Friday 24 July 17:15
- 18:45
Hall: 01 - Basilica
Chair:
Falco Alessandra
Discussant:
Barbieri Barbara
Division: Division 1: Work and Organizational Psychology
Evolving social and economic pressures are reshaping universities, intensifying workloads through new technologies, internationalization, funding challenges, and administrative demands, which negatively affect academic staff's well-being and increase their psychophysical strain. Despite high workloads, meaningful work and job autonomy can protect academics, fostering energy and resilience through teaching and research activities. Similarly, key resources for technical and administrative staff include support from supervisors and colleagues, job autonomy, and organisational justice. Although the literature has highlighted several risk and protective factors affecting academic staff, further exploration is needed to better understand the relationship between psychosocial risk factors and the quality of academic life.
Building on the reflections of a QoL@Work group of the Italian Association of Psychologists, this symposium aims to contribute to understanding the factors influencing academic staff well-being by comparing methodologies and research experiences in different European academic contexts. The first contribution by Arcucci introduces a new tool designed to objectively assess the risk of work-related stress (W-RS) in academia, addressing both Italian legal requirements and the growing need for objective measures of W-RS risk. The second contribution by Bacci describes an empirical study based on data collected through five biennial surveys targeting the same population of researchers and professors within a large public STEM university in northern Italy. The empirical study by Papa investigates potential role-based differences - among researchers, associate professors and full professors - within an Italian university regarding job demands, resources, and job outcomes. In a fourth contribution Mol conducted a multilevel, multinational study on the contextual antecedents of mental health among researchers. Finally, the study by Elfering extends the reflection beyond academics to technical and administrative staff with the aim of investigating the antecedents and consequences of procrastination among scientific workers in a university faculty in Switzerland.
