M54 - Personnel Economics: Labor ManagementReturn

As one of the essential human needs, autonomy affects internal motivation and drives job satisfaction. The aim of the article is based on long-term quantitative research (n = 631) to examine gender, age, education and job position differences in job autonomy and to evaluate the extent to which job satisfaction and job autonomy are related. The research shows that 72.6% of the respondents have a high degree of work scheduling autonomy, 68.1% have a high degree of decision-making autonomy and 53.9% have a high degree of work methods autonomy. An important finding is that most respondents (84.8%) are satisfied with their job. There are differences between generations and non/managerial job positions regarding work scheduling autonomy, decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy. Additionally, there is a difference between education levels regarding work scheduling autonomy. The Spearman's rank correlation coefficients show positive mutual correlations between job autonomy categories, as well as between job autonomy categories and job satisfaction. The results also confirm the relationships between job autonomy categories and job satisfaction. Employees with a high degree of job autonomy feel more satisfied in their jobs than others. On the contrary, there are no differences between genders regarding work scheduling autonomy, decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy. Furthermore, there are no differences between education levels regarding decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy. Understanding the relationship between job autonomy and satisfaction is vital for employers and policymakers to enhance job satisfaction, retain employees and improve organisational performance.
Implications for Central European audience: The research reveals that employees with a high degree of job autonomy, encompassing work scheduling autonomy, decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy, experience greater job satisfaction. No gender or education-based differences in terms of job autonomy were found, but differences exist between generations and non/managerial job positions and job autonomy. The results confirm that job autonomy drives job satisfaction. Employees with a high degree of job autonomy feel more satisfied in their jobs than others. Employers and policymakers should therefore prioritise increasing job autonomy to improve job satisfaction, retention and organisational performance.�

With rising levels of work-related stress and its dramatic consequences, organizations are increasingly investing in finding solutions to promote employee well-being. As an effective approach to stress management, humour has begun to attract the attention of practitioners and researchers. This study proposes to look at humour as a further managerial tool to improve workplace relationships and associated positive outcomes. It examines how the humour style of supervisors and subordinates affects the leader-follower relationship. Specifically, the effects of humour style (dis)similarity on leader-employee exchanges are examined. Data were collected in 2022 from 128 supervisor-subordinate dyads (N = 53 supervisors; N = 128 subordinates) in an international organization headquartered in Switzerland. Our polynomial regression analysis reveals that leader-member exchange (LMX) is positively influenced by congruence in affiliative, self-enhancing and self-defeating humour. These findings contribute to the discussion on the impact of humour style similarity on workplace relationships and the importance of considering dyadic interactions.
Implications for Central European audience: The results suggest that leaders should take humour seriously and consider including it in their managerial toolkit to improve workplace relationships. It is important to differentiate between humour styles and their effects and apply them with respect to the situation and desired outcomes. Joking together improves LMX, which is why leaders should consider supporting their employees in humorous behaviour to strengthen bonds. Since leaders’ behaviour is perceived as a reference and considering the numerous positive effects of humour in organizations, leaders may practice humour at work more often to lead by example and integrate it into the group culture.

The research focuses on the perception and implications of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. The aim of the paper is to prove the validity of an existing theoretical model (presented in Romanian research before COVID-19) for the Czech situation during COVID-19 and draw managerial conclusions. Quantitative primary data were collected via questionnaires and analysed using structural equation modelling, evaluating cause-effect relationships between latent variables in two steps: a structural model (showing latent constructs and paths between them) and an outer model (displaying relationships between each latent construct and the indicators defining it). Ten latent variables were defined, and relationships among them were identified. Thirteen hypotheses were tested, of which seven were accepted. Concerning similarities with the previous study, the present study accepted two hypotheses identically to the previous one, while one hypothesis was accepted only in the Romanian research. Model relevancy was proved. The research contributed to extending current literature findings.
Implications for Central European audience: Based on the hypotheses tested, autonomy and homonomy in telework should not be understood as contrary but complementary phenomena; managers should support both. Positive emotions about telework should be cultivated because they contribute to work-life balance and positively affect the intention to work from home. Work-life balance is positively related to the positive perception of the social implications of telework.

This research examines the relation between annual report readability and company performance in a German-speaking country, Austria. The incomplete revelation hypothesis, management obfuscation hypothesis and agency theory assume that firms with lower performance strategically use readability in their disclosures to obfuscate negative results. For investors, reading, analysing, and interpreting data becomes a costly affair; this weakens the negative effect of such data on a firm’s reputation and share price. We use LIX and Flesch formulas to measure the readability of letters to the shareholders and/or interviews with the board in annual reports. The sample consists of 37 companies that are listed on the Prime Market of the Vienna Stock Exchange and their data from the year 2009 to 2020. Company performance is measured by the change in turnover, profit, and share price. The analysed sections mostly show high to very high levels of difficulty. During the observation period, readability levels do not change significantly. We find that the annual reports of firms with lower performance are not harder to read and, therefore, cannot confirm the management obfuscation hypothesis. A significant influence of change in profit/loss on readability is minutely observed. Possible reasons for this observation could be characteristics of the German language, statistical outliers, the long observation period, more professional investor relations offices, and changing communication channels between companies and stakeholders. The last point, changing communication channels, also puts the obfuscation hypothesis and its application to readability up for discussion again.
Implications for Central European audience: Our study shows that also Central European countries are confronted with low levels of readability in annual reports. Nevertheless, we cannot see a clear tendency towards obfuscation in corporate disclosures.

The complexity and variability of the contemporary labour markets creates the need for continuous improvement of methods used for their description, analysis and forecasting. Looking for a tool that allows for the simultaneous analysis of various aspects of contemporary labour markets, the authors focused their attention on k-partite graph models (with particular emphasis on bipartite graphs). The assessment of the usefulness of models based on bipartite graphs for analysis of regularities occurring on the Polish labour market is the main aim of the paper. The authors studied the regional distribution of the demand for employee competencies and evaluated the specificity of localities and competencies. The concept of bipartite competency schemas is also introduced in the paper. These schemas can be used as models representing strongly related competencies and localities. The usefulness of bipartite competency schemas was confirmed by empirical research presented in the paper. The content of job offers published online formed the main source of data examined. All analyses were performed with the use of the R programming language.

The paper concerns the notion of information technology (IT) reliability in an organization and User Experience as one of the factors which may potentially increase this reliability through a role of users (who should willingly use IT to perform tasks it is designed to support). Frequency of IT use (also in the context of economic advancement as a comparison between central Europe and North America) and job characteristics, such as task complexity, structuration and uniqueness are discussed as potential moderators strengthening that relation. The empirical research was performed among 550 organizations operating in Poland and USA in order to verify whether User Experience might be the factor positively influencing IT reliability in an organization and whether identified job characteristics indeed are strengthening that influence. The obtained results confirmed, among others, that the more complex and less routine are the tasks performed by the employee, the more significant is the influence of IT User Experience on IT reliability.

The aim of this study is to identify the individual and contextual factors that facilitate or hinder employees’ creativity. However, in this paper the literature is also referring to critical factors that impact employees’ creativity. According to the creativity’s state of the art, we focused on factors based on creativity’s 4P, choosing Person (characteristics of creative persons) and Place (environmental factors that influence creativity). Considerable research efforts have been invested to explore the possible connections between these two domains by investigating the Hungarian labour market. We found that the probability that a creative person works in a creative workplace is twice greater than that of the case of a non-creative person. This study presents the requisites of a creative workplace so that employees’ creativity can be developed and a kind of work environment which facilitates organizational creativity can be created. First, we have collected and presented the best practices of recruitment-tools which help managers to hire the most creative applicants. With these two components, i.e. finding creative workers and securing them a creative friendly environment, the business success is guaranteed.