During the first months of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected several countries all over the world, including Italy. To prevent the spread of the virus, governments instructed employers and self-employed workers to close their offices and work from home. Thus, the use of remote working increased during the pandemic and is expected to maintain high levels of application even after the emergency. Despite its benefits for both organizations and workers, remote working entails negative consequences, such as technostress. The present study had a double aim: to test the psychometric characteristics of the Italian translation of the brief version of the technostress creators scale and to apply the scale to investigate technostress during the Covid-19 emergency. The research involved 878 participants for the first study and 749 participants for the second one; they completed a self-report online questionnaire. Results confirmed the three-factor structure of the Italian technostress creators scale and highlighted positive relationships between workload, techno-stressors, work–family conflict and behavioural stress. The role of remote working conditions has been analysed as well. The study provided a useful tool for the investigation of technostress in the Italian context. Moreover, it provided indications for practice in the field of remote working and workers’ wellbeing.

Thanks to the rapid advances of technology, we are currently experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, which is introducing several changes in how organizations operate and how people learn and do their work. Many questions arise within this framework about how these transformations may affect workers’ wellbeing, and the Work and Organizational Psychology is called upon to address these open issues. This study aims to investigate personal and organizational antecedents (resilience, goal orientation and opportunities for information and training) and one consequence (work engagement) of technology acceptance within factories, comparing white- and blue-collar workers. The study involved a sample of 598 workers (white-collar = 220, blue-collar = 378) employed at an Italian company who filled in a self-report questionnaire. In both samples, the multi-group structural equation model showed a positive relationship between resilience, opportunities for information and training, and technology acceptance, which in turn showed a positive association with work engagement. All indirect effects were significant. This study investigated the motivational dynamics related to the introduction of new technologies within factories involving the little-studied population of blue-collar workers. Results highlighted the importance of providing information and opportunities for training to all employees, in order to support Industry 4.0 transformations without impacting on workers’ motivation.

The aim of the present study was to develop a research model explaining the causal relationship between certain antecedents (job and emotional charge, supportive management and colleagues), work-family conflict (WFC) and job satisfaction. Many research projects in health organizations have highlighted the link between high WFC and lower levels of job satisfaction. The study of these variables is important in understanding the processes of professional nurse retention. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire administered to 351 professional nurses working in a major North Italian hospital. The questionnaire measures six variables: WFC, job satisfaction, job demand, emotional charge, supportive management and supportive colleagues. The data confirmed the connection between WFC and job satisfaction, and showed the importance of some WFC predictors, such as supportive management, emotional charge and job demand, not only for their connections with WFC but also for their direct associations with job satisfaction. WFC, in health organizations, can contribute to a decrease of nurses' job satisfaction. Nursing management could achieve its aim of reducing WFC through the improvement of support from nurse coordinators, the specific organization of work models, ad hoc family-friendly policies and individual counselling programmes for nurses.

Well-being in the workplace through interaction between individual characteristics and organizational context

This study investigated how work relationships (perceived organisational support, supervisor and co-worker work–family backlash) and job demands (workload, emotional dissonance) can interact with work–family conflict and work–family enrichment. Despite the extensive literature on the work–family interface, few studies on the nursing profession have considered the role of job demands and work relationships, focusing on both the positive and negative side of the work–family interface. The study involved a sample of 500 nurses working in an Italian hospital. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to test hypotheses. Analyses showed that work–family conflict has a positive relationship with job demands and supervisor backlash, and a negative relationship with perceived organisational support. Work–family enrichment was found to have a negative relationship with job demands and a positive relationship with perceived organisational support. No significant relationships were found between work–family enrichment and both backlash dimensions. The study confirmed the importance of promoting a balance between job demands and resources in order to create favourable conditions for work–family enrichment and to prevent work–family conflict. The findings suggest that it may be advisable for health-care organisations to invest in measures at individual, team and organisational levels, specifically in training and counselling for nurses and supervisors.

This work is the result of a study undertaken aimed at providing an insight into the way individuals learn through their work in an organization. Twenty interviews were held with 20 managers, each lasting between 8 and 10 hours, in which a total of 282 learning stories were acquired. All those interviewed gave accounts of the learning potential that was acquired when they took on the role of teachers within their organization. Observation, listening and experimentation were the most common processes in facilitating learning during the course of teaching. The great learning potential inherent in teaching would appear to be generated as the result of a particular aspect of the teaching process itself: the encounter with diversity, which on the one hand tends to increase reflexivity while on the other hand tends to break down resistance to change. In this sense, the learning process that emerges during the course of teaching is of an intrinsically social nature, made possible by the investigation of an authentically symmetrical relationship between teacher and pupils in which all the interlocutors are able to contribute to a common goal. Teaching also proved to be an important opportunity for recognizing one's own ignorance and thereby rendering oneself open to the possibility of learning. The results of this study confirm certain evolutionary trends which are to be found in the current method of planning managerial training: the utilization of internal resources, the use of a dialogic style, the search for a link between work and training, and the use of small groups. The actual narration and exchange of learning stories also provided an opportunity for promoting the learning process in those interviewed.