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DA UNIVERSIDADE PORTUCALENSE
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Staying Relevant or Becoming Invisible? Human Legitimacy in Extended Working Lives [abstract]
2026-06-04 - Dieguez, Teresa; Lobo, Carla Azevedo
Demographic ageing, artificial intelligence and increasingly fragmented careers are transforming not just how long people work, but how they are recognised as organisational actors. And with policy and management debates focusing on employability, reskilling and active ageing, less has been asked about a more relational question: under what conditions do individuals remain recognised as legitimate and future-relevant contributors throughout extended working lives? This paper conceptualizes human legitimacy at work as the degree to which an individual is regarded as a meaningful, competent and future-oriented organisational actor. With reference to legitimacy and recognition theory, socioemotional selectivity theory, psychological safety, individual ambidexterity, professional identity and studies of meaningful work, the paper contends that legitimacy cannot be reduced to capability or performance alone. It emerges instead through the alignment of three dimensions: adaptive capacity, social recognition and identity continuity. The paper elaborates on legitimacy misalignment and identifies three configurations: the Invisible Expert, whose capability is overlooked; the Over-Signalled Contributor, whose recognition exceeds current capability alignment; and the Identity-Disrupted Actor, whose participation continues but who experiences diminishing professional self-coherence. By reframing extended working lives as a challenge of recognition rather than retention alone, the paper adds to the literature on leadership and management to suggest legitimacy stewardship as a key leadership responsibility in organisations characterised by demographic change, technological disruption and increasing career uncertainty.
Working conditions and well-being of European employees with chronic illness: The role of perceived organizational support and job insecurity
2026-07-02 - Gomes, Sofia; Ferreira, Pedro; Lopes, João Miguel; Sousa, Bianca
Purpose
This study examines how working conditions, specifically flextime, work autonomy and work intensity, are associated with perceived organizational support and well-being among European employees with chronic illness, and how job insecurity is associated with the link between perceived organizational support and well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources framework, the study uses data for 6,961 employees with chronic illness from the 2021 European Working Conditions Survey and applies partial least squares structural equation modeling to estimate direct and indirect statistical associations between the constructs.
Findings
Flextime and work autonomy are positively associated with well-being, whereas work intensity is negatively associated with well-being. Work autonomy is positively associated with perceived organizational support, while flextime and work intensity are negatively associated with perceived organizational support. Perceived organizational support shows positive indirect associations in the relationships between working conditions and well-being, and higher job insecurity is associated with a weaker positive association between perceived organizational support and well-being.
Originality/value
The study extends Job Demands–Resources theory to workers with chronic illness in Europe by jointly considering job resources, job demands and organizational resources, and by positioning job insecurity as a hindrance demand associated with the perceived organizational support–well-being link. It offers evidence, based on a large cross-national dataset, that working-time flexibility, autonomy, moderated intensity and credible support are associated with better well-being in this population, while also highlighting that these associations are sensitive to how flexibility is framed and to the broader context of employment security.
Mapping leadership patterns and management control practices in family firms: evidence from a multi-level latent class approach
2026-06-30 - Jayantilal, Shital; Gomes, Sofia; Ferreira, Pedro
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how leadership patterns in family firms relate to management control practices, addressing the limited empirical evidence on how observable top-management behaviours shape the design and use of control systems in family businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from the Portuguese Management Practices Survey, the study focuses on 1,505 family firms and operationalizes leadership through nine observable characteristics of the top manager, such as being proactive, taking responsibility and leading by example. A multi-level latent class model is employed to identify firm-level leadership profiles while accounting for the nesting of firms within industry sectors and to examine their association with four dimensions of management control: frequency of key performance indicator (KPI) collection and assessment, availability of information for decision-making and sources of managerial learning.
Findings
Four leadership patterns emerge: example-led decisive, proactive responsibility-driven, responsibility-example oriented and low-participative decision-makers. These leadership patterns are systematically associated with different control practices, particularly in terms of how frequently KPIs are collected and reviewed, how much information is available to support decisions and whether learning about management practices primarily occurs through internal or external sources. The results indicate that leadership heterogeneity within family firms is linked to distinct configurations of management control rather than a uniform “family-firm” control model.
Research limitations/implications
The cross-sectional, single-country design limits causal inference and generalizability. Future research should examine performance and succession outcomes associated with these leadership–control configurations in other institutional contexts.
Originality/value
The study offers an empirically grounded, exploratory typology of leadership patterns in family firms, based on observable managerial characteristics, and links these patterns to specific management control practices while explicitly incorporating sector-level context through a multi-level latent class approach.