The dual‐career phenomenon has become increasingly prevalent worldwide. This lifestyle often generates stresses and strains, at home and at work, for couples juggling multiple demands, which can have negative consequences for organisations. While most empirical research into this lifestyle has been conducted in the United States and Britain, very little has been carried out in Australia. This particular study, based on data from an Australian sample of 121 lawyers and accountants, was therefore aimed at analysing the levels of stress, work‐family conflict and overload among dual‐career and single‐career couples. The results confirm that dual‐career couples experience higher levels of stress, work‐family conflict and overload than single‐career couples. To enhance labour productivity and organisational effectiveness, human resource managers therefore need to take account of the potential for dual‐career stress, overload and conflict, and respond flexibly to dual‐career employee status.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between two components of job burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) and organizational cynicism. Another aim of this research was to examine the role of moderating variables such as role conflict, work-family conflict, perceived fairness, and trust in coworkers on the relationship between burnout and organizational cynicism. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology was a survey-based quantitative method. Totally, 172 nurses in a Taiwanese hospital were surveyed, and 169 completed responses were obtained. The nurses filled out self-report surveys that measured their levels of burnout, organizational cynicism, and various other variables including demographic variables. Findings – The results indicate that several variables acted as moderators in the relationship between emotional exhaustion and organizational cynicism, and in the relationship between depersonalization and organizational cynicism. Trust in coworker, perceived fairness, and role conflict all were found to negatively influence the relationship between a burnout component and cynicism, whereas work-family conflict had a positive influence on the relationship between depersonalization and cynicism. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this research are that the study is cross-sectional in nature, and is based on a Taiwanese sample. Future research should aim to study these variables in a longitudinal fashion and in different contexts. Practical implications – The practical implications from this study include managers being able to harness various variables (such as perceived fairness and trust in coworkers) in order to reduce cynicism. Originality/value – The value of this study is that it connects burnout and organizational cynicism together. It also uncovers several moderating variables that influence the relationship between burnout and organizational cynicism. This is also one of the first studies that have obtained a positive effect of role conflict.

Rabinowitz and Hall (1977) suggested that the relationships between job involvement and personal situational characteristics and work outcomes are approximately equal in size. This study explored the portions of common variance shared with job involvement by combinations of personal and situational characteristics and outcome variables. Correlation and regression generally supported Rabinowitz and Hall's profile of the job-involved employee. Situational characteristics and outcome variables are each found to display comparable amounts of common variance with job involvement and considerably more than do personal characteristics.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of superleader behaviors in self‐managed work teams, on organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem.Design/methodology/approachData were collected on‐site over a period of three days from employees working in a non‐union paper mill located in a small rural community in the northwestern region of the USA. The survey was completed by 141 employees, representing a 9 per cent response rate. Self‐leadership, organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem were all measured using different instruments.FindingsThe results indicated that teams groups that were led by a supervisor who exhibited the characteristics of a superleader had higher levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction, and organization self‐esteem.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on a small sample and relied on self‐report data, thereby allowing for the possibility of same source bias. However, this is a common problem with cross‐sectional designs.Practical implicationsLeading in a self‐managed work team environment requires a unique approach to leadership. The results of this study illustrated that superleader behaviors result in some beneficial outcomes for organizations including enhanced levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem. It behoves organizations to encourage, through training programs, the development of these behaviors.

The findings on burnout that are almost universally from research in service settings are applied to an industrial setting with self-managed work teams. Researchers formulated several hypotheses on the basis of this literature. These hypotheses were then used to develop a structural (causal) model that was tested and refined using LISREL 8. Data were collected from 320 employees concerning perceptions of several job and organization conditions, as well as the three components of burnout. Results indicated that role conflict contributed to emotional exhaustion, and participation in work teams diminished it. Job ambiguity, low co-worker support, and low job ability contributed to feelings of low personal accomplishment. These results were consistent with previous findings. When insufficient time to complete a job was removed from the workload measures, workload actually diminished burnout, a finding opposite from previous research. Other organization factors had no significant impact on burnout in this setting.