Search Results (857)

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) significantly impacts people’s comfort, health, and productivity in buildings, and modern green rating systems are primarily focused on energy efficiency rather than the direct user experience. This paper analyses the relationship between IEQ and the perceived quality of life (QoL) of certified and conventional office buildings in Malaysia using a mixed-methods design. The questionnaires were completed by 162 employees working in four open-plan offices: two were certified under the Green Building Index (GBI) established in Malaysia, and two were traditional. This was supplemented by 14 semi-structured interviews and 2 focus groups. The factors of IEQ were divided into ambient, designed, and behavioral environments. It was statistically determined that behavioral factors, such as visual privacy, personalization, ergonomics, and control, exhibited the strongest correlations with overall QoL, compared to ambient factors such as air quality or thermal comfort. Green buildings performed better in terms of daylighting and esthetics than conventional buildings, though they did not always deliver higher occupant satisfaction. The results indicate that current green certification frameworks pay insufficient attention to occupant-centered aspects. The proposed research adds a validated IEQ-QoL framework that predicts the incorporation of subjective user experience into building performance indicators, which can be important for certification reform, post-occupancy evaluation (POE), and human-centered sustainable design approaches. Full article

Employee loyalty in hospitality settings is influenced by a combination of economic, relational, and developmental factors, including remuneration, recognition, interpersonal relationships, and opportunities for career advancement. This study explores managerial perceptions of the key organizational drivers that enhance employee satisfaction and foster employee loyalty in luxury hospitality settings. Focusing on five-star hotels located in the Heraklion Prefecture of Crete, Greece, the research addresses a context characterized by high service expectations, strong cultural traditions of hospitality, and pronounced seasonal labor dynamics. While previous studies have predominantly examined employee attitudes and outcomes, limited attention has been given to how decision-makers perceive and prioritize the factors influencing employee loyalty in luxury hospitality environments. To address this gap, the study adopts a mixed-method approach, combining structured Likert-scale questionnaires and qualitative insights collected from senior managers and owners representing 28 luxury hotels. The quantitative component provides descriptive insights into managerial consensus regarding organizational practices, while the qualitative analysis offers deeper interpretation of perceived challenges and priorities. Findings indicate that managers consider leadership style, working conditions, professional development, and employee welfare as central drivers of satisfaction and loyalty, although variation exists regarding the role of benefits and technology. The study contributes to hospitality management literature by highlighting the managerial perspective as a distinct analytical lens and offers practical implications for strategic human resource practices in high-end tourism contexts. Full article

Sustainable tourism development requires more than well-designed human resource systems; it also relies on how leadership is demonstrated in daily interactions with employees, especially in high-contact service environments. While high-performance work systems (HPWSs) are widely recognized for enhancing employee performance and service quality, their effectiveness may depend on relational processes that occur at the supervisory level. This study examines resonant leadership as a relational mechanism that complements structural HR practices. Instead of viewing leadership as a background condition, we focus on how emotionally intelligent leader behaviors influence employees’ job satisfaction and, consequently, their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Based on Social Exchange Theory and Affective Events Theory, we propose that job satisfaction acts as a mediator linking resonant leadership to discretionary service behaviors. Survey data were gathered from hotel employees in Cyprus, with 337 valid questionnaires included in the final analysis. The results show that resonant leadership is positively related to job satisfaction and OCB. Additionally, job satisfaction partially mediates this relationship, suggesting that emotionally attuned leadership fosters stronger affective bonds and encourages voluntary behaviors that support service delivery. By including relational leadership in the sustainability discussion, this study expands the mostly system-focused HPWS literature. The findings imply that sustainable tourism outcomes are driven not only by formal HR structures but also by leadership practices that stabilize human capital and reinforce service consistency over time. Full article

This study addressed how business administration training influenced perceptions of sustainable development goals (SDGs) within park management, situating the research at the intersection of sustainability education and applied management practice. A controlled experiment was conducted in Chongqing Central Park, where 100 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either an integrated business administration training program or a conventional park management program for two months, followed by standardized questionnaire surveys and statistical analyses, including analysis of variance and multivariate linear regression. A pretest verified randomization equivalence. The results demonstrated that participants who received integrated training reported higher perceptions of SDGs related to quality education, climate action, and life on land, alongside improvements in entrepreneurial mindset, social and economic value preferences, multitasking awareness, decision-related attributes, and interest in nature education. Regression analyses revealed that SDG perception was primarily strengthened by social value orientation and entrepreneurial mindset factors, whereas certain employee attributes and elements of nature education satisfaction exerted negative or weaker effects, particularly among trained participants. In contrast, the control group showed limited and mostly insignificant relationships, with SDG perception relying largely on baseline attitudes. Overall, the findings indicate that embedding business administration concepts into park management training enhances multidimensional sustainability awareness and provides evidence that socially oriented entrepreneurship and structured management thinking contribute meaningfully to SDG perception formation without overstating causal claims. Full article

Background/Objectives: Access delays in specialist consultations and diagnostics are frequently cited as key weaknesses of the Polish healthcare system. This study aimed to identify patient- and healthcare employee-reported bottlenecks beyond primary care, focusing on access, organisational and information barriers. Methods: A cross-sectional survey in Primed Medical Center in Lublin (south-eastern Poland) analysed fifty eligible adult respondents (58% patients; 42% healthcare employees). Measures covered access and organisational barriers (primary care, specialists/diagnostics, out-of-hours), perceived quality, equity, and satisfaction. Results: Overall dissatisfaction predominated (66.0% rather/definitely dissatisfied vs. 24.0% somewhat/definitely satisfied), and 70.0% indicated that reform is needed. The most frequent constraints concerned appointment scheduling convenience (88.0%), limited specialist access (86.0%), inability to obtain timely diagnostics (80.0%), unclear guidance on where to seek help (78.0%), and low administrative efficiency (74.0%). Additional concerns included out-of-hours access (60.0% reported no immediate night help) and perceived inequity (58.0% reported unequal access; 62.0% reported unequal treatment). In contrast, primary care availability was rated positively by 78% on a qualitative scale, and physician competence by 62%. Associations with sex, age, residence, and role were significant but small to moderate. Conclusions: Respondents differentiate clinical competence from system performance: negative assessments cluster around organisational barriers and capacity constraints in specialist and diagnostic pathways. Improving patient navigation and information, scheduling and administrative workflows, and specialist/diagnostic capacity—while strengthening primary care coordination—may reduce delays and support more equitable, higher-quality care. Full article

This paper examines how employees in Croatian hotels relate their direct supervisors’ leadership behaviors to job satisfaction. Survey data were collected from 153 hotel employees across departments and hotels of different sizes. Leadership was assessed through five styles (autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, transformational, and transactional), while job satisfaction was measured across six dimensions. The hypothesized relationships were tested using competitive regression models in which all leadership styles were entered simultaneously, complemented by a moderation test and relative-importance analysis. The results show a differentiated pattern. Transformational leadership is positively related to staff development and management satisfaction and also shows a positive association with salary satisfaction. Transactional leadership is most strongly linked to salary satisfaction, while it relates negatively to staff development satisfaction when other styles are controlled. Democratic leadership is positively associated with management satisfaction, but its unique association with staff development satisfaction is contingent on hotel size: it is negative in small hotels and attenuates to non-significance in medium-sized and large hotels. Autocratic leadership is generally associated with lower satisfaction in key domains, whereas laissez-faire leadership does not show meaningful unique effects in the competitive models. These findings provide evidence from the Croatian hotel sector and suggest that leadership development and HR support systems should be aligned with the specific satisfaction domains hotels seek to improve. Full article

Organizational ambidexterity is an essential topic in management research. A growing number of studies argue that organizational ambidexterity is increasingly critical to the sustained competitive advantage of firms. However, there is less research on ambidexterity in new technology-based firms, despite the significant impact it has on local and national economies. The study examined the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance (non-economic and economic). The sample consists of 102 Colombian new technology-based firms. A latent variable design or structural equation modeling was followed. The statistical method was Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). According to the results, organizational ambidexterity is positively related to both non-economic and economic performance. Organizational ambidexterity explained 10% of the variance of the economic performance and 56% of the variance of the non-economic performance. These findings highlight the importance of organizational ambidexterity to obtain better firm performance, especially non-economic performance related to customer perception, employee satisfaction, and improvement in the quality of products and services in new technology-based firms. Full article

The digitization of Human Resource (HR) processes is currently regarded as a vital step towards enhancing efficiency, transparency, and employee satisfaction within organizations. This research paper analyzes the circumstances under which the digitization process in human resource management within innovative business entrepreneurship will affect corporate sustainable development. The present study assesses employee satisfaction with the innovative digital HR tools used and identifies the perceived benefits and barriers in assessing the impact of digitization on the functioning of HR processes. The primary objective of the research paper is to estimate the impact of the digitization of personnel management processes, from the perspective of employees, on their satisfaction with the innovative digital personnel tools used, and to determine the extent to which innovative digitization tools would affect the sustainable development of the corporation. The estimation is based on the data assessment approach regarding the questionnaire survey conducted within the framework of the VEGA project output. The primary method employed for hypothesis verification is the chi-square test, accompanied by graphical representation. The findings of this study suggest that corporations must strategically allocate resources to invest in digital tools and cultivate digital competencies within their workforce if they are to reap the full benefits of digitization and innovation processes. The ability to adapt to and leverage innovative, cutting-edge digital technologies will be a key determinant in terms of reinforcing sustainable development in business. Full article

Organizational productivity and workforce management are highly affected by employee attrition. Thus, an employee attrition prediction system may allow human resource management to enhance the workplace by minimizing attrition. This study proposes a new and interpretable ensemble learning framework for employee attrition prediction. The model integrates SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP)-based feature selection, Optuna hyperparameter optimization, and dual explainability using SHAP and Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME). Random oversampling (ROS) is used to address class imbalance. The proposed framework allows for both global and local interpretability, enabling actionable insights into retention drivers. It was assessed using two benchmark datasets: the Kaggle HR Analytics dataset (14,999 records) and the IBM HR dataset (1470 records). The results revealed that the most impactful factors on employee attrition are promotion history, tenure, job satisfaction, workload, average monthly hours, overtime, and financial incentives. Furthermore, the proposed model achieved exceptional performance on both datasets. On the Kaggle dataset, it reached an accuracy of 98.72%, an F1-score of 97.29%, and an ROC–AUC of 0.994, while on the IBM dataset, it produced an accuracy of 97.72%, an F1-score of 97.74%, and an ROC–AUC of 0.995. Moreover, the proposed approach shows high computational efficiency, demonstrating that it is suitable for real-world deployment. These findings indicate that integrating explainable AI techniques, resampling tools, and automated hyperparameter tuning can achieve robust, accurate, and actionable employee attrition predictions, supporting HR managers’ decision-making. Full article

For logistics facilities at the county level, workforce scheduling is a basic operational concern. Although these facilities are developing rapidly, they still mostly rely on human and semi-automated work. Significant differences in employee productivity and skill levels, along with regular changes in demand, exacerbate this challenge. This study proposes a sustainability-oriented dual-objective optimization model to coordinate operational cost control with employee well-being enhancement. To address this issue, we designed an improved Genetic Algorithm that combines heuristic initialization with specialized repair operators, forming a systematic optimization framework. The effectiveness of the proposed system design and algorithm has been validated through real-world case studies. Experimental results demonstrate that this model not only achieves a balance between cost and employee satisfaction under uncertain demand conditions but also provides county-level logistics centers with sustainable scheduling solutions adaptable to business changes. Management recommendations based on the experimental results are proposed, such as implementing differentiated scheduling strategies, easing restrictions on maximum working hour variations, establishing a progressive optimization mechanism, and optimizing staffing and employee structure in accordance with corporate characteristics. This study provides scientific decision support for county-level logistics systems to achieve sustainable operations and human resource management transformation. Full article

Background: This study explores how healthcare staff perceptions of their physical work environment influence their satisfaction. Methods: A qualitative research design involving semi-structured interviews was adopted. The study sample comprised ten healthcare staff, including both clinical and nonclinical employees, working in a healthcare facility. The participants represented a range of professional roles and work areas, allowing for diverse perspectives on the physical environment. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The interview transcripts were systematically coded, and recurring patterns and themes were identified through an iterative analytical process reflecting participants’ perceptions and experiences of the physical work environment. Results: The analysis revealed seven main themes: impact of spatial layout on workflow; need for relaxation and break spaces; connection to nature, furniture and comfort; influence of color on mood; ambient features and environmental control; and natural light and well-being. Conclusions: This study highlights the critical role of the healthcare physical environment in shaping employee satisfaction and offers practical recommendations for healthcare facility design, emphasizing the need for ergonomic workspaces, greenspaces, and safe workplaces. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how the physical environment can be optimized to support employees in healthcare settings. Full article

Although organizational behavior (OB) research on burnout has traditionally emphasized workload and resource imbalance, such explanations remain insufficient for understanding burnout in highly routinized industrial hierarchies, where work is standardized, autonomy is limited, and stress often arises from how tasks are assigned and justified rather than from workload intensity alone. Drawing on the concept of illegitimate tasks—tasks perceived as unreasonable or unnecessary given one’s formal role—we argue that burnout in industrial hierarchies is more fundamentally rooted in violations of role legitimacy embedded in work design. We employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to understand how job demands, effort–reward imbalance, and illegitimate tasks collectively affect job satisfaction and burnout in large manufacturing organizations. We analyzed quantitative survey data collected from 504 employees and found that illegitimate tasks exert a stronger, more consistent effect on burnout than effort–reward imbalance. In addition to these findings, qualitative interviews with senior executives revealed how ambiguous role boundaries, intensive overtime practices, and limited advancement structures normalize illegitimate task assignments in industrial settings. The findings suggest that burnout in industrial settings reflects not only accumulated job demands but also employees’ evaluations of how their work roles are structured and valued. This study thus brings the stress-as-offense-to-self perspective into OB scholarship and demonstrates its relevance for theorizing burnout in routine industrial work. The findings indicate that burnout reflects deeper deficiencies in work design that may undermine the sustainability of industrial work systems. From an industrial workforce sustainability perspective, workplace burnout extends beyond an individual health concern and signals structural issues in job design and human resource utilization relevant to social sustainability and decent work. Burnout can serve as an early warning indicator of declining human capital sustainability. Full article

Employees’ green workplace attitudes and behaviours represent a driving force for organizations’ contributions to environmental sustainability. The present quasi-experimental (pre-post-test) study aimed to assess the feasibility of a novel psychoeducational intervention grounded in a metacognitive-motivational approach and focused on promoting environmental awareness and proneness toward acting pro-environmentally at work among energy sector employees. A sample of 78 employees from the operational level attended three in-person group-based sessions. Pre-post testing surveys assessed green workplace attitudes and behaviours, environmental awareness, and employees’ expectations and satisfaction with the intervention. Results show that employees reported greater environmental awareness and lower self-reported ease to identify and communicate environmental anomalies with potential harmful impacts at post-intervention compared with pre-test. Employees’ satisfaction regarding the intervention’s usefulness, motivation, and interest at post-test exceeded their initial expectations. Employees also rated the intervention capable of providing a greater understanding of environmental issue management at work and in daily life to a greater extent than what was expected at pre-test. Overall feedback on the content, structure, and activities was highly positive. Our findings support the feasibility of applying a metacognitive-motivational approach, showing employees’ acceptability and increased environmental awareness after the intervention, as a promising intervention strategy for organizations to prompt environmental sustainability within organizational contexts. Full article

One of the most important priorities of the most recent research work regarding the professional appraisal (PA) process is to understand different aspects of the social workers’ satisfaction with this particular type of professional evaluation. In this sense, this study addresses the imperative to comprehensively understand social workers’ satisfaction with PA, a pivotal yet sensitive human resource instrument within public administration. Drawing on a sociological survey of social workers in Romania’s North-West Development Region, the research empirically validated a multidimensional theoretical model of PA satisfaction (PAS) through rigorous exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The findings definitively establish that PAS is not a unidimensional construct, but rather a complex phenomenon underpinned by three distinct dimensions: (1) satisfaction with the most recent performance rating; (2) satisfaction with the appraisal system; and (3) satisfaction with the rater. This validated model significantly advances the conceptualization of satisfaction regarding PA, providing a precise diagnostic instrument for identifying systemic inefficiencies. Consequently, it offers a strategic framework for targeted organizational interventions and informs the development of more equitable and growth-oriented public policies. The study highlights that holistic measurement across these identified dimensions is crucial for cultivating employee motivation, reinforcing organizational justice, and fostering sustainable professional development within the public sector. Full article

Background/Objectives: University students and working professionals, especially those preparing for or employed in healthcare, face substantial psychological demands. Identifying low-cost, easily deployable personal resources to buffer stress and enhance satisfaction is therefore a priority for positive-psychology research and practice. Adult playfulness, the disposition to (re)frame everyday situations in an entertaining, interesting, or meaningful way, may represent such a resource, but evidence from applied settings remains scarce. We investigated how four facets of playfulness relate to perceived stress and job/academic satisfaction across study and work contexts, as well as whether these associations differ by healthcare affiliation. Methods: We analyzed two samples comprising 499 employed adults from diverse occupational backgrounds and 635 university students (N_total = 1134). Participants completed measures of playfulness, perceived stress, and job/academic satisfaction. Results: Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses supported scalar measurement invariance across occupational status and healthcare affiliation. Structural equation models indicated that lighthearted playfulness was associated with lower perceived stress. Associations between playfulness facets and satisfaction were weak overall and were primarily observed among working adults. We found no evidence for moderation by healthcare affiliation. Conclusions: Given that playfulness is a relatively stable disposition whereas stress and satisfaction. These findings underscore the importance of a differentiated conceptualization of playfulness and point to the potential value for future research examining facet-specific, context-sensitive applications in education and practice. Full article