The roles of leader emotion management and team conflict for team members' personal initiative: A multilevel perspective

Employees' personal initiative (i.e., their active and future-oriented engagement at work) is of high relevance to organizations that strive for innovation and competitiveness. To better understand its drivers and diminishers, the present study refers to Affective Events Theory and examines the impact of leader emotion management, team conflict, and affective well-being on personal initiative. Data from 300 members of 59 work teams in Germany were gathered from multiple sources at three points in time over the course of 2 weeks. Multilevel analyses indicated that leader emotion management positively affected team members' personal initiative and that this effect was mediated by team members' affective well-being. Data also revealed a contrasting negative indirect effect of task conflict within the team on team members' personal initiative via team members' affective well-being. The study's results suggest that the improvement of leaders' emotion management as well as the establishment of work conditions and experiences that foster affective well-being should be seriously considered by organizations wishing to facilitate personal initiative in team settings.     

The relationship between productive and counterproductive work behaviour across four European countries

Research suggesting a similar but different relationship between Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) and Counterproductive Work Behaviour (CWB) is dominated by North American samples. Little evidence exists on whether these findings are replicated in other countries. To assess if a similar pattern emerged, we used the Social Axioms model (Bond et al., 2004) as a cultural framework and surveyed employees in the UK (105), The Netherlands (203), Turkey (185), and Greece (70) on the relationship between OCB and CWB, and the relationship between these behaviours and personality, justice, and commitment. Analysis supported a multidimensional structure to OCB and CWB and indicated a nonbipolar relationship between these behaviours. Culturally, somewhat different to OCB research in general, we find support for a convergence perspective across countries. Conceptually, linguistically and structurally the scale assessing OCB/CWB was shown to be equivalent across countries and a nonbipolar pattern of relationships was consistent across countries. Overall, findings imply a universal nature to the relationship between OCB and CWB across societal cultural groups.     

Organizational and Individual Values: Their Main and Combined Effects on Work Attitudes and Perceptions

A survey was conducted using a convenient sample of employees (N = 999) from various industries to examine the main and combined effects of organizational and individual values on organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and procedural justice. Moderated multiple regression analyses showed that employees' reactions were mainly explained by perceived organizational values and value preferences. In contrast, person-organization value fit and interaction effects were marginal. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Coping Response Inventory: Assessing coping among Iranian college students and introductory development of an adapted Iranian Coping Response Inventory (CRI)

Coping is related to mental and physical health outcomes, but cultural and societal differences may influence its nature and structure. This study reports on the adaptation of the Coping Responses Inventory for Adult (CRI-A) to the Iranian social and cultural context. Study 1 was designed to obtain qualitative data and test the construct and discriminative validity of coping scales. Factor analysis of the CRI and Iranian items yielded seven factors: Religious Coping, Problem Solving, Cognitive Avoidance, Positive Reappraisal, Seeking Guidance and Support, Seeking Alternative Rewards, and Acceptance/Resignation. Internally, consistencies varied considerably from 0.92 to 0.53. All sub-scales from the Coping Responses Inventory for Adult (CRI-A) were resistant to social desirability biases with the exception of Religious Coping and Problem Solving. In Study 2, the replicability of the adapted CRI-A factorial structure and concurrent validity for the newly developed religious coping sub-scale was demonstrated. Given the importance of the role of religious coping in health and well-being outcomes, the expression and use of which may be substantially influenced by cultural practices and norms, it is recommended that future research pursues the validation of context-specific constructs of religious and spiritual coping.     

The Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in the diagnosis of subcortical vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

The aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of the Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in detecting and differentiating early stage subcortical vascular dementia (SVD) from early stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Ninety-two subjects (18 SVD patients, 36 AD patients, and 38 healthy controls) were assessed using the ACE-R. Between-group’s differences were evaluated using the Quade’s rank analysis of covariance. The diagnostic accuracy and discriminatory ability of the ACE-R were examined via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The ACE-R was able to successfully discriminate between patients and healthy subjects. The mean ACE-R total scores differed between SVD and AD patients; there were also significant differences in attention and orientation and in memory measures between the groups. An optimal cut-off of 72/73 was found for the detection of AD (sensitivity: 97%; specificity: 92%) and SVD (sensitivity: 100%; specificity: 92%).     

Word recognition across orthographies: Another look at the interaction between context and degradation

Abstract

The performance of English and Spanish subjects was examined in two experiments using a lexical decision task in which the effects of semantic priming and stimulus degradation were systematically varied. The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis predicts that priming and degradation will interact in the orthographically “deep” language (English) but not in the “shallow” one (Spanish). In the first experiment, the two factors were found to interact in a similar way in both English and Spanish groups. In the second experiment, in which only Spanish subjects participated, the interaction was again present but only in those subjects who showed an overall facilitation effect on primed words. The results are consistent with the use of the so-called “direct” route in Spanish and are at variance with other previous findings which have suggested that reading in shallow orthographies occurs via the “indirect” phonological route. There was also evidence that nonword rejection times were slower in Spanish subjects and that the performance of the two groups was affected differently by the different types of neutral baseline primes (asterisks or unrelated words). Possible interpretations of these performance variations are briefly discussed.     

Ontogenetic dissociation between habit learning and recognition memory in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

The performance of young and adult capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) on a Concurrent Discrimination Learning (CDL) test and a Delayed Non-Matching to Sample (DNMS) task were investigated. Results indicate that all subjects were able to learn the CDL test with 20-pairs simultaneously and retain this stimulus/reward association within 24-h interval. In contrast, young subjects did not perform the DNMS task with the same proficiency as adults. While adults' scores were above chance across all memory test delays, the young capuchin monkeys performed the test by chance level. These results support the hypothesis that these two tasks require different cognitive processes mediated by two independent neural systems with a differentiated ontogenetic development. Moreover, they provide evidence that this dissociation occurs not only in humans and Old World monkeys but also in the New World capuchin monkeys indicating that this species can be a valuable alternative model for investigations of the neurobiological basis of memory.     

Depressed mothers' newborns show longer habituation and fail to show face/voice preference

Twenty neonates of depressed and nondepressed mothers failed to show an initial visual preference for their mother's versus a female stranger's face/voice. Subsequently, infants were habituated to their mother's face and voice. Infants of depressed mothers required 1/3 more trials and almost twice as long to habituate. A posthabituation test with their mother and a different female stranger revealed a preference for the stranger's face for 9 out of the 10 newborns of the nondepressed mothers. Again, the infants of depressed mothers displayed no visual preference. These findings reveal differences in depressed mothers newborns' speed of habituation and face/voice preferences. ©2002 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Stress and Coping: A Comparison of Self-Report Measures of Functioning in Families of Young Children with Cerebral Palsy or No Medical Diagnosis

We analyzed data from 87 mothers of children ages 15 to 44 months with cerebral palsy (CP) or no diagnosis, who completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, Parenting Stress Index, Support Functions Scale, and Inventory of Social Support. Principal components analysis of the 15 subscales from the 5 measures revealed few cross-measure loadings. Mothers of children with CP (severe or mild) reported higher levels of parenting stress than did mothers of controls. However, cluster analysis of self-report measures yielded a 5-cluster solution, with no diagnostic group differences across clusters. That is, there were no overall differences in self-reported family functioning according to presence or severity of the child's disability. The results are discussed in terms of the organization of family systems and their relationship to child diagnosis. Clinical implications for assessing and working with families are noted.