From Job Insecurity to Job Satisfaction, High Quality Education and Career Success

 

Global turmoil, like Brexit and the Trump administration, raises the fear of job loss among university staff, both academic and support. In South Africa, social inclusion and the call for the decolonization of curricula, among others, bring challenges on universities. The perception of job insecurity has been identified as a key psychological risk in the working environment, impairing performance quality and output. Our plenary speakers will provide insights from the latest research on job insecurity from both South Africa and internationally, discuss the implications of job insecurity on different levels ranging from the workgroup to national contexts, provide research evidence for potentially effective coping mechanisms and elaborate on the continued search for evidence-based interventions.

 

The workshop aims to provide opportunities for practitioners, researchers and students to have discussions and establish networks on implications of job insecurity for organizations, higher education and future research. We are honoured to have internationally renowned researchers in the field presenting keynotes (in alphabetical order):

• Hans De Witte is a Full Professor in Work Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the KU Leuven, Belgium, where he is member of the Research Group Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology (WOPP), part of the larger Research Unit Occupational & Organisational Psychology and Professional Learning (O2L). He is also appointed as Extraordinary Professor at the North-West University of South Africa (Optentia Research Focus Area, Vanderbijlpark Campus). His research includes the study of the psychological consequences of job insecurity, unemployment, temporary employment and downsizing, as well as mobbing and job stress (e.g. burnout) versus well-being at work (e.g. work engagement). He is member of the European Network of Work & Organizational Psychologists (ENOP) and of the executive board of the Scientific Committee Unemployment, Job Insecurity & Health of ICOH.

• Lixin Jiang is a lecturer of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at University of Auckland, New Zealand. Before relocating to New Zealand, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and Stress & Health. Her research focuses on occupational health psychology with the goal to promote employee safety, health, and well-being. Her job insecurity research has been published at Journal of Applied Psychology, Work & Stress, and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

• Haijiang Wang is an associate professor at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Haijiang obtained his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology in February 2017. Haijiang is also a part-time Statistical Consultant at the Department of Applied Psychology, Lingnan University. His research interests include job insecurity, leadership, employee engagement and proactive behavior. His research work was published in Journal of Applied Psychology, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Stress & Health.

• Dr. Tahira M. Probst is an Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Washington State University Vancouver (USA) where she directs the Coalition for Healthy and Equitable Workplaces lab. Her research focuses on the health, safety and performance-related outcomes of economic stressors (including job insecurity, financial strain, economic deprivation, and underemployment), as well as multilevel contextual variables that influence these relationships. She has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters on stress and health-related topics. Most recently, she was selected to receive a Fulbright Scholar Award to investigate the effects of the current financial crisis on the health and safety of Italian workers. She is currently co-Editor in Chief of Stress & Health and sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Occupational Health Science, Military Psychology and the Journal of Business and Psychology.

 

Date

 

Friday, 1 December 2017 

 

Venue

 

The workshop takes place at the Optentia Indaba Conference Room, Optentia, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa. Accommodation will be available a wide variety of hotels and guest houses in the area.  

 

Key Information

 

Job Insecurity Workshop 2017
North-West University
P O Box 1174
Vanderbijlpark 
1900 

 

Tel: +27 (016) 9103410 (Lynn Booysen)
Email: lynn.booysen@nwu.ac.za or lara.roll@nwu.ac.za