Managing a new collaborative entity in business organizations: understanding organizational communities of practice effectiveness

Companies worldwide are turning to organizational communities of practice (OCoPs) as vehicles to generate learning and enhance organizational performance. OCoPs are defined as groups of employees who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic and who strengthen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on a consistent basis. To date, OCoP research has drawn almost exclusively from the community of practice (CoP) literature, even though the organizational form of CoPs shares attributes of traditional CoPs and of organizational teams. Drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) original theory of legitimate peripheral participation, we integrate theory and research from CoPs and organizational teams to develop and empirically examine a model of OCoP effectiveness that includes constructs such as leadership, empowerment, the structure of tasks, and OCoP relevance to organizational effectiveness. Using data from 32 OCoPs in a U.S.-based multinational mining and minerals processing firm, we found that external community leaders play an important role in enhancing OCoP empowerment, particularly to the extent that task interdependence is high. Empowerment, in turn, was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We also found that OCoPs designated as "core" by the organization (e.g., working on critical issues) were more effective than those that were noncore. Task interdependence also was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We provide scholars and practitioners with insights on how to effectively manage OCoPs in today's organizations.     

Young adult identities and their pathways: a developmental and life course model

Developmental and life course studies of young adult identities have focused on 2 dimensions: subjective age and psychosocial maturity. This study examines the developmental synchrony of these 2 processes. In a longitudinal sample of young adults from Add Health (ages 18-22), a person-centered analysis of indicators of these dimensions identified 4 identity profiles. Two depict early and late patterns of identity; the others represent contrasting types of discordance: pseudo-adult, with subjective age more advanced than maturation level, and anticipatory, with subjective age less advanced than maturational level. The profiles vary by gender, socioeconomic status, and race-ethnicity, as well as by adolescent (ages 12-16) pubertal maturation, psychosocial adjustment, and family context. These results provide support for a more holistic, interdisciplinary understanding of adult identity and show that young adult identities in the Add Health sample follow differentiated paths into the adult years, with largely unknown consequences for the subsequent life course.     

Childhood emotional abuse and attachment processes in the dyadic adjustment of dating couples

In an effort to improve understanding of the mechanisms that link early maltreatment to later outcomes, this study investigated the mediation effects of adult attachment processes on the association between childhood emotional abuse and later romantic relationships among heterosexual couples. College students and their dating partners (N = 310; 155 couples) completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Experiences in Close Relationship Scale, and Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006), multilevel modeling results indicated that memories of childhood emotional abuse reported by both students and their partners were significantly associated with attachment strategies, as well as romantic relationship quality. Findings supported hypothesized mediation effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance.     

The implications of adult identity for educational and work attainment in young adulthood

This study investigates the relation of young adult identities (ages 18-22 years), reflecting subjective age and psychosocial maturity, to educational and career attainment in young adulthood (ages 25-29 years). Add Health data show that having an older subjective age alone does not curtail attainment; the critical issue is the level of psychosocial maturity that accompanies subjective age. Those with older subjective ages and low psychosocial maturation have the lowest attainment at ages 25-29 years, while those with older subjective ages and high psychosocial maturation show considerable progress toward work-related attainment. For those with younger subjective ages, a lower level of psychosocial maturity is not as detrimental to attainment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Semantic priming and identification of near threshold primes in a lexical decision task

Three experiments examined both the impact of semantic analysis of 50-msec, masked visual primes on a target response and the impact of semantic analysis of the target on a prime response. The first two experiments used a prime-target interval of 1000 msec. In Experiment 1, subjects reported the identity of each prime: (a) after a lexical decision about the target, (b) both before and after a lexical decision, or (c) after a target detection response. Prime report after both types of target response showed retroactive priming in which report was facilitated by related targets and inhibited by unrelated targets. Analyses of lexical decision latency and accuracy conditionalized on prime report showed that semantic priming was restricted to reported related primes. In Experiment 2, subjects made no overt response to the primes. Priming was conditionalized on recognition of the primes on a subsequent test. The pattern was the same as Experiment 1: There was priming only for recognized primes; recognition memory showed a pattern consistent with retroactive priming. Experiment 3 also conditionalized priming on recognition performance but used a prime-target interval of only 250 msec. Again, semantic priming was found only for recognized primes, and recognition memory revealed retroactive priming. Retroactive priming indicates an interdependency between prime and target processing that needs to be incorporated into models of semantic priming.