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Browsing by Author "Ospina, Javier H., author"

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    Resource competition and ageism: a study of the influence of employment scarcity on the endorsement of ageist attitudes
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Ospina, Javier H., author; Cleveland, Jeanette, advisor; Gibbons, Alyssa, committee member; Henle, Chris, committee member; Swaim, Randall, committee member
    The major economic recession of 2007, which has disproportionately affected younger workers, and the rapid growth of the older population have created an environment where younger persons are economically disenfranchised and a highly visible older population persists in the labor force at a time when jobs are scarce. Intergenerational conflict may arise under these conditions due to perceived competition over economic resources, consistent with Realistic Group Conflict Theory, which posits that negative intergroup perceptions arise when the success of one group is threatened by another, potentially leading to intergroup hostility. Younger workers may perceive older workers as a threat to their economic well-being and thus harbor ageist perceptions about them. To test this hypothesis, survey data was collected from 395 participants using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The survey collected information about current employment status, duration of longest unemployment, number of peers unemployed, underemployment, job insecurity, and endorsement of ageist beliefs. Work centrality was investigated as a potential moderator for these relationships and perception of threat felt from older persons as a potential mediator. Results indicated that underemployment and job insecurity were both significant predictors of ageism. Workers who experienced greater underemployment or job insecurity were more likely to harbor ageist beliefs. Additionally, work centrality moderated relationships between peer unemployment and ageism, and perception of threat from older persons mediated relationships between underemployment/job insecurity and ageism. This study provides insight into how perceptions of age are influenced by economic factors and how a vulnerable group in society is affected during periods of economic turmoil.
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    What motivates healthcare workers? Using latent profile analysis to understand healthcare workers' motives and their relationships with work outcomes
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Ospina, Javier H., author; Fisher, Gwenith, advisor; Gibbons, Alyssa, advisor; Henry, Kimberly, committee member; Sarason, Yolanda, committee member
    Healthcare workers (HCWs) are an integral part of the U.S. healthcare system. Despite their importance, healthcare organizations often struggle to attract, retain, and manage these workers due to various challenges inherent in this type of work. Human resource management interventions that target HCWs' motivation have been proposed as a means to help address these issues. However, HCW motivation is complex and multifaceted and prior work has not thoroughly accounted for how multiple motives influence HCWs' work. The current research seeks to understand how various HCW motives identified in the literature relate to each other and to important work outcomes. Specifically, I used latent profile analysis to identify distinct HCW motive profiles, evaluated the degree to which each profile was characterized by extrinsic or intrinsic motivation or amotivation, and then examined whether these profiles were differentially related to client-related burnout, work-related burnout, turnover, job satisfaction, meaning in life, and job performance. My results revealed three latent profiles: an incentive-driven profile, an altruism-driven profile, and a broadly-driven profile. The incentive-driven profile displayed low intrinsic motivation and was associated with the worst outcomes. The altruism-driven profile displayed moderate intrinsic motivation and was associated with better outcomes than the incentive-driven profile but worse outcomes than the broadly-driven profile. The broadly-driven profile displayed high intrinsic motivation and was associated with the best outcomes. All profiles displayed high extrinsic motivation and low amotivation. This study's results demonstrated that HCWs who reported multiple motives for engaging in their work fared better than those who reported only one or two motives, and that a higher degree of internalization (i.e., intrinsic motivation) was associated with better outcomes. This study also found, counterintuitively, that being driven solely by altruistic motives was detrimental to HCWs. Implications for research and practice as well as future direction are discussed.