Högskolan i Skövde

The retail sector in Sweden has an outstanding productivity ratio in comparison to retailsectors in other countries. In this paper we claim that the main reason to this is the HRMpractice on store level in Sweden. International research presents a grim picture of the retailworkplace. Because of fierce price competition personnel are subjected to high demands forflexibility in working hours and suffer from low salaries, poor working conditions and little orno employer provided education and training resulting in a low level of employee workmotivation, responsibility and productivity. Our research constrasts this picture and showsthat the workplace in Swedish retailing is characterized by mutually trusting and cooperativerelationships between managers and co-workers, leading to employee commitment andacceptance of responsibility. We mainly explain our conclusions that differ from those ofinternational retailing research by the principal fact that standards and values from otherSwedish work sectors are also found in the Swedish retail sector.

Vad innebär det att arbeta med ledaruppdrag inom handeln och hur kan man nå framgång som butikschef? Detta är två centrala frågor i boken Uppdrag butikschef – att leda i butik som tar ett helhetsgrepp om följande centrala aspekter på butikschefsarbete: 

• ledarskap och medarbetarskap 

• motivation och kommunikation 

• personalarbete och arbetsrätt 

• kompetensutveckling och etik

Boken är skriven av forskare inom företagsekonomi och socialpsykologi, verksamma vid Högskolan i Skövde, och den bygger delvis på ett aktuellt forskningsprojekt om ledarskap och medarbetarskap inom svensk handel.

A career in retailing is to a large extent a boundaryless career. A career in retail does not limit the individual to a single organisation, to a single role/position, or to a hierarchical rung on the organisational ladder. Both co-workers and managers move quite easily among organisations within the same retail area, between different retail areas, and in and out of the retail sector.

• In the past, the description of retailing as a transitory employment sector has had a negative connotation. Yet this description can also have quite a positive connotation. For example, experience acquired in the retail sector can be very useful in other work sectors. Moreover, people working in retail are generally motivated by job security, a job that is possible to combine to leisure/family, and a job close to home. They are typically much less motivated by traditional career advancement opportunities, the exercise of power over others, and by the desire to make decisions.

• People working in retail have a rather limited interest in becoming managers in part because their major work motivators are not the motivators one usually associates with management career paths.

• Gender is a relatively weak distinguishing variable in terms of retail careers, but there are some statistically significant – yet small – differences in the work characteristics of men and women in retail. For example, women in retail prioritize work-life balance, the proximity of workplace to home, and outside interests more than men in retail. These priorities have a limiting effect on their opportunities to accept managerial positions and to follow traditional, upward career paths.

• There are more women than men working in the retail sector today, but a larger percentage of men in management positions. However, this cannot be explained by differences between the motivations of men and women to become managers or in their attitudes towards their own managerial capabilities. The explanation lies in other, more indirect factors such as the expectations of today’s managers.

• Women generally earn less than men in the retail sector. This inequality is especially evident when differences in work responsibilities exist (e.g., specialized areas, subbranches, management tasks).

• There is some general scepticism among employees in the retail sector as far as the extent to which their employers are willing to commit to their well-being and development. This finding has important practical implications when employees sense a lack of employer commitment to them.

• People outside retail sector generally have a more negative picture of the retail sector than the people within the sector. People in the retail sector are relatively satisfied and think their work is varied and interesting.

• The number of women at the lower management levels (at the store-level) is increasing. Because of this trend, which is expected to continue, in the relatively near future there may be as many female managers as male managers at this level. However, at the upper management levels in retail, there are more than ten men for every woman and no indications of change.

• Job security is the most important career anchor for retail employees in Sweden. This finding has very important practical implications because job security is typically not associated with employment in the retail sector. It is a factor that can be an important consideration for retailers.

The shift to consumer-centric marketing accentuates the need for a more comprehensive understanding of consumer desires, including how consumers manage their resources to satisfy these desires. However, the complexity of the resource concept combined with a fragmented research stream thus far provides a limited understanding of consumer resources and their effect on consumer well-being. The purpose of this article is to encourage continued research into consumer resources, including resource exchange, to gain a more complete understanding of the concept and to facilitate the development of a unified theory of consumer resources. To accomplish our objective, resource theories proposed in different disciplines (economics, management/marketing, psychology, and social psychology) are summarized and used to provide research direction into a wide variety of consumer behavior issues related to consumer resource management and resource exchange behavior.

Extending previous research on the role of fairness in social dilemmas, two experiments investigated allocation preferences in public good dilemmas. In Experiment 1, fairness conceptions were a significant predictor of how participants allocated the public good to their group. Experiment 2 aimed at studying the impact of distributive goals on allocation preferences. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions in which the different goals were induced. As hypothesized, the different goals affected which allocation principle the groups used to allocate the resource. These findings suggest that people in a public good dilemma apply the allocation principle that serves a particular group goal, even though this may interfere with their perceptions of fair allocations

Aim and objective: In this study, we explore how personal and situational factors relate to the provision of person-centred care (PCC) in nursing homes. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between the care staff's personality traits and provision of PCC and to what extent perceptions of the working environment influences this relationship.

Background: The ultimate goal of elderly care is to meet the older person's needs and individual preferences (PCC). Interpersonal aspects of care and the quality of relationship between the care staff and the older person are therefore central in PCC.

Design and methods: A cross-sectional Swedish sample of elderly care staff (N = 322) completed an electronic survey including measures of personality (Mini-IPIP) and person-centred care (Individualized Care Inventory, ICI). A principal component analysis was conducted on the ICI-data to separate the user orientation (process quality) of PCC from the preconditions (structure quality) of PCC.

Results: Among the five factors of personality, neuroticism was the strongest predictor of ICI user orientation. ICI preconditions significantly mediated this relationship, indicating the importance of a supportive working environment. In addition, stress was introduced as a potential explanation and was shown to mediate the impact of neuroticism on ICI preconditions.

Conclusions: Personality traits have a significant impact on user orientation, and the perception of a supportive and stress free working environment is an important prerequisite for achieving high-quality person-centred elderly care.

Implications for practice: Understanding how personality is linked to the way care staff interacts with the older person adds a new perspective on provision of person-centred elderly care.

In the present study, we investigate the interplay of personality traits (i.e., person) in frontline care staff in nursing homes and the way they relate to the residents (i.e., situation) to account for their job satisfaction. Participants completed a survey including Mini-IPIP tapping the five-factor model of personality, Individualized Care Inventory tapping four aspects of person-centered care and job satisfaction. The results revealed that staff scoring high on neuroticism experienced less job satisfaction. This relationship was partly accounted for by resident autonomy, suggesting that part of the adverse influence of neuroticism on job satisfaction may be mitigated by organizations providing a supportive care environment. In contrast, staff scoring high on agreeableness experienced higher job satisfaction. This relationship was accounted for by another aspect of person-centered care, that is, knowing the person. This suggests that agreeableness in a sense facilitated adjustment of acts of care toward the unique needs and preferences of residents and this partly explained why the more agreeable the staff was the more they felt satisfied at work. In sum, effects of personality traits on job satisfaction in care staff are partially mediated by the perception of working conditions and care policy and to the extent that a certain personality trait affects whether the staff have a positive or negative perception of the way they relate to the residents, they will experience, respectively, higher or a lower job satisfaction. This finding has implications for how to combine a focus on delivering person-centered care with improving personal job satisfaction.

Previous research has demonstrated that unfairness judgments of resource allocations become more complex when there are more than two recipients. In order to explain some of this complexity, we propose a set of psychological mechanisms that may underlie four different choices of maximally unfair resource allocations (MUA): Self-Single-Loser, Self-One-Loser-of-Many, Self-Single-Winner, and Self-One-Winner-of-Many. From this psychological theory, several predictions are derived and tested in vignette studies involving a total of 708 participants recruited online using MTurk. As predicted by our theory, (1) choices of MUA where there is a single loser were much more common when the allocated resource was of negative rather than positive valence, and (2) the amount of egoistic bias individuals exhibited when judging the unfairness in receiving a small rather than a large share in a non-extreme multi-party allocation was predicted by their choices of MUA. These findings suggest that an individual’s choice of MUA reveals some generally relevant principles of how unfairness is perceived in multi-party allocations. This opens up new lines of inquiry, especially regarding research on social dilemmas and social value orientation.

Purpose – Care process quality (i.e., how care is enacted by a care worker toward a client at the interpersonal level) is a strong predictor of satisfaction in a wide range of health care services. The present research aims at describing the basic elements of care process quality as user-oriented care. Specifically, the questions of how and why quality in user-oriented care varies were investigated in the context of elderly care.

Design – Two municipalities were selected for in-depth field studies. First, in each municipality, we interviewed and observed care workers’ interactions with the older persons in both home care and nursing homes during two weeks (Study 1). Second, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of why process quality in terms of user-oriented care varies, we conducted interviews with care workers and care unit managers (Study 2).

Findings – A new taxonomy for categorising process quality variation, the Big Five of user-oriented care (Task-focus, Person-focus, Affect, Cooperation, and Time-use), is proposed. In addition, the perceived reasons for process quality variation are reported in our own developed Quality Agents Model, suggesting that variations in care process evaluations may be explained from different perspectives at multiple levels (i.e., older person, care worker-, unit-, department-, and municipality-level).

Value – The proposed taxonomy and model are useful for describing user-oriented care quality and the reasons for its variations. These findings are of relevance for future quality developments of elderly care services, but also may be adapted to applications in any other enterprise employing a user-oriented approach.

Keywords elderly care, quality, satisfaction, person-centered care, individualised care, user-oriented care

As the proportion of older people in coming years is increasing, and as the organizations of home care and nursing homes grow to manage the expectations from the population, the debate on the quality of elderly care has gained a new momentum. Today, most decision-makers within elderly care in Sweden base their actions on the nation-wide annual quality report on elderly care from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Open Comparisons. This research presents findings from this national survey conducted in 2012, including a wide variety of indicators for elderly care services in all Swedish municipalities (N = 324) based on the responses from over 95,000 older persons. Study I presents that structural variables (i.e., budget resources and personnel training) overall did not correlate with older persons’ perceived quality of care, while processual variables (i.e., influence, respect, and access to information) showed moderate to strong correlations. Study II presents that overall satisfaction with care was strongly correlated with evaluation of relationship with care personnel and feelings of safeness. Study III presents an overall municipality quality-index with which comparisons between municipalities can be made, showing that the highest and the lowest ranked municipalities did not differ strongly on indicators of quality (d < 0.6). The conclusion is that there currently exists no reliable and valid measure which manages to tap quality of municipal elderly care, and that developing a new client-care centered climate scale should prove to be fruitful. Seeing how a person-centered theoretical approach is receiving support from this large national sample, implications for extending the theoretical frame of person-centeredness into psychological climate research in organizations is proposed. 

Med den ökande andelen äldre personer i Sverige har diskussionen om kvalitet i äldreomsorgen tagit ny fart. Idag är äldreomsorgsbeslut baserat på den omfattande årsrapporten, Öppna jämförelser, som rankar alla Sveriges kommuner utifrån ett antal kvalitetsindikatorer. Relevant för området sociala studier och hälsa, visar sekundäranalyser av dessa data att Öppna jämförelser gör en missvisande rankning som inte tar hänsyn till hur de äldre har svarat, och inte heller påtalar hur små skillnaderna mellan högst och lägst rankade kommuner är. Genom att använda effektstorleksmått presenteras i artikeln ett nytt och mer korrekt sätt att ranka kommuner. Vidare föreslås i denna artikel att Öppna jämförelser i sina framtida mätningar inkluderar reliabla och valida mått på brukarorienterad omsorg då detta har visat sig ha positiva effekter på äldres upplevelse av omsorgskvalitet.

Maximizing satisfaction among the older persons is the goal of modern individualized elderly care and how to best achieve this is of relevance for anyone planning and providing for elderly care services. Purpose of the study: What predicts satisfaction with care among older persons can be conceived as a function of process (how care is performed), and the older person. Inspired by the long-standing person versus situation debate, the present research investigated the interplay between person- and process aspects in predicting satisfaction with elderly care. Design and method: A representative nationwide sample was analyzed, based on a questionnaire sent out to 95,000 individuals using elderly care services. Results: The results showed that person-related factors (i.e., anxiety, health, and loneliness) were significant predictors of satisfaction with care, although less strongly than process-related factors (i.e., treatment, safeness, and perceived staff- and time availability). Among the person-related factors, loneliness was the strongest predictor of satisfaction among older persons in nursing homes. Interestingly, a path analysis revealed that safeness and treatment function as mediators in linking loneliness to satisfaction. Implications: The results based on a large national sample demonstrate that the individual aging condition to a significant degree can be countered by a well-functioning care process, resulting in higher satisfaction with care among older persons. 

The structure versus process approach to quality of care presented by Donabedian is one of the most cited ever. However, there has been a paucity of research into the empirical validity of this framework, specifically concerning the relative effects of structure and process on satisfaction with elderly care as perceived by the older persons themselves. The current research presents findings from a national survey, including a wide range of quality indicators for elderly care services, conducted in 2012 at the request of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare in which responses from 95,000 elderly people living in 324 municipalities and districts were obtained. The results revealed that the only structural variable which significantly predicted quality of care was staffing, measured in terms of the number of caregivers per older resident. More interestingly, process variables (e.g. respect and access to information) explained 40% and 48% of the variance in satisfaction with care, over and above the structural variables, in home care and nursing homes respectively. The findings from this large nationwide sample examining Donabedian's model suggest that quality in elderly care is primarily determined by factors pertaining to process, that is, how caregivers behave towards the older persons. This encourages a continued quality improvement in elderly care with a particular focus on process variables.

Purpose – Previous research has shown that user-oriented care predicts older persons’ satisfaction with care. What is yet to be researched is how senior management facilitates the implementation of user-oriented care. The present study set out to investigate the organizing principles and management climate characterizing successful elderly care organizations.

Design – The care organization in one highly ranked municipality was selected and compared with a more average municipality. On-site semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers as well as participatory observations at managers’ meetings were conducted in both municipalities.

Findings – The results revealed three key principles for successful elderly care: 1) organizing care from the viewpoint of the older service user, 2) recruiting and training competent and autonomous employees, 3) instilling a vision for the mission which guides operations at all levels in the organization. Furthermore, using climate theory to interpret the material, in the highly successful municipality the management climate was characterized by affective support and cognitive autonomy, in contrast to a more instrumental work climate primarily focusing on organizational structure and doing things right characterizing the more average municipality.

Value – We suggest that guiding organizing principles are intertwined with management climate and that there are multiple perspectives that must be considered by the upper management, i.e., the views of the older persons, the co-workers, and the mission. The results can guide future care quality developments and increase the understanding of the importance of organizational climate at the senior management level.

Purpose: The current conceptualizations and measurements of well-being are inadequate in the context of work. Specifically, well-being research has neglected the social aspects of well-being. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the validity of a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected in an educational setting, i.e. six different schools in a Swedish municipality. A total of 314 teachers and other categories of school staff (239 females and 75 males) participated in a survey study. Findings: Results provided empirical support for a multi-dimensional view of occupational social well-being. The dimensions were integration, acceptance, contribution, actualization and coherence, and they were differentially correlated with previous measures of well-being. Furthermore, occupational social well-being accounted for additional variance in work tension, overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment over and above the variance accounted for by positive and negative affect and satisfaction with life, indicating the value of taking domain-specific social indicators of well-being into account in explaining various employee outcomes. Practical implications: Occupational social well-being is an umbrella term for describing the well-lived social life in the context of work. As such, this is a crucial part of a holistic view of well-being at work. Thus, effective employee well-being enhancement programs should not only focus on physical and mental health promotion or competence development but must also include measures of relational experience and functioning as discussed in the present study. Originality/value: This is the first study to measure and validate occupational social well-being as an attempt to complement existing measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Measures of social aspects of well-being are crucial to assess as it has been argued in previous research that context-free measures of well-being might render misleading results.

There is a paucity of empirical research on the social psychology of justice in educational settings. A few previous studies have predominantly focused on distributive and procedural justice concerns, and knowledge about the role of what have been called informational and interpersonal justice for school outcomes is very scarce. In the present study, data from 227 eighth- and ninth-grade students who participated in a survey study were analyzed to examine the interplay between relational justice concerns (decomposed into procedural, interpersonal, and informational justice), motivation to study, and school achievement. A comprehensive theoretically grounded multi-item measure of informational justice was developed and validated. The results showed that informational justice significantly predicts school grades, and that motivation to study fully mediates this effect. Neither procedural nor interpersonal justice was associated with school grades. The implications of these results for research and practice are discussed in detail.

Social groups implicitly or explicitly strive to achieve various goals that pervade most activities within the group. In social dilemma and game theoretic research, it has been posited that the goal is to achieve the highest possible monetary outcome for the individual or the group. Yet, important group goals may also include future enjoyable social relations, a sense of responsibility, and a concern for others. This thesis argues that research on public good dilemmas need to address the issue of what is a preferred distribution of the public good. This is the focus of the reported research whereas previous research has focused on public good provision. It is assumed that preferences for distributing the public good to group members are related to what goals the group is trying to reach. In Study I allocation preferences in step-level symmetric public good dilemmas were investigated. Experiment 1 revealed that fairness conceptions were related to how participants allocated the public good. Experiment 2 examined the impact of the goals of economic productivity, social concern, and harmony on participants’ allocation preferences. Groups with economic productivity as their goal allocated the resource according to equity, groups with social concern as their goal allocated the resource according to equal treatment, and groups with harmony as their goal allocated the resource according to equal final outcomes. These findings suggest that in a public good dilemma, people apply the allocation principle that serves a particular group goal, independently of their perceptions of fairness. In Study II the prediction was tested that salience of fairness and group goal reduces the influence of self-interest on preferences for allocation principles. In Experiment 1, it was found that perceived fairness of allocation principles increased perceived instrumentality of the principles. Self-interest did however not have any effect. In Experiment 2, economic productivity as the group goal increased allocations according to equity, and the group goal of social concern increased allocations according to equality and equal final outcomes. Self-interest had no effect. Taken together, the results of the empirical studies provide support for that both fairness and group goal influence allocation preferences in public good dilemmas.

Well-being is mostly defined and measured in terms of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect in psychology. As human well-being depends on need satisfaction, and many of our needs as humans are satisfied with and by other people, it is argued in this chapter that the current conceptualization and measurement of well-being is inadequate. Specifically, although there are some expectations, psychological research on well-being has largely neglected the social aspects or the context of well-being. It is thus argued that in order to understand the social nature of well-being several dimensions have to be considered. The proposed dimensions are social integration, social acceptance, social contribution, social actualization, and social coherence. Results from a validation study provide tentative empirical support for the proposed conceptual structure.

Taxation has attracted considerable research attention. In this article some preliminary steps are taken towards advancing a multi-faceted fairness framework of taxation according to which taxation fairness is not only related to the tax expenditure programme (distributive justice), but also to how tax decisions are made (procedural justice), how citizens are treated by the tax authorities/employees (interpersonal justice), and how tax decisions and the legislation are explained and justified to the citizens (informational justice). This framework further posits that taxpayers experience uncertainty in the context of taxation, and that fairness reduces uncertainty. It is also posited that fairness is a prerequisite for legitimacy of the tax system. The framework draws upon the literature on the social psychology of justice and applies it to the taxation context. Altogether, this theoretical framework provides an alternative account of tax attitudes and behavior in that it downplays the role of surveillance and sanctions and instead emphasizes the role of perceived fairness for citizens' willingness to pay taxes and for tax system legitimacy.

Leader-member exchange (LMX) is the foremost relational approach to leadership. Building upon the LMX theory, this study aimed to examine the associations between three types of relationship appraisals in the workplace: leader-member (leader LMX), member-leader (member LMX), and member-member relationships (collegial climate), and their impact on employee work attitudes (i.e., employee job satisfaction and commitment). Questionnaire data were obtained from a sample of retail managers (n = 113) and retail workers (n = 555) in the Swedish retail sector. Mediation analyses confirmed the novel hypotheses that member LMX and collegial climate fully mediate the association between leader LMX and employee job satisfaction. However, in predicting employee commitment, the only significant mediator was member LMX. This study not only contributes to the existing LMX theory and research but also adds to the expanding body of knowledge in the field of positive organizational scholarship exploring the significance of positive workplace relationships in shaping employee attitudes.

Previous research has not been conclusive as to whether people prefer different or identical allocation principles in distributions of positive and negative outcomes. Thus, in this study, the question of whether or not group goal accounts for preferred allocation of positive and negative outcomes was posed. As hypothesized for division of surpluses, the results showed that relationship-oriented goals predicted preferences for equality, whereas performance oriented goals predicted preferences for equity. Moreover, the results were the same for allocation of deficits. This suggests that people implicitly have different orientations, or goals, in mind in group situations that similarly influence the way they prefer to allocate positive and negative outcomes. The results also showed that participants allocating deficits deviated to a larger extent from the allocation principles than did participants allocating surpluses.

Seventy-two undergraduates participating in a step-level asymmetric public good dilemma were requested to distribute the provided public good among the group members to achieve different group goals. In Line with the hypotheses, economic productivity resulted in equitable allocations, harmony in equal allocations, and social concern in need-based allocations. The results also supported the hypotheses that salience of group goal minimizes influences of self-interest on allocations and that perceived fairness accounts for why people pursuing different group goals differ in their preferences for allocation of public goods.

Two experiments investigated allocation preferences in symmetric public good di-lemmas. In Experiment1 where 20 undergraduates participated in 5-person groups, it was found that fairness conceptions were a significant predictor of how participants allocated the public good to their group. 60 undergraduates partici-pated in Experiment 2 aimed at studying the impact of goals of economic produc-tivity, social concern, and harmony on participants’ allocation preferences. Groups with economic productivity as their goal allocated the resource according to equity, groups with social concern as their goal allocated the resource accord-ing to equal treatment, and groups with harmony as their goal allocated the re-source according to equal final outcomes. These findings suggest that in a public good dilemma people apply the allocation principle that serves a particular goal, independently of their perceptions of fair allocations.

Theory and research on social dilemmas usually focus on determinants of coop-eration. In the present study, we investigated perceptions of allocations following the provision of a step-level public good. Fairness was assumed to play a role for these perceptions as well as the goal the group wants to attain, whether economic productivity, social concern, or harmony. It is argued that an allocation principle (e.g., equality) may be fair under one goal condition, a different principle (e.g., equity or need) under another goal condition. The results corroborated our line of reasoning. The group goal of economic productivity increased fairness of alloca-tions according to equity, and the group goal of social concern increased fairness of allocations according to equality and equal final outcomes. Self-interest had no effects on perceived fairness or allocation preferences. The salience of fairness and group goal reduced the influence of self-interest on allocation preferences.

In an experiment we investigate preferences for allocation of a public good among group members who contributed unequally in providing the public good. Inducing the group goal of productivity resulted in preferences for equitable allocations, whereas inducing the group goals of harmony and social concern resulted in preferences for equal final outcomes. The study makes a contribution by simultaneously treating provision and allocation of a public good, thus viewing these as related processes. Another contribution is that a new paradigm is introduced that bears closer resemblance to real life public good dilemmas than previous research paradigms do.