Contagious flexibility? A study on whether schedule flexibility facilitates work‐life enrichment

Schedule flexibility defines an important generating resource for work-life enrichment; however, our knowledge about how such spillovers take place is limited. This multiple case study examines how workers from different working time contexts with varying levels of schedule flexibility experience work-life interplay. Given the adopted explorative design, it is important to interpret the findings in a tentative light. Nonetheless, the study offers important insight into work-life enrichment that may guide future research in this field. The findings indicate that schedule flexibility may act as a boundary-spanning resource owing to the agency potential it offers workers. Thus, it seemed that flexible schedule opportunities enabled workers to engage more fully in personal life activities, which in turn had a positive influence on their work involvement through positive affect. Such positive role engagements appeared, however, to be greatly determined by workers' boundary management and by time conditions of work and family. In conclusion, the major findings and limitation of the study are discussed against existing research and theory.     

农民工的工作退缩行为：基于多重嵌入和身份压力的视角

2.9亿农民工的工作退缩行为——为减少工作和组织角色而有意采取的行为(回避工作和降低努力、迟到缺勤、离职等)影响重大。为此, 本研究以资源保存理论作为“伞”理论, 整合了多重嵌入和身份压力的视角, 构建了一个全面预测农民工的工作退缩行为的模型。在该模型中, 提出了同时包含隐性和显性的工作退缩行为的测量指标体系; 构建了农民工在城市和家乡的多重嵌入对不同工作退缩行为的预测关系, 以及“农村人”和“城市人”的双重身份压力经由农民工在城市的多重嵌入对工作退缩行为的间接预测效应。本研究基于农民工样本的特异性, 构建了一个“背景化”的全面预测工作退缩行为的理论模型, 不仅弥补了微观层面农民工研究的理论空白, 也丰富了身份、多重嵌入和工作退缩行为领域的理论和文献。     

The Wisdom of Sharing a Frame: Commentary on Papers by Anthony Bass and Ilana Laor

In this discussion I agree with Anthony Bass, who shows how the analytic frame has properties that involve both the process and the structure, and I suggest replacing the term structure with the term constraints. Bass considers analytic frames as contexts: Different frames organize different contexts of experience. He says that the frame is cocreated by patient and analyst and evolves over time. I think that Dafna's case presented by Ilana Laor is a good example of this aspect. I agree with Laor, who shows how the frame reflects the negotiation process between patient and analyst, emphasizing that this process itself is therapeutic. Following Bass I emphasize that a polarization between stability versus flexibility should be replaced by the dialectic between stability and flexibility. I conclude wondering how Bass's and Laor's “wisdom” regarding flexibility and elasticity can be passed over to younger psychoanalysts who are beginning their clinical work.     

The real deal: What judgments of really reveal about how people think about artifacts

It is widely assumed that artifacts fall into distinct kinds. These kinds are generally identified by appeal to words—chair versus stool versus bowl versus vase, and so on. But contextual and cross-linguistic variation in what artifacts are grouped together by name raise questions about whether artifacts indeed do fall into fixed kinds. Can judgments of what artifacts really are reveal a true kind membership, distinct from what the objects are called in communicative contexts? In two experiments, we examined what drives judgments of what an artifact really is and what these judgments can tell us about how people think about artifacts. In both experiments, we found that people failed to treat artifacts as having a definitive kind membership in their judgments of what the artifacts really were. Instead, really judgments reflected the typicality of objects with respect to the things normally called by the queried name. If these judgments are taken as direct evidence about the existence of artifact kinds, the outcome argues against such kinds. Alternatively, really judgments themselves may be fundamentally linguistic in nature, and so unable to tap into underlying kind memberships. In either case, if such kinds exist, they remain to be found. A more likely reality may be that intuitions about the existence of artifact kinds reflect the partial clustering of objects in similarity space, plus the fact that each language provides names for some constellations of objects in that space.     

Multistability and the Agency of Mundane Artifacts: from Speed Bumps to Subway Benches

A central question in philosophical and sociological accounts of technology is how the agency of technologies should be conceived, that is, how to understand their constitutive roles in the actions performed by assemblages of humans and artifacts. To address this question, I build on the suggestion that a helpful perspective can be gained by amalgamating “actor-network theory” and “postphenomenological” accounts. The idea is that only a combined account can confront both the nuances of human experiential relationships with technology on which postphenomenology specializes, and also the chains of interactions between numerous technologies and humans that actor-network theory can address. To perform this amalgamation, however, several technical adjustments to these theories are required. The central change I develop here is to the postphenomenological notion of “multistability,” i.e., the claim that a technology can be used for multiple purposes through different contexts. I expand the postphenomenological framework through the development of a method called “variational cross-examination,” which involves critically contrasting the various stabilities of a multistable technology for the purpose of exploring how a particular stability has come to dominate. As a guiding example, I explore the case of the everyday public bench. The agency of this “mundane artifact,” as actor-network theorist Bruno Latour would call it, cannot be accounted for by either postphenomenology or actor-network theory alone.     

Flexibility competencies: emotional organization management

The aim of this article is to analyse the transferral of flexibility from contemporary organizations to workers. Through the approach of management by competencies, organizations try to develop in their workers behaviours that are related to efficient job performance. In order to appraise the importance of this approach, we used a critical-rational perspective to discuss the productivity demands that are characteristic of advanced industrial societies. The article shows how the link between workers' flexibility management and their emotional competencies affects their lives, which, like the organizations, should be versatile and adaptable to change.     

The Mediated Breast: Technology,Agency, and Breast Cancer

Women intimately interact with various medical technologies and prosthetic artifacts in the context of breast cancer. While extensive work has been done on the agency of technological artifacts and how they affect users’ perceptions and experiences, the agency of users is largely taken for granted hitherto. In this article, we explore the agency of four women who engage with breast cancer technologies and artifacts by analyzing their narrative accounts of such engagements. This empirical discussion is framed within the tradition of science and technology studies, philosophy of technological mediation and phenomenology of embodied agency as ‘I can/not’. This approach leads to the conclusions that women’s technologically mediated agencies range from being restricted to extended, take place on different bodily levels, within complex temporal structures, and are determined by certain socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, it reveals that such agency shaping does not imply a one-way conditioning relationship between technologies and users, but rather involves a reciprocal relationship in which both subject and object are co-constituted. We therefore suggest that the ‘material turn’ in philosophy of technology also needs to take into account technologically mediated, material human beings in order to gain a better understanding of human existence.     

Research Essays: An Introduction and Invitation

In this article, we offer an approach to conceiving of the relation between literacy practices and space–time. Literacy, embedded in other forms of activity, has a unique role in producing and organizing space–time relations, and such relations provide for different forms of cognition and learning. Closely examining how literacy practices produce and organize space–time helps researchers move beyond folk distinctions based on setting or context, such as "in school," versus "out of school," which necessarily associate different settings with different practices. Drawing on actor network theory, we propose a new way of reconceiving of literacy and its relations to space–time through the construct of the literacy network. We define and develop 5 space–time dimensions of literacy networks, including translation, the heterogeneity of space–time representations, movements and positions of texts in circulation, rhythms and speeds of circulation, and network continuity. Drawing on these dimensions, we analyze 3 different literacy networks that 1 youth, Brian, participates in, including 2 from school classrooms and 1 from his play of a massively multiplayer online game. We argue that the space–time dimensions of these networks have direct relevance to understanding Brian's engagement, agency, and identity.     

心理解脱与幼儿教师生活满意度的关系：家庭压力的调节作用

下班后从工作状态中解脱出来有利于减少工作应激对劳动者健康的损害。家庭作为劳动者下班后生活的主要场所。家庭中的压力因素可能影响劳动者的解脱结果。本研究以 215 名幼儿教师为被试,考察家庭压力影响心理解脱结果的机制。结果发现,高家庭压力会削弱心理解脱对生活满意度的正向预测。该结果支持资源保持理论和付出-恢复模型,提示在工作应激相关的职业健康保护中应注意家庭因素的作用。     

The Child Behavior Checklist for Group Care Workers: A Study Regarding the Factor Structure

In this study we examined the factor structure of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) filled out by group care workers. Group care workers' judgements were collected on 846 children and adolescents treated in various residential settings in The Netherlands. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we were able to show that the original CBCL factor model based on parental judgments of child behavior also fits for the judgments of group care workers. This means that the well known 8 narrow-band syndromes (Withdrawn, Somatic Complaints, etc.) as well as the 2 broad-band syndromes (Internalizing and Externalizing) can be used to interpret the CBCL scores of group care workers. This confirmation of the CBCL factor structure is a first step to add a group care worker version to the CBCL family. However, as a second step, normative data need to be gathered to further enhance the use of the CBCL for group care workers.     

When and Why People Evaluate Negative Reciprocity as More Fair Than Positive Reciprocity

If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. We report seven studies, conducted with people from the United States, in which participants were asked to evaluate situations involving resource distribution in contexts such as economic games, government, and the workplace. Specifically, we find that equal resource distribution in multilateral interactions is seen as more fair than engaging in reciprocity. We also find that negative reciprocity is seen as more fair than positive reciprocity in these multilateral situations because positive reciprocity is perceived as based in favoritism. We rule out alternative explanations and demonstrate that there are contexts where favoritism is not viewed as unfair. These findings are important for theories of fairness and reciprocity as they demonstrate the central role of perceived partiality in the evaluation of multi‐party resource allocation.     

Dealing with artifacts: The EOG contamination of the event-related brain potential

Eye movements and blinks represent a major source of artifacts in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The origin of this artifact is the large difference in potential that exists between the cornea and the retina. Eye movements and blinks produce shifts of the electric fields that propagate across the whole head and that can be several times larger than the activity generated by the brain. Ocular activity can be monitored by electrodes located near the eyes (electrooculogram, or EOG). The electric fields associated with eye movements and blinks are somewhat different. The simplest procedure for dealing with ocular artifacts is to eliminate trials on which EOG activity is detected (rejection). However, this technique may result in data loss and biased data samples, especially when one is comparing clinical populations or tasks involving large amounts of eye movements. Another approach involves estimation and correction of the ocular artifact on the EEG and ERP traces. Several techniques have been proposed. Some of them are reviewed in the present paper. Issues related to the accuracy of the various techniques, as well as other advantages and limitations, are also discussed. Finally, general guidelines for how to deal with ocular artifacts are proposed.     

当代农民工感知社会支持、自尊和主观幸福感的关系

本研究以600名农民工为被试,采用自编的农民工感知社会支持情景问卷以及修订的自尊量表、农民工主观幸福感问卷,以探讨农民工感知社会支持、自尊与主观幸福感的关系,并考查农民工自尊在其感知社会支持与主观幸福感之间的中介作用。结果表明：（1）高自尊水平农民工的主观幸福感及其各维度、感知社会支持都极其显著地高于低自尊农民工;（2）自尊水平与主观幸福感及各维度、感知社会支持水平之间存在极其显著的正相关关系;（3）感知社会支持、自尊与主观幸福感显著两两正相关;（4）自尊在感知社会支持基础上对主观幸福感及两个维度回归效应显著,为二者之间重要的中介变量。     

The cramped and crowded room: The search for a sense of belonging and emotional well-being among temporary low-wage migrant workers

Recent scholarship on belonging examines how temporary transnational low-wage migrant workers find belonging in the host country. While this is possible for some migrant groups, it overlooks those groups who cannot. This study examines how mutually reinforcing socio-spatial processes converge to produce the unequal distribution of belonging experienced by low-wage migrants at the margins of the margin. Drawing from the emotional narratives of forty-four temporary migrant workers from eleven different countries employed in low-wage work in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the study reveals the exclusionary processes that limit belonging. These processes are rooted in historical hierarchies established by the state and socioeconomic elite along the lines of nationality, race, and ethnicity. The hierarchies are reinforced using socio-spatial disciplinary mechanisms that create and maintain low-wage labor. Social exclusion and the devaluing of certain nationalities are further reinforced within the space of worker accommodation in relation to the stratification of low-wage migrant groups whose behavior replicates society's vertical hierarchies. Analysis focuses specifically on the scale of the room—the cramped, confined space that low-wage migrants share—, how it was experienced spatially, socially, and emotionally, and how it can be a pathway or barrier to accessing a sense of belonging.     

Validation of a reflective practice rubric for evaluating the complexity of teacher candidate digital and written reflections

This study was conducted to validate the effectiveness of a previously published rubric for evaluating the reflective characteristics contained within reflective artifacts. The goal of the study was to test the validity of the rubric when evaluating written reflection and digital artifacts of teacher candidates. The theory of reflection is discussed, and the process of eliciting higher levels of reflection through various modalities from written prompts. Secondly, this study describes the process participants followed while learning to use the rubric, the methods of evaluating artifacts using the rubric, and the results the study produced. The rubric proved to be an effective tool when determining the level of reflection, a teacher candidate demonstrated. Lastly, this article discusses limitations of the rubric, as well as suggestions for further research regarding teaching reflective practices, and how to refine one’s own reflective skills to achieve a level of deep reflection on/for action.     

Attitudes and perceptions of workers to sexual harassment

The authors investigated how individual factors (age, gender, gender role, past experiences of sexual harassment) and organizational factors (gender ratio, sexual harassment policies, the role of employers) related to workers' attitudes toward and perceptions of sexual harassment. In Study 1, participants were 176 workers from a large, white-collar organization. In Study 2, participants were 75 workers from a smaller, blue-collar organization. Individuals from Study 2 experienced more sexual harassment, were more tolerant of sexual harassment, and perceived less behavior as sexual harassment than did individuals from Study 1. For both samples, organizational and individual factors predicted workers' attitudes toward and experiences of sexual harassment. Individual factors-such as age, gender, gender role, past experiences of sexual harassment, and perceptions of management's tolerance of sexual harassment-predicted attitudes toward sexual harassment. Workers' attitudes, the behavioral context, and the gender of the victim and perpetrator predicted perceptions of sexual harassment. The authors discussed the broader implications of these findings and suggested recommendations for future research.     

Occupational conditions and workers' sense of community: Variations by gender and race

The literature is reviewed to define a sense of community in the workplace and to identify factors that may foster it. A model is developed and estimated with survey data from a culturally diverse sample of men and women performing lower-level jobs at a medium-sized manufacturing firm. Results of regression analyses are reported that correct for sample selection bias resulting from the lower response rates of minority workers. Findings suggest that well-designed jobs and supportive workplace relationships and policies are important in explaining workers' sense of community, defined as workers' perceptions of mutual commitment between employee and employer. Informal sources of support play a larger role in explaining men's sense of community, while formal sources of support are more important in explaining women's sense of community. Findings further suggest that African American workers, especially women, have a difficult time experiencing a sense of community at work. The authors thank the employees of Fel-Pro for their participation in this study and Melissa Roderick, Michael Sosin, and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. This research was funded by the Fel-Pro/Mecklenberger Foundation and the Lois and Samuel Silberman Fund.     

Contemporary Educational Argumentation: A Multimodal Perspective

In contemporary educational contexts there is considerable variation in how argumentation works and what forms and styles it takes. Influencing factors include the educational purpose and task, the level of education, and the discipline or curriculum subject in which it occurs. This paper offers a theoretical framework and a set of multimodal analytical tools which can provide a rich and systematic account of such variation. Using naturalistic data from three different educational sites I illustrate how such a framework reveals the diverse ways in which students use language and other modes of meaning making as they engage in processes of argumentation. In particular, I consider how new technologies have caused shifts in the distribution of meaning across different semiotic modes (such as visual images, space, colour and graphics) and how this impacts upon both argumentation process and product. The educational implications of such changes are also considered.     

Coworker attributes as potential correlates to the perceptions of older workers' job performance: An exploratory study

This study examined coworker attributes as potential correlates to the perceptions of older workers' job performance. It was found that increased education, more positive attitudes toward retirement, and experience working with older workers might lead to more positive perceptions of older workers' job performance.     

AGE DIFFERENCES IN TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION DECISIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR A CHANGING WORK FORCE

This research investigated age differences in individual adoption and sustained usage of technology in the workplace using the theory of planned behavior. User reactions and technology usage behavior were studied over a 5-month period among 118 workers being introduced to a new software system. At 2 points of measurement, compared to older workers, younger workers' technology usage decisions were more strongly influenced by attitude toward using the technology. In contrast, older workers were more strongly influenced by subjective norm and perceived behavioral control, although the effect of subjective norm diminished over time. These findings were robust, even after controlling for key confounding variables identified in prior organizational behavior research (i.e., income, occupation, and education levels). Theoretical and practical implications for understanding the effects of aging on technology adoption and usage in the workplace are discussed.