The results confirm the hypotheses that Engagement and Vicarious Traumatization are primarily determined by organizational variables, and, particularly, by the level of job support.

BACKGROUND: Working in direct contact with the public may involve psycho-social hazards for employees who are frequently exposed to rude or verbally aggressive customers. Negative encounters may undermine employees' well-being and job performance, impairing the quality of the service provided with tangible costs for organizations. OBJECTIVE:The paper provides a systematic review of research on customer incivility and verbal aggression in service settings using the following framework 1) antecedents of customer misbehavior as reflected in worker perceptions, customer reasons and environmental factors; 2) maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies used by service providers in response to customer incivility and verbal aggression; 3) effects of customer incivility and verbal aggression on service providers' wellbeing and work-related outcomes; and 4) practical implications for the management. We present a model of the relationships between these four areas. METHODS: A systematic review was conducted using PsychINFO and Scopus. RESULTS: Fifty-three papers (20 pertaining to customer incivility and 33 pertaining to customer verbal aggression) were included. CONCLUSION: Both customer incivility and verbal aggression may impair employees' well-being and job outcomes. Current gaps, practical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

Emergency workers are exposed to chronic and acute emotionally demanding stressors. Fortunately, they have some important psychological resources that can buffer the negative effects deriving from the exposure to occupational stressors. In particular, job, organizational, and family support can protect rescuers against negative health effects, such as burnout and vicarious traumatization (VT). The aim of this study was to investigate the role of perceived social support as a protective factor against negative outcomes in a sample of Italian rescuers. Of the present sample (N ϭ 782), 70.3% were ambulance operators, mainly volunteers (65.9%). They filled in a paper-and-pencil questionnaire aimed at investigating VT, burnout, job support from colleagues and superiors, organizational support in terms of affective commitment, and family support. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses verified the influence exerted by affective commitment and social support on well-being dimensions. Results showed that affective commitment has the most significant influence on all burnout and VT dimensions, whereas family support has the weakest influence. Our findings confirm that affective commitment is an important coping resource that protects individuals against negative effects and that social support at work is associated with some dimensions of burnout and posttraumatic symptoms. The main result of the present study concerns the important role of affective commitment as a protective resource against negative psychological effects. Therefore, work environments organized in a way that employees can feel affectively committed to their organization may function as a buffer against negative outcomes, especially if it is associated with a strong social support from colleagues.

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Today’s increasingly global marketplace is resulting in more organizations sending employees to work outside their home countries as expatriates. Consequently, identifying factors influencing expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment at work and performance has become an increasingly important issue for both researchers and firms. Drawing on Kim et al. (2008), this study examines the critical elements to expatriate success, which are the relationships between cultural intelligence, cross-cultural adjustment at work, and assignment-specific performance. One-hundred and fifty-one expatriates working within the energy sector, who were mainly located in the Middle East completed questionnaires, investigating: cultural intelligence (Cultural Intelligence Scale), cross-cultural adjustment (Expatriate Adjustment Scale), performance (Expatriate Contextual/Managerial Performance Skills), cultural distance (Kogut and Singh’ index), length of staying in the host country and international work experience. Findings indicated that the four cultural intelligence components were directly and indirectly (through cross-cultural adjustment at work) associated with performance. The positive relationship between motivational cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment at work was stronger when cultural distance was low, when expatriates were at the beginning of a new international assignment, and when they had lower experience. Organizations can greatly benefit from hiring cross-culturally intelligent expatriates for international assignments, providing their employees with pre-departure training programs aimed at increasing cultural intelligence, and giving them organizational resources and logistical help to support them.