BACKGROUND:The number of workers who have previously undergone a cancer treatment is increasing, and possible late treatment effects (fatigue, physical and cognitive complaints) may affect work ability.OBJECTIVE:The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of late treatment effects and of job resources (autonomy, supportive leadership style, and colleagues’ social support) on the future work ability of employees living 2–10 years beyond a breast cancer diagnosis.METHODS:Data at T1 (baseline questionnaire) and at T2 (9 months later) were collected in 2018 and 2019 (N = 287) among Dutch-speaking workers with a breast cancer diagnosis 2–10 years ago. Longitudinal regression analyses, controlling for years since diagnosis, living with cancer (recurrence or metastasis), other chronic or severe diseases, and work ability at baseline were executed.RESULTS:Higher levels of fatigue and cognitive complaints at baseline predicted lower future work ability. The three job resources did not predict higher future work ability, but did relate cross-sectionally with higher work ability at baseline. Autonomy negatively moderated the association between physical complaints and future work ability.CONCLUSIONS:Fatigue and cognitive complaints among employees 2–10 years past breast cancer diagnosis need awareness and interventions to prevent lower future work ability. Among participants with average or high levels of physical complaints, there was no difference in future work ability between medium and high autonomy. However, future work ability was remarkably lower when autonomy was low.
Change is endemic in modern society, and the educational systems that operate in it. In Higher Education societal trends such as globalization and economic rationalism are impacting on teachers. Changes in the student population, new educational methods derived from shifting perspectives on the role of knowledge and re-structuring of the organizations within which teachers work have also led to transformation of the professional context. At European level policy initiatives such as the Bologna Declaration (1999) have necessitated an overhaul of educational provision. This research project attempts to focus on these wideranging changes through the lens of teacher autonomy in order to establish what is changing in the working lives of teachers in a Dutch university, how they are responding to these changes and how they can be helped to respond to change effectively and discriminatingly. This is an insider research project, using case study and semi-structured interviewing to yield data that is subjected to thematic linguistic analysis. It was piloted in 2006, and interviewing was resumed in February 2007. Findings indicate the contested nature of teacher autonomy, and suggest that professional autonomy can impede as well as facilitate teachers in processes of engaging with change. The team - operating as a community of practice - is identified as the location where change agency can operate most effectively. Distributed leadership - specifically perceived in the activities of team leaders and teacher change agents - is seen as crucial to processes of embedding change in educational practice.
Proper decision-making is one of the most important capabilities of an organization. Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding and overview of the decisions an organization makes. A means to understanding and modeling decisions is the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard published by the Object Management Group in 2015. In this standard, it is possible to design and specify how a decision should be taken. However, DMN lacks elements to specify the actors that fulfil different roles in the decision-making process as well as not taking into account the autonomy of machines. In this paper, we re-address and-present our earlier work [1] that focuses on the construction of a framework that takes into account different roles in the decision-making process, and also includes the extent of the autonomy when machines are involved in the decision-making processes. Yet, we extended our previous research with more detailed discussion of the related literature, running cases, and results, which provides a grounded basis from which further research on the governance of (semi) automated decision-making can be conducted. The contributions of this paper are twofold; 1) a framework that combines both autonomy and separation of concerns aspects for decision-making in practice while 2) the proposed theory forms a grounded argument to enrich the current DMN standard.
