Crafting a Better Life

This is a review of “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennett, published by Yale University Press, 2008.     

A Really Big Picture View of Social Intelligence

This study examined the validity of the Clinical Perfectionism Questionnaire (CPQ; Fairburn, Cooper, &; Shafran, 2003) in a nonclinical sample of 61 men and 182 women. Consistent with expectations, we found that scores on the CPQ were positively associated with scores on common measures of maladjustment, namely, depressive symptoms, anxious symptoms, and stress. In addition, results from regression analyses indicated that the CPQ accounted for additional variance in each of the 3 indexes of maladjustment beyond what was accounted for by multidimensional perfectionism and negative affectivity. Accordingly, our findings provide promising support for the validity of the CPQ in a nonclinical population.     

Crafting a policy statement: Some observations

In 2016, a task force appointed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began drafting a policy statement which in 2018 appeared with the title “A Declaration of Inter‐Religious Commitment.” This article explains the production of that document and explores its main themes. The document appeals to vocation—that is, the calling to serve one's neighbor and community—as its framework. It encourages engagement, resisting stereotypes, cooperation for the common good, and standing up for those who are harassed or mistreated. It goes on to explore the relationship between evangelism and inter‐religious understanding, affirming both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.     

Trade Secrets for Crafting a Conceptual Article

A sound conceptual article can be a quantum leap, in terms of value and usefulness, beyond a typical literature review. In this article the author clarifies the distinction between a literature review and a conceptual article, outlines the creative process as it applies to written work, and provides “trade secrets” for novice writers on how to enhance their literary creativity and how to confront and solve troublesome writing problems.     

Crafting usable knowledge

Current emphasis on evaluating interventions does not address the problems of dissemination and utilization of these interventions, particularly in complex settings such as schools. Research on interventions is of value, but its generalizability to specific contexts is limited. Further, little is known about actual use of empirically supported interventions in practice settings. These concerns suggest the following: (a) There is a need to examine the dissemination process, including practitioner education and the development of a consumer information mindset by researchers; (b) guidance about selecting interventions would benefit from a systematic problem-solving orientation; and (c) research training and methodology need to be augmented with strategies and techniques suitable for developing an empirical approach to practice. These issues are addressed with specific examples drawn from school-based practice.     

中庸工作重塑研究

采用中庸思想作为研究的理论基础,建构中庸工作重塑概念,并应用于工作要求-资源模型检验其构思效度。在288名医务人员中探索中庸工作重塑的结构,在178名医务人员中验证结构,并探讨中庸工作重塑在工作要求或工作资源与工作投入及工作倦怠之间的中介效应。研究结果发现,中庸工作重塑是由个体取向和群体取向构成的两维结构的工作重塑。其中,在工作要求-资源模型的压力机制中,人们通过工作重塑来降低工作要求引致的工作倦怠,促进工作投入;而在其激励机制中,人们通过工作重塑会增强工作资源的激励作用,促进工作投入。     

The Big Picture of Advocacy: Counselor,Heal Society and Thyself

This article, motivational in purpose, encourages counselors to be engaged in the growing movement for social justice advocacy in counseling. Analyses of a macrolevel framework of advocacy extend to microlevel operations of recruitment, sociopolitical education, diversity management, and self‐care of counselor‐advocates. Case studies and exemplars illustrate views expressed.     

Getting the Big Picture in Community Science: Methods That Capture Context

Community science has a rich tradition of using theories and research designs that are consistent with its core value of contextualism. However, a survey of empirical articles published in the American Journal of Community Psychology shows that community scientists utilize a narrow range of statistical tools that are not well suited to assess contextual data. Multilevel modeling, geographic information systems (GIS), social network analysis, and cluster analysis are recommended as useful tools to address contextual questions in community science. An argument for increased methodological consilience is presented, where community scientists are encouraged to adopt statistical methodology that is capable of modeling a greater proportion of the data than is typical with traditional methods.     

Big Picture,Bad Outcomes: When Visual Perspectives Harm Health Goal Pursuit

People often fail to achieve health goals, which compromises their well‐being. Prior research suggests that seeing events through an observer's eyes (i.e., adopting a third‐person perspective) should facilitate goal pursuit. However, we find that third‐person perspectives discourage goal‐consistent intentions and behavior for health goals when goal centrality is low (i.e., the goal is peripheral to one's self‐concept). In Experiment 1, people who adopted a third‐person perspective chose more sugary foods if they considered a healthy eating goal to be more peripheral to the self. Experiment 2 examines why a third‐person perspective can hinder goal pursuit; it encourages a breakdown in implemental thinking which, in turn, increases negative self‐conscious emotions. While high goal centrality buffers people from negative effects on goal intentions, low centrality does not. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this effect is robust when goal centrality is manipulated. We recommend that consumers pursuing health goals (and individuals who support them) exercise caution when employing perspective‐based strategies, as they may backfire for people at greatest risk of goal abandonment.     

Crafting your Career: How Career Competencies Relate to Career Success via Job Crafting

This study aimed to investigate whether career competencies could enhance an employee's subjective career success in terms of perceived employability and work–home balance via job crafting behaviors. Based on Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) Theory, we examined a potential motivational process in which career competencies, as a personal resource, would enhance career success through expansive job crafting. The results showed that job crafting mediated the positive relationship between career competencies and both internal and external perceived employability. In addition, job crafting mediated the positive relationship between career competencies and work–home enrichment. We expected a negative association between job crafting and work–home interference, yet our results indicated that career competencies are indirectly and positively related to work–home interference via job crafting. With our findings, we add to JD‐R Theory by (1) showing that career competencies may be considered a personal resource, (2) empirically examining the role of job crafting in motivational processes, and (3) showing that enhanced subjective career success can be an outcome of motivational processes. Organisations may use these findings to implement developmental HR practices aimed at increasing career competencies and job crafting.     

Supervisor Reactions to Avoidance Job Crafting: The Role of Political Skill and Approach Job Crafting

Avoidance job crafting refers to employees proactively changing work boundaries by reducing tasks and/or interactions with others. Although avoidance job crafting may help employees to address work demands, if noticed by others, specifically supervisors, it may trigger negative reactions from them. While previous research posits that job crafting is largely unnoticed by supervisors, using a dyadic supervisor-employee study (N = 141 dyads), we found that supervisors were in fact aware of their employees’ avoidance job crafting, which related to a reduction in supervisor support. This relationship was moderated by employee political skill (but not approach job crafting), such that high avoidance job crafting in combination with high political skill resulted in fewer negative outcomes, presumably because supervisors were less likely to notice their employees’ avoidance job crafting. In a second, vignette study (N = 92 supervisors), we experimentally replicated the relation between observed avoidance job crafting and negative supervisor reactions, and found that this relation can be explained by supervisors perceiving avoidance job crafting as destructive work behavior. Our findings introduce the supervisor perspective to the job crafting literature and highlight the importance of engaging in avoidance job crafting in a skillful way that aligns with the external context.     

Crafting identities and accessing opportunities post-Brown

Decades following Brown v. Board of Education (1954), issues regarding the effects of skin color, poverty, and racial differences in the availability of protective factors persist. For a multiethnic sample of mainly African American (56%), female (69%), and high-achieving (65%) youths, a dual-axis model of vulnerability is used to compare four groups of youths identified as high, masked, low, and undetermined vulnerability on the basis of the presence of risk and protective factors. Risks included level of poverty, number of parents in home, and skin-color pigmentation. Protective factors included youths' perceptions of school climate, parental monitoring, and consonance between skin pigmentation and preferred skin color. The author suggests that 50 years post-Brown, issues concerning White privilege, color stereotyping, power discrepancies, and economic disparities maintain "invisible" and persistent hurdles for vulnerable youths who vary on available protective factors. Findings confirm the impact of vulnerability on psychosocial and achievement outcomes.     

The Big Picture of Individual Differences in Physical Activity Behavior Change: A Transdisciplinary Approach

The goal of this research is to utilize a transdisciplinary framework to guide the selection of putative moderators of the effectiveness of an intervention to promote physical activity behavior adoption and maintenance in the context of a randomized controlled intervention trial. Effective interventions to increase physical activity are sorely needed, and one barrier to the identification and development of such interventions is the lack of research targeted at understanding both the mechanisms of intervention efficacy and for whom particular interventions are effective. The purpose of this paper is to outline our transdisciplinary approach to understanding individual differences in the effectiveness of a previously successful exercise promotion intervention. We explain the rationale for and operationalization of our framework, characteristics of the study to which we apply the framework, and planned analyses. By embracing a transdisciplinary orientation for individual differences important in the prediction of physical activity (spanning molecular approaches, animal models, human laboratory models, and social psychological models), we hope to have a better understanding of characteristics of individuals that are important in the adoption and maintenance of physical activity.     

Managers as a Missing Entity in Job Crafting Research: Relationships between Store Manager Job Crafting,Job Resources,and Store Performance

Increasing demand for workplace proactivity has directed scholarly attention to job crafting as a voluntary and proactive form of job design. While mounting research has examined the impact of employee job crafting on work outcomes, little is known about the role of job crafting on the part of store managers in predicting unit-level performance. To fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the link between store manager job crafting and store performance, and proposes job resources as boundary conditions affecting this relationship. We collected survey-based data from 235 restaurant stores in South Korea and performed multilevel regression analyses. Results indicated that store manager job crafting was positively associated with store sales performance. This relationship was more pronounced when store managers received performance feedback than when they did not. However, autonomy and opportunities for development did not moderate the store manager job crafting–store performance relationship.