Studies of Work: Achieving Hybrid Disciplines in IT Design and Management Studies

We explore the relationship between ethnomethodology (EM), ethnography and the needs of managers and designers in industry, considering both ethnomethodological and industrial criteria of adequacy and explicating their relationship through the concept of “audience.” We examine a range of studies in this light, with a view to their possible candidacy as hybrid studies and identify three types of application of EM studies of work: market research, design, and business improvement. Application in the first of these fields we dub “anthropological,” in that it consists in studying and reporting back on the ways of exotic people (customers). This is the application most commonly found in studies of computer supported co-operative work (CSCW). A second CSCW application, “technomethodology,” involves the introduction of EM concepts into the design process. A further application, dubbed “holding-up-a-mirror,” involves reporting back to members of a setting upon their own activities. We argue that technomethodology and holding-up-a-mirror both offer the possibility of creating hybrid disciplines. We consider the objection that improvement and design involve the introduction of value judgements that threaten the practice of EM indifference, arguing that action research can serve as a guarantee of unique adequacy (UA) by testing the researcher’s understanding as analysis in action in the setting. Furthermore, the standard of reporting required by the UA criterion contributes to the effectiveness of proposed solutions.     

Reassessing the Work Ethic: A New Look at Work and Other Activities

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to argue that psychological research on the work ethic, or work centrality, uses too narrow a focus for understanding shifts in behaviour and attitudes over time. The appropriate unit of analysis is activity. Working is a subcategory of this larger unit. Six areas of activity are distinguished: education and training in early life, paid tasks or work, updating education throughout life, unpaid tasks or voluntary activity, education of the third age, and active or passive leisure. Historical, sociological, and anthropological evidence is reviewed and related to the psychological analysis of the meaning of working. It emerges that work is a controversial topic; it is extensively praised by some and condemned by others. Few would deny that paid work is a necessary way of obtaining basic and supplementary human requirements under present-day circumstances, but the differential conditions and constraints under which it is carried out are not always accepted as a necessary corollary. Is paid work a necessary or a desirable means of obtaining a standard of living? The answer depends on whether paid work is seen in isolation or as a subsystem of a wider range of activities which together result in a fulfilling life.     

区块与事件相关混合设计:一种新的fMRI研究范式

本文在对区块设计和事件相关设计进行简要回顾的基础上,介绍了当前fMRI研究中一种新的研究范式——区块与事件相关混合设计。这种研究范式能够有效地分离认知加工过程中持久的、状态相关的过程与短暂的、项目相关的过程,并且已经在fMRI研究中得到了初步的应用。文章最后指出了使用这种研究范式时需要注意的一些问题,并且指出了其在认知科学研究中的应用前景。     

Against the New Fictionalism: A Hybrid View of Scientific Models

This article develops an approach to modelling and models in science—the hybrid view—that is against model fictionalism of a recent stripe (the ‘new fictionalism’ that takes models to be imaginary entities that are analogous to works of fiction). It further argues that there is a version of fictionalism about models to which my approach is neutral and which makes sense only if one adopts a special sort of antirealism (e.g. constructive empiricism). Otherwise, my approach strongly suggests that one stay away from fictionalism and embrace realism directly.     

Charting the process of change: A primer on survival analysis

Survival analysis is a powerful and useful technique for understanding qualitative change. This article provides a practical, nontechnical introduction to the use of survival analysis for social scientists. Important issues in using survival analysis are discussed, including research design, data preparation and management, and data analysis. Attendance data from a self-helf organization are used to illustrate common survival analysis tasks such as describing the overall survival and hazard functions, examining covariate effects, and modeling the form of the hazard function over time. An appendix that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current survival analysis computer programs is included. Editor's note: Edward Seidman served as action editor for this article while serving as Associate Editor for Methodology.I thank William Davidson, Susan Englund, Bruce Rapkin, Kurt Ribisl, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The example data presented here were collected with the support of an NIMH grant (MH37390) awarded to Julian Rappaport and Ed Seidman.     

Openness in Cross-Cultural Work Settings: A Multicountry Study of Expatriates

Openness plays an important role in determining what kind of experiences individuals seek out not only in their personal lives, but also in work environments. The objectives of this study were (a) to examine the influence of openness and its facets on the decision to work abroad and (b) to study whether employees’ openness relates to cross-cultural adjustment as well as job and life satisfaction. We investigated these questions among a sample of 2,096 expatriates. In addition to self-reports of openness and cross-cultural adjustment, ratings of subjects’ adjustment were also obtained from 928 knowledgeable others. The openness facets of actions, ideas, and values appear to be good predictors of acceptance of international assignments. In addition, global Openness and its facets Openness to actions and feelings relate to self- and other ratings of cross-cultural adjustment.     

Polychronicity and Multitasking: A Diary Study at Work

Polychronicity and multitasking have been described as being indispensible in work today because they enable people to use their time flexibly and effectively. We conducted a diary study among 93 employees during the mornings and evenings of 5 consecutive workdays (n = 418 observations). The study used hierarchical linear modeling with polychronicity and other personal characteristics at the person level, and multitasking behavior along with multitasking opportunities, interruptions, and unplanned work as antecedents, and affective well-being and self-rated performance as outcomes at the day level. We found several relations between antecedents and multitasking, as well as between multitasking and consequences. Polychronicity interacts with these relationships, such that polychronic individuals’ affective well-being and self-rated performance are less affected on days with much multitasking compared to monochronic individuals.     

Meetings: A Swampy Terrain for Adult Development

This article introduces a model of modes of experience as a tool for making sense of some of the complexity in meetings. Although derived from theories of adult development, the mode model presented here assumes that individuals are more internally diverse than they may appear through the lenses of some stage theories. The article includes vignettes of meetings in various organizational contexts to illustrate the dynamic nature of modes, and it suggests that an individual's psychological development may be fruitfully viewed in terms of both an evolving repertoire of modes, and a growing capacity to exercise judgment about when to shift and when to stay in a mode. Seen in the light of a mode model, meetings bring nearly continuous opportunities to foster collective creativity and constructive risk-taking. Constructive approaches to using modes are described, as well as risks, such as that of attempting to pigeonhole individuals. The concept of modes is best used as a background way of thinking and relating with the ultimate aim of fostering conditions that support organizational and individual development over the long term.     

The Social Construction of Emotions: A New Direction in the Pastoral Work of Healing

Interviews with pastoral practitioners revealed that exploration of feelings, both personal and interpersonal, is considered the sine qua non of pastoral care and counseling. This emphasis on personal and interpersonal feelings is largely attributable to the enduring influence of Carl Rogers on contemporary pastoral care and counseling. While recognizing that Rogers was not as narrowly focused on personal and interpersonal relationships and oblivious to the larger social order than is generally assumed, I contend that he did not give sufficient attention to the fact that emotions are socially constructed and draw on recent literature on the social construction of emotions and on critical race theory to argue for a new direction in the pastoral work of healing, one that takes more adequate account of the sociocultural factors that create and sustain unhealthy emotions and that recognizes that emotions are signals about the social order.     

Identifying thriving Workplaces in Hospitals: Work Characteristics and the Applicability of Character Strengths at Work

In most of their work settings, the health and well-being of hospital physicians are at risk. Trends of work intensification and changing laws in the European Union and beyond have heightened the call for taking a closer look at the workplace and training conditions of hospital physicians. This study aims to identify specific work characteristics (such as autonomy, social support, cognitive demands, and skill adequacy), in order to determine conditions for the applicability of individual character strengths at work and in turn for increased work engagement and well-being. We examined our hypotheses based on cross-sectional (N = 173) and longitudinal self-report data (N = 72) of hospital physicians in Austria. The results identified significant indirect effects of skill adequacy, cognitive demands, autonomy, and social support at work – via the applicability of individual character strengths at work – on work engagement and general well-being. Longitudinal analyses additionally confirmed autonomy as a thriving work characteristic for promoting the applicability of individual character strengths over time (time lag: 6 months). This study revealed the value of enabling and preserving the applicability of character strengths in a hospital work setting and focused – for the first time – on its predicting work characteristics. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of securing skill adequacy early in the training of young physicians and encouraging, as well as, sustaining autonomy in their daily work life.

     

Medical Family Therapy: Charting a Course in Competencies

The skills and training medical family therapists need to be effective in their work is an underdeveloped area in the literature. Training programs in Medical Family Therapy (MedFT) currently vary in duration, intensity, and focus of material and most of this is due to the minimal research done on what core competencies are needed. The results presented in this paper are the product of a larger modified Delphi (Dalkey in Studies in the quality of life, Lexington Books, Lexinton, MA, 1972) study designed to reach consensus regarding the current definition, scope, and practice of MedFT. Thirty-seven experts in MedFT participated in this two-phase investigation. What resulted and will be reported on in this article are the training requirements and recommended core competencies for the practice of MedFT. Participants indicated that 12 academic course content areas and 13 core competencies should be required of those seeking training in MedFT. Recommendations for MedFT core competencies at the master??s, post master??s, and doctoral levels, as well as advancements for future research, are described in detail.     

Supervisor-Subordinate Work Value Congruence and Subordinate Performance: A Pilot Study

The relationship of superior-subordinate work value congruence to subordinate performance was examined in a retail setting. Additionally, because of on-going interest in the role of justice or fairness in the performance appraisal process, the relationship between the supervisor's value of fairness and subordinate performance was examined. Superior-subordinate value congruence was not related to subordinate performance. The supervisor's level of the value of fairness was related to supervisor-rated dimensions of performance, but not to sales and profits. Implications for future research are presented.     

Predicting Work Activities with Divergent Thinking Tests: A Longitudinal Study

This study examined whether divergent thinking test scores obtained from engineering students during college predicted creative work activities fifteen years later. Results showed that a subscore of the Owens Creativity Test, which assesses divergent thinking about mechanical objects, correlated significantly with self‐ratings of creative work activities and number of patent submissions. An overall divergent thinking score obtained from the Structure of the Intellect Learning Abilities Test (SOI‐ELCT), however, did not correlate significantly with either creative work activities or patent submissions. Practical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

Offender Characteristics: A Study of 23 Violent Offenders in Sweden

Twenty-three offenders convicted of homicide or attempted murder/manslaughter, and their respective crimes, were examined to identify any common characteristics. Court documents were assessed, and the most prominent information of the offenders was that they were often single, most of them had no psychiatric diagnoses, the most frequent modus operandi was a knife or sharp weapon (although firearms resulted in more homicides), and the most common homicide typology was domestic disputes, and disputes between friends or acquaintances. Based on a cluster analysis, two profiles emerged: one with so-called traditional criminals and another profile over-represented with offenders who commit domestic crimes.     

The Study of Religions in the Third Reich: A Report on Work in Progress

Translator's Note. Possible connections between the study of religions and European fascism, if not indeed Nazism, have sparked considerable discussion and debate in the English-speaking world. Consider the celebrated cases of Mircea Eliade and Georges Dumézil.By contrast, the work of German scholars of religion during the NS period has been relatively little studied. Still, there have been exceptions. Burkhard Gladigow of Tübingen has published ‘Naturwissenschaftliche Modellvorstellungen in der Religionswissenschaft in der Zeit zwischen den Weltkriegen’.¹Recently, the study of religions during the Third Reich has become the subject of an ongoing seminar at Philipps-Universität Marburg. To date, one student has declared his intentions to write a thesis on the topic. Rainer Flasche, who convenes the seminar, has also worked on the topic extensively. The following essay is a preliminary indication of his results.Flasche, born in Hannover in 1942, studied theology, philosophy, German, and the history of religions in Marburg. He has taught history of religions there since 1971, making his habilitation in 1975. His best known work isDie Religionswissenschaft Joachim Wachs(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978).Readers may wish especially to note what emerges as the central principle of Nazi religio-historical hermeneutics: that only those who belong to a race (gender? class?) can understand it. Thus, only Germans can understand Germanic religion. The essay may also shed some light on the study of religions in Germany after the war. A reviewer of a recent book by Isaiah Berlin has noted how Berlin's lasting confidence in the liberal tradition perhaps derives from the usefulness of that tradition in Eastern Europe, where Berlin spent his formative years. In post-war Germany, the study of religions has emphasized a positivism that remains close to the sources and shuns explicit theorizing, an emphasis in which Flasche clearly concurs. The usefulness of this strategy should not be overlooked. It allowed German scholars of the NS period, but also later under communist rule in the Democratic Republic and to some extent within the confines of state-run theology programs in the Federal Republic, to work independently of and even oppose a sanctioned ideology. The strategy was not to champion competing theories but to oppose ideological claims with ‘facts’. This stance contrasts sharply with the theoretical richness that characterized German thought about religions before 1933, but—once burned, twice cautious.A note on terminology. The development of the nation-state took markedly different courses in the German and English speaking worlds. As a result, the wordVolkand the adjectivevölkischhave no entirely satisfactory English equivalents. The connotations of ‘nation’ are too limited, because the GermanVolkwas an ideal that transcended not only the principalities that dominated German political life from 1648 to 1866 but also the remnants of German glory that remained after World War I and even the extensive empire administered by Prussia from 1866 to 1918. Therefore, I have translatedVolkas ‘people’. But English ‘popular’ has quite a different sense fromVölkisch, so forvölkischI have used the adjective ‘national’ instead. Readers should keep in mind the direct verbal link between the two in the original.