Psychologie du criminel en col blanc: À la recherche de sa personnalité

The aim of this present conceptual analysis is to define the main analytical approaches of the particular form of organizational deviance: white-collar crime. Within the scope of the dispositional heuristic approach, the analysis explores the explanatory potential of a certain idiosyncratic factor: the narcissistic personality. The analysis proposes future avenues of research concerning the identification of personal dispositions underlying white-collar crime.     

Skill mastery inhibits adoption of observed alternative solutions among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Geographic variation in socially transmitted skills and signals, similar to human culture, has been well documented for great apes. The rules governing the adoption of novel behaviours, however, are still largely unknown. We conducted an innovation-and-transmission experiment with two groups of chimpanzees living at hopE Primate Sanctuary Gänserndorf, Austria, presenting a board on which food had to be manoeuvred around obstacles to be acquired. Most chimpanzees used sticks to acquire the food, but five adults independently invented a novel technique, rattling, which was subsequently tested by almost all group members. However, individuals who had become proficient with sticks were reluctant to switch to rattling, despite it being more efficient. Similarly, after rattling was prevented, rattle specialists kept trying to rattle and made no attempt to use the stick technique, despite their knowledge about its existence. We conclude that innovators stimulate others to experiment with the solutions they display, but that chimpanzees are nevertheless conservative; mastery of a skill inhibits further exploration, and hence adoption of alternative techniques even if these are more efficient. Consequently, conformity among group members should not be expected in great apes when individuals develop proficiency at different techniques. Conservatism thus joins conformity as a mechanism to bring about cultural uniformity and stability.     

Book Review: “Dimensions of Apeiron: A Topological Phenomenology of Space,Time, and Individuation”

This article suggests that it may be timely to action the relationship between design and evolution. While this view is not particularly new, the form of its expression here may be. It is noted that the exponential (possibly double exponential) rate of technological change, and the merging of the technological evolutionary lineage with those of biology, cognition, and socioculture is causing greatly accelerated evolution in these latter lineages. So rapid are these change processes that the attendant evolutionary time frames are becoming consonant with those of human design activities. Implications of these developments are outlined.     

Emotional intelligence and employee innovation: Sequential mediating effect of person-group fit and adaptive performance

IntroductionHow emotional intelligence interrelates with employee innovation becomes a timely and crucial topic for research, for human resource and organizational psychology practitioners and academicians alike.ObjectiveThe study examined the mediating effect of person-group fit and adaptive performance on employee innovation. A sequential mediation framework explaining the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee innovation was constructed. This study differentiates itself from other similar studies on emotional intelligence and employee innovation since it suggests a novel approach to enhance employee innovation.MethodsElectronic as well as paper-based surveys were conducted to collect the data and the analysis of 417 responses revealed that the hypotheses were strongly supported by the data.ResultsWe found that a sequential mediation effect exists between person-group fit and adaptive performance. The findings offer a significant contribution to the field of human resources, since prior research has examined neither the simple mediating effect nor the sequential mediating effect of person-group fit and adaptive performance between emotional intelligence and employee innovation.ConclusionThe theoretical and practical implications of the findings were explored which have substantial value for human resources especially, for recruitment and training teams.     

Networking In Organizations: Developing A Social Practice Perspective For Innovation And Knowledge Sharing In Emerging Work Contexts

This article focuses on the micro-level phenomena related to emergent ways of organizing. It explores how new ways of organizing might be enabled or inhibited through the networking activities and knowledge flows that organizational members engage in within a multinational business organization after the set-up of an innovative Internet business unit. The article considers innovation and networking as social practices mediated in this particular case study through knowledge-sharing activities. This perspective on innovation, networking, and knowledge leads to a conceptualization of organizations that stresses their inherent complexity and their interactive and co-evolving nature with their environments.     

Felt and behavioral engagement in workgroups of professionals

This research proposes a two-dimensional measure of engagement for professionals in technically-oriented workgroups. It examines the relationship of their engagement to five workgroup outcomes: innovation, performance, satisfaction with the organization, career success, and intentions to stay. Three studies are reported involving: (1) a random sample of 123 workgroups and 1351 self and reports by others of professionals employed by a Fortune 100 company, (2) a panel study of 1024 of the study one professionals four months later, and (3) the replication of results with 827 professionals across three cultures. The results support felt engagement and behavioral engagement as distinct constructs that can be measured by both a self-report and assessments by others of workgroup engagement. The relationship of engagement to workgroup innovation, performance, satisfaction with the organization, career success, and intentions to stay generalized across four countries and cultures: U.S./North America, The Netherlands/Europe, Argentina, and India. Felt engagement was the best predictor of affective outcomes and intentions to stay when all variables were measured concurrently. Behavioral engagement was the best predictor of workgroup performance concurrently and over time. This research indicates that the two dimensions of engagement are important aspects of vocational adjustment for the success of professionals in technically-oriented workgroups. Implications for future research are to consider multiple dimensions of engagement, clearly define the population and setting for engagement, and to study engagement as a dynamic experience that warrants ongoing management and workgroup attention.     

Beyond the information given: Infants’ transfer of actions learned through imitation

Five experiments were conducted to investigate infants’ ability to transfer actions learned via imitation to new objects and to examine what components of the original context are critical to such transfer. Infants of 15 months observed an experimenter perform an action with one or two toys and then were offered a novel toy that was not demonstrated for them. In all experiments, infants performed target actions with the novel toy more frequently than infants who were offered the same toy but had seen no prior demonstrations. Infants exhibited transfer even when the specific part to be manipulated looked different across the toys, even when they had not performed the actions with the demonstration toys themselves, even when the actions produced no effects on the demonstrations, and even when the actions were demonstrated with only a single exemplar toy. Transfer was especially robust when infants not only observed but also practiced the target actions on the demonstration trials. Learning action affordances (“means”) seems to be a central aspect of human imitation, and the propensity to apply these learned action affordances in new object contexts may be an important basis for technological innovation and invention.     

Le comportement de « prise de parole » (voice) : validation de la version française de la mesure de Maynes et Podsakoff

Voice is an essential behaviour that can inhibit or generate processes of innovation and organisational change. To date, few measurement scales adapted to the French context and allowing to analyse this behaviour exists. This article proposes to translate the 4’factors Voice scale from Maynes and Podsakoff (2014). The translation of this scale was tested by 4 studies on different samples of 1275 French workers from various organisational backgrounds. The first studies test the reliability, internal consistency, divergent and convergent validity of the scale. Then, a gender invariance analysis tests the metric properties of the scale. The results obtained present acceptable psychometric qualities that validate the French version.     

Climate for work group creativity and innovation: Norwegian validation of the team climate inventory (TCI)

The present study assessed the psychometric properties and the validity of the Norwegian translation of the Team Climate Inventory (TCI). The TCI is a measure of climate for innovation within groups at work and is based on the four-factor theory of climate for innovation (West, 1990). Cronbach's alpha revealed satisfactory reliabilities and exploratory factor analysis successfully extracted the four original factors as well as a fifth factor that has also been reported in other studies (N = 195 teams from a wide range of professions). Results from confirmatory factor analysis, using a different sample (N = 106 teams from the Norwegian public postal service), suggested that the five-factor solution had the most parsimonious fit. Criterion validity was explored by correlating TCI scores from 92 post offices and 395 postal distribution teams with customer satisfaction scores. Significant positive relationships were found between three of four TCI scales and customer satisfaction.     

L’innovation radicale par la méthode de l’utilisateur extraordinaire

This article presents the extraordinary user method, which aims to stimlate radical innovation by enabling designers to rediscover functional needs associated to product use. This method draws on user centered approaches, while trying to circumvent the Innovator's dilemma, which is detrimental to radical innovation. The method consists in including extraordinary users in the very first stages of innovation process, in order to rediscover the fundamental fonctional needs the target population may have forgotten. Extraordinary users can be found among lead users, children, elderly, disabled, or non-users. This methodological proposal is illustrated with application cases from several socioeconomical sectors.