A Qualitative Study of Performance Leadership and Management in Elite Sport

This paper is an investigation of performance leadership and management in elite sport. Thirteen national performance directors of Olympic sports were interviewed with regard to best practice. Four main areas were identified: vision, operations, people, and culture. The main vision issues were vision development, influences on the vision, and sharing the vision. The main operations issues were financial management, strategic competition and training planning, athlete selection for competition, and upholding rules and regulations. The main people issues were staff management, lines of communication, and feedback mechanisms. The main culture issues were establishing role awareness, and organizational and team atmosphere.     

Out in the midday Sun: Risk behaviour and optimistic beliefs among residents and visitors on tenerife

Abstract

A questionnaire was distributed to 107 local residents on a beach on the island of Tenerife and to 108 visitors from Britain and continental Europe. Measures included perceived danger of sun exposure. environmental concern. value of a suntan, optimism regarding personal risk of skin damage relative to others of one's age and gender, amount of midday sun exposure, sunscreen use and skin type. Use of sunscreen protection was greatly below recommended levels, though higher for women (N = 103). Among visitors, the British (N = 54) showed the riskiest behaviour. Relationship between behaviour. beliefs and background variables varied between groups. Overall there was a significant optimistic bias. This was stronger for the British, and for men. The relationships between optimism and other measures varied between the different national groups. In particular, among the British. greater optimism was associated with placing a higher value on a suntan, with having a more sensitive skin type, with using less adequate sunscreen protection, and with spending a (nonsignificantly) greater proportion of time exposed to the sun in the middle of the day. Among locals and visitors from continental Europe, optimism was associated with less midday exposure. It is concluded that these data offer evidence for two complementary interpretations of the relationship between optimism and health behaviour. On the one hand, those who perceive themselves to be at greater risk may be motivated to take more precautions. while risk-taking may be greater among those regard themselves as less vulnerable. On the other hand. those who take more precautions may infer that their own relative risk is lower. It is argued that research should not assume a single process relating perceived risk to behaviour, but consider factors that might predict the relative importance of alternative processes.     

Group Psychotherapy and the Nature of Drug Addiction

There is little evidence that the development and resolution of a regressive transference neurosis is an important or useful experience for patients in once-a-week outpatient group psychotherapy. Rather, research evidence and clinical experience suggest that a broad range of therapeutic factors are important. Before group treatment, patients expect to gain from insight, catharsis, interpersonal output, and interpersonal input. Patients who have had short therapeutic experiences indicate that catharsis, learning to trust others, and learning how one relates to others are most important. In longer-term therapies, a broad range of factors comes into play, including universalization, altruism, guidance, and existential factors, in addition to catharsis, insight, and interpersonal learning.     

The Effect of a Final Exam on Long-Term Retention

Testing on a final exam in a college course improved long-term retention over material that had not been tested on the final. Students from an upper level psychology course took a long-term retention test, four to five months after the end of the course. For half of the items, a related question had been on the final. For the remaining half, a related question had appeared on an earlier exam, but not the final. On the long-term retention test, percent correct was 79% when a related question had appeared on the final and 67% when a related question had not appeared on the final. These results have both theoretical and practical implications.     

The irresponsibility of American social scientists

The arguments contained in books criticizing American social scientists by C. Wright Mills (The Sociological Imagination) and Bernard Crick (The Science of American Politics) are discussed, compared and criticized. It is argued that Mills’ criteria of evaluation and constructive alternatives to the tendencies he criticizes are immeasurably sounder than those found in Crick's book. An effort to supplement Mills’ argument by providing a more explicit statement of its moral underpinnings is made. Finally, it is argued that though both critiques have serious empirical flaws, the authors have undeniably demonstrated that important tendencies for irresponsible thought and action do exist within the American social sciences.     

Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension

This paper has two purposes. The first is to elaborate compromise formation theory from an intersubjective perspective. The second is to explore the implications of this vantage point for our understanding of the modes of therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.

I pursue the goals of this paper by outlining the essentials of compromise formation theory and by elaborating what I mean by its intersubjective dimension. Then I present and discuss analytic data to demonstrate the value of the theory for understanding aspects of mode of therapeutic action. Finally, I contrast this perspective with competing theoretical points of view.     

Job crafting and its relationships with person–job fit and meaningfulness: A three-wave study

Although scholars imply that job crafting contributes to person–job fit and meaningful work, to date, no study examined the relationships between these variables. The present three-wave weekbook study was designed to gain more knowledge about the influence of job crafting on person–job fit and meaningfulness. We collected data among a heterogeneous group of employees (N = 114) during three consecutive weeks (N = 430 occasions). At the end of their working week, employees reported their job crafting behaviors, their person–job fit (demands–abilities fit and needs–supplies fit), and the meaningfulness of their work that week. Results indicated that individuals who crafted their job by increasing their job resources (e.g., support, autonomy) and challenging job demands (e.g., participate in new projects), and by decreasing their hindering job demands (e.g., less emotional job demands) reported higher levels of person–job fit the next week. In turn, demands–abilities fit related to more meaningfulness in the final week. No support was found for alternative causal models. These findings suggest that by crafting their job demands and job resources, individuals can proactively optimize their person–job fit and as a consequence experience their work as meaningful.     

Who Seeks Job Resources,and Who Avoids Job Demands? The Link Between Dark Personality Traits and Job Crafting

Although job crafting has been linked repeatedly to positive employee and organizational outcomes, its detrimental side has not been well explored. To understand the way dark personality traits affect the type of crafting in which employees engage, this research focuses on two frameworks: the PEN (psychopathy, extraversion, and neuroticism) framework and the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). In Study 1, we collected data on the PEN traits and job crafting from 155 individuals in various occupations. We found that neuroticism was negatively related to seeking structural job resources, whereas psychoticism was negatively related to seeking social job resources. We also found that extraversion was positively related to seeking structural and social job resources and to seeking challenging job demands. In Study 2, we examined how the Dark Triad traits predicted job crafting among police officers (N = 135). The results showed that narcissism was positively related to seeking social job resources and challenges, whereas psychopathy was negatively related to seeking social resources. Age and narcissism were positive predictors of reducing job demands. We conclude that personality plays an important role when choosing how to craft one's job. We discuss the practical implications of these findings.