A self-regulation approach to understanding citizenship behavior in organizations

Researchers have generally taken a between-person, cross-sectional approach to understand why employees engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). However, in light of recent work indicating that motivated behavior in organizations is often better understood using a within-person, longitudinal approach, we conceptualize citizenship performance as a dynamic cycle that varies over time. Specifically, we use self-regulation theory to explain how employees seek to fulfill goals through their OCBs, make plans to achieve those goals, engage in OCBs, and process feedback regarding their citizenship behavior. In doing so, we highlight the role played by chronic and working self-concept orientations. We also explore the way affective states influence self-regulation and citizenship, discuss unconscious or habitual acts of citizenship, and address the ways in which self-regulation and citizenship may vary over time.     

Salespeople as knowledge brokers: a review and critique of the challenger sales model

Over the last several years, there has been increasing interest in a new sales training approach – referred to as the Challenger Sales model – to engage customers. This approach, focusing on purposefully generating tension with customers to spark new ways of thinking, has gained traction among leading sales organizations. Although generating tension with customers has received a great deal of interest, researchers have yet to complete a systematic, in-depth examination of the Challenger model. The purpose of this article is to provide a much needed comprehensive review and critique of the approach. By conducting both an empirical and conceptual review of the framework, we offer insight into its novelty, merits and weaknesses.     

Boundaries of Citizenship Behavior: Curvilinearity and Context in the Citizenship and Task Performance Relationship

Resource allocation, attentional capacity, and role theories all suggest that the well‐documented linear relationship between citizenship behavior and task performance may be more complex than previously believed. In a study of 352 incumbents, we develop hypotheses that propose a curvilinear effect of employee citizenship on task performance. We further argue that this nonmonotonic relationship is different across the targets of citizenship performance and is moderated by several factors from the task context. Results support the curvilinear assertion, indicating that the relationship with task performance inflects when citizenship is more frequently performed. These diminishing returns are amplified when the target of citizenship is the organization compared to the individual. Findings further reveal that the task context elements of accountability and autonomy moderate the curvilinear relationship, whereas ambiguity does not. Implications for a reappraisal of the citizenship–task performance relationship are discussed.     

Egocentric reciprocity and the role of friendship and anger

In this research, we examine the phenomenon of egocentric reciprocity, where individuals protect self-interest by adopting an eye-for-an-eye strategy in negatively imbalanced exchanges, and by taking advantage of overly generous treatment in positively imbalanced exchanges. We conducted two experiments using a modified ultimatum game examining attitudinal and behavioral responses to imbalanced exchanges. The experiments allowed us to explore the moderating role of relational closeness (i.e., whether the game partner was a friend or a stranger) and the mediating role of anger and indebtedness in these moderated relationships. Our results consistently demonstrate the phenomenon of egocentric reciprocity. Most importantly, this research reveals that friendship places a boundary on this egocentric tendency, and that the effects may partially be explained by anger experienced in response to exchange.     

MA and Togetherness (Ittaikan) in the Narratives of Dancers and Spectators: Sharing an Uncertain Space

The Japanese concept/character MA (間), commonly translated as “gap, interval, or the in between,” partakes in many forms of Japanese arts and daily-life practices. In this article, we report the results of a qualitative research on the meaning or experience of MA and its relation with the feeling of togetherness in the context of contemporary dance improvisation. We interviewed performers and spectators (all professional dancers) while they watched the videotaped and reduced stick-figure versions of short dance improvisations created in a laboratory installed with motion-capture sensors. Based on the individual narratives, and inspired by Japanese and occidental aesthetic writings, we elaborate a specific understanding of MA as attending to the event's preacceleration, and how this experience causally relates to the feeling of togetherness (一体感, ittaikan). We propose that MA, understood not extensionally (as an empty space or a silent gap), but intentionally/internally as a certain quality of attention or perceptual mode, is fertile ground for serendipity. MA as an interpersonal ethical construct suggests a transsubjective difference as a foundation for a collective coming together.     

Service planning for chronic mental patients: some principles

Services for chronic mental patients in this era of deinstitutionalization present a major challenge to clinicians and planners alike. The complexity of these patients' clinical and other programmatic needs requires that an array of viable comprehensive services be made available to them. Following certain established principles of service planning will help facilitate patients' longitudinal, psychological, financial, and geographical access to care.     

Notes on Psychoanalysis,Psychotherapy and Methodology

Abstract

Technical innovations always carry with them clinical and scientific challenges. The aim of this paper is to provide a context for exploring the consequences of technical innovations for psychoanalysis as an interrelated method of observation, treatment, and body of knowledge about mental functioning. The problems are approached from a methodological perspective because scientific progress requires methodological clarity. The inquiry begins with a methodological investigation of the technical and theoretical consequences of first principles, that is, the consequences of the assumptions and methods we adopt for the kind of data that are obtained by their application and for the theory required to understand and unify the resulting observations. The conclusion suggests that if one organizes a doctor-patient relationship around the clinical-historical and free-association methods with the aim of removing all obstacles to communication, if the understandings that emerge include a full range of dynamic, structural, genetic and adaptive propositions, one is engaged in psychoanalytic inquiry. The circumstances under which Rothstein's technical recommendations enable such understandings to develop are an important topic for future research.     

Reconstructing the Loss: Bereaved Parents in Personal Commemorative Films

The aim of this study was to find answers to the question of how Israeli parents who have lost their child in battle or in a terror attack reconstruct their life story, as revealed in personal commemorative films. Twenty personal documentary commemorative films were systematically and thematically analyzed. Through exposing the themes of last shared experience, death event, and notification of death, the research sheds light on the self-healing process that enables parents to build a bridge in their narrative. The commemorative films provide a framework for reconstruction work adding to the new body of research in the field of video and cinema therapy.     

Effects of task interdependence on the relationship between helping behavior and group performance

The authors examine whether task interdependence moderates the relationship between the helping form of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and group performance. In a laboratory study, 62 groups with 3 members each completed a card-sequencing activity in which the level of task interdependence among group members was manipulated. Independent evaluators assessed helping by viewing videotapes of the groups' interactions during the sequencing activities. Performance was measured as a combined function of group speed and accuracy. Two prior field studies reported contradictory results regarding the impact of helping on group performance. Results from this study suggest that task interdependence may explain these results, and that the relationship between helping and group performance depends on the level of task interdependence required of group members.