Prototypical supervisors shape lay‐off victims’ experiences of top management justice and organizational support

Job loss is a pervasive experience affecting millions of workers around the globe annually. To investigate lay‐offs from the perspective of those who are affected, we conducted a lagged study examining lay‐off victims’ experiences of supervisory justice, top management justice, and organizational support. We test the hypotheses that the relationships between supervisory justice and lay‐off victims’ subsequent experiences of top management justice as well as organizational support are moderated by supervisors’ prototypicality of their team. Results from our study conducted during lay‐off process indicated that supervisory justice had a positive lagged impact on lay‐off victims’ unfolding experiences of both (1) top management justice and (2) organizational support for supervisors who were viewed as highly (but not lowly) prototypical of the team that both supervisors and subordinates were part of. Our study identifies a theoretically grounded moderator that may account for the presence (or absence) of cross‐foci effects found in previous multifoci justice studies. Moreover, our results shed light on the development of justice perceptions by demonstrating the impact of lower‐level supervisors in translating subordinates’ perceptions of justice of the supervisor to that of the top management. Findings suggest that supervisors have an important role to play in managing (for better or worse) the potentially harmful consequences associated with organizational redundancies.

Practitioner points

• Prototypical supervisors are ‘gatekeepers’ who are able to influence their subordinates’ relationship with the organization and its management.
• Involving supervisors in critical events such as lay‐offs may be important to effectively manage employees’ concerns.
• It may not be well advised to overly centralize responsibility for communicating information regarding lay‐offs under human resource departments.

     

Robustness of Decision‐Making Competence: Evidence from Two Measures and an 11‐Year Longitudinal Study

Decision‐making competence (DMC) is the ability to follow normative principles when making decisions. In a longitudinal analysis, we examine the robustness of DMC over time, as measured by two batteries of paper‐and‐pencil tasks. Participants completed the youth version (Y‐DMC) at age 19 and/or the adult version (A‐DMC) 11 years later at age 30, as part of a larger longitudinal study. Both measures are composed of tasks adapted from ones used in experimental studies of decision‐making skills. Results supported the robustness of these measures and the usefulness of the construct. Response patterns for Y‐DMC were similar to those observed with a smaller initial sample drawn from the same population. Response patterns for A‐DMC were similar to those observed with an earlier community sample. Y‐DMC and A‐DMC were significantly correlated, for participants who completed both measures, 11 years apart, even after controlling for measures of cognitive ability. Nomological validity was observed in correlations of scores on both tests with measures of cognitive ability, cognitive style, and environmental factors with predicted relationships to DMC, including household socioeconomic status, neighborhood disadvantage, and paternal substance abuse. Higher Y‐DMC and A‐DMC scores were also associated with lower rates of potentially risky and antisocial behaviors, including adolescent delinquency, cannabis use, and early sexual behavior. Thus, the Y‐DMC and A‐DMC measures appear to capture a relatively stable, measurable construct that increases with supportive environmental factors and is associated with constructive behaviors. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotion Regulation of Events Central to Identity and Their Relationship With Concurrent and Prospective Depressive Symptoms

Dispositional emotion regulation is related to the severity and maintenance of depressive symptoms. However, whether emotion regulation specific to an event highly central for an individual’s identity is predictive of depressive symptoms has not been examined. Nonclinical participants (N = 220) reported the extent to which they employed a selection of emotion regulation strategies when recalling low- and high-centrality events. Dispositional emotion regulation and depressive symptoms were also assessed. A 7-week follow-up was conducted. High-centrality events were associated with more emotion regulation efforts. Greater brooding and expressive suppression in relation to high-centrality memories predicted concurrent depressive symptoms after controlling for event valence and dispostional emotion regulation. Effects were absent for low-centrality memories. Emotion regulation in response to high-centrality memories did not predict depressive symptoms at follow-up beyond baseline depressive symptoms. Overall, the findings showed that maladaptive emotion regulation in response to memories of high-centrality events is important for explaining depressive symptomatology.     

Is Jessie right to end her life?

Presupposing that our consideration of ethical issues can be enriched by examining literary works, this paper focuses on Marsha Norman's play ‘night, Mother. The play describes the last hour and a half in the life of Jessie, a young woman who decides to die by suicide. Before ending her life, Jessie explains to her mother her reasons for her suicide. In the context of the play, these are presented as quite weighty and as, perhaps, justifying her decision. Scholarly research on the play has also treated Jessie's suicide favorably. In this paper I argue that Jessie, and people in similar conditions, are wrong to die by suicide. Among other points, I criticize Jessie's arguments from the impossibility to improve life; the assured termination of suffering; the badness of the world; and the right for suicide. I also criticize arguments in the scholarly literature that view Jessie's suicide favorably, such as the arguments from independence, heroism, authenticity, and emotional closeness.     

Perceived overqualification,felt organizational obligation,and extra-role behavior during the COVID-19 crisis: The moderating role of self-sacrificial leadership

Past research has found that employees who view themselves as overqualified for their jobs tend to hold negative job attitudes and be unwilling to go beyond the call of duty. In challenging situations such as during the COVID-19 crisis, when having “all hands-on deck” may be important to an organization's survival, mitigating the negative tendencies of these employees becomes important. Adopting a sensemaking perspective on crisis management, we examine whether supervisors' self-sacrificial leadership can mitigate these negative tendencies. First, we propose that employee perceived overqualification is associated with lower levels of felt obligation to the organization and thereby lower levels of extra-role behaviors (i.e., helping and proactivity). We next propose that supervisors' self-sacrificial leadership during the COVID-19 crisis can evoke, especially when COVID-19 more strongly impacts the organization, a sense of collectivism toward the organization, which mitigates the negative association of perceived overqualification with felt obligation and thus extra-role behaviors. We tested our theorizing in samples from the UK (n = 121, pilot study) and US (n = 382, main study) in studies with a multi-wave, time-lagged design. Findings from both studies provide support for our theorizing. We discuss implications for research and practice concerning perceived overqualification during a crisis.     

环境无序性对消费者多样化寻求的影响及作用机制

在日常生活和购物环境中, 混乱无序无处不在。然而, 关于环境无序性对消费者产品选择行为的影响研究却十分有限, 本文试图填补这一不足。具体而言, 本文创新性地提出环境无序性与多样化寻求行为之间存在着因果关系, 且自我效能威胁和未来偏好不确定感在其中发挥链式中介作用。通过1个预实验和4个实验, 本文发现无论在真实环境、线下购物环境、工作环境, 还是线上产品陈列情境下, 环境无序性均可提升多样化寻求行为; 无序的环境会对消费者的自我效能产生威胁, 进而增强其对未来产品偏好的不确定性感知, 最终促使其通过增加多样化寻求行为来应对未来可能变化的产品偏好。     

Subjective perception of health in elderly inpatients

There is evidence that subjective health is an important variable in general health outcomes. It can be an indicator of the individual's overall health status, creating a reliable and valid estimate about health. Quality of life (QoL) assessment can be associated with the individuals' subjective assessment of their own health status. The aim of the present study was to investigate variables associated with subjective perception of health in older inpatients. Ninety elderly inpatients over 60 years old were interviewed. The perception of health assessment (healthy/unhealthy) allocated elders in either of two groups. All the elders answered sociodemographic questions, the WHOQOL-100 and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Comparing the group that considered themselves unhealthy to the other group, the former showed a tendency of worse QoL assessments in five out of six domains investigated. Significant differences were found for the physical and level of independence domains, as well as overall QoL. There was a significant association between health perception and lower intensity of depressive symptoms, as well as better QoL perception in the level of independence domain. This study shows the existence of an association between depressive symptoms and health assessment. It also suggests that the independence dimension is important in the elders' perception of their health status. These findings can help identify cause-effect relations between variables in aging studies involving health indicators and bring new intervention proposals for the elderly.     

An evaluation of progressively increasing intertrial intervals on the acquisition and generalization of three social skills

We evaluated the effects of different intertrial intervals (ITIs; time between programmed learning opportunities) on the acquisition and generalization of 2 preschoolers' social skills. Independent and generalized skills were observed only when the daily ITI was gradually increased from short to progressively longer intervals.     

Explaining the Sense of Family Coherence Among Husbands and Wives: The Israeli Case

ABSTRACT

This study examined variables belonging to the family environment that explain the sense of family coherence among husbands (n = 133) and wives (n = 133) in Israel. Specifically, the explanatory variables tested were spousal power relations (as expressed in equality in the division of household labor and decision making), and perceived family conflict. In general, the sense of family coherence among spouses was found to be high. Perceived family conflict contributed to explaining the sense of family coherence for both husbands and wives. Equality in the division of household labor and in decision making had a greater impact on husbands than wives. Family coherence correlated negatively with age for husbands and positively with income for wives. The explanatory variables had a greater impact on the sense of family coherence among husbands than among wives.     

Acculturative Hassles and Immigrant Adolescents: A Life-Domain Assessment for Soviet Jewish Refugees

Abstract

In a sample of 146 adolescents, the authors developed and validated a measure of acculturative hassles for Soviet Jewish refugees. They based the measure on an ecological perspective, which focuses on hassles involving person-environment transactions occurring in life domains of school, family, peers, and language. The authors reviewed conceptual and methodological issues in existing instruments and incorporated efforts to address current limitations into instrument development. The measure was correlated with psychological distress, level of acculturation to Russian and U.S. cultures, and outcomes in life domains; it contributed to outcomes over and above effects of nonacculturative hassles. Implications for measurement of acculturative hassles are discussed.