INTRAORGANIZATIONAL EMPLOYEE NAVIGATION AND SOCIALLY DERIVED OUTCOMES: CONCEPTUALIZATION,VALIDATION, AND EFFECTS ON OVERALL PERFORMANCE

Intraorganizational employee navigation (IEN) is conceptualized as a means of better understanding how the organizational actor proactively works across their firm's internal environment in the execution of their jobs. Navigation is argued to be a precursor to the employee's overall performance through a class of mediating variables labeled “socially derived outcomes,” which are variables inside the organization that are bestowed upon the employee as a result of them first engaging in proactive behavior (e.g., IEN). Two studies are reported. Study I sees IEN psychometrically validated versus a range of existing proactive behaviors and individual traits (discriminant, nomological, and criterion‐related validity) with a heterogeneous sample of 704 employees. Study II then tests a model relating IEN to performance through six mediating “socially derived outcomes” by leveraging data from 2 Fortune 500 firms. The results of Study II show that IEN significantly impacts multiple measures of the employee's overall performance through mediating effects brought about by key socially derived outcomes, such as the employee's “manager alignment.” The contributions, broader implications, and limitations of the research are then put into context.     

Social Identity Patterns in Culturally Diverse Organizations: The Role of Diversity Climate1

Many of the problems associated with cultural diversity in organizations stem from individuals' tendencies to categorize their social environment into “us” and “them.” We present the results of a field study (N = 1111) showing that diversity climate—an organizational climate characterized by openness toward and appreciation of diversity—may be the key to reducing these problems. The results show that diversity climate is positively related to cultural identity for majority members, and to organizational identity for minority members. In organizations with a strong diversity climate, both majority and minority members identify with the organization and their cultural groups simultaneously, thus displaying a dual identity. Diversity climate is positively related to job‐related outcomes for both groups, but particularly for minority members.     

Human and Global Identities: Different Prototypical Meanings of All-Inclusive Identities

The impact of identities encompassing all human beings (e.g., human and/or global identities) on intergroup relations is complex, with studies showing mostly positive (e.g., less dehumanization), but also negative (e.g., deflected responsibility for harm behavior), effects. However, different labels and measures have been used to examine the effects of these all-inclusive superordinate identities, without a systematic empirical examination of the extent to which they overlap or differ in their sociopsychological prototypical content. This study examined whether different labels activate the same contents in laypeople's conceptualization. Two hundred and forty-eight participants openly described one of six labels: “All humans everywhere”; “People all over the world”; “People from different countries around the world”; “Global citizens”; “Citizens of the world”; and “Members of world community.” Results from quantitative content analyses showed that the different labels activated different thematic attributes, representing differences in their core prototypical meaning. We propose that a general distinction should be made between labels that define membership based on human attributes (e.g., biological attributes) and those that evoke attributes characteristic of membership in a global political community (e.g., attitudinal attributes), as their effect on intergroup relations may vary accordingly.     

Embodied Simulations Are Modulated by Sentential Perspective

There is considerable evidence that language comprehenders derive lexical‐semantic meaning by mentally simulating perceptual and motor attributes of described events. However, the nature of these simulations—including the level of detail that is incorporated and contexts under which simulations occur—is not well understood. Here, we examine the effects of first‐ versus third‐person perspective on mental simulations during sentence comprehension. First‐person sentences describing physical transfer towards or away from the body (e.g., “You threw the microphone,” “You caught the microphone”) modulated response latencies when responses were made along a front‐back axis, consistent with the action‐sentence compatibility effect (ACE). This effect was not observed for third‐person sentences (“He threw the microphone,” “He caught the microphone”). The ACE was observed when making responses along a left‐right axis for third‐person, but not first‐person sentences. Abstract sentences (e.g., “He heard the message”) did not show an ACE along either axis. These results show that perspective is a detail that is simulated during action sentence comprehension, and that motoric activations are flexible and affected by the pronominal perspective used in the sentence.     

Proactivity towards workplace safety improvement: an investigation of its motivational drivers and organizational outcomes

Initiating a safety oriented change—or safety initiative—is conceptually distinct from other forms of safety participation and safety citizenship behaviour, yet little attention has been given to its performance outcomes or its motivational antecedents. An initial study with a sample composed of middle managers (N = 86) showed that safety initiative predicted objective improvement actions 6 months later, whereas, showing differential validity, safety compliance predicted the implementation of monitoring actions. Two subsequent studies focused on motivational antecedents. First, using a sample of team leaders (N = 295), we tested a higher-order structure of proactive motivation that incorporates three domains: “can do”, “reason to” and future orientation. Second, in a longitudinal study of chemical work operators (N = 188), after checking for the influence of potential confounders (past behaviours; accidents experience; perceived risk), we showed that safety initiative was predicted only by proactive motivation. Instead, safety compliance was found to be associated with affective commitment and scrupulousness, whereas safety helping was found to be associated with affective commitment. Self-reported behaviours were validated against rater assessments. This study supports the importance of distinguishing safety initiative from other safety behaviours, indicating how to create an organizational context supporting a proactive management of workplace safety.     

Love as a Problem of Knowledge in Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Plato's Symposium

At the end of the essay “Silhouettes” in Either/Or, Kierkegaard writes, “only the person who has been bitten by snakes knows what one who has been bitten by snakes must suffer.” I interpret this as an allusion to Alcibiades' speech in Plato's Symposium. Kierkegaard invites the reader to compare Socrates with Don Giovanni, and Alcibiades with the seducer's women. Socrates' philosophical method, in this light, is a deceptive seduction: just as Don Giovanni's seduction leads his conquests to unhappy love—what Kierkegaard terms “reflective sorrow”—so the elenctic method leads Socrates' interlocutors to aporia, not to knowledge. I offer a critique of Socrates' ironic stance as a philosopher, which stance is reflected in the theory of love he presents in the Symposium, and suggest that philosophy should be modeled on the romantic love of persons—a love that can be reciprocated—not the love of an impersonal Form, a one-sided love.     

In Search of True Causes:

The present investigation sought to obtain empirical data that either directly supports or refutes the popular assumption that communication is an essential element of effective decision making. Specifically, it reports three phases of study that attempt to determine whether the variance in group decision making is best accounted for by noninteraction or interaction sources. Phase 1 examines the relationship among group member ability, communication opportunity, and decision performance. Phase 2 examines the relationship among group member ability, qualities of group communication, and decision performance. Phase 3 examines the relationship among fulfillment of communication functions requisite to decision-making efficacy, group member ability, and decision performance. In Phase 1, a strong independent main effect for communication opportunity was found; whereas in Phase 2 we discovered classification and explanatory effects for three facets of interaction quality—“evaluation of task-relevant issues,”“goal-directed communication,” and “idea development”—and in Phase 3 no classification or explanatory effects for either of the communication functions examined was found. Open channels of communication and high quality task-oriented discussion that focused on issue evaluation and task accomplishment facilitated group performance in light of the effects of group potential.     

Review Essay: Constructivism with a Human Face

Irwin Hoffman's book Ritual and Spontaneity includes, but goes well beyond, his series of seminal papers—written over the past several decades—developing a psychoanalytic, constructivist perspective. A new, existential framework depicts what Hoffman calls the “psychobiological bedrock” at the core of the human process of constructing meaning—the lifelong effort to create a livable, subjective world in face of our ever present sense of loss, suffering, and, ultimately, mortality.

This review describes Hoffman's encompassing, existential perspective and discusses how, within this framework, he uses his dialectical sensibility to frame our understanding of both parenting and analysis as “semisacred” activities. The “dialectic of ritual and spontaneity”—the vital clash between disciplined adherence to the analytic frame and personally expressive deviations from it—represents the creative tension between the “magical” dimension of analytic authority and the healing influence of a genuinely expressive human relationship. Hoffman's perspective on the self-interested, “dark side” of the analytic relationship is compared with Winnicott's views on the vital, therapeutic role of “hate” and the paradoxical process by which the patient comes to “use” the analyst.

Unlike most postmodernist “constructivists,” Hoffman openly reveals his underlying belief in certain “transcultural, transhistorical universals”—his “psychobiological bedrock.” In acknowledging these “essentials” (assumptions about human nature) that in some form are integral, yet often hidden, elements of any system of thought, Hoffman saves his own dialectical constructivism from falling into dichotomous (constructivist vs. essentialist) thinking.     

The Influence of Music on Memory

Allan Paivio's dual-coding hypothesis of retention predicts that stimuli high in imagery value facilitate imaginal processing, while high meaningfulness stimuli facilitate verbal processing. When verbal and imaginal instructional sets have been used to test the predicted interactions, as mentioned above, the findings have almost always been negative, indicating a lack of support for a dual-process theory of coding in retention.

In the present study it was hypothesized that instructional sets offer inadequate tests of dual or multiple-process theories because the proactive history of the verbal and imaginal semantic properties of the word lists determine coding in retention. That hypothesis was tested in two studies, one with children and one with adults. Verbal and imaginal attributes were varied in instructional sets and in word lists. As hypothesized, the interaction predicted by a dual-process theory of coding occurred in both studies (p < .0001). The interaction involved verbal and imaginal word attributes, but not the instructional sets.

The findings are relevant to the testing of predictions from dual-process theories of retention and to reinterpretation of the results of earlier findings. In this study and in many related ones reviewed in the introduction, the “elusive” interaction predicted by a dual-process theory regularly does occur, and it seems to be determined by attributes of word lists.     

Responsibility Ethics,Shared Understandings,and Moral Communities

Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an “expressive‐collaborative,” culturally situated, practice—based picture of morality, critical of a “theoretical‐juridical” picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the “theoretical‐juridical” model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with (other) animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.     

A DEFENSE OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON PETER HARRISON'S “AFTER SCIENCE AND RELIGION” PROJECT

Recent scholars have called into question the categories “science” and “religion” because they bring metaphysical and theological assumptions that theologians should find problematic. The critique of the categories “science” and “religion” has above all been associated with Peter Harrison and his influential argument in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). This article evaluates the philosophical conclusions that Harrison draws from his antiessentialist philosophy in the two volumes associated with his “After Science and Religion Project.” I argue that Harrison's project is too skeptical toward the categories “science” and “religion” and places too much emphasis on naturalism being incompatible with Christian theology. One can accept the lessons of antiessentialism—above all, how meanings of terms shift over time—and still use the terms “science” and “religion” in responsible ways. This article defends the basic impulse of most scholars in science and religion who promote dialogue and argues for a more moderate reading of the lesson of Territories.     

Response to Ranganathan

This essay responds to Bharat Ranganathan's “Comment” on my essay, “The Concept of Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (2011). Addressing key criticisms in this “Comment,” I make the following points. First, neither the idea of inherent dignity being “imparted” to humans, nor the Universal Declaration's implication—through its use of terms such as “inherent” and “inalienable”—that humans participate in transcendent reality, necessarily presuppose a Christian metaphysics. Second, a concept such as “inherent dignity” must be affirmed to be intrinsically heuristic unless we are to assume that its meaning can be completely known within the conditions of existence; but this affirmation does not render such concepts “indeterminate of sense.” Finally, Ranganathan's distinction between“weak” and “strong” senses of transcendence is untenable. If human truths beyond all contingencies are knowable (“weak” transcendence), then there must be a real dimension of meaning that transcends all contingencies (“strong” transcendence).     

“THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF EXPERTS”: IN DEFENSE OF THE “ELITES” OF THE SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION DEBATE

This article takes a critical stance on John H. Evans's 2018 book, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science. Highlighting the significance of the book for the science‐and‐religion debate, particularly the book's emphasis on moral questions over knowledge claims revealed in social‐scientific studies of the American public, I also suggest that the distinction between the “elites” of the academic science‐and‐religion field and the religious “public” is insufficiently drawn. I argue that various nuances should be taken into account concerning the portrayal of “elites,” nuances which potentially change the way that “conflict” between science and religion is envisaged, as well as the function of the field. Similarly, I examine the ways in which the book construes science and religion as distinct knowledge systems, and I suggest that, from a theological perspective—relevant for much academic activity in science and religion—there is value in seeing science and religion in terms of a single knowledge system. This perspective may not address the public's interest in moral questions directly—important as they are—but nevertheless it fulfils the academic function of advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and self‐understanding.     

“Practical Divine Influence”: Socioeconomic Status and Belief in the Prosperity Gospel

The “prosperity gospel” is an understudied feature of the religious landscape of the United States. Little is known about the social patterning of prosperity gospel beliefs. We focus on two core dimensions of socioeconomic status (SES)—education and income—as potential influences. Our analyses of data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's 2006 Survey of Pentecostals produce three findings. First, education and income have negative and mostly independent associations with prosperity gospel beliefs. Second, SES‐based patterns remain after accounting for other attributes of the religious role. Third, while most education‐based differences are contingent upon the attributes of the religious role, these contingencies are not replicated for income‐based differences. These observations reinforce the long‐standing claim that SES plays a pivotal—and complex—role in the social patterning of religious beliefs.     

An Aesthetics of the Ordinary: Wittgenstein and John Cage

Comparisons of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Cage typically focus on the “later Wittgenstein” of the Philosophical Investigations. However, in this article I focus on the deep intellectual sympathy between the “early Wittgenstein” of the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus—with its evocative and controversial invocation of silence at the end, the famous proposition 7: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent”—and Cage's equally evocative and controversial work on the same theme—his “silent piece,” 4′33″. This sympathy expresses itself not only in the common aim of the two works (a mystical appreciation for the ordinary, everyday world that surrounds us) but also in a shared methodology for bringing about this aim (tracing the limits of language from within in order to transcend those very limits). In this sense, I argue that Cage's work gives a concrete, performative reality to Wittgenstein's early conception of language as well as the mystical revelation that lies behind it.     

Negative parenting and functions of relational aggression: The moderating roles of gender and physiological reactivity

Dimensions of negative parenting, including permissive, authoritarian, and psychologically controlling parenting behaviors, are associated with children's engagement in relational aggression. However, some youth may be more strongly influenced by negative parenting than others, and effects may depend on whether aggression is proactive or reactive in function. In a community sample of 236 preadolescent children followed over 1 year, we examined whether children's skin conductance level reactivity (an index of “fight or flight” response) and gender moderated links between parents' self-reported negative parenting behaviors and increases in children's teacher-reported proactive and reactive relational aggression. Findings indicated that negative parenting predicted increases in proactive and reactive relational aggression, and, consistent with differential susceptibility theory, effects often emerged among highly reactive youth. Associations between negative parenting and proactive relational aggression emerged for boys but not girls. Results tentatively suggest that associations between parenting and aggression vary by the function of aggression, children's physiological reactivity to stress, and gender, although results should be interpreted with caution due to high levels of missing data. Implications for theory and intervention are discussed.     

Rewriting the flesh of the world for the new human: Merleau-Ponty,Fanon, and Wynter on the ethics of futurity

This article reads Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the “flesh of the world” alongside the ontology that seems to undergird Frantz Fanon's sociodiagnostics as well as his theory of sociogeny. It argues that reading Fanonian sociogeny in terms of the ambiguity and intercorporeality of the flesh of the world renders the ethical and political imperatives of Fanon's decolonial project all the more pressing, since the “new human” is prefigured—if not totally determined—in the national consciousness obtained by “les damnés” through the decolonization process. It then examines how Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian call to (re)fashion the future of humanness through (re)conceptualizing “being human as praxis,” also seems to rely on this ontology of the flesh of the world. Bringing these arguments together, the article suggests that the conceptual content of the new human can be found in the liberation struggles of les damnés across what Wynter calls the “poverty archipelagos” wrought by colonial humanism. Hence, the “new skin” for which Fanon calls is fashioned through forming international solidarity with les damnés, with the conceptual content of the new humanism emerging sociogenically—and autopoetically—from those struggles themselves.     

主动性人格与大学生创业准备行为的关系:创业意向的中介效应与创业社会支持的调节作用

基于生态系统理论和有意创业行为的整合模型,本研究探讨了主动性人格与创业准备行为的关系,以及创业意向的中介效应和创业社会支持的调节作用。对1659名大学生进行问卷调查,结果表明:(1)主动性人格正向预测创业准备行为;(2)创业意向在主动性人格和创业准备行为的关系中起部分中介作用;(3)创业社会支持调节主动性人格通过创业意向预测创业准备行为的前半段,预示着高创业社会支持可能会增强主动性人格对创业意向的积极影响,进而促进创业准备行为。研究结果反映了个体特质与环境因素的交互作用,对如何科学有效地促进大学生的创业准备行为具有启示意义。     

Connaissances et contrôle exécutif : deux facteurs cognitifs de protection contre le vieillissement de la mémoire épisodique ?

In this study we refer to Craik and Bialystok's model distinguishing the “knowledge” (cultural learning experience that forms the basis for knowledge of the world) and the “executive control” (set of operations that control and regulate cognitive performance) as two main factors susceptible accounting for the age-related negative effects on the cognitive functioning, and for a possible age-related protective effect. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine the possible protective effect of these two factors on the age-related decline in a cued-recall task. Four age groups of participants (20–39 years, 40–59 years, 60–74 years and 75–90 years) were administered with a word-stem cued-recall test to assess episodic memory, a “vocabulary” sub-test of the WAIS-R to assess knowledge and a reading span test to assess control. Results showed an age-related effect on the episodic memory, the control performance and the knowledge measure, indicating that performance decreases with age. A GLM analysis revealed a positive effect of the knowledge and the control factors on the cued-recall performance, and interaction between age and the knowledge factor resulting from a positive effect of the knowledge level only for the youngest group of participants (20–39 years). Furthermore, results revealed an interaction between age and the control factor, indicating a positive effect of the control level for the two oldest groups of participants (60–74 years and 75–90 years). These results suggest that, contrary to the knowledge, the control factor could be an effective protection against the age-related negative effects on the episodic memory.