Strategies for Counseling Midcareer Changers: A Conceptual Framework

The authors describe a model designed to help counselors facilitate the midcareer change process. Problems of typical midcareer changers are portrayed using case studies. Intervention strategies are presented in a framework that includes emotional adaptation and cognitive decision making.     

Navigating Between Cultures: A New Paradigm for Korean American Cultural Identification

The author incorporates empirical methodology and cross-cultural psychology literature to propose a new paradigm for Korean American cultural identification. He explains cultural identification as a cultural process construct that has important bearing on how successfully or unsuccessfully minority persons may function in the U.S. The construct of bicultural orthogonal identification was applied toward the development of a bilingual 4-item Korean American Cultural Identification Scale (KACIA). A random sample of 80 from a larger national pool of 1,141 Korean Americans was used to develop the scale. Findings support the orthogonality of bicultural identifications and good validity and reliability for the KACIA. The author argues for complimentary dualism over conflicting dualism and the orientation of “both/and” over “either/or” as a strategy for doing pastoral practice and theology.Parts of this article appeared elsewhere in different versions and they are modified and used here with permission from the respective publishers (see Lee, 1994, 1995, 2004a).     

Ageing and Death: A Buddhist-Christian Conceptual Framework for Spirituality in Later Life

SUMMARY

This study tested the roles of age, religious beliefs and organizational religiosity in the prediction of depressive symptoms and positive affect. Data provided by 129 younger and older adults were used to test a path model in which both direct and indirect effects of age and beliefs on well being were hypothesized. Both age and religious beliefs were positively and significantly associated with organizational religiosity. Individuals who reported more frequent participation in organizational religiosity reported fewer depressive symptoms and higher positive affect. Neither age nor religious beliefs, however, exerted direct effects on the outcomes. Results of the current investigation suggest that a better understanding of the content and function of religious beliefs may add to our understanding of well being and aging. Moreover, we advocate the further investigation of religiosity and positive emotional experiences.     

Development and Validation of an Instrument for Measuring Individual Motives for Playing Digital Games

Individual motives for playing digital games have been studied from a variety of theoretical perspectives using different measurement instruments. However, an instrument that roots the social, rule-based narrative essence of digital games in a theory on human behavior acknowledging that not all behavior is consciously motivated has hitherto been lacking. A framework based on social cognitive theory that integrates these dimensions is proposed. After comparing the advantages of this framework to existing approaches, the development of a measurement instrument is discussed. This development concerns the generation and evaluation of an item pool and also testing the instrument for reliability and validity on different samples and different populations. Results suggest psychometric as well as theoretical soundness of the instrument.     

Reconceptualizing the Transitive Inference Ability: A Framework for Existing and Future Research

It has often been claimed that to demonstrate transitive inference is to demonstrate a logical ability, and by implication that transitivity as a property is generally a logical entity. Both claims are considered using a theoretically driven analysis together with consideration of relevant existing experimental research and some newly reported findings. This approach suggests an account of transitivity and transitive inferential reasoning that differs not only from the classic Piagetian account, but also from the information processing account so dominant today. We begin by considering one important issue, that the “logical” definitional criterion can only be approached if individuals are required to demonstrate a capacity for transitive inference that is discriminative in nature. This, together with interpretation of findings from existing transitive tasks, leads to the postulate of a three-component psychological system, with the components relying on perceptual, linguistic, and conceptual subprocesses and sensitivity to simple cues. The framework is testable and accommodates important aspects of classic and modern accounts of “transitive development” that until now have been taken to be mutually exclusive. It also readily accommodates both human and nonhuman research, yet neither a formal logical structure nor memory in any general sense need be assigned the primary role.     

Chronic Illness and the Life Cycle:A Conceptual Framework

This article provides a conceptual framework for thinking about the system created at the interface of chronic illness with the family life cycle. First, a psychosocial typology and time phases of illness schema is described as a necessary, preliminary step to create a common language that bridges the worlds of illness, individual, and family development. This schema organizes similarities and differences between diseases in a manner useful to psychosocial-developmental rather than biomedical inquiry. Then, drawing on several major life-cycle theories in the literature, key concepts (periods of transition, life-structure building and maintaining, centripetality, and centrifugality) are used in a complementary fashion to link these three lines of development. Equipped with these psychosocial languages, consideration is given to transgenerational aspects of illness, loss, and crisis, and the interwoven threads of illness, family, and individual development. Clinical vignettes are provided to highlight this conceptual framework.     

Processes Involved in Adult Ego Development: A Conceptual Framework

Ego development has been found to stabilize by early adulthood among the majority of the population, at a stage which is well below the maximum potential. The modal stage of stabilization is one which involves rudimentary self-awareness and incipient conceptual complexity. The reasons for this early stabilization below the maximum potential are not fully understood. In this article, a conceptual framework is formulated to explain the processes involved in ego-stage transition in adulthood. The formulation is based on Loevinger's theoretical reflections on adult ego-stage transition and the associated research, the intervention programs designed to promote adult ego development, the theory and research in relation to moral-stage development in adulthood, and the theory and research in relation to general personality change in adulthood. In the resulting framework, it is proposed that ego-stage transition in adulthood represents an accommodative response to specific types of life experiences and that the degree of exposure to such life experiences, as well as the perception of and response to the life experience, is influenced by specific psychological characteristics. Specific research hypotheses follow from the proposed framework, and these are outlined with suggestions for empirical tests.     

Determinants of Partner Opportunism in Strategic Alliances: A Conceptual Framework

Purpose  

We present a comprehensive framework of the key determinants of partner opportunism in strategic alliances.     

Mental Simulation, Affect, and Personality: A Conceptual Framework

Recent advances in theory and research on the relations among mental simulation, affect, and personality are summarized and combined. Research has shown that (a) affect and mental simulations can influence each other, (b) mental simulations can serve diverse self-motives, and (c) personality characteristics are related to divergent functions of mental simulations. Findings in these three areas are synthesized into a conceptual framework on the basis of three attributes of mental simulations: (a) time, whether simulations are prospective or retrospective; (b) direction, whether simulations are upward or downward; and (c) focus, whether simulations are contrasted or assimilated. This integrated framework not only may enable a greater understanding of existing findings, but also suggests novel and unique predictions for future research on understanding personality processes, automaticity in simulations, and coping with life events.     

The Sales-Marketing Interface in Consumer Packaged-Goods Companies: A Conceptual Framework

For those companies marketing branded consumer packaged-goods to an increasingly powerful retail trade, collaborative relations within the marketing function are crucial, particularly between trade customer-focused sales personnel and brand-focused marketing personnel. Yet although there is a well-developed body of literature on marketing's relations with other major business functions, relations within the marketing function itself remain unresearched. Drawing on theory and empirical results from studies of marketing's cross-functional interfaces, the authors develop a framework for understanding the nature, causes and effects of relations between sales and marketing in consumer packaged-goods firms. Propositions to guide further research are also developed.     

The ABLe Change Framework: A Conceptual and Methodological Tool for Promoting Systems Change

This paper presents a new approach to the design and implementation of community change efforts like a System of Care. Called the ABLe Change Framework, the model provides simultaneous attention to the content and process of the work, ensuring effective implementation and the pursuit of systems change. Three key strategies are employed in this model to ensure the integration of content and process efforts and effective mobilization of broad scale systems change: Systemic Action Learning Teams, Simple Rules, and Small Wins. In this paper we describe the ABLe Change Framework and present a case study in which we successfully applied this approach to one system of care effort in Michigan.     

Intersectionality in Clinical Medicine: The Need for a Conceptual Framework

Intersectionality has become a significant intellectual approach for those thinking about the ways that race, gender, and other social identities converge in order to create unique forms of oppression. Although the initial work on intersectionality addressed the unique position of black women relative to both black men and white women, the concept has since been expanded to address a range of social identities. Here we consider how to apply some of the theoretical tools provided by intersectionality to the clinical context. We begin with a brief discussion of intersectionality and how it might be useful in a clinical context. We then discuss two clinical scenarios that highlight how we think considering intersectionality could lead to more successful patient–clinician interactions. Finally, we extrapolate general strategies for applying intersectionality to the clinical context before considering objections and replies.     

Prime Minister Leadership Styles in Foreign Policy Decision-Making: A Framework for Research

Although the institutional contexts of prime ministers in parliamentary democracies and of U.S. presidents are very different, both types of executive leaders influence the decision-making processes through their leadership styles. Leadership style includes how the leaders relate to those around them, how they like to receive information, and how they make up their minds. While there are numerous empirical studies and theoretical frameworks on the leadership styles of U.S. presidents, few studies of prime ministers are concerned with personality and styles of leadership. This paper reviews the literature on U.S. presidential styles and on organizational leadership in order to construct a framework for the study of prime minister leadership styles. Components of the proposed framework are illustrated with examples of British prime ministers and German chancellors. In addition, categories of dependent variables to be explained by leadership style are discussed. I argue that leadership style has the greatest impact on the decision-making process and that although the direct effect of leadership style on foreign policy behavior is less, leadership style indirectly influences foreign policy through the decision-making process.     

Workplace Spirituality and the Selling Organization: A Conceptual Framework and Research Propositions

The past few years have witnessed a proliferation of articles on spirituality and its relevance for business. A growing trend in spirituality research is an emphasis on spirituality in the workplace. Theoretical and empirical support is emerging on how workplace spirituality infl uences both employee and organizational outcomes. However, the sales literature has not yet integrated the dimensions of workplace spirituality into its frameworks. Therefore, drawing on existing theoretical foundations, we propose a conceptual framework that illustrates the role of workplace spirituality in selling organizations. We present relevant testable research propositions, guidelines for future research, and implications for practice.     

Multiple Audiences as Text Stakeholders: A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Complex Rhetorical Situations

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.     

Improving Outcomes for Youth with ADHD: A Conceptual Framework for Combined Neurocognitive and Skill-Based Treatment Approaches

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent and chronic mental health condition that often results in substantial impairments throughout life. Although evidence-based pharmacological and psychosocial treatments exist for ADHD, effects of these treatments are acute, do not typically generalize into non-treated settings, rarely sustain over time, and insufficiently affect key areas of functional impairment (i.e., family, social, and academic functioning) and executive functioning. The limitations of current evidence-based treatments may be due to the inability of these treatments to address underlying neurocognitive deficits that are related to the symptoms of ADHD and associated areas of functional impairment. Although efforts have been made to directly target the underlying neurocognitive deficits of ADHD, extant neurocognitive interventions have shown limited efficacy, possibly due to misspecification of training targets and inadequate potency. We argue herein that despite these limitations, next-generation neurocognitive training programs that more precisely and potently target neurocognitive deficits may lead to optimal outcomes when used in combination with specific skill-based psychosocial treatments for ADHD. We discuss the rationale for such a combined treatment approach, prominent examples of this combined treatment approach for other mental health disorders, and potential combined treatment approaches for pediatric ADHD. Finally, we conclude with directions for future research necessary to develop a combined neurocognitive + skill-based treatment for youth with ADHD.     

Preparation,Action, Recovery: A Conceptual Framework for Counselor Preparation and Response in Client Crises

Despite increasing requirements for counselor proficiency in crisis response, there is an absence in the standards for counselor preparation, certification, and supervision of consistent criteria on which best practice in crisis prevention and intervention, and postcrisis recovery can be gauged. The authors present a conceptual framework that defines the actions required at the different phases of a client crisis and identifies potential constraints to effective counselor action that must be acknowledged and overcome at each phase.