Acts against the workplace: Social bonding and employee deviance

Research into the phenomenon of workplace deviance has separately focused on two types of employee rule‐breaking behavior, 1) acts against the property and assets of the organization and 2) various types of counter‐productive behavior. In an attempt to compare the theoretical and empirical similarity of these two forms of employee deviance, this paper examines the self‐reported involvement in both property and production deviance among a population of employees randomly sampled from three industry sectors and three metropolitan areas. Utilizing a weighted least squares logit regression analysis, the findings support continued conceptual separation of these two forms of employee rule‐breaking as they seem to be explained by slightly different configurations of the “social bonding” model. Involvement in property deviance seems to be primarily the result of a lack of future “commitment” to the organization, while counter‐productive behavior is better understood using a combination of “commitment, attachment, and involvement” variables in the model. Further, both forms of workplace deviance were significantly more likely to involve younger employees.     

Understanding the factors that determine workplace coaching effectiveness: a systematic literature review

Meta-analytic results have established that workplace coaching is effective, however, little is known about the determinants of coaching effectiveness. This paper reports an inclusive systematic literature review, covering the quantitative and qualitative research on workplace coaching. We focus on seven promising areas in the current workplace coaching literature that emerged by the synthesis of 117 empirical studies: self-efficacy, coaching motivation, goal orientation, trust, interpersonal attraction, feedback intervention, and supervisory support. The major contribution of our paper is the systematic integration of well-established theoretical constructs in the workplace coaching context and the new insights we provide in the synthesis of these literatures. Based on our review, we provide specific recommendations to be addressed in future research, including recommended research methodologies, which we propose will significantly progress the field of workplace coaching theory and practice.     

An Investigation of Abusive Supervision,Vicarious Abusive Supervision,and Their Joint Impacts

ABSTRACT

Recent work has begun to look at the impact of abusive supervision, a dysfunctional workplace behavior, on employee outcomes. This study extends this line of research by examining vicarious abusive supervision (abuse not directly experienced, but rumors about it or hearing about it, that is “experienced vicariously”). In particular, this research effort investigates whether vicarious abuse has effects above and beyond those accounted for by personally experienced abusive supervision on the outcomes of job frustration, coworker abuse, and perceived organizational support. Our sample is composed of 233 workers from a large variety of organizations. Results reveal that both personally experienced and vicarious abuse have negative impacts and these effects are heightened when both forms of abusive supervision are present. Practical and theoretical implications, as well as directions for future research, are offered.     

Pratiques d’encadrement et usages des TIC : un exemple en Gendarmerie nationale

This article will present the results of field research conducted in a French army civilian body responsible for the safety of property and people. The object of study concerns “e-leadership” management practice in connection with the information technology and communication (ICT). After recalling the role played by ICT in situations of current work, the issue of management relationship will be developed, as well as knowledge on the “e-leadership”. The results show the impact of ICT on the management relationship is rooted in a multiple determinism related to the nature of tasks, the characteristics of technological tools and constraints in the use situations.     

A Culture‐Inclusive,Socially Engaged Agenda for Creativity Research

The 50 years anniversary of The Journal of Creative Behavior offers a festive occasion to reflect on the recent history of the field as well as look toward its future. From the standpoint of sociocultural psychology, I celebrate the growing importance of society and culture within creativity research. However, I also note an important distinction between “social inside” and “social outside” approaches. A truly culture‐inclusive field would go beyond the view of culture as “container” and explore the ways in which sociocultural contexts actively participate in creativity. At the same time, it would examine how creative action, in turn, shapes society and culture, particularly at times of growing intolerance, nationalism, and inequality. A socially engaged agenda for creativity research is timely both conceptually and practically. Taken together, these two pillars could not only advance but also fundamentally transform our field, carrying it for the next 50 years and beyond.     

Work ethic and organizational commitment as conditions of unethical pro‐organizational behavior: Do engaged workers break the ethical rules?

Unethical pro‐organizational behaviors (UPB) are actions that break rules or established standards, but are undertaken for the purposes of helping the organization or coworkers. Although research has already examined the role of work ethic and organizational commitment in shaping employee behaviors, little is known about the reason for and antecedents of employees undertaking UPB. In a sample of 425 working adults from multiple industries, we tested whether work ethic and organizational commitment dimensions predict the readiness to undertake UPB. The time‐lagged study showed that the work ethics dimension “hard work,” and normative and affective organizational commitment, are positive predictors of UPB. The ethics dimensions “morality/ethics,” “delay of gratification,” “centrality of work” and “anti‐leisure attitudes” are negative predictors of UPB.     

Reflecting on Participatory,Action‐Oriented Research Methods in Community Psychology: Progress,Problems, and Paths Forward

This paper provides a critical reflection on participatory action research (PAR) methods as they pertain to community psychology. Following a brief review of the fundamental aspects of PAR, key developments in the field are examined. These developments include the redefinition of the research enterprise among groups such as Indigenous and consumer/survivor communities, challenges that attend the “project” framing of PAR, academic and practice context challenges, and important domains in which PAR methods need to become more engaged (e.g., social media and disenfranchised youth). Three illustrative case studies of programs of work in the areas of youth homelessness, consumer/survivor engagement, and Indigenous research are provided to illustrate these contemporary challenges and opportunities in the field. The authors make the argument that without an effort to reconsider and redefine PAR, moving away from the stereotypical PAR “project” frame, these methods will continue to be poorly represented and underutilized in community psychology.     

I crashed the boat and wept: Localizing the “field” in critical geographic practice

Geographers often practice “fieldwork” for research, physically traveling between field and the academy. While critical scholars have contemplated their positionality in the field, what gets overlooked is how academic constructions of their “field” can discount indigenous peoples’ knowledges of “home.” Because academics’ representations of “the field” affirm the subject/object binary, this ontology allows indigenous peoples’ knowledges to be criticized in their emotional expressions of their homelands. In this paper I describe my practices of “field” work to disrupt this ontology—and in so doing, what emerges is my deeply emotional engagement with this “field,” produced through the network of materialities and beings with whom I worked. Network ontologies allow more space for discussing the emotional and affective experiences of a field site, including researcher uncertainty and responsibility. Attending to both conscious and unconscious motives to action is a more rigorous critical practice, and representing emotions can at once benefit research goals (emotional engagements leading to new insights), and lead to new politics of knowledge production and representation: such as opening a space for indigenous peoples to be recognized as legitimate spokespersons about their own beloved landscapes.     

Where “culture wars” and therapy meet: Exploring the intersection between political issues and therapeutic practice

In the era of “culture wars,” instances where client and practitioner discuss political issues in therapy may become more frequent. This paper introduces the way in which “culture wars” manifest in today's societies and highlights the importance of therapeutic practitioners to engage with and explore their own views in relation to these polarising political debates. In doing so, this paper reflects upon the existing research focussing on the way in which “culture wars” enter the therapeutic encounter and highlights the feelings of anxiety and conflict that arise when practitioners are tasked with “talking politics” with clients. It considers the implications for practice and policy and concludes with recommendations for future scholarship, arguing for more culturally specific studies that examine how “culture wars” issues impact therapeutic work in a variety of international settings.     

Gadamer and Scholz on Solidarity: Disclosing,Avowing, and Performing Solidaristic Ties with Human and Natural Others

ABSTRACT

This essay is concerned with Gadamer’s reflections on solidarity and practice as found in several of his later writings. While Gadamer offers a robust explanation of practice, practical reason, and how both are operative in solidarities, his investigations of solidarity are in no way systematic. He does, however, distinguish two aspects of solidarity, viz. what one might call “natural solidarity” and “avowed solidarity”. In contrast to natural solidarities, avowed solidarities require an intentional decision and commitment to act with others for a common cause. Since Gadamer’s writings on solidarity are more sketches than detailed treatises, we will bring his work into dialogue with feminist and political philosopher Sally Scholz. Scholz has devoted significant research to the concept of political solidarity. Like Gadamer, Scholz too is concerned with how we engage natural others and how our present practices harm and exploit them. By bringing Scholz’s and Gadamer’s work into dialogue, we gain a better understanding of different facets and types of solidarity, how they interrelate and influence one other, and how their interrelations might help to effect positive social and political changes for all who inhabit this world.     

De l’aménagement des bureaux à la transformation des modes de travail : quelles répercussions collectives ?

An increasing number of companies choose to implement “activity-based” workplace environments. Building upon activity theory and situated cognition, we focus on the impact of these office solutions on collective work practices. Our study is based on 15 semi-structured interviews as well as 5-day activity diaries followed by commented walks. We aim at understanding how the office layout is dealt with and acted upon by the employees of an Information Technology company. Our results show that the “activity-based” workplace provides a framework for both interpreting the work of colleagues and organizing one's own work. More generally, our research opens up a reflexion on how office design intervention could support activity development.     

Peter McHugh: A Memoir of the Passion of Theorizing

This paper is a personal and theoretic commemoration of Peter McHugh’s life and commitment through the prism of the writer’s discovery of, and involvement in, the effort from the late 1960s to diagnose and respond to “the failure of positivism” in sociology. Peter’s work (with that of Alan Blum) formed a central component of that effort. I trace the genealogy of Peter’s teaching and conversational practice, to his roots in ethnomethodology and his involvement with Harold Garfinkel. This is followed by an account of how Peter developed and transformed the ethnomethodological impulse, from the “uninterestingly” enforceable towards the invitation to share in the discovery and reconstruction of interest. The paper concludes by situating the time that is its focus, acknowledging the depth of Peter’s impact, and opening for future engagement the subsequent development of his work, in the context of various debates and questions (briefly alluded to) that form a part of the life of theorizing in the early twenty-first century.     

Redefining dementia care barriers for ethnic minorities: the religion–culture distinction

Barriers to healthcare services experienced by black and minority ethnic (BME) persons with dementia are labelled as “cultural” in existing research. This is a promising shift from an ethno-centric approach to dementia care provision, yet very little research is dedicated to specifically how religion – as distinct from culture – influences healthcare practice. Further consideration of the religion–culture distinction is required; religion and culture are two distinct entities, which inevitably interlink. Cultural themes such as “God's will”, “Religious Ritual” and “Religious Duty”, warrant re-categorisation as “religious”. Sensitivity to the nuances between cultural and religious themes will provide clearer knowledge of how and why BME persons with dementia experience barriers to accessing care services. Further research is needed with regard to the role of religion specifically on dementia care access for BME persons to aim to improve care provision for this underrepresented demographic.     

Visual awareness and the levels of processing hypothesis: A critical review

Does a visual percept emerge to consciousness in a graded manner (i.e. evolving through increasing degrees of clarity), or according to a dichotomous, “all-or-none” pattern (i.e. abruptly transitioning from unawareness to awareness)? The level of processing hypothesis (LoP; B. Windey and A. Cleeremans, 2015) recently proposed a theoretical framework where the transition from unaware to aware visual experience is graded for low-level stimulus representations (i.e. stimulus “energy” or “feature” levels) whereas it is dichotomous for high-level (i.e. the perception of “letters”, “words” or “meaning”) stimulus perception. Here, we will critically review current behavioral and brain-based evidence on the LoP hypothesis and discuss potential challenges (such as differences in LoP conceptualizations, awareness scale related issues, attentional confounds and divergences on experimental factors or statistical analyses) which might be of use for future research within the field. Overall, the LoP hypothesis is a recent and promising proposal that attempts to integrate divergent evidence on the graded vs. dichotomous emergence of awareness debate. Whereas current evidence validates some of the assumptions proposed by the LoP account, there is still much work to do on both methodological and experimental levels. Future neuroimaging studies might help to disentangle the current complex pattern of results found in LoP studies and, importantly, shed some light on the ongoing debate about the search for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC).     

Les décisions d’orientation dépendent-elles des stéréotypes sociaux ? Sous quelles conditions ?

IntroductionIn this research we want to show that influence of social stereotypes linked to the social background on the students’ orientation is not a social fate that cannot be ignored but that there really are conditions that allow to reduce or even suppress those effects. The objective is to test the hypothesis according to which the seniority of the teachers, their type of professional commitment and the fact of working or not in an area earmarked for special educational assistance (prioritary education zone) must allow to significantly reduce the stereotypes effects on the academic judgment.MethodWithin the framework of an experimental research lead in school, we have asked high school teachers to express propositions of continuing studies as well as success predictions from ficticious student files reaching the end of high school. The results confirm that the bias generally observed in academic judgments are reduced in professors having a seniority above 5 years compared to the ones having a seniority lower than 5 years, those who have a strong work commitment, like the “self made persons” or “social activists” types, compared to those having a lower type of work commitment like the “self investors” or “careerists” types and those working in an area earmarked for special educational assistance (prioritary education zone) compared to those who work outside these areas.ConclusionThis research shows that factors likely to limit the effects of social background stereotypes on academic judgments do exist.     

Community Psychology in Ghana: Challenges,Successes and Prospects

Community psychology gained formal recognition in Ghana when a few students were admitted to Wilfrid Laurier University, in Canada, to pursue master's degree in the early 1990s. In Ghana, community psychology is enacted through the operations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and professionals. The university classroom is also being used as the main context for introducing people to the field of community psychology. In comparison with the work of community psychologists in countries such as the United States of America and Canada, the field is still underdeveloped in Ghana. “Small wins” which refers to the process of achieving an intervention objective through gradual and incremental successes, are considered as examples of “best practice” in Ghana, where religion and superstition are at the heart of almost every activity. Despite the current challenges, community psychology has a promising future in Ghana.     

The Paradox of Howard Becker’s Intellectual Identity

Howard S. Becker, best known as a sociologist of deviance, claims that he “never really did work on deviance as such.” Why does he say this? The fortuitous nature of his entry into the field, his belief that deviance is not an analytic category, and the amount of time, energy, and commitment he has invested in this as opposed to other fields, play a role in this stance. In all likelihood, contrary to his wish, Howard Becker will always be regarded as a deviance researcher.     

But we’re here to help! Positive buffers of the relationship between outsider incivility and employee outcomes

Incivility from sources outside the organization (e.g., customers, patients) is increasingly recognized as an important workplace stressor, having been linked to a variety of negative outcomes. It is therefore becoming more important to understand not only the negative effects of outsider incivility, but also potential buffers of these negative effects. As such, the current study sought to explore the impact of outsider incivility directed towards emergency workers (called “victim” incivility) and to identify and test potential positive psychological buffers of the relationship between victim incivility and burnout, physical symptoms and objective absenteeism. Specifically, utilizing a resource perspective, we sought to determine whether work engagement and empathy buffered these negative effects. Survey data from 208 firefighters at two time points showed that victim incivility predicted burnout, physical symptoms and absenteeism, and that both engagement and empathy ameliorated some negative outcomes of victim incivility, including burnout and physical symptoms. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed and areas for future research are proposed.