Laura Dal Corso

Social support, work engagement, and non-vocational outcomes in people with severe mental illness

The relationships between social support (i.e., supportive relationship between supervisor-coworker), work engagement, self-esteem, and self-awareness (i.e., identity and perceived personal health), were investigated in a group of patients with severe mental illness (i.e., patients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and mood disorders). Seventy Italian working patients were administered the Italian version of the following scales: a) Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, b) Work Climate Questionnaire, c) Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, d) Self-Awareness (identity and perceived personal health) ad hoc scale. Results showed that social support is positively related to work engagement, self-awareness, and self-esteem. Moreover, the relationships between social support and identity appeared to be fully mediated by perceived personal health. Practical implications are discussed.

The moderating role of job resources in the relationship between job demands and interleukin-6 in an Italian healthcare organization

In this study we examined the association between job demands (JD), job resources (JR), and serum levels of a possible biomarker of stress, the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). According to the buffer hypothesis of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, we expected that job resources-defined as job autonomy and social support from supervisor-might buffer the relationship between job demands, defined as emotional demands and interpersonal conflict with colleagues, and IL-6. Data from 119 employees in an Italian public healthcare organization (acute care hospital) were analyzed using multiple regression. In predicting IL-6, the interactions between emotional demands and JR and between interpersonal conflict with colleagues and job autonomy (but not social support) were significant, after controlling for the effect of age and gender. The association between JD and IL-6 was stronger for individuals with low levels of JR, so that levels of IL-6 were highest when JD were high and JR were low. Overall, these results are consistent with the buffer hypothesis of the JD-R model and also extend previous research, showing that the exposure to stressful situations at work, measured as high JD and low JR, is associated with higher levels of IL-6 in hospital employees.

Ethical Leadership as Antecedent of Job Satisfaction, Affective Organizational Commitment and Intention to Stay among Volunteers of Non-Profit Organizations

The aim of this paper is to investigate among a group of non-profit organizations: (a) the effect of ethical leadership (EL) on volunteers’ satisfaction, affective organizational commitment and intention to stay in the same organization; (b) the role played by job satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between EL and volunteers’ intentions to stay in the same organization, as well as between EL and affective commitment. An anonymous questionnaire was individually administered to 198 Italian volunteers of different non-profit organizations. The questionnaire contained the Ethical Leadership Scale, the Volunteers Satisfaction Index, the Affective organization Scale, as well as questions regarding the participants’ age, sex, type of work, level of education, length of their volunteer works, intention to volunteer in the following months in the same organization. The construct as well the effects of EL on volunteers is approached in light of the Social Exchange Theory and the Social Learning Theory. Structural equation models were used to test hypothesized relationships. The results confirm the role of mediation of volunteer satisfaction in the relationships between the variables studied. In particular, EL was found to be positively associated both with volunteers’ intention of staying and with their affective commitment. In the first case this relationship is fully explained by the mediation of the volunteers’ satisfaction, while the latter is explained by both direct and indirect factors. To the authors’ knowledge, this the first attempt to understand the role played by EL on volunteers’ behavior and, more in general, in the management of non-profit organizations. Findings are relevant both for practitioners and managers of non-profit organization, since they suggest the relevance of the perception of EL by volunteers, as well as for scholars, since they further deepen the knowledge on EL and its effects on the followers. Limits of the study: the questionnaire was administered only among a group of non-statistical sample of volunteers. Furthermore, the study reached only volunteers from Italian non-profit organization.

Coping with the economic and labor crisis: models and tools for the evaluation of suicide risk

This review derives from the application of models and tools to address the suicidal risk of people affected by the Italian economic and labor crisis, especially since 2010. This crisis has resulted in a sharp increase in the number of suicides by employers who lost their companies — mostly small and family-run — and employees who lost their job. A national psychological support service was implemented with the purpose of listening to and counseling those who were in serious economic difficulties, thus preventing their disease. Over 1000 people turned to this support service; the authors of the study could therefore observe the strengths of various theoretical and practical approaches and their implications in situations where the risk of suicide was present. On the basis of this experience as well, the authors propose a description of the models and tools, mainly addressing psychologists and psychotherapists faced with suicidal risk situations.

“To be, rather than to seem”: The impact of supervisor’s and personal responsibility on work engagement, job performance, and job satisfaction in a positive healthcare organization

Moving from a definition of positive organization, in this study the relationship among job resources (i.e., supervisor’s responsibility, job autonomy, and perceived organizational support), personal resources (i.e., responsibility toward the task and toward colleagues and collaborators), work engagement, and its positive outcomes (i.e., job performance and job satisfaction) were investigated in an Italian public healthcare organization. Data were collected from 224 healthcare employees who completed a questionnaire to express their evaluations. The aims of the study were: a) to explore the issue of responsibility — a construct still little investigated in the literature — with particular reference to the supervisor’s role; b) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Positive Organization Questionnaire (POQ) and of the other instruments adopted through confirmatory factor analyses; c) to verify the hypothesized relations through a structural equation model with observed variables. Results showed that the scales adopted had satisfactory psychometric properties. Furthermore, according to the JD-R model, job autonomy and perceived organizational support were positively associated with work engagement, which, in turn, was positively associated with job performance and job satisfaction. In this study, supervisor’s responsibility is seen as a job resource, however it wasn’t directly related with the considered outcomes, but employee responsibility toward the task mediated the relationship between supervisor’s responsibility and job performance, like responsibility toward colleagues and collaborators mediated the relationship with work engagement. Finally, job autonomy showed a positive direct effect on job satisfaction. Some limitations and future developments are discussed.