Reflections Relative to Death,Dying, and Grieving Workshops

Death, dying, and grieving are frequent counseling themes. Developmental workshops and courses, such as described in this article, address the crucial existential aspects related to living and dying.     

The influence of parent negative emotional expression on adolescents' perceptions of their relationships with their parents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between parent affective expression in interactions and adolescent perceptions of their relationship. Observational and self-report data were collected on 85 intact families with adolescents in grades 5 to 9 (n = 44 males, 41 females). Each parent and adolescent took part in two 8-minute conversations–one about an activity they reported enjoying together and one about a disagreement or area of conflict. Conversations were coded on a speaker turn basis for positive, negative, neutral, mixed, and altered affect (kappa = .76). Physical maturation was related to adolescent perceptions of increased negative communication quality in all parent-adolescent dyads. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that expression by fathers of negative and mixed affect significantly predicted adolescent perceptions of communication quality, psychological autonomy, and firm/lax control, in addition to the effects of adolescent pubertal maturation. Mother affective expression in interactions was less consistently related to adolescent perceptions of relationship satisfaction. Implications for the salience of father versus mother affective expression in interactions with adolescents are discussed.     

LOWER BACK DISABILITY IN OCCUPATIONAL SETTINGS: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE FROM A HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT VIEW

Lower back disability (LBD) is a widespread phenomenon that has dramatic impacts on individuals' lives, as well as employers' costs. Despite this fact, specialists in the area of human resources have paid little attention to this critical, work-related outcome. The need for human resource professionals to learn more about LBD has become even more urgent due to the recent passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Although the treatment of lower back pain falls within the domain of physicians, this paper adopts a bio-psycho-social approach and reviews the existing empirical literature on variables related to LBD at the preventative and rehabilitation stages. We identify five avenues (job design, selection, training, compensation, and organizational climate) through which human resource researchers and practitioners can influence lower back disability.     

Primal Alternatives to Talk Therapy: The Batak “Tondi” of North Sumatra

Although talk therapy has tended to rely on exogenous or outside the person resources, many primal alternatives to talk therapy have emphasized the importance of endogenous or inside the person sources of empowerment. The Toba Batak of North Sumatra provide an internalized means of mediating mental health through a religious-based notion of the tondi, or source of power, inside the person as the source of mental-physical health and illness. The rituals necessary for maintaining health are discussed with the rationale supporting those rituals. Applications of these historical beliefs among contemporary university students are also discussed.     

APPLICANT PERSONALITY, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, AND ORGANIZATION ATTRACTION

This study examined the dispositional basis of job seekers' organizational culture preferences and how these preferences interact with recruiting organizations' cultures in their relation to organization attraction. Data were collected from 182 business, engineering, and industrial relations students who were seeking positions at the time of the study. Results obtained from multiple sources suggested that the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) generally were related to hypothesized dimensions of culture preferences. Results also suggested that both objective person-organization fit (congruence between applicant culture preferences and recruiting organization's reputed culture) and subjective fit (applicant's direct perception of fit) were related to organization attraction. Further, subjective fit mediated the relationship between objective fit and organization attraction.     

AN EVALUATION OF GENERIC TEAMWORK SKILLS TRAINING WITH ACTION TEAMS: EFFECTS ON COGNITIVE AND SKILL-BASED OUTCOMES

This study evaluated the utility of generic teamwork skills training for enhancing the effectiveness of action teams. Results from 65 4-person action teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator revealed that generic teamwork skills training had a significant and positive impact on both cognitive and skill-based outcomes. Trained team members evidenced higher levels of declarative knowledge regarding teamwork competencies and demonstrated greater proficiency in the areas of planning and task coordination, collaborative problem-solving, and communication. Furthermore, results indicated that cognitive and skill based outcomes were interrelated. Team members' declarative knowledge regarding teamwork competencies positively affected planning and task coordination, collaborative problem solving, and communication skills. However, we found that the effects of declarative knowledge differed across team members depending on their roles and responsibilities. The team benefited the most from the knowledge held by the team member who occupied the most critical position in the workflow. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.