My upcoming events

European Researchers’ Night

 

Research micro-conference: The new psychosocial risks at workplace

Francisco Díaz Bretones

 

Nowadays, work is a basic and core element in our lives, which provides us with not only economic resources but also with psychological wellbeing. But work, at the same time, may be a source of risks for our health. Not only because of the danger or physical risk that work activity may entail, but because it can affect our health in general, our social life, our eating and sleep habits, our level of stress and it may even lead to the individual’s death.

 

Therefore, these risks are all those aspects of work and of the organizational context that can cause us physical and psychological harm as workers. 

 

More than a quarter of a century ago, the International Labor Organization characterized some of these work risks. But more recently, with the changes occurred in the social, economic or technological spheres, new labor contexts have appeared and with them new risks with clear negative consequences for our physical social and mental health.

 

In this micro-conference, I will explain some of these emergent psychosocial risks at workplace (such as work precariousness and intensification, technification or emotional tiredness) as well as the Healthy Workplace Model proposed by the World Health Organization (2010).

 

Finally, I will explain briefly and in a didactic way, some of the research that our research group is developing on specific population and labor groups. I will talk about the studies of psychosocial risks that we are carrying out on migrant population in Spain or about the results that we have found on elementary teachers in Ecuador, among others.

 

European Researchers’ Night. September 29, 2017

http://ec.europa.eu/research/researchersnight/index_en.htm

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Call for applications: Athenea3i research fellowship

The Well-being and Health Organisation research group through the initiative Athenea3i, a research fellowship program focused on attracting highly talented researchers to the University of Granada (UGR) is looking for a post-doc research in the field of Occupational Health Psychology.

The candidate would be hired by the University of Granada with a monthly salary of 4,000€ plus other facilities for the whole period of the fellowship (36 months) and will be executed at the UGR (Spain).

The general eligibility criteria are:

  • a PhD diploma awarded no more than 7 years ago (maternity leave, paternity leave or long-term illnesses do not count towards the time off from research)

  • mobility rule: at the time of the relevant deadline for submission of proposals, researchers shall not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the date of the call deadline. Compulsory national service and/or short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.

More information about the economic conditions or eligibility and selection criteria, could be check at: https://athenea3i.ugr.es/

The deadline is September 29th, 2017.

Contact:

prof. Francisco Diaz Bretones

Head of Well-being and Health Organisation (UGR)

fdiazb@ugr.es

Call for applications: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF)

 

The Well-being and Organisational Health Research Group at the University of Granada (Spain) welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF).

 

 The Well-being and Organisational Health team is a multidisciplinary research group composed by researchers from the University of Granada (Spain) focused on both the study of the new and emergent psychosocial risks and their impact on vulnerable groups.

 

More information about the Research Group and their projects can be found at:

https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/hosting/post-doctoral-research-fellowship-msca-if-2017-well-being-and-organisational-health

 

Applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule. You can find more information in the participant guide at: http://sl.ugr.es/097k

 

For further information, you can contact me by email (Francisco Diaz Bretones): fdiazb@ugr.es

 

The deadline for applications is 30th June 2017 (1pm Brussels time)

 

Oral Comunication: The Influence of Technology on Elementary Teachers in Ecuadorian Context

(22nd Annual CyberPsychology, CyberTherapy & Social Networking Conference. 26-28 June 2017. Wolverhampton, England)

 

There has been a great deal of research on the role of technology on education. However, considerably less is known about how it impacts on the well-being of teachers. So, although the purpose of technology is to improve and simplify teaching work and educational process, the lack of training, inadequate infrastructure and the absence of technical support can cause these teachers to suffer from anxiety and emotional strain.

 

In light of all these factors, the objective of our research study was to  characterize and understand the teachers’ perceptions about technology.

For this purpose, we performed a qualitative study with nine focus groups with the participation of 75 teachers working in the city of Guayaquil (Ecuador).

Based on the results obtained, this study detected that some teachers believe that they lack the necessary professional competences to successfully deal with new technological changes. Many teachers tend to perceive themselves in the role of educators and caregivers with an emphasis on all aspects related to children (where they feel more secure) rather than on more technological aspects of their job.

 

The consequences of all these technological demands are reflected in an exponential increase in perceived chronic stress levels in teachers, accompanied by feelings of anxiety, and in many cases, other symptoms. For this reason, it is important that educational institutions promote suitable organizational actions and train teachers in order to qualify them and to help them generate positive attitudes towards technological demands.

 

Oral Comunication: Differentiated responsibility? A qualitative study about CSR in Finish Co-ops

 (International Co-operative Alliance Global Research Conference  20-23 June 2017, University of Stirling)

 

Our economic system has been based on such values as competitiveness, growth, and development. So, if the raison d'être for stock corporation is to maximize profit and shareholder value as best as they can, the idea of thus acting in socially responsible ways would seem paradoxical in the sense that they seek maximum efficiency and profit.  In this context, some authors argue that CSR would play a role as manifestation of that corporate pragmatism and instrumental tool to attain these economic goals (Müller-Christ, 2011).

 

However, González-González, et al., (in press) argue the necessity of not  avoiding, denying, or ignoring inconsistencies of CSR, but rather of approaching these paradoxes and contradictions in a transparent way in order to build confidence and overcome the lack of credibility.

 

That paradox is wider in the case of cooperatives where not-for-profit character is one of their distinctive features, suffering the tension between the traditional co-ops values and the emerging new ones that economic environment demands from them (Bretones & Jaimez, 2009).

 

In that sense, the objective of our study has been to explore perceptions and discourse of CSR in Finnish Co-ops, examining them through the Paradoxical Analysis Model proposed by Poole and Van de Ven's (1989).

 To reach this goal, we carried out a qualitative study with a series of semi-structured interviews with Finnish co-ops managers, representatives of co-ops associations and experts on CSR from both the academic and professional world in Finland.

 

The results obtained show paradoxical nature of CSR on co-ops which indicates an organizational paradox in the design and execution of CSR initiatives with great differences between big and small and local cooperatives.

 

Presentation: Work, Psychosocial Risk and Responsibility

(Research Forum UH. 8 March 2017)

 

Work is not only a means of economic gain and benefit but also a key component of an individual’s personal, cultural, and social evolution, which contributes to health as well as physical and psychosocial well-being. For this reason, the sweeping changes that are currently taking place in the social and work environment of the world are having an enormous psychological impact on workers of all nations. Not surprisingly, work conditions are an important source of potential health risks. In fact, occupational hazards have become one of the most serious problems now faced by workers and society in general. This is due to the fact that work conditions are now in a state of constant flux as a consequence of the technological, economic, and social transformations and innovations required to competitively adapt to new work situations and scenarios.

 

In our presentation, we will show a qualitative study about emergent psychosocial risks that we carried out in Spain focused on small and medium-sized companies and the main results we have collected.

 

Lecture: Organizational Change and Psychosocial Risk at Work (University of Hertfordshire. March 8, 2017).

 

New work systems are in a state of constant flux as a consequence of the technological, economic, and social demands and innovations required to competitively adapt to new organizational situations and scenarios. In fact, the only permanent characteristic nowadays is the fact that companies are in constant change. All these organizational changes can be good for companies and workers but, at the same time, can also generate negative consequences and new associated psychosocial risks.

 

 Now, in companies, it is not only a matter of how employees perform their technical tasks at the workplace, but there are also other qualities that have become increasingly important such as decision-making, multitask demands, high engagement or new technological skills.

 

 All of these transformations involve new demands which can generate different psychological costs for workers aspects in terms of chronic stress, psychological disorders, exhaustion, and other social consequences as work-family conflict, loneliness, lack of social support, etc.

 

 In this lecture, I will show an overview of those emergent and most important psychosocial risks at work associated with organizational change, trying to identify them and raising strategies to prevent them.

 

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