To build a sustainable workforce for long-term disaster relief and reconstruction, more effort must be made to promote local relief workers’ mental health. We conducted 25 semistructured interviews with local relief officials 10 months after the 2008 earthquake in China to investigate the stress and coping experiences in their personal lives as survivors. We conducted thematic analysis of interview transcripts. Traumatic bereavement and grief, housing and financial difficulties, and work–family conflict were the three main sources of stress in the respondents’ personal lives. The coping themes were finding meaning and purpose in life through relief work, colleagues’ support and understanding, suppression or avoidance of grief, appreciation for life, hardiness, optimism, letting nature take its course, and making up for loss. We suggest that relief work has a double-edged-sword effect on workers’ coping abilities. We discuss the implications of this effect for work–life balance measures and trauma and grief counseling services.

Objectives: Local workforces play a critical role in disaster relief and reconstruction. However, the mental health of local relief workers might be affected by disasters, threatening the sustainability of local workforces. In this study, we tried to address this concern by investigating the well-being of local relief workers and its association with suicidal ideation. Design: A retrospective study was conducted. Surveys were designed to collect data from a purposive sample of local disaster relief workers who survived a disaster. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed to test hypotheses. Setting and Participants: The study sample was from a population of local relief workers in the worst quake-hit regions in China in 2008. The respondents were local relief workers from a town in these regions. All of the 83 local relief workers were invited 11 months after the earthquake, and 70 joined the study, resulting in a response rate of 84.3%. Main Outcome Measures: The dependent variable was postdisaster suicidal ideation. The independent variables were bereavement, depression and posttraumatic stress, daily work hours, job burnout, work-family conflict, and work engagement. Results: Approximately 21.4% of participants reported suicidal ideation after the earthquake in comparison with 7.1% before the earthquake. One potential risk factor was an interaction effect of job burnout and work-family conflict (odds ratio [OR] = 3.738; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.086-12.868). Potential protective factors included daily work hours (OR = 0.317; 95% CI, 0.106-0.952) and work engagement (OR = 0.297; 95% CI, 0.091-0.969). Conclusions: Findings suggest that for local relief workers who are also disaster survivors, meaningful engagement such as participation in disaster relief could be salutary to their mental health, but overwork and interference with personal life could be harmful and increase the risk of suicidal ideation. Discretion is needed in managing local workforces, particularly with long work hours and work-family balance.

After the devastating 2008 earthquake in China, grass-roots government officials were the main local force in postquake relief and reconstruction. Like other survivors, many officials were severely bereaved. Their psychological well-being was at stake. We conducted 25 semistructured interviews to investigate sources of stress at work and their coping experiences. We coded interviews using the content analysis method. Misunderstandings and assaults from survivors, prolonged heavy workload, and grief and bereavement were major sources of stress at work. Finding meaning in the work, emotion regulation, and goal and time management were main coping strategies. The challenge and importance of the work, combined with support and recognition at work, fostered an empowering work environment. Few interviewees reported fatigue, whereas the majority displayed dedication to work, indicating a status of work engagement more than burnout among grass-roots officials. Implications of a meaning-oriented empowerment approach to stress management for disaster relief forces are drawn.

Objectives: Elderly service work is a labor intensive and emotion demanding occupation. Workers in this field are prone to burnout, a form of emotional exhaustion at work. While their job well-being is associated with a number of job demands, little research has been done in exploring job resources to promote their well-being. Holistic care culture (HCC) was proposed as an organizational culture of holistic caring. This study explored the role of HCC in predicting job well-being and moderating the impact of perceived stress on job well-being. Method: A large-scale questionnaire survey was conducted among 992 elderly service workers of a major social service organization in Hong Kong, with a 93% response rate. Participants completed a standardized self-report questionnaire. Results: Structural equation modeling found HCC negatively predicted burnout (β = −0.32, p < 0.01) and positively predicted engagement (β = 0.36, p < 0.01). HCC showed significant moderating on the relationship between perceived stress and job well-being in expected directions. The model explained 53.7% and 35.8% of variance in burnout and engagement. Conclusion: Findings from this study provides supportive evidence for HCC as a moderator to ameliorate burnout and facilitate engagement among elderly service workers. Further studies of rigorous design on HCC are recommended. Implication of this study for organizational practice was discussed.

This article explores the relationship between meta-governance, uncertainty and governance network responses. A social network analysis was conducted on the interlocking directorate network among nonprofits before and after a market-oriented collibration triggered by a new public management reform to the corporatist social service provision system in Hong Kong. By unpacking and showing the distinct processes of network formation in response to substantive and strategic uncertainty arising from the market-oriented collibration, the study shows that although more nonprofit actors were directly included in the formalized policy venues after the reform, the network density and clustering coefficient dropped after the reform, potentially reducing the self-coordinating capacity of the governance network. However, for some nonprofit actors, node betweenness centrality increased and node degree centrality decreased, creating an enabling condition for adaption. Points for practitioners: The uncertainties in meta-governance may bring about network processes at variance with the original intentions of public meta-governors that actors with complementary resources and competences combine their efforts in the provision of services and service innovation. To manage substantive and strategic uncertainties, public meta-governors need to find ways to increase the shared understandings of social problems, enhance the clarity of policy goals, and find a balance when collaborating between collaborative and market modes of governance.