The study of organizational behaviour in family business

Family businesses (FBs)—enterprises that are significantly influenced by family members and kinship ties—are ubiquitous and play a crucial role across all world economies. Because of the embeddedness of family and business systems in FB, these organizational forms are theoretically distinct from their non-family counterparts. Curiously, FBs have been largely overlooked in the organizational behaviour (OB) literature. The limited available research at the interface of OB and FB highlights the importance of FB as a unique context to advance OB theories, and of OB as a promising discipline to increase our understanding of FB. In a selective review of literature focused on the four topics of values and goals, leadership and power, trust and justice, and conflict, we discuss how insights from the general theory of communal and exchange relationships open exciting avenues for research at the FB-OB interface. Rich fruits of intellectual harvest await scholars who focus on behavioural research in FB.     

Affective Priming Effects in the Left and Right Cerebral Hemispheres in Patients With Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and control subjects were tested in an affective priming paradigm associated with an affective discrimination task. Two pictures, one affectively positive or affectively negative and the other neutral, were presented simultaneously in the right and in the left visual fields; the participants had to decide which of the two pictures was the most affectively positive or negative. The target pictures were preceded by a prime picture that was either affectively positive, affectively negative, or neutral. The principal result was the observation, in AD patients as well as in control subjects, of negative affective priming effects for targets presented in the right hemisphere, and of positive affective priming effects for targets presented in the left hemisphere. The presence of affective priming effects suggests that AD patients have no particular deficit in the automatic activation of emotional information; the fact that priming effects were also observed for targets presented in the left hemisphere showed that AD patients probably have no left hemisphere deficit in the automatic activation of emotional information. However, in AD patients, affective priming effects were significant with negative targets but not with positive targets, which could suggest that AD patients processed positive targets in a more semantic way than negative targets.     

Etude des Facteurs psychosociaux,du burnout,de la Vigueur et des troubles musculosquelettiques chez les soignants hospitaliers

Psychosocial factors, the burnout and the musculoskeletal disorders coexist in health professionals at the hospital. From 176 answers to a questionnary built from Karasek (1990) and Siegrist (1996) theories of psychosocial factors, Shirom (2004) of burnout and vigor and finally Kuorinka (1987) of musculoskeletal disorders, we measure and put in link these different aspects, then we propose a predictive model for burnout and pains.     

Nestling barn owls assess short-term variation in the amount of vocally competing siblings

Assessing the amount of rivals is crucial to optimally adjust investment into a contest. If laboratory animals show numerical abilities, little is known about the ecological implications particularly in young animals. The two to nine barn owl (Tyto alba) siblings vocally compete for priority of access to food resources before parents actually deliver them. In dyads, the individual that vocalizes at the highest rate in the absence of parents deters its siblings from competing for next delivered prey. We tested the novel hypothesis that to optimally adjust vocal investment, barn owl nestlings assess how many of their siblings are currently competing. To singleton owlets, we broadcasted a fixed global number of calls emitted by one, two or four pre-recorded unfamiliar nestlings. We could thus distinguish the independent effect on singletons’ vocal behavior of the global number of calls produced by a brood from the number of competitors that produced these calls. Overall, nestlings retreated more from vocal contest when facing more competitors. However, in front of one highly motivated competitor, nestlings refrained from vocalizing to a larger extent than when competing against more but less motivated individuals. Therefore, young animals assess variation in the number of currently competing siblings based on individual-specific vocal cues.     

The role of sound intensity and stop-consonant voicing on McGurk fusions and combinations

The present paper argues that generalisation is conservative. Our goal was to experimentally study the links between knowledge generalisation and the storage of contextual elements. The knowledge domain, very simple chess configurations, allowed subjects, novices in chess, to acquire micro-expertise based on the analysis of a single source problem. In the first experimental phase, subjects had to analyse a source problem. We induced two modes of source-problem encoding: In the first group, subjects were given explanations focused on the sequence of elementary solving steps; in the other group they were given the general principle relevant to the category of problems in question. Subjects had then to solve different tests (solving isomorphic problems, recall tests, similarity tests) designed to answer two questions: The first question was to test whether the experimental manipulation in the two groups had in fact generated knowledge that varied in abstractness; the second question was to determine whether generalisation is accompanied by storage of surface features of the source problem. Results show that the knowledge generalisation is conservative. Subjects who generalise their knowledge have a better memory retention of context-dependent elements than the other subjects.     

Organizational Support,Job Resources,Soldiers’ Motivational Profiles,Work Engagement,and Affect

The authors examined the relationships between soldiers’ motivational profiles and work correlates. Results showed that the profiles differentially related to perceived organizational support and work engagement in both samples, as well as to communication, supervisor support, and positive and negative affect in Sample 2. Specifically, soldiers with the highest autonomous motivation scores displayed the highest levels of perceived organizational support and work engagement. Moreover, the highest levels of autonomous motivation were associated with the highest levels of communication, supervisor support, and positive affect. Finally, soldiers with low to moderate levels of autonomous motivation reported higher levels of negative affect than those characterized by high autonomous motivation scores. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The annihilation by glide of prismatic loops in walls

Two mechanisms are conjectured for the non-diffusional refinement of prismatic dislocation loops. These mechanisms offer an alternative to the widely accepted concept of spontaneous disintegration below some critical dipole height. In one, a loop array is refined by reaction with a mobile dislocation having the same Burgers vector. Loop shrinkage then depends on the geometry of the array and on the position of the plane of incidence. In principle, any loop array can be refined via this mechanism provided that all the loops have the same sign. An alternative mechanism may take place in dense walls formed of randomly arranged dipolar loops of both signs. As the wall is densified by impacting dislocations that push pre-existing loops on their glide prism against each other, refinement occurs conservatively when two loops of opposite sign come into contact.     

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive

This research examines the role of alcohol consumption on self‐perceived attractiveness. Study 1, carried out in a barroom (N= 19), showed that the more alcoholic drinks customers consumed, the more attractive they thought they were. In Study 2, 94 non‐student participants in a bogus taste‐test study were given either an alcoholic beverage (target BAL [blood alcohol level]= 0.10 g/100 ml) or a non‐alcoholic beverage, with half of each group believing they had consumed alcohol and half believing they had not (balanced placebo design). After consuming beverages, they delivered a speech and rated how attractive, bright, original, and funny they thought they were. The speeches were videotaped and rated by 22 independent judges. Results showed that participants who thought they had consumed alcohol gave themselves more positive self‐evaluations. However, ratings from independent judges showed that this boost in self‐evaluation was unrelated to actual performance.     

Predictors of semantic categorical flexibility in older adults

This study investigated the processes involved in the aging of semantic categorical flexibility. A previous study revealed the effects of aging on the flexible use of taxonomic relations. We aimed to explain our previous results regarding the performance of older adults; we carried out investigations into the respective roles of executive and conceptual factors in semantic categorical flexibility. Fifty older adults carried out a semantic categorical flexibility task alongside conceptual and executive measures. The results replicate our previous findings and indicate that the predictors of the maintenance of the use of taxonomic relations are conceptual and the predictors of the switching from thematic to taxonomic relations are executive.     

Adults and 5‐year‐old children draw rectangles and triangles around a prototype but not in the golden ratio

This study uses a production task to probe the representations of two geometrical shape categories (rectangles and triangles) in adults and children before the onset of geometry instruction. We specifically assessed whether drawings of these shapes would average around a prototype and whether the prototypical side‐length ratio of the shapes would be situated in the range of the ‘golden ratio’, as it has been reported in the perception domain. We asked 78 adults and 68 five‐year‐old children to draw one rectangle and one triangle. In both populations, the prototypical rectangle was horizontally oriented with a ratio between sides superior to the ‘golden’ value of 1.62. For the triangle, both children and adults tended to produce horizontal acute isosceles triangles with a ratio inferior to the golden value. These findings suggest that adults’ and children's shape categories of triangles and rectangles are organized around a prototypical shape, but the characteristics of this prototype may differ to a certain extent with the ones observed in previous perceptual tasks. Implications of this perception/production dissociation for length concept development, as well as the potential origins of these prototypes are discussed.