Dimensions of social identification with the team as predictors of the coach-created training climate in rugby: A group-actor partner interdependence modelling perspective

Recently, social identity approach has been giving stimulating insights in leadership in sport, considering social identification as a consequence regarding leadership processes. Nonetheless, social identity theory fundamentally posits social identification as a subjacent parameter of cognitions implied in the frame of interpersonal and intergroup relations. The current study aimed to enrich the existing literature by investigating athletes’ team identification as a predictor of the perception of coach-created climate. French male rugby union players (N = 248) completed an online survey measuring the multidimensionality of their social identification to the team, and their perception of the coach-created climate in terms of empowering and disempowering motivational climate. Using Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Modelling, the analyses revealed that the perception of the climate as empowering was driven by high scores on ingroup ties, especially when teammates’ ingroup ties scores were low. Team’s ingroup affect and cognitive centrality resulted in lower perception levels of the empowering climate. Neither player's ingroup ties nor cognitive centrality predicted the perception of the climate as empowering, and when player’s ingroup affect fitted into the group, his perception of a disempowering motivational climate decreased when ingroup affect score was high. The results are mainly discussed to the light of intergroup permeability by underlying the importance of considering social identification as a predictor of the perception of coach-athletes’ relationship. Some practical applications are put forward along with future directions for research on coach-athletes’ relationship. Especially, this study points out the importance of considering the social identity approach of leadership as a transactional relationship encapsulated in a mutual influence between the ingroup member social identification and that of the team as a whole.     

Sensitive but not sentimental: Emotionally intelligent people can put their emotions aside when necessary

Are emotionally intelligent people sentimental? Does their greater sensitivity handicap them or are they able, as theory would expect, to experience and regulate emotions flexibly, depending on their goals? We examined this issue in organizational settings. Good managers are indeed expected to be both attuned to feelings (theirs as well as their subordinates’) and able to put them aside when needed to take tough (but necessary) decisions. Our results show that emotionally intelligent managers do make better managers, as reflected by greater managerial competencies, higher team efficiency and less stressed subordinates. Moreover, and most importantly, emotionally intelligent managers are not just nicer managers. As our results show, emotional intelligence has nothing to do with sentimentality. Actually, it is managers with low EI who have the greatest difficulties to put their emotions aside and not let them interfere when inappropriate.     

Why individuals in larger teams perform worse

Research shows that individuals in larger teams perform worse than individuals in smaller teams; however, very little field research examines why. The current study of 212 knowledge workers within 26 teams, ranging from 3 to 19 members in size, employs multi-level modeling to examine the underlying mechanisms. The current investigation expands upon Steiner’s (1972) model of individual performance in group contexts identifying one missing element of process loss, namely relational loss. Drawing from the literature on stress and coping, relational loss, a unique form of individual level process, loss occurs when an employee perceives that support is less available in the team as team size increases. In the current study, relational loss mediated the negative relationship between team size and individual performance even when controlling for extrinsic motivation and perceived coordination losses. This suggests that larger teams diminish perceptions of available support which would otherwise buffer stressful experiences and promote performance.     

A Preface to Ethics:

This essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.     

Key characteristics of decision making in soccer and their implications

This paper puts forward the position that the cognitivist approach adopted in research on decision making in team sports leads to a disconnection from the actual environment of play. The argument is structured as a narrative review of 60 articles that were analyzed to identify the most recent concepts related to the following topics or combinations thereof: tactics and action in the play; decision making and associated cognitive mechanisms and skills; and the teaching–learning–training process. The results of the review led us to characterize decision making in the team sports context as being (a) “prereflected,” (b) based on evaluation, (c) frugal, and (d) “generated,” as opposed to being a process of choosing from alternatives. In addition to showing clear adjustments to the environment of play, the four characteristics imply that teaching, learning, and training to play should also be designed according to the restrictions imposed by the context and the actual lived experience of the play. We conclude that cognition should not be considered solely responsible for decisions, and thus both theoretical and pedagogical models of player development should take the ecological perspective of decision making into account. As a result, the methodologies employed to develop players from an early age could be elaborated on by taking into account the interaction between cognitive skills and the possibilities emerging in the play.     

Booming clangs and whispering ghosts: Attending to the reflexive echoes in IPA research

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose reflexivity can be revealed through a deliberate adjunct to the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) process. This adjunct, which we refer to as “echoes,” is a mixture of the participant’s and researcher’s words and experiences resonating with each other during the research process. We argue that explicitly recognising echoes gives a heightened sensitivity to both the researcher’s own place and being in the research, and to the other in relation to the researcher. Exploring the echoes enables the researcher to work with, rather than dismiss, his or her own presuppositions and exposes greater phenomenological sensibility toward the research subject and is-ness of that phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to outline how attending to echoes is a strategy for IPA researchers to promote and overtly journal reflexivity as central within their research practices. To exemplify how echoes can be used, practical examples from a doctoral research project are given to demonstrate how resonance can explicate reflexivity in the IPA process.     

Team performance and collective efficacy in the dynamic psychology of competitive team: A Bayesian network analysis

The purpose of this paper was to discover the relationships among 22 relevant psychological features in semi-professional football players in order to study team’s performance and collective efficacy via a Bayesian network (BN). The paper includes optimization of team’s performance and collective efficacy using intercausal reasoning pattern which constitutes a very common pattern in human reasoning. The BN is used to make inferences regarding our problem, and therefore we obtain some conclusions; among them: maximizing the team’s performance causes a decrease in collective efficacy and when team’s performance achieves the minimum value it causes an increase in moderate/high values of collective efficacy. Similarly, we may reason optimizing team collective efficacy instead. It also allows us to determine the features that have the strongest influence on performance and which on collective efficacy. From the BN two different coaching styles were differentiated taking into account the local Markov property: training leadership and autocratic leadership.     

Minimizing Bias and Maximizing the Potential Strengths of Autoethnography as a Narrative Research

Up to the current time, psychology has provided very limited space for qualitative research to contribute to the discipline, even though psychology has a lot to do with subjectivity and intersubjectivity in its work. This article discusses autoethnography, which by some qualitative researchers is still being debated. The author argues that autoethnography contains strong narrative components or analysis with potential contribution to provide new understanding and to build knowledge. The article discusses criticisms against autoethnography, followed by its distinctive characteristics, which at the same time bring significant potential power. Clear guidelines and steps are needed to minimize biases and to bring about the potential power of autoethnography, and this article aims to address the issues through discussions on intersubjectivity, reflexivity, and ethics. At the end, it might be concluded that autoethnography is a method to investigate not merely the researchers, but to reveal certain phenomena and issues. Autoethnography is one good alternative among other methods that can contribute to developing understanding and knowledge through the construction of substantive theories about a particular issue.