Employee reactions to flattening organizational structures

This article examines the effectiveness of a newly introduced integrative structure and its impact on employee job perceptions in an aircraft maintenance organization. It is not common to find studies, that relate such changes to lower level employee reactions. The implementation of the change programme involved a system-wide approach incorporating both structural and cultural change. Using a retrospective methodology we assessed employee reactions to the changes introduced. We found that both intrinsic job satisfaction and job characteristics perceptions improved in the new integrative organization. The fact that positive findings have been identified when other studies found no relationship between such changes and attitudinal outcomes illustrates the efficacy of a system-wide approach to change. Extrinsic satisfaction and organizational commitment however did not improve. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that the latter areas are concerned with factors outside the direct completion of the job and may take much longer to change if indeed they can be shown to change over time at all.     

Role conflicts of family members in family firms

The existence of role conflict among organizational members tends to create tensions inside organizations worldwide. However, in the context of family firms, having a dual role of being a member of a family and a member of the firm can represent interesting differences that make family firms an important form of organization to study. Following the tenets of the stewardship theory, our article develops a model where reciprocal altruism represents an antecedent to role conflict among family members. We further argue that perceptions of collective efficacy among family members have a moderating effect on the relationship between reciprocal altruism and role conflict. Last, we propose that role conflict in family firms reduces the family firm performance. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Sanctification of work: assessing the role of spirituality in employment attitudes

Recent research has sought to develop measures that empirically substantiate spirituality as a unique construct independent of established personality constructs. One such measure is Sanctification, a psychological process through which people perceive aspects of life to possess spiritual character and significance. This study empirically examines the relationship between Sanctification of Work and work-related outcomes in a national sample (N?=?827) of individuals employed in religiously affiliated institutions. The results indicated that the Sanctification of Work was a significant predictor of Job Satisfaction, Turnover Intention, and Organisational Commitment after controlling for Personality, Spirituality, Religiosity, Psychological Safety, and Demographic variables.     

A community psychology of object meanings: Identity negotiation during disaster recovery

What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of “we”), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on “me”), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the “we” that speaks for “me” and “us” versus “them”). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.     

Understanding the Ageing Process: A Developmental Perspective of the Psychosocial and Spiritual Dimensions

SUMMARY

This chapter describes a perspective of psychosocial and spiritual development in the later years of life. It outlines a study of nurses conducted in six nursing homes using pre and post workshop tests to identify changes in nurses' assignment of a list of behaviours as psychosocial or spiritual. Use of SPSS found significant changes between the pre and post tests. Pre workshop tests only identified items as spiritual if they included the word God, or Bible. Results from this study highlight the potential role for nurses in aged care to provide spiritual care as part of holistic care. It also highlights the fact that many nurses feel ill prepared for this role.     

A cross-sectional comparison of routinized and compulsive-like behaviours in typical children aged from 2 to 11 years

Routinized and compulsive like behaviours (RCBs) have been described as important aspects of development seen universally in children, yet investigation is relatively scarce. One exception was the development of the Childhood Routines Inventory (CRI), which has prompted recent studies. The present study was a replication of the standardization for the CRI on a British sample and with an extended age range. It also explored possible associations with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The parents of 1,369 children (aged 2–11 years) completed the CRI, and an 8-item OCD scale for those 7 years and over. Socioeconomic status (SES) was measured by proxy post codes; 111 parents completed the questionnaire twice. The CRI had good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. There was a significant linear decline in RCBs with age; a minority of children continued to have high levels up to 11 years of age. Children designated at risk for OCD had higher CRI scores. Anxious behaviours reported by parents of children aged 7 years or over were associated with higher levels of RCBs. Factor analysis of the CRI identified three factors: “Repetitive”, “Just Right” and “Sensitivity”.     

Collective moral disengagement: Initial validation of a scale for adolescents

Collective moral disengagement refers to shared group beliefs that morally justify negative actions. This study reports an initial validation of the newly developed Classroom Collective Moral Disengagement Scale (CCMDS) for adolescents. This self-report instrument assesses the degree to which mechanisms of moral disengagement are shared by students in their class. Data were collected from two samples of 486 and 654 adolescents attending middle and high schools in Italy. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses the unidimensional structure of the scale was established. Multigroup analyses demonstrated configural, metric and scalar invariance of the model across age and gender groups. The final version of the scale consists of 17 items and it has good internal consistency and validity. It is concluded that the scale is a promising measure for research concerning group level morality.     

Adverse developmental experiences and risky health behaviours among black South African university students

This study examined the relationship between adverse developmental experiences (ADEs) and risky health behaviours among a cross-sectional sample of black South African students (n = 393; females = 58%, M_age = 20.5 years, SD = 2.9). Binary logistic regression was used to model the association between categories of ADEs and risky health behaviours. Findings suggest individual ADEs to significantly predict risky health behaviours. The highest singular ADEs reported were being treated like a child (62%), parents being overprotective (59%), and being driven to be perfectionistic (58%). There was no indication of a general trend of ordered associations between the number of ADEs and risky health behaviours.     

‘I feel better when…’: An analysis of the memory-experience gap for peoples’ estimates of the relationship between health behaviours and experiences

Objective: People often overestimate how strongly behaviours and experiences are related. This memory-experience gap might have important implications for health care settings, which often require people to estimate associations, such as “my mood is better when I exercise”. This study examines how subjective correlation estimates between health behaviours and experiences relate to calculated correlations from online reports and whether subjective estimates are associated with engagement in actual health behaviour.

Design: Seven-month online study on physical activity, sleep, affect and stress, with 61 online assessments.

Main Outcome Measures: University students (N = 168) retrospectively estimated correlations between physical activity, sleep, positive affect and stress over the seven-month study period.

Results: Correlations between experiences and behaviours (online data) were small (r = ?.12–.14), estimated correlations moderate (r = ?.35–.24). Correspondence between calculated and estimated correlations was low. Importantly, estimated correlations of physical activity with stress, positive affect and sleep were associated with actual engagement in physical activity.

Conclusion: Estimation accuracy of relations between health behaviours and experiences is low. However, association estimates could be an important predictor of actual health behaviours. This study identifies and quantifies estimation inaccuracies in health behaviours and points towards potential systematic biases in health settings, which might seriously impair intervention efficacy.