world in recent years. However, according to a survey done by the Conference Board (2014), the chief executives are so concerned about the execution in their companies and have rated it as the No.1 or No.2 most challenging issue. Many of them choose to invest in training with a purpose to harvest the most for strategy execution. Therefore, this research is trying to find out a model to design training programs that can at most contribute to the success of strategy execution with three real-life training cases done by BTS Consulting Service. It was found that strategy execution could be greatly supported by training programs that take into consideration the four factors, namely Alignment, Mindset to Change, Capability and Organization Support. Main implications of the findings are presented and discussed. Key