Revue Internationale de Psychosociologie et de Gestion des Comportements Organisationnels

TRANSFORMATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIORS DURING A PANDEMIC: FOCUS ON HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONS AND REMOTE WORK

Anne-Laure GATIGNON TURNAU, Ann LANGLEY — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The topics of management and health have probably never been as closely intertwined as they are today. Companies and their practices play an important role in public health (Freudenberg, 2014). They influence every aspect of human life from food supply, air pollution, physical health, psychological wellbeing and healthcare to personal identity and lifestyle. The Covid-19 crisis has only heightened awareness of this interconnectedness. For almost three years, the pandemic focused researchers’ attention on health concerns, with burgeoning publications and research programs around this theme. But the crisis was more than just a wake-up call; it also influenced and transformed organizational behavior (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020). Its disruptive effect on work relations has been widely documented (Fouad, 2020). For example, Hillebrandt & Barclay (2022) showed that cheating and individualistic behaviors have been exacerbated by the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the pandemic should not only be analyzed as a specific context for study, but also as the cause of profound transformations in organizational behavior.This special issue of RIPCO aims to contribute to this scientific momentum by bringing together contributions from organizational behavior scholars. While we are only just emerging from the crisis, we know that it is difficult to estimate its long-term effects on behavior. We have therefore chosen to focus this special issue on seven contributions dealing with the direct consequences of the pandemic: the behavior of carers and their relationship with patients, and the unprecedented development of remote working…

JOB CRAFTING: WHAT PROACTIVE BEHAVIOURS DID HEALTHCARE STAFF ADOPT TO DEAL WITH THE ROLE STRAIN GENERATED BY THE COVID CRISIS?

Christelle ROUTELOUS, Anne Lise LE HESRAN, Myra SADER — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, we investigate the capacity of healthcare staff to manage the role strains that emerged during the Covid crisis. To achieve our goal, we undertook research involving 24 healthcare employees between November 2020 and March 2021. Our focus was the strategies they developed to cope with the role strains triggered by the Covid crisis in an industry already under pressure. The results highlight several adaptive strategies applied by healthcare employees, in particular to cope with their workload and with the ethical dilemmas generated by lockdown measures concerning users of medical and social institutions. From a theoretical perspective, our research contributes to the literature on role strain, highlighting the contribution made by job crafting. From an empirical perspective, we emphasize the role played by proactive behaviours in maintaining organization during the exceptional context of the Covid crisis. A limitation of our study is the fact that we consider job crafting in the context of changes imposed by the Covid crisis, rather than in normal times. We discuss the importance of proactive behaviours in health workers and provide guidelines for further research.

HEALTH CRISES AND VIRTUAL PATIENT COMMUNITIES: WHAT INFLUENCE DO THESE COMMUNITIES HAVE ON PATIENT-MEMBERS’ TRUST IN THEIR REGULAR DOCTOR?

Brice ISSEKI , Pierre BUFFAZ — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the context of a health crisis, this article explores the influence of a virtual patient community on patients’ trust in their usual doctor. To achieve this objective, an exploratory study based on a netnographic approach was carried out with a virtual health community centred on coping with covid 19 and made up entirely of patients. A total of 1,155 online conversations from 667 members were collected and analysed, first by non-participant floating observation, then by thematic content analysis following top-down classification of text segments using IRaMuTeQ software. The results show that, in the context of a health crisis, membership of the virtual community studied does not seem to influence the trust of patients in their usual doctor, whereas we might have thought that patients’ legitimate fears about their own illness and about the doctors’ lack of knowledge would have had an impact. Instead, the community appears to be an empathetic space for discussion, information, and support directed towards helping each other to overcome the health crisis and its effects. This article therefore adds to the literature on trust in the patient – physician relationship by showing that this trust would not necessarily be undermined or modified by patients’ interactions with peers within a virtual patient community. In addition, this research suggests that doctors need to approach their patients differently, since some of them are likely to breach the exclusivity of the bilateral medical relationship by gathering information and support from other patients.

DEVELOPING THE POWER TO ACT OF HOSPITAL PRACTITIONERS, TO “DO WELL” AND HAVE AN IMPACT: THE CASE OF THE CALVI-BALAGNE HOSPITAL CENTRE

Romain MORETTI, Soufyane FRIMOUSSE — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The covid 19 health crisis, which seemed to sound the death knell for public hospitals, led to an accelerated awareness, on the part of hospital stakeholders and public authorities, of the ills of the public health sector. The rise of New Public Management in public hospitals, characterised by a hybridisation of the roles of healthcare professionals, has led to a loss of meaning in their work and a clash between professional identities within the structure, with the administrative sphere on one side and the practitioner sphere on the other.In order to respond to these challenges, this article looks at the rise of the power to act, which offers employees the conditions to move towards the essence of their profession and thus contribute to the construction, or reconstruction, of meaning at work for healthcare professionals. The qualitative methodology used in this study highlights, through cognitive maps and semi-structured interviews, the points of convergence between the administrative and practitioner visions. The results suggest that we should move beyond the idea of a ‘doctor-manager’ towards a systemic, learning approach, made possible by the development of a supportive environment.

TELEWORKING AS A FACTOR OF RESILIENCE; SOME LESSONS FROM THIS COVID CRISIS

Chantal FUHRER — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Our objective is to better understand the role of teleworking in resilience during the Covid-19 health crisis. Aligned with the exploration of new digital practices, this research delves into the dynamic of resilience. We will particularly focus on commitment as a key aspect. To achieve this, we analyse the results of five online surveys conducted between March 2020 and February 2021. The corpus results from the compilation of five different sources: written reports in March 2020, a narrative survey in April 2020, a quantitative survey in May 2020, a second narrative survey in December 2020, and finally, three focus groups in February 2021. Consequently, the transcriptions of the speeches from 1,299 managers and specialists are studied using Textual Data Analysis methods. We initially explore the connections among teleworking, optimism, and resilience, followed by an analysis of various forms of commitment. Finally, we delve into the dynamics of resilience. Our findings indicate that the impact of teleworking varies based on whether resilience is considered individual or collective. Furthermore, it varies across time and in relation to the resilience process, which we propose to categorize into three phases: preventive resilience (before the disaster), reactive resilience (during the disaster), and curative resilience (after the disaster). We leverage the insights from the resilience study to discuss implications for the advancement of teleworking as a digital tool and practice. Our results also bring attention to limitations, providing opportunities for future research.

IDENTITY DEFENSE STRATEGIES IN RESPONSE TO DIRTY WORK ADOPTED BY CAREGIVERS IN NURSING HOMES

Chloé GUILLOT-SOULEZ, Claude ROUSSILLON SOYER — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This research draws on social identity theory and the concept of dirty work to study the identity defense strategies adopted by caregivers in nursing homes. We analyze the strategies that caregivers who perform devalued jobs mobilize to find or restore meaning to their work. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 65 caregivers in nursing homes. The data collected were subjected to lexicometric analysis using Iramuteq software. Six identity defense strategies were observed: 1) defending and recommending the profession, 2) emphasizing the usefulness and meaning of the profession, 3) accepting the negative image, 4) promoting the profession by talking about nursing homes as places to live, 5) publicizing the richness of the profession in terms of relationships, and 6) highlighting the physical and psychological difficulties of the profession. Caregivers thus favored reframing and refocusing as strategies for normalization of work.These results provide insight into how caregivers in nursing homes remedy a loss of meaning at work. To facilitate a genuine revaluation of this profession, we identify levers for action at both the organizational and societal levels.

SUPPORT AND RESILIENCE: KEY LEVERS IN IMPROVING WORK ENGAGEMENT IN HEALTHCARE PERSONNEL

Annabelle DI TOMASO, Sara-Maude CARLE, Anthony HASSAN, Marie-Pier BOIVIN — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recent years have been hard on the psychological well-being of health and social services workers. Whether due to the “dehumanization” condemned by many in the healthcare system (Agence QMI, 2021) or to excessive workloads (Statistics Canada, 2022), numerous workers have chosen to leave Canada’s healthcare system. The situation has only worsened since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Siou and Cousineau (2022) reported that over 500 nurses, nursing assistants and personal support workers left their jobs between December 2021 and January 2022 in the province of Quebec. In June 2020, only three months after the start of the pandemic, 52% of Quebec healthcare workers were experiencing professional burnout (Brouillette, 2021).The current literature does not adequately meet the needs of managers trying to encourage healthcare workers to stay on the job. In short, while there has been abundant research on the factors that negatively impact psychological health in the workplace, there has been much less on the other side of the coin—the factors that promote psychological health in the workplace (Bliese et al., 2017). One factor known to have a negative impact is a perceived disequilibrium between a worker’s investment in their job and the support they receive from superiors. Nursing staff have in fact identified this disequilibrium as a major issue (Boivin-Desrochers & Alderson, 2014). Similarly, Moisson-Duthoit (2016) found that nurses frequently perceived a lack of recognition and consideration on the part of their organization…

MOBILITY AND STAFF (UN-)SAFETY: THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ORGANIZATION AND ITS LEVERS FOR ACTION IN QUESTION THE CASE OF THE COVID CRISIS IN A UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

Emmanuelle GURTNER, Yves HABRAN, Renato GUIMARAES — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This research is based on a case study of observations and interviews carried out in a hospital during the health crisis, and focuses on the massive, enforced mobilization of hospital staff in Covid services during the pandemic. Temporary and intermittent internal mobility within the same organization is a little-studied phenomenon. While it can have positive consequences, such as better use of resources and individual and collective learning, it can also have negative consequences for individuals, hindering further mobility and affecting the organization’s ability to mobilize its resources. This research therefore questions the link between temporary, forced and repeated internal mobility and the unsafety of the staff concerned. The study shows that such mobility leads to skills gaps and loss of reference points (spatial, relational, and organizational), which are sources of unsafety. It also reveals a number of organizational factors that can help remedy the situation. Ultimately, this research is an original theoretical contribution, linking the literature on mobility and that on psychological safety, and proposing a dynamic framework for the concept of psychological safety. It also highlights the responsibility of organizations in making people (un-)safe. Finally, the managerial contribution consists in identifying HR, organizational and managerial levers that can be used, on different axes and according to different timeframes, to reduce this unsafety, and thus reduce the adjustment costs incurred by individuals in organizations that need to have resources available when and where required.