Boundary integration, work/family enrichment and life satisfaction among female nursing staff

Purpose This study aims to propose a model based on boundary theory to provide information about how boundary integration (BI) promotes life satisfaction (LS) among female nursing staff. For the prediction of this relationship, this study also captures the mediation effect of family-to-work enrichment (FWE), work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and job satisfaction (JS). Design/methodology/approach Descriptive statistics, correlation, structural equation modelling (SEM), Baron and Kenny approach, PROCESS Macro and Sobel test approaches were used on a sample of 724 nurses. Findings The results of the study confirm the significant effects of BI on LS of female nursing staff. Moreover, the mediating roles of FWE, WFE and JS are also confirmed. Practical implications Work–family BI is essential for the enhancement of LS among nursing staff. Increasing the BI level along with WFE and FWE provides foundation for JS and LS. Moreover, the study in hand provides significant implications for nursing management; importantly, this study explores BI as an important predictor of FWE, WFE and JS in addressing the LS among nurses. Originality/value Nurses’ WFE and FWE are determined through various factors. In distinguishing from past studies in the relevant field, this study explores BI as an important predictor of WFE and FWE in addressing the JS and LS among female nursing staff.

Boundary integration and innovative work behavior among nursing staff

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of boundary integration (BI) on innovative work behavior (IWB) of nursing staff. Furthermore, in order to understand the constructive role of BI, this study also examines the mediating role of work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and moderating role of co-worker and supervisor support.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 786 nurses and 144 doctors (nurse supervisors) through self-administered questionnaires from public sector hospitals in Pakistan. Descriptive statistics, correlation, Baron and Kenny approach (Causal steps approach), PROCESS Macro (Normal Test Theory) developed by Hayes and hierarchical regression approaches were used to analyze the collected data that provide several interesting results for the formulated hypotheses.FindingsResults indicated that BI among nursing staff is positively related to doctors’ rating of innovative behaviors. Moreover, WFE mediates the relationship of BI and IWB. Furthermore, the results also confirmed that the relationship between BI and IWB is stronger among those nurses who frequently received support from co-workers and supervisors.Originality/valueEmployees’ involvement in innovative work is of crucial importance for organization’s strength, especially in health care sector. Although researchers have identified various antecedents of nurses’ IWB, however, it is still unclear how BI influences IWB. Moreover, this study focuses on another important element of workplace support and argues that nurses who can successfully manage work and family matters through the integration of boundaries have greater opportunities to achieve enrichment and respond more effectively to demonstrate IWB.

A Cell-Based Smoothed XFEM for Fracture in Piezoelectric Materials

This paper presents a cell-based smoothed extended finite element method (CS-XFEM) to analyze fractures in piezoelectric materials. The method, which combines the cell-based smoothed finite element method (CS-FEM) and the extended finite element method (XFEM), shows advantages of both methods. The crack tip enrichment functions are specially derived to represent the characteristics of the displacement field and electric field around the crack tip in piezoelectric materials. With the help of the smoothing technique, integrating the singular derivatives of the crack tip enrichment functions is avoided by transforming interior integration into boundary integration. This is a significant advantage over XFEM. Numerical examples are presented to highlight the accuracy of the proposed CS-XFEM with the analytical solutions and the XFEM results.

The validity of Kirchhoff theory for scattering of elastic waves from rough surfaces

The Kirchhoff approximation (KA) for elastic wave scattering from two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) rough surfaces is critically examined using finite-element (FE) simulations capable of extracting highly accurate data while retaining a fine-scale rough surface. The FE approach efficiently couples a time domain FE solver with a boundary integration method to compute the scattered signals from specific realizations of rough surfaces. Multiple random rough surfaces whose profiles have Gaussian statistics are studied by both Kirchhoff and FE models and the results are compared; Monte Carlo simulations are used to assess the comparison statistically. The comparison focuses on the averaged peak amplitude of the scattered signals, as it is an important characteristic measured in experiments. Comparisons, in both two dimensions and three dimensions, determine the accuracy of Kirchhoff theory in terms of an empirically estimated parameter σ 2 /λ 0 ( σ is the RMS value, and λ 0 is the correlation length, of the roughness), being considered accurate when this is less than some upper bound c , ( σ 2 /λ 0 < c ). The incidence and scattering angles also play important roles in the validity of the Kirchhoff theory and it is found that for modest incidence angles of less than 30°, the accuracy of the KA is improved even when σ 2 /λ 0 > c . In addition, the evaluation results are compared using 3D isotropic rough surfaces and 2D surfaces with the same surface parameters.