The protective identity: Evidence that mortality salience heightens the clarity and coherence of the self-concept

Research guided by terror management theory has shown that self-esteem provides a buffer against mortality concerns. The current research extends the theory to examine whether clarity and coherence in the structure of the self-concept serve a terror management function independent of enhancing self-esteem. Specifically, five studies tested whether mortality salience (MS) heightens diverse tendencies to clarify and integrate self-relevant knowledge, especially in individuals predisposed to seek structured knowledge. MS led high, but not low, structure-seeking participants to prefer coherent (Study 1) clearly-defined (Study 2), and simply organized (Study 3) conceptions of their personal characteristics. Also, MS led high structure-seeking participants to prefer causal coherence in recent experience (Study 4) and meaningful connections between past events and their current self (Study 5). Supporting the specificity of these effects on self-concept structuring, MS increased self-enhancement in Studies 1, 4, and 5 but these effects were not moderated by preference for structured knowledge.     

Flow experiences in everyday activities of Japanese college students: Autotelic people and time management1

Abstract: This study examines the characteristics of flow activities, executive skills of time management and goal directedness related to autotelic personality styles. Japanese college students (155 men and 168 women) completed the Flow Experience Checklist, Evaluation after Everyday Life Activities Scale, Time Management Skill Scale, Experiential Time Perspective Scale, and Multiple Mood Scale with reference to five everyday activities. The results suggest that flow activities are related to the process of personal growth and self‐advancement, and also provide pleasure and motivation for subsequent activity. Autotelic people reported the highest amount of flow experience in everyday activities, and the highest scores on time management and goal directedness.     

Perceived collective continuity and ingroup identification as defence against death awareness

Perhaps unique among the animal species, humans are aware that they will ultimately die. Terror management theory (TMT) posits that investing in a social group helps people to manage paralysing anxiety stemming from death awareness. In line with this proposition, research to date has shown that when reminded of their own mortality, people increase their identification with a relevant group and defend its beliefs, values, and practices. In the reported study, we demonstrate that a mortality salience induction enhances people’s perceptions of group temporal endurance—or perceived collective continuity (PCC), as we define it. Enhanced PCC leads, in turn, to enhanced group identification. This is in line with the TMT assumption that death awareness leads people to invest in a social group because this constitutes a temporally enduring meaning-system that imbues life with meaning, order, and permanence, and promises death transcendence to those who meet the prescribed standards of value.     

The significance of organizational factors for the incidence of bullying

It is frequently assumed that a poor psychosocial working environment will create conditions that encourage bullying. However, few studies have examined this assumption while comparing work environment ratings of bullied and non-bullied employees who work in the same organization and/or department. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational factors and the incidence of acts of bullying based on two different approaches: the first by comparing bullied with no-bullied, the second by comparing departments with widespread bulling with departments with little bulling. The study was a part of a general survey study of the work environment and employee well-being in 12 different local social security offices. A total of 898 persons participated in the study (a response rate of 88%).
First, the results showed a clear relationship between bullying and fear of organizational change; secondly, weak, but significant, correlations between bullying and other organizational factors; thirdly, the subsequent analyses compared departments in which bullying were most widespread with the rest of the departments. The results supported the hypothesis that departments that suffer from much bullying also have a poorer psychosocial work environment, results that support the assumption that organizational factors such as changes in one's position, pressure of work, performance demands, autocratic management and role conflict and lack of role clarity, as well as a poor social climate can contribute to the emergence of higher incidences of bullying.     

Work-to-family conflict, positive spillover, and boundary management: a person-environment fit approach

This study adopted a person-environment fit approach to examine whether greater congruence between employees’ preferences for segmenting their work domain from their family domain (i.e., keeping work matters at work) and what their employers’ work environment allowed would be associated with lower work-to-family conflict and higher work-to-family positive spillover. Different facets of work-to-family conflict (time-based and strain-based) and positive spillover (affective and instrumental) were examined. According to latent congruence modeling of survey data from 528 management employees, congruence was negatively related to both time-based and strain-based work-to-family conflict and positively related to work-to-family instrumental positive spillover as expected. However, contrary to expectations, congruence was negatively related to work-to-family affective positive spillover. Implications for how boundary management processes may affect both positive and negative experiences of the work-family interface are discussed.     

Exploring types of career orientation: A latent class analysis approach

Career literature has been discussing the decline of the traditional career. Despite this debate, systematic information on the prevalence of contemporary career types is lacking. Two studies with large samples of employees aimed to determine types of career orientation, to explore their prevalence, and to validate these types by testing hypotheses relating each of the career orientations to work attitudes and sociodemographical variables. In study 1 (N = 835), we identified four types of career orientation – traditional/promotion, traditional/loyalty, independent, disengaged – applying exploratory latent class analysis. These were confirmed in study 2 (N = 737) with confirmatory latent class analysis. The variables associated with the career orientation types mostly followed the predicted pattern. Almost two thirds reported a traditional career orientation, while one fifth each expressed an independent and a disengaged orientation. This finding shows that people’s career orientation does not reflect the changes that many authors argue have been occurring.     

创业者差错取向的绩效作用及其跨文化比较

创业企业是创业者的延伸,但创业者对创业企业的影响究竟是怎样的,当前的研究进展还不能很好的解释这点。研究采用跨文化比较的方法,首先分析中国和德国的创业者差错取向对创业企业差错气氛的影响模式,然后检验中国样本和德国样本的跨文化测量等同性,之后对比并综合分析两组样本模型的异同。研究发现在中国样本模型中,创业企业差错气氛在创业者差错取向的绩效影响中不起中介作用,而在德国样本模型中正相反。此外,研究还发现创业者个性特质对企业组织气氛存在一种“投影”影响     

Whither “Confucian Management”?

This article asks whether “Confucian Management” may be seen as the dominant influence in contemporary China. The philosophical legacy of Confucius on modern management theory and practice has received a good deal of attention in recent times, and here I attempt to assess its possible continuity. In order to carry out this task, I apply a bibliometric analysis called the “Culturomics” approach, looking at the literature on “Chinese Management” published in Mandarin in the last century, from 1900 onwards. After the presentation of the empirical data, the discussion section is set out, followed by the article’s conclusions.     

Born to be biased? Unrealistic optimism and error management theory

When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beliefs. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that rather than being a flaw in human cognition, biases may actually be design features. In my paper, I assess the claim that unrealistic optimism is such a design feature because it is a form of error management. Proponents of this theory say that when individuals make decisions under uncertainty, it can be advantageous to err on the side of overconfidence if the potential gains through success are high and the costs of failure are low. I argue that there are a number of conceptual problems in matching the theory with the existing data. I also show that there is empirical evidence against the error management hypothesis.     

An Application of MCDM in Water Resources Problems

In this paper a practical application of MCDM in water resources problems is presented. Based on a real project for Qinhuangdao water resources management sponsored by Qinhuangdao Municipality, we construct a set of models for inflow forecast, reservoir operations, water supply and allocation, and flood routing for system optimal operation and flood management. A stochastic dynamic programming (DP) model with a fuzzy criterion is proposed for monthly reservoir operations. A series of goal programming (GP) models is built for water supply and allocation on different planning and operating levels. The DP–GP models fulfil the optimal operation tasks of a water resources management decision support system (WRMDSS) for Qinhuangdao water resources management.