Job crafting for lean engagement: The interplay of day and job-level characteristics

The quality of working life under the production system known as lean manufacturing (LM) is a heavily debated topic. Little is known about the engagement level of employees under this system. Our study is concerned with how employees in this context craft their jobs to enhance their own engagement, and we specifically consider how daily skill utilization triggers this process. Using a cross-level perspective, we further consider whether job-level characteristics relevant to the lean context, namely task interdependence and boundary control, restrict or facilitate the effects of daily skill utilization. A daily diary study was conducted over 4 working days with 64 employees in a large company utilizing LM. The results of multilevel structural equation modelling demonstrated that on a given day, skill utilization was associated with seeking resources, and this relationship was stronger when employees had high boundary control and low task interdependence in their general job roles. Results further demonstrated that employees experienced higher work engagement on days when they sought resources and challenges. Our findings illustrate the motivational potential of job crafting under LM and how crafting activities can be facilitated by the design of jobs and allocation of daily tasks.     

Linking daily ethical leadership to followers’ daily behaviour: the roles of daily work engagement and previous abusive supervision

The aim of this study was to advance literature on ethical leadership towards its day-level application. Daily ethical leadership is defined as ethical leadership behaviours a leader exhibits on a given day. Beneficial effects of daily ethical leadership on daily helping behaviour and daily counterproductive work behaviour via daily work engagement were examined. Furthermore, yesterday’s abusive supervision was postulated to moderate the impact of today’s ethical leadership on work engagement indicating moderated mediation. The relationship between daily ethical leadership and daily work engagement should be stronger when previous abusive supervision was high. This model was tested using an experience sampling methodology spread over 5 working days. The sample consisted of 241 employees from different organizations. Results supported the beneficial indirect impact of daily ethical leadership on daily helping through strengthening daily work engagement. The indirect effect was non-significant for daily counterproductive work behaviour. Consistent with theoretical assumptions, both indirect effects were strongest with high previous abusive supervision and diminished when previous abusive supervision was low. Implications for leadership research and managerial practice are discussed.     

Reliability of measures of work engagement and psychological well-being among South African state security forces

This study reports on the psychometric properties of measures of work engagement and psychological well-being in the South African state security forces. The research sample consisted of a combined sample of 178 soldiers and 57 police officers (34% females). They completed a battery of measures of work engagement and psychological well-being. Results following exploratory and reliability analysis suggest the scores from the measures to be reliable for research use with the South African security services.     

Contribution d’une catégorisation des RPS à la prédiction du stress et du burnout (ou du mal-être au travail) des soignants

Health-care professionals are strongly affected by distress at work. Our goal is to study the usefulness of a psychosocial risk measure, compared to a measure of psychosocial and organizational work constraints, on the prediction of distress among a population of caregivers. This measure is based on the categorization of psychosocial risk factors issued from the College of experts chaired by Gollac. Seven hundred and fifty-seven health-care professionals filled out a questionnaire composed of measures of psychosocial risks, psychosocial and organizational work constraints specific to caregivers, as well as stress and burnout. Results indicate that the measure of psychosocial risk better predicted the levels of stress and burnout than the measure of psychosocial and organizational work constraints.     

The hippocampus facilitates integration within a symbolic field

This paper attempts to elaborate a fundamental brain mechanism involved in the creation and maintenance of symbolic fields of thought. It will integrate theories of psychic spaces as explored by Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion with the neuroscientific examinations of those with bilateral hippocampal injury to show how evidence from both disciplines sheds important light on this aspect of mind. Possibly originating as a way of maintaining an oriented, first person psychic map, this capacity allows individuals a dynamic narrative access to a realm of layered elements and their connections. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, the hippocampus facilitates the integration of this symbolic field of mind, where narrative forms of thinking, creativity, memory, and dreaming are intertwined. Without the hippocampus, there is an inability to engage many typical forms of thought itself. Also, noting the ways these individuals are not impaired supports theories about other faculties of mind, providing insight into their possible roles within human thought. The evidence of different systems working in conjunction with the symbolic field provides tantalizing clues about these fundamental mechanisms of brain and mind that are normally seamlessly integrated, and hints at future areas of clinical and laboratory research, both within neuroscience and psychoanalysis.     

Stupidity in the analytic field: Vicissitudes of the detachment process in adolescence

This paper has the objective of broadening the understanding of technical aspects in working with adolescents who defend themselves against detachment from infantile aspects through defensive organizations. These organizations numb the adolescent toward both triangular reality and narcissistic defenses. The families of such young people may be part of the organization and the analyst can also be recruited to participate in it. But the analyst's perception can become blurry and this fact makes him appear stupid. Aspects of the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus are used here as models for studying stupidity. The analysis of a psychotic teenage girl who is symbiotic in relation to her family shows how the analytical field can be invaded by defensive configurations. Collusions of idealization and domination/submission involve the young person, her family and the analyst but the defensive organizations are only identified after their traumatic breakdown. The expansion of the symbolic network allows symbiotic transgenerational organizations to be identified, while models related to enactments prove helpful for understanding technical ups and downs. The paper ends with imaginative conjectures where Oedipus, as ‘patient’, is compared to the patient discussed here. These conjectures lead to reinterpretations of aspects of the Oedipus myth. The reinterpretations, together with the theoretical and clinical study, may serve as models for understanding the technical ups and downs in working with troubled teens.     

The coordination of shoulder girdle muscles during repetitive arm movements at either slow or fast pace among women with or without neck-shoulder pain

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the coordination of the shoulder girdle muscles among subjects with or without neck-shoulder pain performing repetitive arm movement at either a slow or fast pace. Methods: Thirty female adults were allocated to one of two groups—healthy controls or cases with neck-shoulder pain. Surface electromyography (sEMG) signals from the clavicular, acromial, middle and lower trapezius portions and the serratus anterior muscles were recorded during a task performed for 20 min at a slow pace and 20 min at a fast pace. The root mean square (RMS), relative rest time (RRT) and normalised mutual information (NMI, an index of functional connectivity between two muscles in a pair) were computed. Results: No significant differences on RMS, RRT and NMI were found between groups. For both groups, the fast movement pace resulted in increased levels of RMS, lower degrees of RRT and higher NMI compared to the slow pace. No interaction between group and movement pace was found. Conclusions: This study highlights the change in sEMG activity of muscles to meet the demands of performing a task at fast movement pace. The fast pace imposed a higher muscle demand evidenced by increased sEMG amplitude, low degree of muscle rest and increased functional connectivity for subjects in both the case and control groups. No indication of impaired sEMG activity was found in individuals with neck-shoulder pain.     

Autistic Heterogeneity: Linking Uncertainties and Indeterminacies

Autism is a highly uncertain entity and little is said about it with any degree of certainty. Scientists must, and do, work through these uncertainties in the course of their work. Scientists explain uncertainty in autism research through discussion of epistemological uncertainties which suggest that diverse methods and techniques make results hard to reconcile, ontological uncertainties which suggest doubt over taxonomic coherence, but also through reference to autism’s indeterminacy which suggests that the condition is inherently heterogeneous. Indeed, indeterminacy takes two forms—an inter-personal form which suggests that there are fundamental differences between individuals with autism and an intra-personal form which suggests that no one factor is able to explain all features of autism within a given individual. What is apparent in the case of autism is that scientists put uncertainty and indeterminacy into discussion with one another and, rather than a well-policed epistemic-ontic boundary, there is a movement between, and an entwinement of, the two. Understanding scientists’ dialogue concerning uncertainty and indeterminacy is of importance for understanding autism and autistic heterogeneity but also for understanding uncertainty and ‘uncertainty work’ within science more generally.