Remote Working for Sustainability of Organization during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediator-Moderator Role of Social Support

Remote working became a widespread business practice during the COVID-19 pandemic as an organizational response to protect employees’ health and maintain business continuity. The aim of this paper is to reveal the role of social support in the relationship among NWHI, NHWI and loneliness, and work engagement and job performance. The study respondents were employees with a remote working status in Serbian companies, and a total of 226 valid surveys were collected. The PLS-SEM approach was deployed to test the hypothesized relationship between named variables. A standard bootstrapping procedure was used to reveal direct and indirect effects among latent variables. Results indicate a strong and positive direct association between social support and work engagement and job performance, while mediation and moderation of the role of social support were mostly confirmed but with some results opposite to what was expected. Social support was not able to buffer a negative home–work interaction and loneliness within remote working. The study offers insight into the role of social support and recommendations for managing the antecedents and consequences of remote working, with the aim to determine a sustainable model for extensive application, not only during the COVID-19 pandemic, but in regular times.

Workaholism and family interaction among nurses

This study aims to identify the prevalence of workaholism and work-family interaction, their relationship and their variation according sociodemographic and occupational characteristics among nurses. A quantitative, descriptive, correlational and transversal study was conducted with a sample of 839 Portuguese nurses. Regarding workaholism, 27% of workaholic nurses were identified, scoring a higher mean value for excessive work. For work-family interaction, the dimensions showing the highest mean values were the negative work-family interaction and the positive family-work interaction. The variables identified as significant predictors of workaholism were the work-family interaction (39%), occupational variables (10.6%) and sociodemographic variables (1.2%). Among the occupational and professional variables, the women, age equal or less than 37 years and perception of stressful work, were highlighted. The confirmation of workaholism in nurses, as well as its predictive variables are significantly important for professionals and organizations to better understand the impact of this phenomenon, particularly in mental health and to encourage the development of programmes aiming to promote health at the workplace.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Higher Education: Characterizing the Psychosocial Context of the Positive and Negative Affective States Using Classification and Regression Trees

Our aim is to analyze the extent to which the psychosocial aspects can characterize the affective states of the teachers, administrative staff, and undergraduate and postgraduate students during the quarantine. A questionnaire was answered by 1,328 people from the community of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Spain. The survey was partially designed ad hoc, collecting indicators related to sociodemographic variables, the impact of COVID on the subjects or in their personal context, the psychosocial context of coexistence and perceived social support, characteristics related to the physical context during the quarantine, and labor conditions. Additionally, it included two validated instruments: the Survey Work-Home Interaction–Nijmegen for Spanish Speaking Countries (SWING-SSC) validated in Spanish and PANAS, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Classification and Regression Trees (CART) were performed to identify which variables better characterize the participants' level of positive and negative affective states. Results according to groups showed that students are the ones who have suffered the most as a result of this situation (temporary employment regulation, higher scores in negative work-home and home-work interaction, lower scores in positive home-work interaction, and negative effects of teleworking). Additionally, they reported a higher mean score in interpersonal conflict and worse scores with regard to negative affective states. Based on sex, women were the ones whose environment was shown to be more frequently affected by the pandemic and who exhibited more negative effects of teleworking. In general terms, participants with the highest scores in negative affective states were those who perceived an increase in conflict and a high negative effect from work spilling over into their personal lives. On the contrary, participants with the highest levels of positive affective states were those with medium to low levels of negative home-work interaction, over 42.5 years old, and with medium to high levels of positive work-home interaction. Our results aim to help higher education to reflect on the need to adapt to this new reality, since the institutions that keep pace with evolving trends will be able to better attract, retain, and engage all the members of the university community in the years ahead.

Potential Herb–Drug Interactions in the Management of Age-Related Cognitive Dysfunction

Late-life mild cognitive impairment and dementia represent a significant burden on healthcare systems and a unique challenge to medicine due to the currently limited treatment options. Plant phytochemicals have been considered in alternative, or complementary, prevention and treatment strategies. Herbals are consumed as such, or as food supplements, whose consumption has recently increased. However, these products are not exempt from adverse effects and pharmacological interactions, presenting a special risk in aged, polymedicated individuals. Understanding pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions is warranted to avoid undesirable adverse drug reactions, which may result in unwanted side-effects or therapeutic failure. The present study reviews the potential interactions between selected bioactive compounds (170) used by seniors for cognitive enhancement and representative drugs of 10 pharmacotherapeutic classes commonly prescribed to the middle-aged adults, often multimorbid and polymedicated, to anticipate and prevent risks arising from their co-administration. A literature review was conducted to identify mutual targets affected (inhibition/induction/substrate), the frequency of which was taken as a measure of potential interaction. Although a limited number of drugs were studied, from this work, interaction with other drugs affecting the same targets may be anticipated and prevented, constituting a valuable tool for healthcare professionals in clinical practice.

The Gorontalo language at workplace: Its maintenance and native speakers’ attitudes

This study aims to describe the maintenance of Gorontalo language in workplace that carried out by Gorontalo speakers. Qualitatively, data collection was carried out by interview, observation, field notes. Furthermore, data analysis was performed by Spradley model (ethnography). Based on the research results it can be concluded that (1) in every scope of work it can be found that the use of Gorontalo language in work interaction among all employee, or between the employee and the customers that is able to fluently uses Gorontalo language, have a close relationship, the customers will open the conversation by Gorontalo Language; (2) The attitudes towards Gorontalo Language speakers who are actively used it in workplace include the positive attitudes and negative attitudes which influenced by the backgrounds of speakers; and (3) The factors that influence the retention of Gorontalo language can be classified into the factors from the outside of community which include a changes in the composition of multi-ethnic society, the exposure of global information and factors within the society which include a lack of public awareness due to a miss-understanding of the urgency on maintaining Gorontalo Language as Local pride.

THE STUDY ON GROUP WORK IMPLEMENTATION IN TEFL BY UKRAINIAN SCHOOL TEACHERS

The article reviles the potential of group work as an effective means for mastering EFL. This article aims to outline the definition of group work as methods of teaching notion, toanalyze the advantages of group work for learners and teachers on theoretical level and to contrast them with the results of the practical research on the group work experience inUkrainian school. The basic definition of group work is students working together with a number of other students rather in pairs or as a whole class. Numerous authors emphasize the advantages of group work as it makes learning more meaningful, namely, increase the time and opportunity to use the language and learners motivation; it provides positive affective climate and encourages a friendly relaxed learning environment. Despite the majority of theoretical works on the benefits and effectiveness of group work for EFL acquisition, our research reviles that teachers who work in Ukrainian schools still tend to implement traditional forms of whole class and individual work interaction types instead of group work. The received results logically prove that the prevailing number of teachers (63,5 %) of any experience level see no real benefits in harnessing group work in classroom interaction. They note more disadvantages than advantages in group work, such as noise and fall of discipline, difficulty in controlling and assessing the individual participation in the group work performance, difficulties in organizing and grouping learners. Altogether, the teachers tackle with the lack of methodology knowledgeon group work and experience due to the teacher-oriented approach dominating in teacher training higher schools in Ukraine.

Cooperative Governance of Complex Public-Private Partnership Program: Case Study of Characteristic Town Program

PPP program is characterized by great organizational complexity, complicated communication network, and high coordination cost, which lead governance problems to be more complex than usual construction projects. Investigating 49 stakeholders of the D characteristic town construction program, the author constructs the work interaction network and supervision network of characteristic town PPP program based on organizational relationship. Through the calculation and comparison of network parameters, the network problems were analyzed, and the governance improvement scheme was proposed. The results show that, during the construction phase of the PPP program, (1) the SPV is still the core stakeholders; (2) the PPP program supervison belongs to hierarchical supervision characteristics and (3) the government regulators and loan institutions have limited influences on the program but they can restrict the SPV by strengthening supervision with subprogram stakeholders.