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Objectives The study aimed to describe and compare nurses’ perceptions of role conflict by professional designation [registered nurse (RN) vs registered practical nurse (RPN)] in three primary areas of practice (emergency department, medical unit, and surgical unit). Methods This analysis used data (n = 1,981) from a large cross-sectional survey of a random sample of RNs and RPNs working as staff nurses in acute care hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Role conflict was measured by the Role Conflict Scale. Results A total of 1,981 participants (RN = 1,427, RPN = 554) met this study’s eligibility criteria and provided complete data. In general, RN and RPN mean total scale scores on role conflict hovered around the scale’s mid-point (2.72 to 3.22); however, RNs reported a higher mean score than RPNs in the emergency department (3.22 vs. 2.81), medical unit (2.95 vs 2.81) and surgical unit (2.90 vs 2.72). Where statistically significant differences were found, the effect sizes were negligible to medium in magnitude with the largest differences noted between RNs and RPNs working in the emergency department. Conclusions The results suggest the need to implement strategies that diminish role conflict for both RNs and RPNs.

This article examines what vice-principals in Singapore experience as constraints to their leadership practice, and how they deal with these constraints, cognisant that role misalignment for vice-principals presents barriers to schools achieving optimal effectiveness. This qualitative study seeks to hear the voices of vice-principals, to uncover the contextual richness of their experiences through interviews with 28 vice-principals. Coding involved a mix of codes from the literature and from the interviews, with member checking of the findings. Vice-principals in Singapore face two main constraints: role ambiguity and role conflicts. These are mainly a structural issue, given the dual expectations of vice-principals to support their principals and to lead. The problems are heightened when there are clashes of values, with vice-principals conflicted between two sources of authority: administrative and professional. Framing the constraints faced by vice-principals under role ambiguity and role conflicts raises these constraints to a theoretical and organisational level. The study proposes a link between the concepts of role ambiguity and role boundaries and illustrates how role ambiguity and conflicts can be disempowering. However, the study also shows that ambiguity need not always be a constraint but can be positive under some conditions.

This study develops an understanding of the relationships among personal accomplishment, resilience, and teaching multiple school subjects role conflict (TMSS-RC) among Irish post-primary, multi-subject teachers. A theoretically informed conceptual framework was developed to explain the relationships among personal accomplishment, resilience, and the sub-domains of TMSS-RC: status conflict, schedule conflict, and energy expenditure. Participants included 259 post-primary teachers across Ireland who were responsible for teaching physical education and at least one other school subject concurrently. Participants completed a 46-item, cross-sectional survey consisting of a demographics questionnaire, the TMSS-RC scale, the personal accomplishment subscale from the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Educators Survey, and the 10-item version of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale. Concurrent confirmatory factor analysis was first used to confirm the psychometric quality of the hypothesised factor structure. Results indicated that the hypothesised model was a good fit for the data. Structural equation modelling was then used to examine and verify the hypothesised relationships of the conceptual model. Results supported the model with mediation, which showed good model fit: C3(129) = 174.97, p = 0.004, χ 2/df = 1.36; root mean square error of approximation = 0.044 (90% confidence interval = 0.031, 0.057; p = 0.770), standardised root mean square residual = 0.058; non-normed fit index = 0.974; comparitive-fit index (CFI) = 0.978. Collectively, results indicate that as teachers’ levels of personal accomplishment and resilience increase, their experiences of TMSS-RC decrease. This suggests that stress as a result of teaching multiple school subjects concurrently can be reduced with an increase in teachers’ perceived levels of personal accomplishment and resiliency.

This article explores the approaches of identity construction used by Chinese daughters while negotiating the successor–leader role within family businesses. A qualitative interpretivist approach was adopted to understand daughter views on gender, family business leadership and succession, as well as the approaches adopted to negotiate the role of female successor/leader in the Chinese family business. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with both actual and potential female successors. Three approaches of identity construction emerged based on the degree of conformity to traditional gender roles and Confucian family values: first, to abide by conventional gender expectations and perceive themselves as a temporary leader; second, to act as the ‘second leader’ and remain involved in decision making and third, to challenge conventional gender roles and strive to be an independent leader. This article contributes to debates on women in family business and gendered identity construction of daughters in family business in the Chinese context.

Previous research suggests high school counselors are not living up to their potential as social/emotional, academic, and postsecondary counselors. This article addresses this concern by studying how schools and districts utilize counselors. Through interviews and observations of high school counselors, administrators, and counselor educators in an urban midwestern community, I find that counselors suffer from role ambiguity and role conflict due to lack of a clear job description, overlap with similar professions, supervision by noncounseling administrators, inadequate forms of performance evaluation, and conflict between their roles as counselors and educators. This conflict leads to poor boundaries at work, with counselors receiving an overwhelming amount of noncounseling duties that reduce their time with students. High school counselors have the potential to improve student social and academic outcomes, but these obstacles of role ambiguity and role conflict reduce them to school managers rather than master’s-level trained educators with a mental health background.

Older adults who experience challenges related to mental health are unlikely to seek professional help. The voices of older adults who have navigated through mental health issues and systems of care to arrive at psychological treatment are less well understood. We conducted individual interviews with 15 adults aged 61 to 86 who sought psychological treatment. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using narrative methods. We identified several main storylines that describe the meaning-making and treatment-seeking journeys of older adults: resistance to being labeled with mental health problems (telling stories of resistance, defining mental health issues in mysterious and uncontrollable terms, and experiencing internal role conflict); muddling through the help-seeking process (manifestations of chaos and system-level barriers); and emotional reactions to psychological treatment (hope, fear, and mistrust). Findings add to the literature base in the area of narrative gerontology, and highlight the complex experiences that older adults face when seeking psychological treatment.

This article theorises how, why and with what outcomes successors manage the paradox of control and autonomy emerging as role conflict through emotion management strategies; thus, it contributes to theory building on paradox and emotion management in family business. Drawing on 20 interpretive case studies of French family businesses operating in wide-ranging industries, we highlight emotional ambivalence towards the father/incumbent, the mother, siblings and cousins, and leadership and document their prevalence in enmeshed family businesses. We show that when motivated by self-conformity and self-protection motives, successors accept the incumbent’s control and manage ambivalent emotions through defensive strategies, such as avoidance or compromise, which contributes to the pursuit of successor legitimacy. We reveal that during successor installation, successors might reject the incumbent’s control and instead promote personal autonomy by managing ambivalent emotions through confrontational strategies, such as hyperbolised emotional reactions, emotional display of negative emotions or holism, which contributes to successor emancipation.

The current study explores role retreatism in secondary social studies teachers who coach athletics. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which social studies teacher-coaches retreat towards coaching and reasons for such prioritization. A case study relying primarily on interview and document data was conducted which included three secondary social studies teachers who coach football in the southeastern United States. Results indicate that participants prioritized coaching over teaching to cope with role conflict. The study further highlights the unequal rewards system in American schools, which promotes athletics over academics.

As term-time employment for college students has rapidly increased worldwide, the topic of multiple role engagement among employed students has attracted much research attention. Nevertheless, how paid employment might affect student outcomes remains unknown. With this in mind, we provide a critical synthesis of the school-work-life (SWL) interface literature that focuses on undergraduate students who engage in term-time employment because the SWL interface, when considered as a psychological experience emerging from multiple role engagement, may shed light on the complex relationship between engagement in multiple roles and outcomes. Supporting the notion that the SWL interface is an underlying mechanism in the relationship between the multiple role engagement and outcomes, our review suggests that (a) demands and resources in each domain relate to positive/negative inter-role interface and (b) positive/negative inter-role interface predicts various outcomes in working undergraduates. We conclude with practical implications for multiple stakeholders and directions for future research.

Preservice teachers enter university with a range of personally held beliefs related to inclusive education and themselves as educators. This article reports on one case study from a larger qualitative research project. The study examined a preservice teacher’s perceptions of herself as an inclusive educator as she approached the final year of her undergraduate degree. Data included a metaphorical representation of being an inclusive educator, and two semi-structured interviews held 6 months apart. The use of collage and a structured written response completed the data set. Evelein and Korthagen’s model of core reflection and Voice-Centred Relational Method were used to analyze the data. Analysis exposed the dissonance between the layers that separate the preservice teacher’s core qualities and the environment. Data are presented using I-poems and discussed using the emerging themes. The consequences for her emerging identity as an inclusive educator and sense of belonging in the profession are discussed.

This article explores the approaches of identity construction used by Chinese daughters while negotiating the successor–leader role within family businesses. A qualitative interpretivist approach was adopted to understand daughter views on gender, family business leadership and succession, as well as the approaches adopted to negotiate the role of female successor/leader in the Chinese family business. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with both actual and potential female successors. Three approaches of identity construction emerged based on the degree of conformity to traditional gender roles and Confucian family values: first, to abide by conventional gender expectations and perceive themselves as a temporary leader; second, to act as the ‘second leader’ and remain involved in decision making and third, to challenge conventional gender roles and strive to be an independent leader. This article contributes to debates on women in family business and gendered identity construction of daughters in family business in the Chinese context.

This article explores the scope conditions of national role conceptions as reference points for foreign policy decision making during crises. It aims to contribute to a refined perspective of the agency of new states undergoing socialization processes in relations with significant others. Drawing on a primary material consisting of interviews with Georgian and US officials, the article analyzes the significance of Georgia’s role conceptions in the country’s relations with the USA in relation to two major crises: the 2007 riots in Tbilisi and the 2008 war with Russia. The article posits that crises provide situational circumstances where the requirements of appropriate behavior associated with role expectations may enter into conflict with the demands of the immediate situation. In order to resolve ensuing role conflicts, actors face the need to both rationalize role expectations, and to compensate for departures from them. In turn, these strategies relate to the possibility for change and stability in role conceptions, and by extension their enactment in foreign policy. The analysis of the Georgian government’s management of the two crises demonstrates actions that implied both rationalization and compensation, aiming to retain the credibility of its existing role conceptions in the eyes of its US counterparts.

Experiences of family members are often overlooked in social research on gender transitions. The current article aims to address this gap by considering the experiences of partners during a gender transition, approaching this topic through role theory and the concepts of role ambiguity and role conflict. Seventeen partners and former partners were interviewed. First, we distinguished three different roles of partners during the transition: the co-parental role, the ally role and the romantic partner role. We found that ambiguity was most apparent for the romantic partner role. Second, we observed that the expectations which accompany these different roles often contradict each other during gender transition. This leads to role conflict. We discuss how this role conflict may influence the acceptance and adaptation process of the partner and steer certain relationship outcomes. In the discussion, we construct three types of adaptation processes of partners.

Using a cross-sectional survey, we collected data from program coordinators at UCEA-member institutions to understand the various roles, time investments, and cost commitments associated with program coordination, including incentives institutions provide (or do not provide) for assuming such responsibilities. We seek to improve our understanding of the work and role(s) program coordinators play, the time commitments they report, and the types of incentives provided for assuming the role of program coordination of educational leadership programs. Understanding these roles help us understand how best to support these leaders in administering quality preparation programs.

While numerous studies have examined the benefits of customer participation (CP), understanding of the dark side of involving customers in service firms’ processes is limited. This study proposes that the changing role of customers who actively participate in service co-development can cause role stress and negative feelings, which may, in turn, reduce customer satisfaction and the perceived value of participation. We develop and test a comprehensive role theory–based framework for CP-role stress. Using a video-based experiment, behavioral lab experiment, and field study, we find that greater CP leads to heightened role stress including role conflict, role overload, and role ambiguity. These adverse effects occur contingent on customers’ prior participation experience and firm-provided support. Furthermore, role stress effects vary across service co-development types depending on (a) the scope of the task (i.e., open task, closed task) and (b) the beneficiary of participation (i.e., customer, general market). Specifically, adverse effects are stronger for open than for closed tasks, and they also tend to be stronger when the beneficiary is the general market rather than the individual customer. These findings emphasize the need for more cross-context theorizing in CP research. Managers should consider these adverse effects and implement measures that reduce role stress.

There is a need to better understand the reality of enacting dual teaching positions, or roles, within a school. Therefore, role conflict experienced by teachers who are tasked with concurrently teaching multiple subjects warrants further understanding. For example, teachers responsible for teaching physical education (PE) and another school subject(s). There is, however, currently no published instrument for measuring role conflict of this nature. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Teaching Multiple School Subjects Role Conflict Scale, an instrument to measure interrole conflict between the roles of teaching PE and another school subject(s). Research aims included: (a) developing the instrument; (b) identifying a factor structure for the instrument using exploratory factor analysis; (c) confirming the factor structure through confirmatory factor analysis; and (d) examining the correlation between the newly validated measure and conceptually similar (i.e. role stress) and dissimilar (i.e. resilience) constructs. Exploratory factor analysis identified a stable three-factor, nine-item solution, including schedule conflict, energy expenditure conflict, and status conflict. Confirmatory factor analysis supported this solution, χ2(24) = 47.16, p < 0.001, non-normed fit index = 0.950, comparative fit index = 0.967, standardized root mean square residual = 0.069, and root mean square error of approximation = 0.069. The newly validated scale correlated appropriately with conceptually similar and dissimilar constructs.

To date, little research has been conducted on subject leadership by primary and/or junior secondary school heads of department (HODs). Unlike their senior secondary school counterparts, South African science HODs have the more complex task of leading in the multidisciplinary context of natural sciences (NS 1 ). Such leadership comes in addition to the complications of role ambiguity, limited time and authority that are inherent in the HOD position. Using interviews and 360° multi-rater by four teachers and subject meeting observations, data were transcribed and categorised into themes that describe the instructional leadership practices of three NS HODs in South Africa. This paper is part of a more comprehensive PhD study. It suggests that providing leadership for NS teaching is more complex in practice than has been reported to date. In the context of increasing focus on accountability and national testing, the unintended consequence has been the neglect of the junior secondary NS teachers by the HODs. Furthermore, the data suggest that the HODs tend to limit their attention to areas of their own specialisation. The paper concludes with a conceptual framework that provides guidance for improving instructional leadership by the HODs in such multidisciplinary contexts, especially for the junior secondary school levels. It also recommends the restructuring of the conglomerate departments to make them more effective.

Functional diversity in healthcare teams—where members from different healthcare professions work together—is often advocated as the key to achieving quality patient outcomes. However, although functionally diverse teams promise much, they do not always deliver on that promise. Based on the informational diversity perspective, we argue that functional diversity increases role conflict and is an important factor that can help to explain why functional diversity does not always lead to effective team performance. We also argue that team processes play an important role in moderating the effect of functional diversity on role conflict and that depending on how functionally diverse healthcare teams are, certain team processes are more important than others for reducing role conflict thereby leading to improved team performance. We contrast two specific team processes (interpersonal conflict management and back up and helping) and argue for their relative importance depending on the level of functional diversity in healthcare teams. Data from 75 hospital teams support our differential predictions that interpersonal conflict management is a particularly important team process for reducing role conflict and improving team performance for teams with high functional diversity, whereas for teams with low functional diversity, back up and helping is a more important team process. These results have important implications for the management of functionally diverse healthcare teams. By identifying the relative importance of team processes, these results provide evidence for investing in team processes that enable healthcare teams to reap the rewards of functional diversity.

This qualitative study explores the career–life experiences of foreign-born immigrant women pursuing undergraduate degrees. Two conceptual frameworks guided this study: life role salience and systems theory framework. We interviewed 18 women studying at a regional comprehensive university in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Two categories emerged from our analysis, which used constructivist grounded theory methods: (a) managing multiple roles, expectations, and options and (b) mediating the contexts that influence career–life decisions. Each category is organized by two subcategories. Our findings led to two theoretical propositions as well as suggestions for career development practitioners and implications for practice, policy, and research.

This study examines the extent to which emotional labor and role stressors (such as role conflict and ambiguity) required of police officers contribute to police officer burnout. In particular, it is hypothesized that these aspects of police work cause officers to experience emotional dissonance, thereby leading to burnout. To test these hypotheses, we conduct mediation analyses using survey data from 466 police officers in Seoul, South Korea. Overall, emotional labor, role stressors, and emotional dissonance are related to greater police officer burnout. In addition, there were several significant indirect effects between emotional labor, role stressors, and burnout, via emotional dissonance.

Inspired by real-life events, this case describes the start of a seemingly solid working relationship between two elementary campus administrators and its demise as the result of inadequate communication and distrust. Initially, these two leaders benefit from differing supervision styles, but these differences eventually lead to increased tension and conflict between them. The assistant principal (AP) attempts to maintain a unified administrative front despite disagreement with the principal’s leadership style and decisions. Once the principal suspects the AP is undermining her authority, their relationship quickly deteriorates and the AP faces losing his job.

The researchers of this study used a mixed-methods approach to understand issues of rural special education teacher burnout. Results of survey responses ( n = 64) and follow-up focus group interviews ( n = 12) from rural special education teachers indicated several factors contributing to stress and burnout. Teachers noted that lack of clarity in their roles, too many facets to the roles, emotional exhaustion, and lack of accomplishment contributed to their perceptions. Good working relationships with colleagues and administrators, building relationships with students, and a high level of self-advocacy were noted as helping to maintain mental health and a work–life balance. Possible steps to alleviate risk factors of rural special education teacher burnout are discussed.

Isolation has affected the quality of the work experience for employees in education for decades. This study explores the role that isolation plays in impacting the quality of the work experience among new principals. Building on recent studies, the analysis tests whether isolation serves as a mediator in the relationship between factors that are known to affect the work experience of principals (social support; role ambiguity, role overload; administrative experience; and participation in a structured coaching relationship), as independent variables, and persistence of new principals. We find some support for this mediating effect, and support for the role of isolation as a predictor of persistence.

This case study is a combination of real-life events that describe the complexity of dual roles within a small school. The administrators in this case have to determine the consequences in response to a student’s misbehavior, who happens to be the godchild of the superintendent and the daughter of a middle school principal. The child’s high school principal has to choose between following policy guidelines and winning a basketball championship.

This paper seeks to understand the peculiarity of the Trudeau government’s decision to withdraw Canadian fighter jets from Iraq and Syria. Most studies have focused on electoral turnover to account for early withdrawal from coalition operations. Yet no study offers a plausible explanation for why a centrist challenger, such as Trudeau, favoured early withdrawal despite public support and alliance pressure for continued involvement, and committed when in power to a bolder and riskier mission while withdrawing valued military assets from coalition operations. Building on foreign policy role theory, we argue that role conflict best explains the particularity of the Trudeau government’s withdrawal decision. In the wake of the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party of Canada witnessed an intra-party conflict over which role to perform between that of a faithful ally and a good international citizen. The party leader finally proposed a compromise mission making Canada more involved on the frontlines.

This qualitative study examines the work, family, and study experiences of Portuguese professional women in two different career stages: early career and mid-career. Using semi-structured interviews with a sample of 22 working mothers enrolled in a master’s degree, this study explores their experiences of combining the roles of mother, worker and student and the role of support for a successful integration of work–family and school. Support from peers was found to be a critical factor for successfully integrating work–family and school responsibilities. Differences in the use of partner and family support were found between early and mid-career women. Lack of or limited support from the workplace was a barrier that emerged in both groups.

This study examines how employee customer and selling orientations, and their interaction, impact frontline employees’ (FLEs) pursuit of service and sales-related performance outcomes. Applying a job demands-resources lens, we advance a model that explores service-sales ambidexterity at the individual level. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis are used to assess how varying levels of customer and selling orientation relate to FLE outcomes. Our findings indicate that commitment to service quality and sales performance are highest when employees are singularly focused on one or the other. However, when required to be ambidextrous—that is, when employees must maintain a dual focus—these outcomes begin to suffer as employees are unclear of their role in the organization. While ambidextrous employees experience role conflict, they are also more likely to use creativity in their selling activities. These positive and negative consequences of ambidexterity underscore both the potential risks and rewards of a dual orientation on the front line.

Project-based organizations in the film industry usually have a dual-leadership structure, based on a division of tasks between the dual leaders – the director and the producer – in which the former is predominantly responsible for the artistic and the latter for the commercial aspects of the film. These organizations also have a role hierarchically below and between the dual leaders: the 1st assistant director. This organizational constellation is likely to lead to role conflict and role ambiguity experienced by the person occupying that particular role. Although prior studies found negative effects of role conflict and role ambiguity, this study shows they can also have beneficial effects because they create space for defining the role expansively that, in turn, can be facilitated by the dual leaders defining their own roles more narrowly. In a more general sense, this study also shows the usefulness of analyzing the antecedents and consequences of roles, role definition, and role crafting in connection to the behavior of occupants of adjacent roles.

Journalists identify with a medium because it aligns with their interests and talents, and they may resist tasks incongruent with their perceived creative strengths. Occupational conflict arises when one’s personality does not align with expected work tasks within a role according to Holland’s theory of vocational choice. We carried out a quantitative survey of aspiring print and broadcast journalists to investigate whether they differed in personality traits (i.e., extraversion, conscientiousness, life values, and journalism degree motivations). Results show broadcast journalism students perceived themselves as more extreme on many measures including extraversion, conscientiousness, and certain life values. Broadcast students were also more likely to choose journalism as a degree for social prestige, sports, reporting, and photography reasons, whereas print students were more likely to choose writing as their primary motivation.

In England, further education college and sixth form college governing bodies are required to appoint a clerk to administer and advise on governing procedure and practice. In this article we report research which aimed to understand and theorise about the role and the associated responsibilities. We analysed the relevant literatures, carried out a national survey of clerks and held seven regional focus group meetings. The role in relation to board matters is significant in institutionalising the governing body and thereby promoting legitimate governance. The clerk’s practices entail communicating the requirements of second-order governance which frame the everyday actions of first-order governance. The context for the role is potentially highly dynamic and clerks’ accountabilities to their boards can be complex. Clerks may have within-college governance responsibilities where their work may be similar to that of a company secretary. These responsibilities can expose clerks to role conflict and complicate accountability relationships, but can also bring benefits to their work with the board. The role, as experienced by clerks, is accorded insufficient status and under-valued, which can affect their authority. We conclude that a role promoting legitimate governance in the English further education sector and in other educational settings is crucial.

This study examines work-family role conflict and the factors predicting it, with a sample of 173 professional women in engineering and information technology (IT) firms, including 2 hospitals—1 public and 1 private. Our findings show no significant difference in the level of work-family role conflict encountered by women across medicine, engineering, and IT, whereas hours of work, family responsibilities, job demand, and work role overload were significantly correlated with work-family role conflict. Multiple linear regression analysis indicates that only work role overload, family responsibilities, and hours of work significantly predicted 45.9% of work-family role conflict. This implies that working women are burdened by work demands, which invariably affects the work-family role conflict they experience and leads to deterioration of their occupational health. It is suggested that employers should create a flexible work schedule and establish family-friendly policies in the workplace to promote a healthy work-life balance for women in science careers.

The main goal of the present study was to examine gender differences in the variables that explain the experience of role conflict and well-being among Jewish working mothers versus working fathers in Israel ( n = 611). The unique contribution of the study lies in its integrative approach to examining the experience of two types of role conflict: work interferes with family (WIF) and family interferes with work (FIW). The explanatory variables included sense of overload, perceived social support, and gender role ideology. The findings revealed that for women, both FIW and WIF conflict correlated negatively with well-being, whereas for men, a negative correlation with well-being was found only in the case of FIW conflict. Contrary to expectations, social support contributed more to mitigating negative affect among men than among women. On the whole, the findings highlight the changes that men have experienced in the work–family system.

Conflict occurring between the roles of work and family has been heavily researched. Recently, however, research has been branching out to study roles beyond work and family. For example, a few researchers have investigated conflict that occurs between the roles of work and school. However, these studies have focused mainly on school and personal outcomes. As such, the present study seeks to contribute to the literature on work–school conflict in two main ways. First, we investigate the relationship between work–school conflict and job outcome variables. Next, we seek to understand the mediating mechanism through which work–school conflict affects job outcomes. Participants in this study were 304 students who completed a survey regarding their attitudes toward work and school. Results were largely supportive of the hypotheses predicting that work–school conflict predicted work outcomes and that burnout mediated these outcomes. Implications for organizations and universities are discussed.

Increases in family homelessness have led several states to use hotels and motels as shelters. Except for investigations into “welfare hotels” of the 1980s, research on this practice is largely nonexistent. This study explored the experience of living in an emergency assistance hotel through in-depth interviews with 10 homeless mothers, triangulated with proximity analyses of the walking distance and public transit time between emergency assistance hotels in Massachusetts (n = 49) and 6 basic need types. Four themes emerged from interviews: living in limbo, profound isolation, role conflict, and immense difficulty meeting basic needs—which proximity analyses further illustrated. Findings suggest the need for systems to consider homeless families' mobility barriers and assess the built environment around hotels used to shelter families.

Based on theory regarding the dynamics of organizational double binds, hypotheses were developed about interactive effects of role conflict, role ambiguity, and coping on psychological exhaustion. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 948 civil servants employed by a government administration in Germany. The sample included 250 (26.4%) women ( M age = 43.6 year, SD = 8.3) and average organizational tenure was 17.1 year ( SD = 10.0). Moderated multiple regression supported the two hypothesized three-way interactions. Under conditions of high role conflict and high role ambiguity, exhaustion was lower in workers reporting high control coping than in workers reporting low control coping. Under conditions of high role conflict and high role ambiguity, worker exhaustion was more pronounced when support coping was high than when it was low. Problem-focused control coping seems crucial to maintain mental health in dealing with contradictory and unclear work role expectations. Emotion-focused support coping appears symptomatic of prolonged involvement in psychologically dysfunctional work situations that cannot otherwise be addressed. Implications are discussed in the context of growing awareness of the contradictory demands organizations impose on employees.

This article explores the experiences of a small group of Nairobi women caring for a family cancer patient at home. On the basis of literature on women as caregivers in Africa, and on other literature more broadly, it was anticipated that issues around generational roles, gender and women’s cultural role would be relevant. Seven women participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews, while thirteen women participated in four mini focus groups. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings underscore the socio-cultural complexities of caregiving as a basis for evidence-based culturally appropriate structures to support family caregivers.

A tenured respected principal learns that supervisory relationships with staff are only one side of the leadership coin. The other side turns up when a new assistant superintendent is assigned as his supervisor. Problems are imminent when the supervisor seems ready to usurp the principal’s traditional decision-making authority. The principal, as the subordinate in this scenario, ponders the role of loyalty and team play versus the political implications of supervisory conflict and pressure from a parent interest group. Questions guide current and aspiring principals to reflect and consider the facets of establishing a relationship with a new supervisor and resolving practice-related conflicts. Activities are designed for reflecting on the pitfalls and possibilities open to a principal under pressure from the supervisor, band parents, reallocated resources, and his own struggle with fair and appropriate treatment of a valued teacher he has known throughout his high school career.

This study examines the joint influences of work exhaustion, job demands (red tape, role conflict, work overload), and public service motivation on street-level bureaucrats’ turnover intention. Based on a survey of 4974 Korean street-level bureaucrats, the study examines the potential mediating role of work exhaustion and complex moderating role of public service motivation in determining street-level bureaucrats’ turnover intention. In line with previous research, we find that job demands have both direct and indirect associations with street-level bureaucrats’ turnover intention through work exhaustion. However, public service motivation was found to reduce the employees’ turnover intention in two different ways. First, public service motivation was found to have a direct negative association with turnover intention. In addition, it was also found to mitigate the positive associations between job demands and work exhaustion, and between job demands and turnover intention.Points for practitionersThe findings of the current study provide several practical implications for public managers. First of all, it suggests that imbuing public sector values through formal and informal training is important. Second, it provides some clues for local government managers to reduce street-level bureaucrats’ work exhaustion and turnover intention. For example, the problem of work overload for street-level bureaucrats could be reduced by reassigning work responsibilities according to workload analyses for given jobs.

One third of undergraduate students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities are considered nontraditional as defined by the single criterion of being aged 25 years and older. Nontraditional students have significantly lower graduation rates than traditional students. Using a role theory perspective this mixed-methods study examines the factors influencing persistence among a sample of 494 nontraditional men and women undergraduates attending a large public university in the southeastern United States. In this study, persistence rates did not differ between men and women although the factors influencing persistence did. Grade point average and confidence in graduating positively influenced persistence for both men and women. Women enrolled part-time were more likely to persist than those enrolled full-time. Although interrole conflict leads many women to consider withdrawing from school, most do not. Instead they exhibit a will to persist that enables them to overcome obstacles and ultimately graduate.

Adult educators are often part-time workers or volunteers and, as such, they must simultaneously negotiate multiple professional identities. This negotiation process may trigger conflict among professional identities, which can provide an opportunity for transformational learning. In this case study, the authors explore this conflict and learning through interviews with five female adult secondary educators. The authors use thematic analysis and metaphor analysis to explore participants’ narratives of professional identity. Each participant narrates her unique professional situation with what the authors call metaphorical improvisation, creating new metaphors or using old metaphors in new ways. Moreover, all participants use metaphors of space and boundaries to narrate themselves as providing educational “access” for their students.

The changing landscape in Higher Education has made it more difficult for less experienced academics to find persons willing and able to invest in, and support their professional development. Mentoring and coaching provide psychosocial assistance in the work space, which assists mentees to deal more effectively with role ambiguity, role conflict and a perceived uncertain environment. This paper presents a single case study of two academics at a university in Jamaica. Using minutes collected from 19 meetings over nine months, the paper discusses the processes and outcomes of an academic mentoring/coaching relationship on the professional development of a faculty member. The main findings indicated that the mentee was positively impacted by opportunities related to career advancement, expanded thinking, scholarly confidence, facilitation of a collaborative culture, and the importance of goal setting in academia. Based on these positive impacts, the mentor and mentee theorize that mentoring is an important activity that should be facilitated in higher education through structures peculiar to each unique context.

Correctional facility staff are subject to an organizational environment that often causes health problems. This article explores variation in correctional officers’ psychosocial health, including assessments of burnout syndrome, job satisfaction, work–family life harmony, role ambiguity, and role conflict. In all, 536 Peruvian correctional officers, 10% of the nation’s correctional employees, were administered psychological tests to measure the aforementioned variables and the impact of a length of work experience variable. Findings confirm a relationship between occupational health and length of work experience. The article offers future directions for research and suggested programs to promote corrections officer health.

This study examines the role of workplace risk factors associated with stress, social availability, and policy enforcement in explaining the severity of alcohol misuse among truck and bus drivers. Using a sample of 227 commercial (i.e., bus and truck) drivers drawn randomly from the employees of eight Israeli transportation enterprises, findings indicate that less than 6% of drivers engage in hazardous drinking, with a far smaller proportion engaging in more risky forms of misuse (i.e., harmful or dependent drinking). Key work-related factors associated with the severity of drivers’ alcohol misuse include the perception of permissive coworker drinking norms, role conflict, and supervisory abuse. Consistent with tension relief models of alcohol misuse, felt strain mediated the association between driver stressors and the severity of alcohol misuse. Perceptions of coworker drinking norms moderated the associations between stressors and supervisory monitoring (on one hand) and alcohol misuse (on the other). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Among the many challenges confronting the United States and its allies in Afghanistan were cohesion and communication problems in state-building programs. Merging role theory and bureaucratic politics approaches, this article argues that US Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), the composite groups charged with implementing these programs, suffered from incompatibilities between sectors of government, among which the military was dominant. US PRTs were affected by role conflict, resulting from varying and often competing organizational cultures with divergent role conceptions.

This case examines how school leaders manage the increased demands of a new state-mandated teacher evaluation process. Subject to negotiations, districts and their local teacher unions can allow for teachers to be credentialed and serve as evaluators within their own schools. The challenge is examined through both the opportunity costs of this new evaluation system and the cultural capacities of the administrators and teachers to foster trust and professionalism in a unionized educational environment.

The experience of headteacher socialization has been described as challenging and often traumatic for new headteachers. The research reported in this article provides a theoretical explanation of that experience by analysing the socialization of new primary school headteachers in England from a role boundary perspective. The role boundary is the delineation between a set of practices – a role-as-practice – which are commensurate with a role-as-position and those practices that are not. Six newly appointed primary school headteachers were interviewed periodically during their first three years in post to explore their experiences. A seventh newly appointed headteacher kept a written log of his experiences during that period. From the data, 22 narratives of critical socializing incidents were developed and interpreted from a role boundary perspective. During headteacher socialization, the new headteacher and those in the school and in its wider context seek to establish and position their respective role boundaries. Role boundary interactions have the purpose of establishing the legitimacy of practices and may be immediate; intense; lead to conflict and have a high affective content. The research confirms the role boundary concept as a theoretical and methodological tool of heuristic and analytical value in understanding and explaining headteacher socialization.

This study considers how employees’ tenacity might enhance their propensity to engage in knowledge exchange with organizational peers, as well as how the positive tenacity–knowledge exchange relationship is invigorated by two types of role conflict: within-work and between work and family. Using data from a large Mexican organization in the logistics sector, this study shows that tenacity increases knowledge exchange, and this effect is stronger at higher levels of within-work and work–family role conflict. The invigorating role of within-work role conflict is particularly salient when work–family role conflict is high. These findings inform organizations that the application of personal energy to knowledge-enhancing activities is particularly useful when employees encounter severe workplace adversity because of conflicting role demands.

This study aimed to examine the contribution of multiple roles to explaining home–work conflict and sense of meaning in life (MIL) among a sample of 616 Israeli working parents. A distinction between three types of multiple roles was made on the basis of the extent of the participants’ role satisfaction, that is, satisfying roles (high role satisfaction), unsatisfying roles (low role satisfaction), and neutral roles (neutral role satisfaction). Satisfying roles contributed both directly and indirectly to the participants’ sense of MIL. Neutral roles contributed to intensifying role conflict and had an indirect impact on MIL. Moreover, the contribution of the number of unsatisfying roles to explaining the intensity of the participants’ role conflict and sense of MIL was insignificant. Men experienced more intense work–family conflict (work interfere with family and household responsibilities) than did women, but no gender differences were found for family–work conflict (family demands interfere with the work domain).

Despite growing numbers of school police personnel, little research has examined how school environments influence officers assigned to school resource officer (SRO) programs. This study explored officers’ perceptions of their roles and job satisfaction. Fifty-two SROs from a statewide Midwestern region were matched to 320 patrol officers at a Midwestern agency. Propensity score matching analyses revealed, compared with patrol officers, SROs performed fewer law enforcement and order maintenance tasks, reported lower levels of role ambiguity and conflict, and were more satisfied along one dimension of job satisfaction. Findings indicated officers in a specialized position were protected from sources of role ambiguity and conflict resulting in greater job satisfaction, which poses implications for improving job performance and officer wellbeing.

Inspired by real-life events, this case describes the dilemma of a novice assistant principal who must balance her role as an administrator at her high school campus where a cousin’s son, Eddie, recently enrolled and is proving to be disruptive the first month of school. Troubled by questions of ethics and loyalty, the issue is complicated after Eddie’s father Rick engages in what might be considered disruptive or inappropriate behaviors on campus. Coincidentally, Rick seeks the assistant’s help, as he believes Eddie’s basketball coach is utilizing questionable discipline practices with the team. The administration is left to investigate the issue.