RELATIONS BETWEEN WORK GROUP CHARACTERISTICS AND EFFECTIVENESS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGNING EFFECTIVE WORK GROUPS

Five common themes were derived from the literature on effective work groups, and then characteristics representing the themes were related to effectivness criteria. Themes included job design, interdependence, composition, context, and process. They contained 19 group characteristics which were assessed by employees and managers. Effectiveness criteria included productivity, employee satisfaction, and manager judgments. Data were collected from 391 employees, 70 managers, and archival records for 80 work groups in a financial organization. Results showed that all three effectiveness criteria were predicted by the characteristics, and nearly all characteristics predicted some of the effectiveness criteria. The job design and process themes were slightly more predictive than the interdependence, composition, and context themes. Implications for designing effective work groups were discussed, and a 54-item measure of the 19 characteristics was presented for future research.     

Hylomorphism without forms? A critical notice of Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events

Abstract

Simon Evnine’s Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts develops amorphic hylomorphism. I critically discuss three of its main themes. One theme is its attempt to do the work of form without forms. A second theme is the requirement that hylomorphs have ‘metabolisms at work’. A third theme is the use of artifacts as the paradigms for hylomorphs. I will raise some criticisms of each of these themes. Although the themes might at first appear disconnected, I believe the third underwrites the first two. So the criticisms of the third theme also bear on the rest.     

The Process of Occupational Decision Making: Patterns during the Transition to Adulthood

In this paper, we consider how recent social changes in the United States may be affecting vocational decision making. While adolescents often maintain high educational and occupational aspirations, the transition from school is characterized by few institutional supports, the prolongation of education, and a multitude of options with respect to the combination of school, work, and family. In such a context, what themes characterize decision making about schooling and occupational careers? We draw on qualitative interviews collected as part of the Youth Development Study (n=1000), a longitudinal study of work through adolescence and early adulthood. Multiple themes were identified including unfulfilled expectations, the postponement of decisions, turning points that crystallized decisions, and resources and obstacles including, among others, family, work, school counseling, and teachers. These themes characterize contemporary occupational decision making and thus would be appropriate focal points for future research. They also suggest that social policies may need to be modified to facilitate the young people's quest for vocational identity and work.     

The embodiment of reconciliation: order and change in the work of Frederic Bartlett

Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) was one of the most prominent figures in British academic psychology during the 20th century. His psychological work has had a mixed reception, but there is no doubt that it continues to be much cited. Bartlett and his work have also attracted considerable historical attention both within history of ideas accounts and in attempts to understand the establishment of British academic psychology. The present article argues that new light can be shed on Bartlett's writings by seeing them as repeatedly grappling with 2 interrelated themes: the preservation of order and the adjustment to changing conditions. The article illustrates the ways in which these themes ran through his major works and informed some of his key theoretical concepts before going on to examine some of the potential sources for these themes.     

Being Brave, Being Nice: Themes of Agency and Communion in Children's Narratives

Although much is known about the presence of themes of agency and communion in adults' autobiographical stories, little is known about the presence of these themes in children's autobiographical stories. In this paper we examine the extent to which children describe themselves and others as agentic and communal beings in ordinary conversational narratives. Subjects were 96 rural, working-class children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. Personal narratives were elicited in the course of informal conversations with an adult experimenter. Narratives were analyzed for the presence of storyworld participants, and for the presence of themes of agency and communion. For both genders, themes of agency were more common than were themes of communion. Girls, however, were more likely to describe themes of communion than were boys, and were more likely to include family members in their narratives than were boys. Finally, correlations between themes of agency and communion were generally low. The findings extend the age to which the concepts of agency and communion can be productively applied to personal narratives. Implications for future theoretical and empirical work are also discussed.     

Acting,feeling and thinking: psychoanalytic psychotherapy with Tracey

This paper consists of a case study and commentary which formed a part of the inaugural lecture in a series entitled ‘Working with Psychosomatic Issues’*. The audience consisted of psychoanalytic, body psychotherapy and integrative practitioners. The presentation was divided into three parts, (1) an outline of philosophical themes that inform perspectives on health, illness and psychosomatic phenomena, (2) the case study reproduced below and (3) a summary of Winnicott's work (1960, 1966, 1988) on ‘the indwelling of the psyche in the soma’. The case study describes work with a young woman who harms herself through self-hitting and, in addition, expresses other physical manifestations of psychological distress. The core approach of the practitioner is psychoanalytic. The work is informed also by postmodern sensibilities and phenomenological themes.     

Social Judgement Theory

This paper first explores a number of themes in the psychological system developed by the Austrian-American psychologist, Egon Brunswik, focusing on those that had a formative influence on Social Judgement Theory. We show that while perception was a recurring ground for Brunswik's empirical and theoretical work, his psychology was a psychology of cognition in the broadest sense. Next, two major themes in Social Judgement Theory— functionalism and probabilism— are described, and the elegant formulation known as Brunswik's Lens Model is introduced. Some methodological and theoretical implications of these themes are presented. The paper concludes with Hammond's Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), which is a theory describing modes of cognition and how those modes are influenced by task characteristics.     

Personhood,culture and family therapy

This paper argues that ideas about personhood and relationships vary cross-culturally and that although it is not always obvious or easy to discover, this variation is particularly salient to family therapy. This argument is supported by a dual definition of culture emphasizing both continuity of cultural themes (generative aspect) and the reconstitution, redefinition and change of such themes through interaction and communication (interactive aspect). The effectiveness of interventions which are isomorphic with ideas which families themselves hold about personhood is demonstrated through work with two families, one Punjabi and one Bangladeshi.     

Recentering Christian Ethics as Comparative Religious Ethics

The filial relationship between Christian ethics and Comparative Religious Ethics (CRE) need not be perniciously distortive and can be salutary for comparative work. I suggest that the suspicions about CRE as a disguised form of a “Christian ethical enterprise” are overstated and that we can appreciate the value of the legacy of Christian ethics for comparative work in the focal themes of emancipatory criticism and common morality. Both of these themes, even if influenced by Christian ethics, reflect more universal social‐moral problems that can be discerned in cross‐cultural contexts.     

Aesthetic Interdisciplinarity in Donald Capps’ Weltanschauung

This article considers the aesthetic interdisciplinarity of the work and Weltanschauung of Donald Capps. It suggests three themes of Capps’ Weltanschauung: reframing, confusion, and empiricism. These themes converge in an image of calmness that epitomizes Capps’ aesthetic interdisciplinarity. Capps envisions a world that is heimlich (homelike), and his aesthetic therefore pursues “homemaking” in this world by virtue of enjoying a certain calmness in the process of pastoral counseling.     

Family influences on commitment: Examining the family of origin correlates of relationship commitment attitudes

Two studies were conducted to investigate the lessons about relationship commitment that people gain from their families of origin. In the first study, participants identified a story from their families of origin that characterized a number of themes about commitment. In the second study, these themes were further refined to reveal eight factors underlying these themes: dedication to partner, constraints on relationships, relationships are impermanent, disillusionment, family and gender influences, approaching relationships with caution, relationships take work, and divorce has negative consequences. Ratings of the themes varied by the occurrence of parental divorce, perceived parental marital happiness, and gender. Commitment lessons remembered from families of origin also were associated with the participants’ reported level of commitment in their current relationships. Implications for current theory on commitment are discussed.     

Edward Said (1935 – 2003): His relevance to psychotherapy

Abstract

This paper is an appreciation of the work of the late Edward Said, the distinguished Palestinian-American academic. By looking at three key themes within his thinking, I argue for the relevance of his work to the psychotherapist and for how much it has to offer in conceptualizing social and personal identity.     

Asian American career development: A qualitative analysis

This study used a modified version of consensual qualitative research design to examine how contextual, cultural, and personal variables influence the career choices of a diverse group of 12 Asian Americans. Seven domains of influences on career choices emerged including family, culture, external factors, career goals, role models, work values, and self-identity. Furthermore, several overarching themes were discovered that expressed elements of many of these domains. These themes highlighted the pervasive and influential role that both culture and family of origin play in the construction of meaning that these Asian American participants made from their career choices. Implications of these domains and themes and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Reality construction at the family/society interface: the internalization of family themes and values

An important component of the socialization function of the family continues to be the preparation of the young for integration into society. Empirical data, particularly from therapeutic settings, indicate that some children are notably well prepared for the world outside their families, while others have hardly been prepared at all. Adolescence is typically the time when these coping skills are most obvious. This paper addresses the issue of socialization of the young for participation in society. Building upon the "family theme" motif, the family is viewed as a micro-society. The issue of congruence between family themes and societally shared meanings is considered, utilizing ideas from the social construction of reality theories of Berger and Luckmann (1966). Three ideal-types of family themes are developed relative to their external world meanings. Previous work on family themes typically has failed to deal with the interpretative function of family meanings. How the family "explains" the family-external meanings is addressed.     

Increasing undergraduate students' capacity to complete their degree programme successfully: Brief psychodynamic counselling intervention

Counsellors and their supervisors have much to gain from reading and reflecting upon nineteenth-century British horror novels. The plots of these novels are principally concerned with themes of over-reaching, repressed sexuality, discovery and pursuit. Parallels are shown to exist between these themes and the work of the counsellor. Examples and quotations drawn from Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula and The Hound of the Baskervilles demonstrate ways in which a reading of these novels can inform counselling work. The anxiety of the counsellor about creating uncontrollable ‘monsters’ is considered, along with the significance of the split between love and hate. Repressed sexuality in the counselling relationship is also discussed, as is the counsellor-as-discoverer, who is at times pursued by client material. The paper concludes with the contention that counsellors may find it valuable and enriching to read, write and reflect upon their own experiences and understandings of horror and the death instinct.     

Stuttering theory,research, and therapy: The present and future

The purpose of this article is to describe present dominant themes in stuttering theory, research, and therapy, and then suggest some directions that work in these areas might now take. The recommendations offered are not all-inclusive, nor do they represent imperatives for future work. Rather, the suggestions put forth seem to follow logically from the present state of theorizing, data gathering, and clinical management.     

Managing computer integrated manufacturing (CIM): A review of themes,issues, and practices

Large scale changes from traditional to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) make fundamental alterations in the way work gets done in an organization. The incorporation of sophisticated computerized machinery into the work flow, however, is only the catalyst for a range of human resource and organizational issues. A review of the literature suggests that the management of these issues in the transition from traditional to computerized systems is critical to success. The review is presented within a time frame that encompasses the major themes of a CIM change effort. These themes include the decision phase or automation consideration, the developmental phase, the bridging phase that spans the gap between planning and implementation, and the implementation phase. Important management issues are summarized at each step, including cost justification, management commitment, planning, vendor and union relationships, employee resistance, education and training, job redesign, and organizational restructuring. Wherever applicable, specific practices and real-world examples for effectively managing these issues are presented.     

A Study of Real Dilemmas in Adulthood

The aim of this work is to study real contextualised dilemmas and relevant events of the biographies offered by a group of adult men and women, in order to analyse the contextual and personal factors that influence moral reasoning during this stage of the life cycle. To this end, we interviewed 60 adults who were asked to recount real contextualised dilemmas. The themes of the real dilemmas were later categorised in relation to the stage of moral reasoning reached and then linked to the ecological contexts in which they took place. The results show that the themes related to proximal processes and contexts (family, parenthood) are the most frequent and are related to the conventional level of moral reasoning. However, in relation to social themes and coherence, the reasoning level obtained is more mature. Finally, there are contextual differences regarding the contents of the real dilemmas related to local conflicts or socio-political concern for one??s own community.     

SOME RECENT WORKS BY CHRISTOS YANNARAS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION1

This article reviews four recent English translations of works by the Greek thinker, Christos Yannaras. It sets Yannaras' work in its historical context, and draws out some of his fundamental themes: the centrality of the notion of the person, which is fulfilled in the self‐transcendence of love, the place of the apophatic, and the use of imagery and poetry in theology. It also seeks to contextualize the sometimes quite strident anti‐Westernism of Yannaras' thought, and show how he draws on themes from patristic theology to provide a viable solution to the problems caused by Western individualism and consumerism.