Development and validation of the job crafting scale

We developed and validated a scale to measure job crafting behavior in three separate studies conducted in The Netherlands (total N = 1181). Job crafting is defined as the self-initiated changes that employees make in their own job demands and job resources to attain and/or optimize their personal (work) goals. In Study 1 and 2 the Dutch job crafting scale (JCS) was developed and tested for its factor structure, reliability, and convergent validity. The criterion validity of the JCS was examined in Study 3. The results indicated that there are four independent job crafting dimensions, namely increasing social job resources, increasing structural job resources, increasing challenging job demands, and decreasing hindering job demands. These dimensions could be reliably measured with 21 items. The JCS shows convergent validity when correlated with the active constructs proactive personality (+), personal initiative (+), and the inactive construct cynicism (?). In addition, results indicated that self-reports of job crafting correlated positively with colleague-ratings of work engagement, employability, and performance — thus supporting the criterion validity of the JCS. Finally, self-rated job crafting behaviors correlated positively with peer-rated job crafting behaviors.     

Work engagement,performance, and active learning: The role of conscientiousness

The present study examines whether the relationship between work engagement and job performance is moderated by the extent to which individuals are inclined to work hard, careful, and goal-oriented. On the basis of the literature, it was hypothesized that conscientiousness strengthens the relationship between work engagement and supervisor ratings of task and contextual performance as well as active learning. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 144 employees from several occupations. Results of moderated structural equation modeling supported the hypotheses. Work engagement was positively related to task performance, contextual performance, and active learning, particularly for employees high in conscientiousness.     

Test publishers' perspective on "an updated meta-analysis": comment on Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012)

Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau's (2012) meta-analysis of pre-employment integrity test results confirmed that such tests are meaningfully related to counterproductive work behavior. The article also offered some cautionary conclusions, which appear to stem from the limited scope of the authors' focus and the specific research procedures used. Issues discussed in this commentary include the following: (a) test publishers' provision of studies for meta-analytic consideration; (b) errors and questions in the coding of statistics from past studies; (c) debatable corrections for unreliable criterion measures; (d) exclusion of laboratory, contrasted-groups, unit-level, and time-series studies of counterproductive behavior; (e) under-emphasis on the prediction of counterproductive workplace behaviors compared with job performance, training outcomes, and turnover; (f) overlooking the industry practice of deploying integrity scales with other valid predictors of employee outcomes; (g) implication that integrity test publishers produce biased research results; (h) incomplete presentation of integrity tests' resistance to faking; and (i) omission of data indicating applicants' favorable response to integrity tests, the tests' lack of adverse impact, and the positive business impact of integrity testing. This commentary, therefore, offers an alternate perspective, addresses omissions and apparent inaccuracies, and urges a return to the use of diverse methodologies to evaluate the validity of integrity tests and other psychometric instruments.     

Call combinations in monkeys: compositional or idiomatic expressions?

Syntax is widely considered the feature that most decisively sets human language apart from other natural communication systems. Animal vocalisations are generally considered to be holistic with few examples of utterances meaning something other than the sum of their parts. Previously, we have shown that male putty-nosed monkeys produce call series consisting of two call types in response to different events. They can also be combined into short sequences that convey a different message from those conveyed by either call type alone. Here, we investigate whether ‘pyow-hack’ sequences are compositional in that the individual calls contribute to their overall meaning. However, the monkeys behaved as if they perceived the sequence as an idiomatic expression rather than decoding the sequence. Nonetheless, while this communication system lacks the generative power of syntax it enables callers to increase the number of messages that can be conveyed by a small and innate call repertoire.     

The Psychoanalysis Between Sándor Ferenczi and Elizabeth Severn: Mutuality,Unconscious Communication,and the Development of Countertransference Analysis

ABSTRACT

The psychoanalysis between Sándor Ferenczi and Elizabeth Severn was characterized by a controversial counterference analysis, in which the analysand, Severn, took an active lead. She can be seen as the co-creator of the Countertransference Analysis. In the two-person analytic dialogue that Severn and Ferenczi created to resolve the intractable therapeutic impasse in their analytic relationship, a dialogue of the unconscious emerged. Severn believed she was attuned to Ferenczi’s unanalyzed countertransference reaction to her. They had a special kind of relationship where attunement was at an unconscious level. In a sustained analytic encounter, she helped Ferenczi retrieve the experience of being sexually abused, which was the unconscious derivation of his negative countertransference to Severn.