CONSTRAINTS ON THE ADOPTION OF PSYCHOLOGY-BASED PERSONNEL PRACTICES: LESSONS FROM ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION

Surveys of organizational personnel practices often indicate that techniques advocated by industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists are used with less frequency than might be expected given their technical merit. This article attempts to explain this phenomenon by viewing the adoption of I/O-type personnel practices as organizational innovations that are subject to the mechanisms and processes described in the innovation-diffusion literature. It is argued that the adoption of I/O-type personnel practices constitutes administrative innovation and that such innovation is not strongly influenced by technical merit. Rather, imitation processes, environmental threat, government regulation, and political influence often dominate highly uncertain adoption processes. Recommendations are made for enhancing the adoption rate for psychology-based personnel innovations.     

Organizational Revival From Within: Explaining Revivalismand Reform in the Roman Catholic Church

The most enduring theoretical model for explaining the rise and fall of religious movements has been some form of the church-sect theory. Yet this model offers little explanation for the continued vitality of the Roman Catholic Church. We argue that a key to this institutional success is the Church 's ability to retain sect-like revival movements within its boundaries. We demonstrate that religious orders, like Protestant sects, stimulate organizational growth, develop innovations for adapting the church to a new culture or era, and provide institutional support for a high tension faith. Unlike Protestant sects, however, they do so within the institutional church. This source of internal reform and revival helps to explain the long term vitality of the Roman Catholic Church and its ability to operaate effectively as a religiou monopoly.     

The Kant and Race Debate: A Frederick Douglass Intervention

Samuel Fleischacker is interested in two questions that are—what he refers to as—a rephrasing of three implications Charles Mills takes away from his encounter with Kant: (1) Is Kant's moral philosophy racist at its core? and (2) Whether it is or not, how should we respond to the fact that Kant displays open racism in some of his writings when we study, teach, or try to make use of his purportedly egalitarian teachings? Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist who wrestled with similar questions regarding the liberatory and inclusive nature of emancipatory documents like the Constitution. In this essay, I want to consider Douglass's changing views on this issue and reasons behind them to think about how he might offer insights into this current debate concerning Kant and race. In doing so, I will consider to what extent Fleischacker adheres to Douglass's guidelines on this matter as he makes his case. I then offer suggestions on how to move forward.     

Silent Disagreement: Microinteractional Solutions to Moral Dissent Among Catholic Converts

How do converts manage their disagreements with religious teachings? Previous literature on religious dissent has largely focused on church members advocating change or apostatizing, solutions largely unavailable to initiates. Based on six months of ethnographic observations in a Catholic conversion class and 21 in‐depth interviews with converts, sponsors, and teachers, I demonstrate how microinteractional norms encourage an atmosphere of silence around disagreement. I then show how initiates explain this conflict avoidant response by justifying their doubt, engaging in a process of hierarchical deference, in which initiates call upon the top‐down structure of the Catholic Church to defer control upward, and faulting human imperfection rather than the institution itself. While “culture wars” debates of the past two decades have investigated a purported moral polarization of the American public, this study contributes to a growing literature on how the moderate majority negotiates disagreements between their beliefs and religious teachings.     

Stoic Warriors and Stoic Torturers: The Moral Psychology of Military Torture

Abstract

Nancy Sherman’s book Stoic Warriors provides an interesting reflection on how a modified version of the ancient teachings of stoicism may be applicable to the concerns and needs of the modern military. In the course of her book, she explains different aspects of the Stoic teachings, such as the importance of outward comportment and control of the emotions, and discusses how they might be relevant to the modern military. In this paper I will focus on her discussion of Abu Ghraib and other atrocities such as the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. I argue that her analysis of the contributing factors that lead to those abuses demonstrates a lack of understanding of how systematic atrocities come to occur and how military torturers are trained. In this paper I show that systematic torture arises not only out of unrestrained rage and hatred, but through a training process that builds on many of the features of basic military training and, ironically, incorporates many of the techniques of self-control and detachment that are characteristic of stoicism.     

Innovative Practice,Clinical Research,and the Ethical Advancement of Medicine

Innovative practice occurs when a clinician provides something new, untested, or nonstandard to a patient in the course of clinical care, rather than as part of a research study. Commentators have noted that patients engaged in innovative practice are at significant risk of suffering harm, exploitation, or autonomy violations. By creating a pathway for harmful or nonbeneficial interventions to spread within medical practice without being subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation, innovative practice poses similar risks to the wider community of patients and society as a whole. Given these concerns, how should we control and oversee innovative practice, and in particular, how should we coordinate innovative practice and clinical research? In this article, I argue that an ethical approach overseeing innovative practice must encourage the early transition to rigorous clinical research without delaying or deferring the development of beneficial innovations or violating the autonomy rights of clinicians and their patients.     

The spirit and development of Neo‐Gonfugianism

The ideal of human life as a life of sagehood is the core of Confucian thought. In neo‐Confucianism the stress is on the self‐perfectibility of man, and the central concern of neo‐Confucianist thinkers has accordingly been with the question of how man can cultivate his own potentiality to be a sage. The different answers they give are in the form of teachings about the ‘way’, these teachings incorporating different philosophical views of mind, human nature, and the universe. The author outlines the views of successive neo‐Confucianists and their versions of the ‘way’, seeing their teachings as developments towards the doctrine presented by Wang Yang‐ming (b. 1472), whose thought can be seen in particular as a synthesis of the views of Chu Tzu and Lu Shiang‐shan.     

EGO-LESS AGENCY: DHARMA-RESPONSIVENESS WITHOUT KANTIAN AUTONOMY

My critical focus in this article is on Rick Repetti's compatibilist conception of free will, and his apparent commitment to a Kantian conception of autonomy, which I argue is in direct conflict with the Buddhist doctrine of no-self. As an alternative, I defend a conception of ego-less agency that I believe better coheres with core Buddhist teachings. In the course of the argument, I discuss the competing conceptions of free agency and autonomy defended by Harry Frankfurt, John Martin Fischer, Christine Korsgaard, and David Velleman.     

Drug treatment and workplace drug testing: Politics,symbolism and organizational dilemmas

This article explains how the link between drug testing and drug treatment was forged, how it has been implemented in the workplace, and speculates on its organizational implications. Part I argues that widespread drug testing in the core institutions of American society would not have been politically possible without forging an explicit link to drug treatment. The authors identify the key variables which account for the link between testing and treatment, including public opinion, employer self interest, collective bargaining agreements, the precedent and influence of Employee Assistance Programs, and developments in the law of the workplace. Part II describes how the link between drug testing and drug treatment has been implemented in the workplace, including the emergence of new organizational units, roles, and inter-organizational relationships. Part III examines the organizational dilemmas created by the testing/treatment linkage.     

Sailing Against the Tide? Sustaining Sexual Abstinence Among Christian Youth in a University Setting in South Africa

This qualitative study sought to understand the perceptions and experiences of abstinence among young Christians in a University in South Africa. Willingness to adhere to Christian teachings of sexual chastity is the primary motivation for sexual abstinence while spiritual, mental and physical health benefits of abstinence as well as enforcement of Christian teachings by members and peers are secondary motivations that help sustain sexual abstinence. Sexual pressures come from desire to satisfy sexual urge, subtle coercion, peer pressure, momentary loss of self-control. There is need for multi-pronged interventions aimed at empowering Christian youth to deal with sources of sexual pressures.     

工作旺盛感:关注员工的健康与成长

工作旺盛感是个体在工作中同时体验到活力和学习的一种心理状态,是衡量个体成长与进步的标尺。旺盛感的社会嵌入模型和个人成长整合模型为旺盛感研究提供了理论框架,反映出个体的自我决定和自我适应机制,并揭示出旺盛感的重要前因和结果。影响工作旺盛感的前因变量包括情境特征和工作资源,而旺盛感结果变量则包括员工绩效、满意度、组织公民行为、健康、创新和适应行为等。开展工作旺盛感的研究有利于组织和个人的可持续发展,但由于该领域较新,其理论和实证研究亟待丰富和完善。     

Communication Networks in the Diffusion of an Innovation in an Organization1

Research on decision-making processes and the diffusion of innovations in organizations has been focused on the influence of formal organizational structures. Since the successful implementation of most innovations requires the cooperation of employees, it is important to investigate how employees' knowledge, opinions, and individual decisions concerning an innovation are influenced by other employees. The present study investigates how information acquisition and adoption decisions of employees are influenced by the quantity and strength of their informal communication ties in the organization, and how strong this influence is in comparison with influence from formal communication sources. Results indicate that formal communication sources contributed more to the process of information diffusion, whereas informal communication sources (especially the employees' strong ties), were more influential on attitudes and adoption intentions.     

A Resource-Based Perspective on Organizational Citizenship and Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Role of Vitality and Core Self-Evaluations

Although results from cross-sectional between-person studies suggest a differentiation of employees in good and bad performers, recent studies have challenged this assumption by showing that performance is also dependent on more transient states that vary within individuals. Acknowledging that individuals do not only differ in reference to others, but also in reference to themselves, we integrated the between- and within-person approach in the examination of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We propose a model informed by conservation of resources theory in which OCB and minor CWB are predicted by within-person variation in one’s level of vitality, with these relationships being moderated by trait core self-evaluations (CSE). Moderated multilevel Poisson regression analyses revealed that vitality was positively related with OCB and negatively with minor CWB. CSE moderated the relationship between vitality and OCB so that individuals high in CSE engaged in OCB regardless of their vitality levels; however, contrary to our expectations, CSE did not moderate the relationship between vitality and minor CWB. Together, these findings indicate a complex reality underlying the mechanisms that drive the enactment of OCB and CWB.     

Species comparative studies and cognitive development

The comparative study of infant development and animal cognition brings to cognitive science the promise of insights into the nature and origins of cognitive skills. In this article, I review a recent wave of comparative studies conducted with similar methodologies and similar theoretical frameworks on how two core components of human cognition--object permanence and gaze following--develop in different species. These comparative findings call for an integration of current competing accounts of developmental change. They further suggest that evolution has produced developmental devices capable at the same time of preserving core adaptive components, and opening themselves up to further adaptive change, not only in interaction with the external environment, but also in interaction with other co-developing cognitive systems.     

The White–Jung Friendship: The Untold Story

For decades Jung searched in vain for a theologian with whom he could deeply and openly converse about his new vision of Christianity. Only very late in his life did he find and form a deep friendship with Victor White, a Dominican theology professor, whose own psychic life was saved by Jung's teachings. Jung saw White as the first theologian he had met who truly understood his psychology. Jung wanted to use White's expertise in Catholic theology in his pioneering efforts to transform Christianity, through his psychology, into a living, breathing, vital faith in the divine. For his part, White wanted to resuscitate Thomistic theology by infusing its dry, cerebral character with the emotional vitality of the original Thomas Aquinas by using his newly discovered Jungian teachings combined with some of the original teachings of Aquinas. In the process of their work together, Jung and White became close, trusting friends. However, White was pushed beyond the limits of his psychological resources by political events within his order, whose superiors destroyed his career as a theologian and sent him into exile. In his scathing review of Answer to Job, White displaced his anger/rage onto Jung instead of the appropriate objects. This attack wounded their friendship deeply, and it was only toward the end of their lives that a partial reconciliation was possible. And yet, Jung's friendship with White was perhaps the closest and most trusting relationship he had with a man during his lifetime. Finally, I suggest that White's mission in this life was to resuscitate Thomism rather than help Jung achieve his purposes, and that White achieved his mission.     

Applications of Collaborative Helping Maps: Supporting Professional Development,Supervision and Work Teams in Family‐Centered Practice

Collaborative, family‐centered practice has become an influential approach in helping efforts across a broad spectrum of human services. This article draws from previous work that presented a principle‐based, practice framework of Collaborative Helping and highlighted the use of Collaborative Helping maps as a tool both to help workers think their way through complex situations and to provide a guideline for constructive conversations between families and helpers about challenging issues. It builds on that work to examine ways to utilize Collaborative Helping maps at worker, supervisory, and organizational levels to enhance and sustain collaborative, family‐centered practice and weave its core values and principles into the everyday fabric of organizational cultures in human service agencies and government agencies that serve poor and marginalized families and communities.     

发现问题是医学创新的起点

临床医学是一门充满着创造和活力的科学,而发现问题、发现特殊性,是临床医学创新的起点.     

At the core: how we steer our course

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age..."--Dylan Thomas (1952). The beautiful evocative words of Dylan Thomas speak to the driving life force that pulses through all creation. So what, then, drives our organization, the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA)? What underlying stream can we tap into to provide the energy, power, and vitality we need to go on being in a meaningful and productive fashion? And, what internal compass can we rely on to steer us in the right direction, to guide us in how we function as an organization? My purpose here is to consider how we formulate our objectives, determine our priorities, make decisions, and insure, as best we can, that we are pursuing that which is meaningful and essential, not veering drastically off course. To do this, I would like to focus briefly on the current organizational structure of AGPA, then examine the use of a strategic planning process, review our accomplishments, and lastly explore hopes and dreams for our future as the premier group psychotherapy organization in the United States.     

Everyday rhetoric: Argument and persuasion in everyday life

While the study of rhetoric in the humanities has an impressive pedigree, rhetorical analysis in organization studies is rather less developed. In this article, I want to provide an introduction to rhetorical analysis, drawing particularly on the work of Billig (1996) and Potter (1996), and illustrate its application to organizational issues through a case example concerning technological change in a public sector organization. In doing this, I demonstrate how alternative approaches to traditional positivism may augment the explanatory power of research in work and organizational psychology. In particular, I want to argue that an awareness of the everyday rhetoric of organizational talk can be illuminating in explaining how the work of an organization is accomplished.     

Termination,Terminable and Interminable: Commentary on Paper by Jody Messler Davies

The termination process begins while the analytic couple is preparing together to end treatment. Mourning the loss and binding the edges of the analytic relationship proceed within each participant after they no longer meet. Many of our common termination practices, however, undermine the patient's leave taking and endanger the positive internal object relationship that we hope our patient will carry into the future. Traditional teachings about how to practice termination, based on one-person psychology and classical principles of anonymity, abstinence, and neutrality, must change to reflect newer ideas about how analysis works. I propose that we think of termination as both a death and a graduation. I suggest ways in which the analyst might engage with the patient in mourning together. I stress the critical importance of follow-up sessions in which unanticipated negative reactions to the termination might be examined before the analytic tapestry has a chance to unravel.