Survey Feedback as a Tool for Changing Managerial Culture: Focusing on Users' Interpretations - A Case Study

This article presents a case study in a savings bank in which a change of managerial culture is conducted over several years. A survey feedback was carried out where special attention was paid to subordinates' perceptions on managerial behaviours of the immediate manager. This intervention intended to stimulate and facilitate changes of managers' values, competences, and practices by means of providing them with relevant feedback from subordinates and by developing a team-centred process of climate analysis and change. However, perceptions and interpretations developed by managers and their subordinates about the actions undertaken emphasized political processes and power games, which caused emotional reactions such as fear, suspiciousness, and discomfort. In light of this situation, the aims, meaning, and process of the intervention, as understood and interpreted by the participants, were taken as the focus of a subsequent target of analysis and intervention. Information obtained on participants' views and the process of their deconstruction are presented. Some suggestions are made to improve professional practice, and research questions are raised that should be incorporated into the research agenda in the near future.     

How do job characteristics contribute to burnout? Exploring the distinct mediating roles of perceived autonomy,competence, and relatedness

This study aimed to better understand the psychological mechanisms, referred to in the job demands–resources model as the energetic and motivational processes, that can explain relationships between job demands (role overload and ambiguity), job resources (job control and social support), and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment). Drawing on self-determination theory, we examined whether psychological resources (perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness) act as specific mediators between particular job demands and burnout as well as between job resources and burnout. Participants were 356 school board employees. Results of the structural equation analyses provide support for our hypothesized model, which proposes that certain job demands and resources are involved in both the energetic and motivational processes—given their relationships with psychological resources—and that they distinctively predict burnout components. Implications for burnout research and management practices are discussed.     

Amélioration de la qualité de vie au travail dans les unités de soins : la démarche ORSOSA

Improve the quality of working conditions is a major issue for healthcare workers who have to deal with productivity obligations and multiple procedures. Based on the magnet hospital concept, the ORSOSA study (prospective cohort study of 4000 helthcare workers) helped develop and validate a methodolody that allows to quickly diagnose the levels of psychological and organizational constraints (CPO) from the staff’s point of view / of the staff. The ORSOSA method relies on an organisational psychologist who launches a dynamic during the diagnostic feedback phase. He gets the team to appropriate the strengths and weaknesses and to rank their recommendations. This article presents an overview of the method and it the first stages of its evaluations.     

The role of psychological control,socioeconomic status and academic achievement in parents' educational aspirations for their adolescent children

The present study examined the associations between mothers' and fathers' psychological control, socioeconomic status (SES) and their role in parents' educational aspirations for their adolescent children. Moreover, we examined to what extent SES and psychological control predicted their child's grade point average (GPA) and educational aspirations. A total of 1,034 Finnish adolescents aged 15 to 16 and their parents (720 mothers, 542 fathers) were surveyed at the beginning of the last grade of compulsory school. The results showed that the use of psychological control was more common among parents with lower SES. Moreover, the lower parents' SES was and the more psychological control they imposed, the lower were their educational aspirations for their adolescent children and lower was their child's GPA. The impact of SES was partially mediated by psychological control. The effects were similar for mothers and fathers.     

The relationship between expressed social fears and assertiveness and its treatment implications

Behavior therapists have speculated about the relationship between social fears or social anxieties and lack of assertive behavior. Wolpe (1958) perhaps most clearly suggested such a relationship. “If he [the patient] has been ineffectual in such situations—unable, for instance, to return a faulty garment—I explain how unadaptive fears are at the bottom of this ineffectualness. … p. 116.” Wolpe further assumed that engaging in assertive behavior reciprocally inhibited fear in these same social situations and that assertive responses can be programmed for use in overcoming these fears.In later writings (Wolpe. 1969; Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966) Wolpe seems to have broadened his position concerning the cause of non-assertive behavior. Specifically, he now allows that an individual also may be non-assertive, “… not because of anxiety but because they have never had the opportunity of acquiring the necessary habits. p. 40” (Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966). For these individuals direct efforts in assertive training such as behavior rehearsal, operant conditioning or direct instruction are in order. For these individuals whose lack of assertiveness is due to a ‘phobic reaction’ or strong extrinsic fears, systematic desensitization is recommended in addition to assertive training.Despite this apparent change in position, the intuitively appealing notion that the more socially fearful an individual is the more non-assertive he is likely to be has not received the empirical attention it deserves. Rathus (1973) seems to have provided some indirect evidence pertaining to the relationship between social fears and assertiveness. In the context of evaluating the efficacy of an assertive training method he administered both the 100-item Temple Fear Survey Inventory (TFSI) (Braun and Reynolds, 1969) and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (RAS) (Rathus, 1973) to groups of female students receiving either assertive training, a placebo treatment or no treatment. He found that at post-test the assertive training group scored significantly higher than either the placebo or no treatment groups on the RAS and that there were no significant differences in post-test Full Scale TSFI Scores. Fear of Social Criticism Factor Scores or Fear of Social Incompetence Factor Scores although in each case the mean changes toward less fear were greater for the group receiving assertive training. This finding gives little support to the reciprocal relationship between social fears and assertiveness. What is needed is a direct determination of the degree to which social fears and assertiveness are related in a sizeable sample of subjects.     

Self-versus drug-produced relaxation and the effects of instructional set in standardized systematic desensitization

Snake fearful college students underwent Standardized Systematic Desensitization (SSD) treatment in which they received instructions designed to induce cognitions of either self- or drug-produced relaxation. Half of the subjects in each of these conditions were also given high expectancy therapy instructions and low expectancy therapy instructions respectively. All four SSD groups showed significantly greater improvement than a no-treatment control group on both the behavior avoidance test (BAT) and the self-report measure of fear. No differences between self- and drug-attributions of relaxation were found on any measure. Subjects' high expectancy ratings were significantly correlated with improvement on self-report measures but not related to BAT performance.     

Situation-specific variables as determinants of perceived environmental aesthetic quality and perceived crowdedness

It was hypothesized that relevant situation-specific variables may act along with objective physical conditions to determine environmental perception, and that the exclusive use of the physical level of an environmental stimulus to predict behavior may, therefore, be inadequate. A 2 × 4 between-subjects design was employed in which an attitudinally similar or dissimilar confederate interacted with a subject at one of four distances. As hypothesized, subjects who interacted with a similar confederate judged the environment to be of higher aesthetic quality, perceived themselves to be less crowded, and felt affectively more positive than subjects who interacted with a dissimilar other. The results were also interpreted as supporting the utility of the Byrne-Clore (1970) reinforcementaffect model of evaluative responses as a means of predicting environmental perception and the behavioral response to environmental stimuli.     

Children's component selection with varying degrees of training

With the component selection measure developed by Hale and Morgan (1973), children's use of selective attention was assessed at six levels of learning, ranging from undertraining to overtraining, and this function was examined at each of ages 4, 8, and 12. It was found that, as the children learned the task, they maintained a relatively wide focus of attention, acquiring information about both features of the stimuli, color and shape. Thus, contrary to the model under investigation, the children did not exercise a high degree of selectivity as they approached mastery of the task; nor did overtraining produce the expected “broadening” of attention, as the children acquired little stimulus information beyond the point at which criterion had been reached. The data were interpreted to be more consistent with a model that assumes the bulk of stimulus learning to occur prior to task mastery.     

La fausse couche : du côté des hommes

ObjectiveThe experience and psychological consequences of a miscarriage have been widely studied but mainly among women. This qualitative study aims to examine the experience of men whose woman has had a spontaneous abortion.MethodThirteen men who have lost an early pregnancy during the five past years participated to a semi-directive interview. The interview was based on the analytical framework previously established and took into account various themes such as psychological experience, marital relationship, guilt, coping strategies, social support given to the spouse, and significance of the loss. All the interviews have been transcribed and studied with a thematic analyse.ResultsResults underline the difficulties linked to the experience of miscarriage among men. Many of them were shocked and have had a sustainable significant distress expressed by sadness, tears or depressive symptoms. In addition to their own difficulties, men have to confront women's distress and want to be a support. Guilt was expressed more or less directly, concerning the miscarriage but also concerning men's reactions toward women. Some of them who encountered psychological problems found very difficult not to be able to support their wife. A miscarriage is a difficult event for a couple and two men interviewed separated shortly after. Several coping strategies were used by men, the most common were seeking social support and avoidance. As in women, significance of the loss was different among men, some of them have lost a child, others an embryo or a life project.ConclusionResults show the variety of feelings and reactions of men that highlight the need to consider their psychological distress. While all men are not equally involved in miscarriage, difficulties encountered by some of them can last several months. Given this results, support interventions for males seems interesting.