Violence, Burnout and Minor Psychiatric Disorders in Hospital Work

OBJECTIVE Identifying the violence suffered by the health team workers and their association with Burnout and minor psychiatric disorders. METHODS Cross-sectional study with 269 health team professionals of a public hospital in southern Brazil. Data were collected through the use of the Survey Questionnaire: Workplace Violence in the Health Sector, Maslach Inventory Burnout and Self-Report Questionnaire. RESULTS Workplace violence struck 63.2% of workers, prevailing mostly in women (p = 0.001), among nursing auxiliaries/technicians (p=0.014) and was associated with minor psychiatric disorders (p<0.05), as exposure to different forms of violence increased the chances of these disorders by 60% (CI 95%: 1.2-2.1). The three Burnout dimensions were also associated to violence at work (p<0.05). CONCLUSION Health workers experience violence in the workplace and this exposure is associated with Burnout symptoms and minor psychiatric disorders.

Improving Transition Outcomes: CASE (Career And Self Awareness) Prototype: Community Team Award

Promotional article recognizing an award presented to the CASE (Career And Self Awareness) team.

Self perceptions as predictors for return to work 2 years after rehabilitation in orthopedic trauma inpatients.

Purpose This study aimed to identify self-perception variables which may predict return to work (RTW) in orthopedic trauma patients 2 years after rehabilitation. Methods A prospective cohort investigated 1,207 orthopedic trauma inpatients, hospitalised in rehabilitation, clinics at admission, discharge, and 2 years after discharge. Information on potential predictors was obtained from self administered questionnaires. Multiple logistic regression models were applied. Results In the final model, a higher likelihood of RTW was predicted by: better general health and lower pain at admission; health and pain improvements during hospitalisation; lower impact of event (IES-R) avoidance behaviour score; higher IES-R hyperarousal score, higher SF-36 mental score and low perceived severity of the injury. Conclusion RTW is not only predicted by perceived health, pain and severity of the accident at the beginning of a rehabilitation program, but also by the changes in pain and health perceptions observed during hospitalisation.

Managing virtual project teams

The purpose of the Master’s Thesis is to study the best practices to virtual project management from the project manager’ point of view. The best practices are divided according to a five-phase virtual project life cycle model. Each phase include concrete suggestions for actions. Research’s theoretical background is wide because of the broad subject matter. In the theoretical part topics such as virtual working, virtual project management challenges are examined and some concrete actions to tackle these challenges are introduced. Thesis’ approach is constructive, where a known problem is solved piece by piece after creating a pre-understanding of the topic. Existing research work is utilized when creating a model for virtual project team management. The basis of the model comes from various best practices read from literature and from the interviews conducted on experienced virtual project managers in the case organization. As a result the model combines both previous research and the organizations empirical experience. As an output of the thesis a model for virtual project team management is developed, which can be used as a guideline by the virtual project managers in their work. The model includes actions and practices what can be used to overcome the challenges of virtual project management.

Ikääntyvät työelämässä. Päihittääkö nuoruus ja koulutus aikuisuuden ja kokemuksen?

The Ageing in Working Life. Do Adolescence and Schooling Beat Adulthood and Experience? This study examines the changes in the work and the work organisations of employees in the fields of health care and retail trade who have turned 45 and their experience of change. In addition, the question of how ageing employees experience their status in post-modern working life is explored. Attention is also focused on the choices and decisions connected with staying at work and retiring. These views are examined in relation to professions and professional cultures. Thematic interviews (N=98) were used to gather the material. The effects of the market liberalistic turn in welfare policy are clearly seen in the everyday work of the health care professions. These changes were examined from the point of view of managing by outcomes and quality assurance, multi-professional cooperation, flexibility in the division of labour, and the spread of market-like procedures. The discourse of those in involved retail trade was dominated by extremely tight global market competition and control of outcomes, and by the structural changes taking place in the retail trade sector. This change discourse was to a large extent a reaction to those changes in the functional environment which were experienced as negative and to the conflict between their own professional identity and professional ethics on the one hand, and their functional environment on the other. There were also obstacles connected with professional culture: defending one's own station and power, guarding the 'frontier', showed up in attitudes towards new management and organisation models or towards structural and functional reforms. The deep structures of professional culture and the mindset of the actors change much more slowly than the functional practices of organisations. For those in a supervisory position, the loss of power due to becoming part of a chain or because of the introduction of a team organisation model was not an easy thing to accept. The nurses and others in related fields felt that they were forced to do work that was below their level of training and professional skill. For sales personnel and those who did assisting work in health care, power and the possibility of having an influence were not so important, as long as they were able to do their work in their own way and were trusted. This view is often completely forgotten, for example, in various organisation models in which power and the possibility of having an influence entwined with power are taken for granted as being clearly positive and desired aspects of job satisfaction. Up to date professional skills were experienced as being important from the point of view of professional identity and self-worth. Thus, training can be understood as a moral obligation, which in turn is intertwined with professional ideology. In the rhetoric of adult education, an adult is expected to be an active player who will seek training again and again if working life so requires. The dark side of this ideology, which leads to feelings of guilt, was apparent in the thoughts of the respondents. Am I never good enough at my job; why must I continually strive for better, additional qualifications? The majority of the respondents evaluated their expertise as being at quite a high level. This self-confidence did not extend to applying for a job. Job recruitment was seen as a situation in which age discrimination reached its peak. The interviewees were unanimous about the idea that society favours the young. Especially among those in the retail trade sector, there was a feeling that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a new job of the same level or a permanent post if they were made redundant. Age discrimination was also apparent in the retail trade field in the form of older employees being retired against their will or transferred to other tasks. It was felt that ruthless forced retirement of older workers was part of the personnel policy of some organisations. The importance of one's outward appearance was connected with the theme of discrimination. This phenomenon is described using the concept of the double standard of ageing in feminist research. An ageing woman is relegated to an inferior position due to both her age and her sex. A culture that would both make possible and allow various types of choices regardless of age, which is described as being characteristic of the post-modern era, does not seem to be very topical in the practice of working life. It is important for employees that the management and the personnel policy that is being implemented makes them feel like both their contribution and they as individuals are appreciated, that their opinions are listened to and that they are noticed as persons. The interviewees hoped for gratitude and a concern for the well-being of employees that shows in everyday life. They valued training and activities aimed at maintaining their work ability, but thought that better coping at work and a pleasant working environment cannot be achieved through such measures as along as the foundation is 'in a mess'. Development of the quality of working life is the only thing that can improve job satisfaction and get people to remain in the work force longer than at present. There should be a sufficient number of properly trained employees at the work place. It was important to the respondents that they be able to stay on their job to the end with honour, since compromising with their own quality standards or acting contrary to their ideal self-image in terms of professional ethics would strike a blow to their professional self-esteem. They called for the development of various types of workplace flexibility, and felt that they have the right to a lightened workload and to early retirement. Early retirement was even seen as an altruistic deed: it would free up a place for younger workers. Thoughts of retirements were explained by familiar factors such as health and finances, life situation, the enticement of free-time, as well as by various factors related to work. It is very important to ageing employees that their work has meaningful content. The values related to self-fulfilment are felt to be of great importance, and if they cannot be realised at work, the respondents wanted more free time, either through retirement or in the form of flexibility in working life.

Challenges in managing large-scale agile software development transformation

Adapting and scaling up agile concepts, which are characterized by iterative, self-directed, customer value focused methods, may not be a simple endeavor. This thesis concentrates on studying challenges in a large-scale agile software development transformation in order to enhance understanding and bring insight into the underlying factors for such emerging challenges. This topic is approached through understanding the concepts of agility and different methods compared to traditional plan-driven processes, complex adaptive theory and the impact of organizational culture on agile transformational efforts. The empirical part was conducted by a qualitative case study approach. The internationally operating software development case organization had a year of experience of an agile transformation effort during it had also undergone organizational realignment efforts. The primary data collection was conducted through semi-structured interviews supported by participatory observation. As a result the identified challenges were categorized under four broad themes: organizational, management, team dynamics and process related. The identified challenges indicate that agility is a multifaceted concept. Agile practices may bring visibility in issues of which many are embedded in the organizational culture or in the management style. Viewing software development as a complex adaptive system could facilitate understanding of the underpinning philosophy and eventually solving the issues: interactions are more important than processes and solving a complex problem, such a novel software development, requires constant feedback and adaptation to changing requirements. Furthermore, an agile implementation seems to be unique in nature, and agents engaged in the interaction are the pivotal part of the success of achieving agility. In case agility is not a strategic choice for whole organization, it seems additional issues may arise due to different ways of working in different parts of an organization. Lastly, detailed suggestions to mitigate the challenges of the case organization are provided.

Designing new learning experiences? : exploring corporate E-learners’ self-regulated learning

The context of this study is corporate e-learning, with an explicit focus on how digital learning design can facilitate self-regulated learning (SRL). The field of e-learning is growing rapidly. An increasing number of corporations use digital technology and elearning for training their work force and customers. E-learning may offer economic benefits, as well as opportunities for interaction and communication that traditional teaching cannot provide. However, the evolving variety of digital learning contexts makes new demands on learners, requiring them to develop strategies to adapt and cope with novel learning tools. This study derives from the need to learn more about learning experiences in digital contexts in order to be able to design these properly for learning. The research question targets how the design of an e-learning course influences participants’ self-regulated learning actions and intentions. SRL involves learners’ ability to exercise agency in their learning. Micro-level SRL processes were targeted by exploring behaviour, cognition, and affect/motivation in relation to the design of the digital context. Two iterations of an e-learning course were tested on two groups of participants (N=17). However, the exploration of SRL extends beyond the educational design research perspective of comparing the effects of the changes to the course designs. The study was conducted in a laboratory with each participant individually. Multiple types of data were collected. However, the results presented in this thesis are based on screen observations (including eye tracking) and video-stimulated recall interviews. These data were integrated in order to achieve a broad perspective on SRL. The most essential change evident in the second course iteration was the addition of feedback during practice and the final test. Without feedback on actions there was an observable difference between those who were instruction-directed and those who were self-directed in manipulating the context and, thus, persisted whenever faced with problems. In the second course iteration, including the feedback, this kind of difference was not found. Feedback provided the tipping point for participants to regulate their learning by identifying their knowledge gaps and to explore the learning context in a targeted manner. Furthermore, the course content was consistently seen from a pragmatic perspective, which influenced the participants’ choice of actions, showing that real life relevance is an important need of corporate learners. This also relates to assessment and the consideration of its purpose in relation to participants’ work situation. The rigidity of the multiple choice questions, focusing on the memorisation of details, influenced the participants to adapt to an approach for surface learning. It also caused frustration in cases where the participants’ epistemic beliefs were incompatible with this kind of assessment style. Triggers of positive and negative emotions could be categorized into four levels: personal factors, instructional design of content, interface design of context, and technical solution. In summary, the key design choices for creating a positive learning experience involve feedback, flexibility, functionality, fun, and freedom. The design of the context impacts regulation of behaviour, cognition, as well as affect and motivation. The learners’ awareness of these areas of regulation in relation to learning in a specific context is their ability for design-based epistemic metareflection. I describe this metareflection as knowing how to manipulate the context behaviourally for maximum learning, being metacognitively aware of one’s learning process, and being aware of how emotions can be regulated to maintain volitional control of the learning situation. Attention needs to be paid to how the design of a digital learning context supports learners’ metareflective development as digital learners. Every digital context has its own affordances and constraints, which influence the possibilities for micro-level SRL processes. Empowering learners in developing their ability for design-based epistemic metareflection is, therefore, essential for building their digital literacy in relation to these affordances and constraints. It was evident that the implementation of e-learning in the workplace is not unproblematic and needs new ways of thinking about learning and how we create learning spaces. Digital contexts bring a new culture of learning that demands attitude change in how we value knowledge, measure it, define who owns it, and who creates it. Based on the results, I argue that digital solutions for corporate learning ought to be built as an integrated system that facilitates socio-cultural connectivism within the corporation. The focus needs to shift from designing static e-learning material to managing networks of social meaning negotiation as part of a holistic corporate learning ecology.

Collectiveness within startup teams – Leading the way to initiating and managing collective pursuit of opportunities in organizational contexts

While traditional entrepreneurship literature addresses the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities to a solo entrepreneur, scholars increasingly agree that new ventures are often founded and operated by entrepreneurial teams as collective efforts especially in hightechnology industries. Researchers also suggest that team ventures are more likely to survive and succeed than ventures founded by the individual entrepreneur although specific challenges might relate to multiple individuals being involved in joint entrepreneurial action. In addition to new ventures, entrepreneurial teams are seen central for organizing work in established organizations since the teams are able to create major product and service innovations that drive organizational success. Acknowledgement of the entrepreneurial teams in various organizational contexts has challenged the notion on the individual entrepreneur. However, considering that entrepreneurial teams represent a collective-level phenomenon that bases on interactions between organizational members, entrepreneurial teams may not have been studied as indepth as could be expected from the point of view of the team-level, rather than the individual or the individuals in the team. Many entrepreneurial team studies adopt the individualized view of entrepreneurship and examine the team members’ aggregate characteristics or the role of a lead entrepreneur. The previous understandings might not offer a comprehensive and indepth enough understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams and team venture performance that often relates to the team-level issues in particular. In addition, as the collective-level of entrepreneurial teams has been approached in various ways in the existing literatures, the phenomenon has been difficult to understand in research and practice. Hence, there is a need to understand entrepreneurial teams at the collective-level through a systematic and comprehensive perspective. This study takes part in the discussions on entrepreneurial teams. The overall objective of this study is to offer a description and understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams beyond individual(s). The research questions of the study are: 1) what collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for, what constitutes the basic elements of it, and who are included in it, 2) why, how, and when collectiveness emerges or reinforces within entrepreneurial teams, and 3) why collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams matters and how it could be developed or supported. In order to answer the above questions, this study bases on three approaches, two set of empirical data, two analysis techniques, and conceptual study. The first data set consists of 12 qualitative semi-structured interviews with business school students who are seen as prospective entrepreneurs. The data is approached through a social constructionist perspective and analyzed through discourse analysis. The second data set bases on a qualitative multiplecase study approach that aims at theory elaboration. The main data consists of 14 individual and four group semi-structured thematic interviews with members of core entrepreneurial teams of four team startups in high-technology industries. The secondary data includes publicly available documents. This data set is approached through a critical realist perspective and analyzed through systematic thematic analysis. The study is completed through a conceptual study that aims at building a theoretical model of collective-level entrepreneurship drawing from existing literatures on organizational theory and social-psychology. The theoretical work applies a positivist perspective. This study consists of two parts. The first part includes an overview that introduces the research background, knowledge gaps and objectives, research strategy, and key concepts. It also outlines the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature, presents and justifies the choices of paradigms and methods, summarizes the publications, and synthesizes the findings through answering the above mentioned research questions. The second part consists of five publications that address independent research questions but all enable to answer the research questions set for this study as a whole. The findings of this study suggest a map of relevant concepts and their relationships that help grasp collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams. The analyses conducted in the publications suggest that collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for cognitive and affective structures in-between team members including elements of collective entity, collective idea of business, collective effort, collective attitudes and motivations, and collective feelings. Collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams also stands for specific joint entrepreneurial action components in which the structures are constructed. The action components reflect equality and democracy, and open and direct communication in particular. Collectiveness emerges because it is a powerful tool for overcoming individualized barriers to entrepreneurship and due to collectively oriented desire for, collective value orientation to, demand for, and encouragement to team entrepreneurship. Collectiveness emerges and reinforces in processes of joint creation and realization of entrepreneurial opportunities including joint analysis and planning of the opportunities and strategies, decision-making and realization of the opportunities, and evaluation, feedback, and sanctions of entrepreneurial action. Collectiveness matters because it is relevant for potential future entrepreneurs and because it affects the ways collective ventures are initiated and managed. Collectiveness also matters because it is a versatile, dynamic, and malleable phenomenon and the ideas of it can be applied across organizational contexts that require team work in discovering or creating and realizing new opportunities. This study further discusses how the findings add to the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature and how the ideas can be applied in educational, managerial, and policy contexts.

The landscape of work engagement in brain injury rehabilitation /

This study examined work engagement among brain injury rehabilitation professionals with specific attention to how they engage with their work (the extent to which they experience vigor, dedication, and absorption while working) and how they engage with people (the degree to which they are welcoming towards others and demonstrate integrity, responsibility, transparency). This study also tested a theoretical model of work engagement that predicted a relationship between engagement and personal, interpersonal, and organizational capacity. Eighty-one staff employed in a hospital-based brain injury program participated in the study. A quantitative self-report survey was used to measure participants' levels of capacity and engagement and a qualitative question was included to identify initiatives that could be introduced to enhance job performance. As predicted by the model, there were statistically significant positive correlations among all three capacity variables and engagement with work and statistically significant positive correlations between ethical engagement and personal and interpersonal capacity. The results of the qualitative data analysis revealed three broad categories of recommendations for improving job performance (more learning opportunities, more resources to support professional development, and the need to build greater team cohesion). These findings provide initial support for a theoretical model that emphasizes the link between capacity and engagement, which could be used to guide theory-driven interventions aimed at improving the work environment.

Co-operative education and the development of self-esteem, an internal locus of control and work habits

This study compared approximately 50 grade 12 students studying In th~ co-operative education mode with approximately 50 grade 12 students studying in a traditional English course. Measures of self-esteem, locus of control and work habits were compared before and at the conclusion of one semester's involvement in the different programs. Using Coopersmith's Self-Esteem Inventory, the students who had chosen to study in the co-operative education mode scored significantly higher than the students in the traditional course. At the end of the semester, the co-operative education students' scores remained significantly higher than the English students'. Although the test showed no sjgnifi~ant changes in self-esteem. anecdotal reports indicated that co-operative education students had increased self-esteem over the semester. No significant differences in locus of control were observed between the two groups at any time. Significant differences in work habits were observed. While both groups had the same number of absences and the same marks before taking these courses, students who were involved in co-operative education had significantly fewer absences and significantly higher marks than the students studying in the traditional course. Anecdotal reports also indicated an improv~ment in work habits for students who had been involved in co-operative education. Recommendations of the study are for further research to determine more exactly how self-esteem and work habits develop in co-operative education students. Also. students. parents, teachers. and administrators need to be made aware of the success of this program.

Advertising broadsheet for the book "Real Pen-Work Self-Instructor in Penmanship", [1881]

One advertising broadsheet titled Private Suggestions and Instructions-to-Agents how to sell the Real Pen-Work Self-Instructor in Penmanship and Patent Ink Capsules. There are sections on how to order, how agents sell the inks, how to send money, and more.

The Influence of Burnout Symptoms on the Relationship between Work-Life Balance and Self-Rated Health

The effects of stress at work are estimated to cost Canadian employers more than 20 billion dollars annually through absenteeism, sick leave and decreased productivity. Over the past two decades, Canadians have reported higher stress levels, increased work hours and more work performed outside of normal business hours. This work-life imbalance has far-reaching repercussions–affecting an employee’s performance as well as their health. Chronic exposure to these high levels of stress can also lead to burnout. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the magnitude in which burnout symptoms influence the relationship between work-life balance and self-rated health. The secondary purpose of this study was to determine if gender and age interactions exist in the relationship between burnout, work-life balance, and self-rated health. This cross-sectional study involved secondary analysis of 220 managers, workers and human service professionals who completed an Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers’ Mental Injury Toolkit (MIT) survey for the launch of the MIT. The MIT survey is a modified form of the short version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire and includes expanded questioning around burnout, stress, sleep troubles, cognitive, and somatic symptoms. There were no significant differences in self-rated health based on a respondent’s gender or age, indicating that no interaction of gender and age would be required. Respondents with low self-rated health reported significantly higher burnout and work-life imbalance compared to those with high self-rated health. The regression analysis demonstrated that the magnitude in which burnout mediates the relationship between work-life balance and self-rated health was 96%. These findings support previous studies that associate high levels of work-life imbalance or burnout with poor self-rated health or health outcomes. In this study, the shared variance between work-life balance and burnout also supports recent efforts to redefine the context and causes of burnout to include non-work factors. Based on our findings, the potential exists for the development of workplace health promotion strategies that address maintaining a balance between work and home as they may improve employee health and reduce burnout.

Queues with retrial/self-generation of priorities /postponement of work and some related reliability problems

Application of Queueing theory in areas like Computer networking, ATM facilities, Telecommunications and to many other numerous situation made people study Queueing models extensively and it has become an ever expanding branch of applied probability. The thesis discusses Reliability of a ‘k-out-of-n system’ where the server also attends external customers when there are no failed components (main customers), under a retrial policy, which can be explained in detail. It explains the reliability of a ‘K-out-of-n-system’ where the server also attends external customers and studies a multi-server infinite capacity Queueing system where each customer arrives as ordinary but can generate into priority customer which waiting in the queue. The study gives details on a finite capacity multi-server queueing system with self-generation of priority customers and also on a single server infinite capacity retrial Queue where the customer in the orbit can generate into a priority customer and leaves the system if the server is already busy with a priority generated customer; else he is taken for service immediately. Arrival process is according to a MAP and service times follow MSP.