Premi e riconoscimenti

La Divisione di "Psicologia per le Organizzazioni dell'Associazione Italiana di Psicologia (AIP) ha conferito a Michela Vignoli il premio di  “Young Researcher Best W/O Psychology Paper” per il paper: “Workplace phobic anxiety as a mental health phenomenon in the job demands-resources model”.

Abstract: Purpose. Anxiety-related problems at work are a serious problem in the occupational context, as they come along with sick leave and problems in work participation. The aim of this study is to analyse workplace phobic anxiety in nonclinical context using the Job Demands-Resources model. Methods. The study involved a sample of 739 workers from a retail company, mostly with permanent contracts. Structural equation modelling analyses were performed using AMOS software. Results. Both the health impairment and motivational variables in the JD-R model were significantly related to workplace phobic anxiety and subsequently to absenteeism, specifically, exhaustion mediated between perceived job demands and workplace phobic anxiety and work engagement mediated between perceived job resources and workplace phobic anxiety. Moreover, workplace phobic anxiety was significantly positively related to absenteeism. Conclusions. Results suggest that workplace phobic anxiety is a specific concept and an important issue in organizations for both workers’ health and the organizational costs linked to absenteeism. Supervisors and occupational physicians should be aware of workplace phobic anxiety, especially when workers are on sick leave often or for long periods.

La Divisione di "Psicologia per le Organizzazioni dell'Associazione Italiana di Psicologia (AIP) ha conferito a Michela Vignoli il premio di  “Best PhD Thesis” per la tesi di dottorato: “Enhancing Workers’ Well-Being. Scientific and social relevance of managing stress in the workplace”.

Abstract: Purpose. Despite work-related stress is one of the most studied topic in organizational psychology, many aspects as for example the use of different measures (e.g. subjective and objective, qualitative and quantitative) are still under debate. According to this, in order to enhance knowledge concerning which factors and processes contribute to create healthy workplaces, this thesis is composed by four different studies aiming to understand: a) the role of relevant antecedents (e.g. leadership, job demands, work-family conflict, social support etc.) and outcomes (e.g. workplace phobia, absenteeism etc.) of work-related stress; and b) how to manage psychosocial risk factors in the workplace. The studies. The first study focused on how disagreement between supervisors and their employees on leadership style (transformational and transactional) could affect workers well-being and work team variables. The second and third study used both subjective and objective data in order to increase the quality of the reliability of the results gained. Particularly, the second study focused on job demand and its relationship with objective sickness leave. Findings showed that despite there is no direct relationship between these two variables, job demand affects work-family conflict, which in turn affect exhaustion, which leads to absenteeism. The third study analysed the role of a new concept never studied before in organizational settings (workplace phobia), as a health outcome in the JD-R model, demonstrating also its relationship with absenteeism. The last study highlighted the added value of using the mixed methods research approach in order to detect and analyse context-specific job demands which could affects workers’ health. Conclusion. The findings of this thesis answered both to open questions in the scientific literature and to the social request of managing psychosocial risk factors in the workplace in order to enhance workers well-being.