NEGLIGENT HIRING AND DEFAMATION: AREAS OF LIABILITY RELATED TO PRE-EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES

Research on pre-employment inquiries has not been extensive. The limited validity and utility of employment references has been documented, but other types of background checks have not been adequately discussed. However, recent legal trends in the areas of negligent hiring and defamation are leading employers to reevaluate their use of pre-employment inquiries and, particularly, references in hiring. Principles of law in these two areas are discussed and issues of concern to I/O psychologists are presented.     

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDE SURVEYS IN A MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATION: CONSIDERING LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN ASSESSING MEASUREMENT EQUIVALENCE

The cross-cultural equivalence of a multinational employee opinion survey was examined using multiple-groups covariance structure analysis to examine 4 scales in 4 countries. Cultural and linguistic influences were considered by assessing equivalence across 2 pairs of countries having the same language but different cultures (U.S. and Australia, Mexico and Spain) and across countries differing in culture and language (U.S. and Mexico). The measure was equivalent across U.S. and Australian samples only. Analyses indicated items that were the source of lack of invariance. One cause explored was translation problems. Practical issues in assessing measurement equivalence in employee opinion surveys are discussed.     

Attachment,trust, and satisfaction in relationships: Investigating actor,partner, and mediating effects

Romantic relationship dissatisfaction has been cited as a primary reason for seeking mental health services (H. M. Foran, M. A. Whisman, & S. R. H. Beach, 2015). An increasing number of studies have revealed the importance of romantic attachment in understanding relationship satisfaction (M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver, 2016). This study aims to assess dyadic trust as a possible mediator of the relation between insecure romantic attachment and relationship satisfaction within a Canadian community sample of 199 heterosexual couples. Results revealed significant actor and partner effects. Specifically, male and female attachment avoidance, as well as male attachment anxiety, predicted lower dyadic trust, which in turn predicted lower relationship satisfaction. These results add to the current literature, suggesting important gender differences in the effects attachment has on overall relationship satisfaction.     

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND TRINITARIAN DEATH: CROSS,KENOSIS, AND HIERARCHY IN THE THEO‐DRAMA

Hans Urs von Balthasar's “Theo‐Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory” exhibits a mutual funding of a hierarchical ordering of the relation between “man” and “woman” and a hierarchical ordering of the relation between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The two hierarchies explain, illustrate, and support one another. Von Balthasar's oscillation between hierarchy and equality, particularly in the divine case, results in a tortured understanding of personhood where being in relation means handing oneself over to another with the threat of death always present. Von Balthasar's understanding of personhood turns out to be fundamentally masochistic. Further, difference collapses into hierarchy and thus turns out to be no more than repetition in the mode of reception, which then poses a serious challenge to Balthasar's account of divine and human being. Since the point of connection between the two is found in his account of the way inner‐trinitarian relations of origin are extended into the world in the sending of the Son, this is the thesis which needs problematizing. For von Balthasar, the kenotic nature of the inner‐trinitarian processions explains what in the life of God makes the cross possible, but this move ascribes something like suffering and death to the inner life of God in a way that undercuts the fullness of divine love while undergirding a hierarchical understanding of divine relationality.