Luis F. Martinez

Sick at Work: Presenteeism among Nurses in a Portuguese Public Hospital

Presenteeism refers to attending work despite being ill. This article focuses on this innovative organizational concept. Data from nurses at a major Portuguese public hospital (N=296) reported some major causes of presenteeism, namely lower-back pain, breath infections, migraines and stress. Although females revealed higher prevalence levels for most of the presenteeism causes, no gender differences were found regarding the number of hours people were affected by presenteeism. Moreover, other work variables were correlated-age, perceived health state, number of working hours, income and seniority-with a presenteeism scale (SPS-6) and a Health Condition Index. Most importantly, a negative correlation was found between perceived health status and presenteeism. Additionally, more experienced and highly paid nurses tended to be less affected by presenteeism. Finally, the limitations of this study-as well as some implications of presenteeism on productivity loss-are discussed.

Behavioural consequences of regret and disappointment in social bargaining games

Previous research on the role of negative emotions in social bargaining games has focused primarily on social emotions such as anger and guilt. In this article, we provide a test for behavioural differences between two prototypical decision-related negative emotions—regret and disappointment—in one-shot social dilemma games. Three experiments with two different emotion-induction procedures (autobiographical recall and imagined scenarios) and two different games (the ultimatum game and the 10-coin give-some game) revealed that regret increased prosocial behaviour, whereas disappointment decreased prosocial behaviour. These results extend previous findings concerning differences between regret and disappointment to interdependent (social) situations.

Presenteeism and burnout among teachers in public and private Portuguese elementary schools

This research aims to study the possible relation between presenteeism and burnout in the public and private education sector. Presenteeism – a groundbreaking concept in organizational behaviour literature – refers to productivity losses that occur when employees come to work but under-perform due to physical and psychological causes. Next, we further clarified the burnout criterion with three groups of predictors: personal, contextual and presenteeism. Results from a sample of 281 elementary school teachers from private and public institutions revealed that personal and contextual characteristics as well as presenteeism were predictive of teacher burnout. We also found that public school teachers exhibited higher levels of both presenteeism and burnout. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed and directions for future research in the field are provided.

Mediation of job embeddedness and satisfaction in the relationship between task characteristics and turnover: a multilevel study in Portuguese hotels

Purpose Employees’ turnover intention is a key problem that hotel managers face daily. This is partially explained by the inevitability of performing tasks with little significance and low identity. This study aims to understand how job embeddedness and job satisfaction could lessen the undesirable effect of task characteristics on turnover intentions. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 525 employees operating in 46 Portuguese hotels was used in this study. The questionnaire included demographic variables and four reliable instruments used to measure job satisfaction, job characteristics, job embeddedness and turnover intentions. The study used a multilevel statistical approach considering both the individual and the hotel levels of analysis. Findings Through multilevel statistics, the findings suggest that both at the individual level and the hotel level of analysis, job satisfaction and job embeddedness fully mediated the relationship between different task characteristics (significance and identity) and turnover intentions. Research limitations/implications Despite a possible absence of common method variance, due to the confirmatory factor analysis, social desirability bias may exist because of the self-reported nature of the survey. Practical implications Managers should increase the perceived costs of employees leaving the hotel by introducing training programs and plans for career development. Also, to increase job embeddedness, managers should also rethink the organizational dynamics of this industry. Originality/value This research provides empirical evidence of the antecedents and mediators of employees’ intentions to leave the hotel industry both at the individual and at the hotel level (multilevel approach).

LMX as a negative predictor of presenteeism climate: a cross-cultural study in the financial and health sectors

Purpose – Some underlying mechanisms regarding presenteeism still remain unclear, namely, the construct of “presenteeism climate” and the importance of “leadership” Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) for presenteeism. In order to shed some light into this phenomenon, the purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a new scale of presenteeism climate. Design/methodology/approach – In Study 1, the authors identified a pool of items from the literature and, in Study 2 (n=147) the authors tested 26 items that were pilot studied with exploratory factor analysis. In Study 3 (n=293) the authors tested a three-factor model – extra-time valuation, supervision distrust and co-workers competitiveness – with confirmatory factor analysis. Findings – Results showed that LMX has a negative correlation with presenteeism climate. Study 3 also showed that this structure remained invariant with additional samples from employees working in hospitals from Ecuador (n=90) and China (n=237). Finally, the authors included suggestions...

Working memory as separable subsystems: a study with Portuguese primary school children.

Although much research has been done to study the working memory structure in children in their first school years, the relation of cognitive constructs involved in this process remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether working memory is a domain general construct that coordinates separate codes of verbal and visuospatial storage or whether it is a domain-specific construct with distinct resources of verbal and visuospatial information. This paper investigates the structure of working memory, by using the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and by doing confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) on a sample of Portuguese children (n = 103) between 8 and 9 years of age. The results of the confirmatory factor analyses that provide the best fit of the data correspond to the model that includes Central Executive and Visuospatial Sketchpad in the same factor, co-varying with a Phonological Loop factor. Moreover, the traditional working memory tripartite structure--based on the Baddeley and Hitch Model--revealed good fit to the data.

Past and future regret and missed opportunities: an experimental approach on separate evaluation and different time frames

Decisions often imply trade-offs that force people to accept missing an opportunity in the past or in the future. However, it is not fully clear whether a past miss or a future miss elicits more regret. In a direct comparison, previous research had found support for the greater impact of future misses. In an experimental study with 216 participants, we replicated and extended previous research by testing the strength of the future miss in a separate evaluation and with different periods. Results show that, when evaluated separately, future misses caused less regret than past misses. However, future misses made participants change their feelings of regret more intensely than past misses did. Also, regret levels did not decrease when future misses were further away. Our findings support the strength of future misses on regret but also show contrasting effects when evaluated separately.

Working sick and out of sorts: a cross-cultural approach on presenteeism climate, organizational justice and work-family conflict

Abstract A climate of presenteeism has important effects on employee well-being and the organization itself. Our study, based on surveys of health sector employees in six different countries (Brazil, Ecuador, Lebanon, Portugal, Russia and Spain) examines whether organizational justice plays a mediating role in the relationship between a presenteeism climate in the organization and work–family conflict (WFC). Our results indicate that the perception of organizational justice and the presenteeism climate do influence WFC. Moreover, higher levels of WFC were found in non-Latin countries. This study contributes to the work attendance and life balance field by providing cross-cultural empirical evidence corroborating the effect of justice and presenteeism climate on the WFC.

Ethical decision making in counterfeit purchase situations: the influence of moral awareness and moral emotions on moral judgment and purchase intentions

Purpose Counterfeiting is an increasingly global phenomenon that threatens the economy as a whole and also presents a risk for the consumers. The purpose of this study is to explore moral emotions along with moral awareness and moral judgment with respect to their influence in the consumption of counterfeits. Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was distributed among participants (n = 225) who were asked to respond to a counterfeit purchase scenario. Findings Results highlight the importance of moral awareness as an essential element of moral decision-making. Also, moral emotions were found to influence moral judgment as well as purchase intention. Research limitations/implications A limitation refers to the fact that a scenario was used to evoke participants’ emotional responses. Although the situation was realistic and the majority of the people could very well imagine experiencing the reported scenario, results might change in an actual purchase situation. Practical Implications This study’s findings may be particularly relevant for authorities and educators who design campaigns to curtail counterfeit consumption, thus seeking to encourage consumers to recognize the several negative consequences that result from counterfeiting behavior. Originality/value This is one of the few studies that examine the impact of cognitive and emotional influences in a counterfeit purchase decision. Fighting this problem requires an in-depth understanding of consumers’ motivations and how they feel about engaging in this morally questionable behavior.

Working conditions in hospitals revisited: A moderated-mediated model of job context and presenteeism

This study examines whether the relationship between the employees’ perceived job autonomy may be prone to the contextual influence of supervisor support and presenteeism climate in explaining the attendance behaviors of presenteeism–the employees’ decision to attend work despite being ill or not feeling well. Does work context play a role on presenteeism climate and the specific act of presenteeism? This study includes 213 health care employees (e.g., nurses, doctors) working in one private hospital in Lebanon. We used the ordinary least squared (OLS) regressions path analytical framework and bootstrapping methods to estimate the hypothesized moderated-mediation models. Our findings indicate that healthcare job resources (job autonomy) is correlated with the presenteeism climate and the occurrence of presenteeism attendance behaviors. We also found that this relationship is mediated by presenteeism climate and that supervisor support moderates the observed indirect relationship. This study extends the organizational attendance research domain to presenteeism climate by explaining for both doctors and nurses how contextual variables explains the relationship between jobs resources and presenteeism attendance behaviors. Supervisor support plays an important role in encouraging task autonomy and thus allowing employees increase their perception of empowerment to manage their actions at work. Overall, healthcare managers should ensure that employees understand their roles and duties and have an up-to-date, clearly defined role (e.g., job description) so that they can meet their organizations’ goals.