The Social Representations of the Bali Climate Conference in the French and German Media

Climate change is a major current affair for which recent United Nations climate conferences aim to build consensus and develop international solutions. The objective of this article is to compare, through the theoretical lens of social representations, the way in which French and German media, specifically newspapers, represent the Bali climate conference. We use the triangulation of data analysis to take both the pragmatic and the semantic aspects of media discourse into account. Results show that German media adopt both a local and a global vision of climate change and of the conference. Religious metaphors highlight a moral dimension of the conference, suggesting anchoring in human and political categories. In contrast, in French media, we identify that conflicts between countries render the stakes of climate change concrete by war metaphors. The French discourses examined are shown to be organised through the anchoring of political and financial categories. Results are discussed in relation to the history of green movements in the two countries and in relation to practical implications. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Le climat d’entropie et le stress dans les organismes de sant

In recent years, many research and reporting of findings highlight the deteriorating work conditions in our hospitals, describing a climate of disorder in the arrangement of this system components (Masclet 2010). The study presented here examines the relationship between the entropy climate and stress of health personnel. The study was conducted in two hospitals in the Picardie region using a self-administered questionnaire answered by 161 workers in six trades. A transactional perspective has been used to clarify the role of organizational stressors through the mediation of psychological stress. The results confirm the mediating effect of psychological stress among the organizational social climate and perceived stress.     

“Walking the talk”: the role of frontline supervisors in preventing workplace accidents

ABSTRACT

Most existing safety research focuses on climate and leadership, with most leadership studies investigating transformational leadership, which is likely to be more impactful when exhibited by executives that by frontline supervisors. Therefore, focusing on frontline supervisors, we investigate how leaders who “walk the talk”, by directly modelling safety behaviours, might encourage subordinates to behave more safely. Using a three-level sample consisting of 579 employees and their supervisors working in 161 groups within 53 organizations, we test a multisource multilevel indirect effects model. Results indicate that safety climate and supervisors modelling safety compliance explain unique variance in safety outcomes. We then addressed an unanswered question concerning whether safety climate is best conceptualized as a group or organizational-level phenomenon, finding that the group-level assessment of safety climate explained more variance in safety outcomes than the organizational-level assessment of safety climate. Both sets of results are consistent with social information processing theory and social learning theory, which highlight the immediate social environment’s influence on employees’ behaviour.     

Diversity climate promises in ideological psychological contracts: racial differences in responses to breach and fulfilment

ABSTRACT

Diversity, a major societal force that exerts an important influence on contemporary workplaces, may play a role in shaping present-day workers’ psychological contracts. In two studies, we explored diversity as an ideological commitment in psychological contracts and its impacts on workers and organizations. In Study 1, a three-wave longitudinal study following workers from pre- to post-hire, organizations’ use of diversity recruitment was positively associated with job-seekers’ perceptions that ideological diversity climate promises were made pre-employment. In addition, we found that subsequent perceptions of breaching these promises have negative effects on worker attitudes and behaviours above and beyond the consequences of traditional (i.e., transactional and relational) psychological contract breach. Unexpectedly, fulfilment and breach of ideological diversity climate promises were more weakly related to racial minority than majority group workers’ attitudes and behaviours. In Study 2, using both between- and within-person experimental designs, we largely replicate this counter-intuitive moderating effect and uncover that racial minority versus majority workers’ differential reactions can be explained by their prior experiences with racial discrimination. Our work substantiates that diversity is an important ideological commitment and provides novel insights as to the mechanisms and consequences of ideology for workers’ psychological contracts.