Globalization,Threatened Identities,Coping and Well-Being

This paper explores the links between the changes associated with the processes of globalization and their psycho-social consequences. Focusing primarily on socio-cultural domain, it examines the impact of globalization on various facets of individual psyche. The paper also looks at social functioning, delineates the role of globalization and acculturation processes in the decentring, dislocation, and reconstitution of core identities that provide crucial linkages to the well-being consequences. The review shows that despite threats to their valued identities, ethnic-minority immigrants who adopt active, problem-focused coping and/or identify with their social identity-based support groups cope efficaciously with stress of identity-based discrimination and devaluation, protect their well-being, and even report enhanced collective self-esteem. The “threatened identities” and “coping options—resources and strategies” that are invoked to cope with such threats, are significant psycho-social moderators between the processes of globalization and the well-being of individuals and groups.     

Predicting Negotiation Performance from Personality Traits: A field Study across Multiple Occupations

Based on decades-old reviews, many negotiation researchers have expressed doubts about the effect of personality on negotiation outcomes. More recent reviews have found significant associations between traits and outcome measures. Existing research has primarily used laboratory experiments; field studies are rare. In this study, we aim to fill that important gap. Traits measured using the Hogan Personality Inventory were correlated with supervisor ratings of negotiation performance across three occupations: marketing managers, lawyers, and construction supervisors. Ambition and likability independently predicted greater negotiation performance. Results generalized across these three samples with evidence for an interaction effect in the lawyer sample. For attorneys, greater ambition was not additionally helpful for those who were relatively more likable. Results establish the importance of negotiation effectiveness as a distinct component of overall job performance. Practical implications are considered in terms of division of labor, person–job fit, and the state-trait distinction.     

Aristotle,Plato and Bhagvad Gita on the “Soul”

This paper broadly aims at examining the idea of the “soul” or “atma” in ancient Greece and in India during the Axial Age. Against the backdrop of this general understanding, an attempt is made at comprehending the idea of the soul in Plato’s Phaedo in the light, on the one hand of Aristotle’s De Anima and on the other of Bhagavad Gita (or Gita in short). It is opined that Socrates’s views, in Phaedo, are closer in spirit to the Hindu ideas of “atma” in the Upanishads and the Gita than to the Greek ideas of the “soul”. An attempt has been made to provide a background for this paradoxical event.

     

Motivating and demotivating forces in teams: cross-level influences of empowering leadership and relationship conflict

Using cross-cultural laboratory and field studies with samples of leaders, employees, and students from the United States and the People's Republic of China, we examined how team-level stimuli, including empowering leadership and relationship conflict, combine to influence individual members' motivational states of psychological empowerment and affective commitment. As predicted, we found that these motivational states are individually and jointly influenced by teams' level of empowering leadership and relationship conflict and that these motivational states mediate the relationships between team stimuli and team members' innovative and teamwork behaviors and turnover intentions. In addition, results held despite controlling for team members' nationality and collectivism. We discuss contributions of our study to the team motivation, conflict, and stress literatures.     

Two short-term,cognitive interventions for the reduction of test anxiety

Abstract

Relative efficacy of Attentional Skills Training and Systematic Rational Restructuring as short-term (50 minutes each), cognitive interventions was determined on a sample of ninth-grade girls from India. Only Attentional Skills Training and not Systematic Rational Restructuring has been found to be effective for high test-anxious girls (regardless of intelligence), not only in the reduction of state test anxiety and its worry state component, but also in the reduction of anxiety interference and in the improvement of the estimated percent time spent on task. However, neither of the interventions improved the performance on the two difficult experimental tasks when compared to controls.     

Atomic diffusion by the dumb-bell mechanism in a concentrated random bcc alloy

Matter transport by <110> dumb-bell interstitials in the bcc random alloy is considered in an analytical treatment based on linear response theory. Four different jump mechanisms of the dumb-bell are dealt with. It was found that at a low level of approximation relations can be deduced which give two of the three phenomenological coefficients in terms of the third one. (These relations are analogous to exact ones deduced for vacancy diffusion in the random alloy by Moleko, L. K., and Allnatt, A. R., 1998, Phil. Mag. A, 58, 666). Monte Carlo simulation shows that the relations are quite accurate, suggesting that they may well be exact.     

Family business: A fertile ground for research on time,teams and positive organizational study

Further reflecting on the study of organizational behaviour (OB) in family business (FB), this rejoinder piece discusses and integrates the points raised in the three thoughtful commentaries and our original article. We start by highlighting the general agreement between us and the commentators on three points: (1) that family firms are theoretically distinct from non-family firms due to significant involvement of kinship ties in the enterprise; (2) there is paucity of research at the interface of OB and FB and (3) there is an abundance of interesting research questions at this interface with the potential to benefit both domains of study. Next, we discuss and elaborate on the research possibilities on time, teams and positive organizational study, suggested by the commentators. An illustrative list of interesting research questions at the OB–FB interface that extend and enrich our agenda for future research is shared. We conclude that not only is FB a promising context for behavioural scholars to investigate, the timing is perfect for such investigations.     

Reversing the emotional Stroop effect reveals that it is not what it seems: the role of fast and slow components

The relative contributions of slow and fast (online) components in a modified emotional Stroop task were evaluated. The slow component, neglected in previous research, was shown to lead to the prediction of a reversed emotional intrusion effect using pseudorandomly mixed negative and neutral stimuli. This prediction was supported in Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiments 3 and 4, a new paradigm was developed that allowed a more direct observation of the nature of disruptive effects from negative stimuli. The results provided a clear demonstration of the presence of the slow component. The fast component, which has generally been assumed to be the source of the interference, was shown, in fact, to have little or no role in the disruption.