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Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit your work to a special issue of Applied Psychology: An International Review, which is about the nature of resources. The deadline of this special issue is Oct 20^th 2017. For more details about this special issue, please see the information below. Thank you for your attention and sorry for any cross-posting.

Kind regards,

Marc van Veldhoven, Anja Van den Broeck, Kevin Daniels, Arnold Bakker, Susana Tavares, & Chidiebere Ogbonnaya

CALL FOR PAPERS

"WHY, WHEN AND FOR WHOM ARE JOB RESOURCES BENEFICIAL?"

Background and rationale for the special issue

Job resources, such as autonomy and social support, are deemed important ingredients to healthy and interesting work. Policy approaches (e.g. ILO, 2001) as well as theoretical models in job design (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001; Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Karasek, 1979) put job resources to the fore as key levers to enhance employee well-being and performance. Job resources may, however, not always have their intended beneficial effects. For example, job resources may enhance strain when they are unsolicited or become overwhelming (Deelstra et al., 2003; Schwartz, 2000). Yet, with only a few exceptions (e.g., Warr, 1987), theoretical models usually do not account for the negative effects of job resources, or seek to understand the processes or contexts evoking such negative effects. Given recent conceptual (e.g., proactive and relational perspectives on job design; Grant & Parker, 2009) and methodological developments (e.g. diary and experience sampling methods that examine the dynamics of job resources; Bakker & Daniels, 2012), it is timely to seek further understanding of why, when and for whom job resources are either beneficial or harmful. There are four knowledge gaps that further enhance the timeliness of this research topic.

First, we need to overcome our fairly narrow conceptualization of which job resources are relevant. Much research and policy bodies only consider standardized assessments and predefined lists of job resources. However, interventions to improve job resources are expected to be most effective when they take into account resources that are specific to organizational and/or professional contexts (Nielsen, Abildgaard & Daniels, 2014).

Second, we need to expand our understanding of the processes through which job resources may have, or fail to have, beneficial effects. The impact of job resources is well-described in the job demands - resources model, but current research on why job resources have their effects is mostly grounded in Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989). This approach is however challenged and criticized for being too broad (Halbesleben, Neveu, Paustian-Underdahl, & Westman, 2014), and some studies have pointed at the relevance of studying more specific processes through which job resources operate (Daniels, Boocock, Glover, Hartley & Holland, 2009).

Third, there is evidence that the relationship of job resources with well-being and performance is dependent not just on individual differences or micro-organizational contexts (Tavares, van Knippenberg & van Dick, 2016), but also on meso- and macro-economic factors (van Veldhoven & Peccei, 2015). Factors at the global, national, organizational and individual level may influence the development and availability of job resources (Parker, Van den Broeck, & Holman, 2017).

In this special issue, we aim to expand our understanding of job resources; to identify the boundary conditions of resource-based models of job design and elaborate, extend and posit new theoretical processes that explain how job resources come to have their effects; to explore the conditions (e.g., at the individual, meso, or macro-levels) under which job resources have beneficial, neutral, adverse or mixed effects on wellbeing and performance; to use new methodologies capable of capturing job resources' nuanced effects on wellbeing and performance; and to inform the design of organizational and job level interventions to enhance wellbeing and performance through the provision of appropriate job resources.

Potential topics may include, but are not restricted to the following:

·                    What are the cognitive, emotional, behavioural, social and political processes involved in the perception, construction and effects of job resources?

·                    Under which conditions do normally positive relationships of job resources with well-being and performance turn into negative or neutral relationships?

·                    What is the role of time? For example, do job resources accumulate over time? Do resources' impact on individual's performance and well-being change over time?

·                    Do daily job resources have psychological properties that are similar or different from general job resources?

·                    What are proactive ways through which employees can mobilize their job resources?

·                    How do meso and macro (e.g. institutional) influences interact with individual sense-making and behaviours in the development and effects of job resources?

·                    Which HR strategies are most effective in fostering which employee job resources?

·                    In what ways can organizations offer tailored job resources to their employees?

In line with the mission of AP:IR, we particularly encourage submissions with an international focus or using samples of emergent markets, developing countries or contexts in which resources are likely to be scarce.

Submission instructions:

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is October 20, 2017. Submissions will be accepted between 1 October and 20 October 2017. All manuscripts are expected to follow the Applied Psychology: An International Review submission guidelines and are subject to the regular double blind review process. Please select 'special issue' as the manuscript type in the submission system. Interested authors are encouraged to send any questions regarding the special issue to the Guest Editors.