Can a manager have a life and a career? International and multisource perspectives on work-life balance and career advancement potential

The present study was the first cross-national examination of whether managers who were perceived to be high in work-life balance were expected to be more or less likely to advance in their careers than were less balanced, more work-focused managers. Using self ratings, peer ratings, and supervisor ratings of 9,627 managers in 33 countries, the authors examined within-source and multisource relationships with multilevel analyses. The authors generally found that managers who were rated higher in work-life balance were rated higher in career advancement potential than were managers who were rated lower in work-life balance. However, national gender egalitarianism, measured with Project GLOBE scores, moderated relationships based on supervisor and self ratings, with stronger positive relationships in low egalitarian cultures. The authors also found 3-way interactions of work-life balance ratings, ratee gender, and gender egalitarianism in multisource analyses in which self balance ratings predicted supervisor and peer ratings of advancement potential. Work-life balance ratings were positively related to advancement potential ratings for women in high egalitarian cultures and men in low gender egalitarian cultures, but relationships were nonsignificant for men in high egalitarian cultures and women in low egalitarian cultures.     

Proximity attitudes toward objects and people: reference to a category and a self-representation?

The relative strength of similarity to self and category typicality as predictors of proximity attitudes (social distance) toward people of varying race and objects associated with people of varying race was investigated. Similarity to self and category typicality were significant predictors of proximity attitudes toward both objects and people, but similarity to self was the significantly stronger predictor. The predictive utility of similarity to self was greater for object judgments than person judgments, but category typicality was a better predictor of person judgments than object judgments. Although the results provide evidence of ingroup favoritism in proximity attitudes toward people, the ingroup bias did not extend to objects associated with people. Category typicality was positively related to attitudes, even for distanced groups. The role of predictability of the target in determining proximity attitudes is discussed.     

Children’s first and second-order false-belief reasoning in a verbal and a low-verbal task

We can understand and act upon the beliefs of other people, even when these conflict with our own beliefs. Children’s development of this ability, known as Theory of Mind, typically happens around age 4. Research using a looking-time paradigm, however, established that toddlers at the age of 15 months old pass a non-verbal false-belief task (Onishi and Baillargeon in Science 308:255–258, 2005). This is well before the age at which children pass any of the verbal false-belief tasks. In this study we present a more complex case of false-belief reasoning with older children. We tested second-order reasoning, probing children’s ability to handle the belief of one person about the belief of another person. We find just the opposite: 7-year-olds pass a verbal false-belief reasoning task, but fail on an equally complex low-verbal task. This finding suggests that language supports explicit reasoning about beliefs, perhaps by facilitating the cognitive system to keep track of beliefs attributed by people to other people.     

Having it all? Combining work and family in a male and a female profession

Are women in a female-dominated profession more successfully able to combine work and family obligations than women in a male-dominated profession? To explore this question, a comparison was made between the family status and careers of 747 women librarians (a female-dominated profession) and those of 449 women MBAs (a male-dominated profession). It was expected that the librarians would marry earlier and have more children. This general prediction was not supported. Over half of both groups of women were married, and after controlling for age, there were no differences in number of children. However, many women without children in both groups reported that they would like to be mothers. This disparity between wanting children and not having them was more common for women MBAs than women MLSs. MBAs and librarians were about equally likely to have had job interruptions, but librarians were more likely to have worked part-time. Reasons for an interruption to full-time work were as likely to be for problems finding (full-time) work as for family responsibilities. Librarians' salaries were much lower, but job interruptions and part-time work had a more negative effect on the salaries of women in business. In sum, the data suggest that many of the women surveyed have not combined motherhood with a professional career and that it is probably somewhat more difficult to combine a family with a career in business than with a career in library science.     

Liturgy and drama: a context of catharsis and transcendence?

This article is concerned with the role of liturgy and drama in the life of the Church and especially with regard to church growth. The assumption that traditional liturgy has only a tangential role in mission is questioned by comparing liturgy and drama and their role in evangelism. Christian worship from the fourth century began to be dramatised; this was a process reinforced by allegorical interpretations of the liturgy. That development and the para-liturgical dramas created from the tenth century onwards were in response to evangelistic needs. Mystery plays, the Holy Week liturgy and popular devotion in medieval Christianity in the West tended to focus on the passion of Christ. They were like tragedy in creating an encounter with death which could lead to catharsis and self-transcendence. Parts of the Holy Week liturgy are looked at in that light. The final section of the article deals with the way the liturgy offers an opportunity for corporate and personal renewal both in terms of inward preparation and outward proclamation of the Easter mystery. In these ways liturgy offers a context for an experience of God and can be seen as having an important role to play in church growth.     

Between a rock and a hard place? Locus of control,religious problem-solving and psychological help-seeking

Drawing on a college and community sample, this study utilised hierarchical multiple regression to examine the relative contributions of demographic variables, psychological treatment experience, religious service attendance, locus of control, and religious problem-solving style in predicting attitudes towards psychological help-seeking. Women, those holding a graduate degree, and those with treatment experience held more positive attitudes towards psychological help-seeking. While neither the locus of control nor religious problem-solving scales alone were related to help-seeking, several significant interaction effects were observed. God-centred locus of control was a positive predictor of psychological help-seeking, but only for older participants. Chance locus of control was a negative predictor, but only for graduate degree holders. Last, self-directing religious problem-solving style was a negative predictor, especially for individuals also endorsing a deferring religious problem-solving style. Perhaps the composition of the sample – largely educated, religious African-American women – gives some insight into the complex nature of these results.     

Narrative and embodiment – a scalar approach

Recent work on the relation between narrative and selfhood has emphasized embodiment as an indispensable foundation for selfhood. This has occasioned an interesting debate on the relation between embodiment and narrative. In this paper, I attempt to mediate the range of conflicting intuitions within the debate by proposing a scalar approach to narrative and an accompanying concept of a split-self (Waldenfels 2000). Drawing on theoretical developments from contemporary narratology, I argue that we need to move away from a binary understanding of narrative as something an entity (the self) strictly is or is not; rather, we need to see narrative as an attribute admitting of degrees. I suggest that the relation between narrative and embodiment should be seen along these lines, proposing three levels of the narrativity of embodied experiencing: 1) the unnarratable, 2) the narratable and 3) the narrative. Finally, I discuss the implications this framework has for the general question of the narrative constitution of selfhood.     

Love and Justice: a Paradox?

Three claims about love and justice cannot be simultaneously true and therefore entail a paradox: (1) Love is a matter of justice. (2) There cannot be a duty to love. (3) All matters of justice are matters of duty. The first claim is more controversial. To defend it, I show why the extent to which we enjoy the good of love is relevant to distributive justice. To defend (2) I explain the empirical, conceptual and axiological arguments in its favour. Although (3) is the most generally endorsed claim of the three, I conclude we should reject it in order to avoid the paradox.     

Replies to Comesaña and Yablo

There are few indulgences academics can crave more than to have their work considered and addressed by leading researchers in their field. We have been fortunate to have two outstanding philosophers from whose work we have learned a great deal give ours their thoughtful attention. Grappling with Stephen Yablo’s, and Juan Comesaña’s comments and criticisms has helped us gain a better understanding of our ideas as well as their shortcomings. We are extremely grateful to them for the attentiveness and seriousness with which they have considered our arguments and to philosophical studies for giving us this opportunity. Given the substantive difference between the two response papers, there is not much beyond sincere gratitude that we can covey to them jointly. We will therefore address them in turn.     

Self-Awareness and the Integration of Pramāṇa and Madhyamaka

Buddhist theories of mind pivot between two distinct interpretative strands: (1) an epistemological tradition in which the mind, or the mental, is the foundation for valid knowledge and (2) a tradition of deconstruction, in which there is no privileged vantage point for truth claims. The contested status of these two strands is evident in the debates surrounding the relationship between epistemology (pramāna) and Madhyamaka that extend from India to Tibet. The paper will focus on two exemplars of these approaches in Tibet, those of ?ākya Chokden (shākya mchog ldan, 1428–1507) and Tsongkhapa (tsong kha pa blo bzang grags pa, 1357–1419).     

Do implicit motives and basic psychological needs interact to predict well-being and flow? Testing a universal hypothesis and a matching hypothesis

Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan in Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press, New York, 1985) suggests that certain experiences, such as competence, are equally beneficial to everyone’s well-being (universal hypothesis), whereas Motive Disposition Theory (McClelland in Human motivation. Scott, Foresman, Glenview, IL, 1985) predicts that some people, such as those with a high achievement motive, should benefit particularly from such experiences (matching hypothesis). Existing research on motives as moderators of the relationship between basic need satisfaction and positive outcomes supports both these seemingly inconsistent views. Focusing on the achievement motive, we sought to resolve this inconsistency by considering the specificity of the outcome variables. When predicting domain-specific well-being and flow, the achievement motive should interact with felt competence. However, when it comes to predicting general well-being and flow, felt competence should unfold its effects without being moderated by the achievement motive. Two studies confirmed these assumptions indicating that the universal and matching hypotheses are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.     

The breadth and boundaries of a self‐psychological immersion in shame a one‐and‐a‐half‐person perspective

Shame colors other feelings and perceptions about the self. From reflections about his own personal experiences and observations regarding a particular manic‐depressive patient, the author discusses the evolution of his current clinical and theoretical understanding of shame. The framework of analytic self psychology is offered as a particularly useful perspective from which to consider shame, with its emphasis on the concept of selfobject to account both for shame's development (through selfobject misattunement and unresponsive‐ness) and for its amelioration (through empathic mirroring, idealization, and twinning). A developmental sequence for shame is advanced reflecting limitations in selfobject responsiveness, and problems are noted in the ability of current self psychology theory to fully account for the alleviation of shame. The self plays its part in the construction of those selfobjects needed to ease shame, representing the “one‐and‐a‐half‐person psychology”; of the paper's subtitle. Finally, the important role of countertransference shame is considered through a clinical example of therapist disclosure of his own shame to his patient, utilized in order to repair an interrupted kinship selfobject transference.     

Can a Scientist Be a Young,Attractive Woman? The Stereotype of a Scientist and the Lexical Choices of Women and Men

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The question of the conformance of a researcher’s features to the stereotype of a scientist is rarely addressed in the context of scientific research....     

Winnicott and Lacan: a missed encounter?

Winnicott was able to say that Lacan's paper on the mirror stage "had certainly influenced" him, while Lacan argued that he found his object a in Winnicott's transitional object. By following the development of their personal relations, as well as of their theoretical discussions, it is possible to argue that this was a missed encounter--yet a happily missed one, since the misunderstandings of their theoretical exchanges allowed each of them to clarify concepts otherwise difficult to discern.     

A failure of dialogue? a critical reflection on a discussion between a teacher trainer and a pre-service second-language teacher

Reflective practice in teacher education often involves dialogic communication between teacher educators and teachers. This essay asks what constitutes authentic dialogic engagement in discussions between a pre-service second-language (SL) teacher and her university supervisor. Written as a self-critical reflection, the paper first describes the author’s thoughts and feelings about a post-teaching session he conducted with one of his supervisees and identifies possible disconnections existing between them. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s of genuine dialogue, this paper reflects on the dispositions that foster a dialogic relationship between teacher educators and pre-service and in-service teachers.     

Aesthetics and literature: a problematic relation?

The paper argues that there is a proper place for literature within aesthetics but that care must be taken in identifying just what the relation is. In characterising aesthetic pleasure associated with literature it is all too easy to fall into reductive accounts, for example, of literature as merely “fine writing”. Belleslettrist or formalistic accounts of literature are rejected, as are two other kinds of reduction, to pure meaning properties and to a kind of narrative realism. The idea is developed that literature—both poetry and prose fiction—invites its own distinctive kind of aesthetic appreciation which far from being at odds with critical practice, in fact chimes well with it.