Chapter 14: The Caleb Affect: The Oldest-Old in Church and Society

SUMMARY

Persons in North America who are over 80 years of age are generally overlooked by religious leaders. They are, however, the fastest growing cohort in society. This age crescendo promises to be a significant factor in the future ministry of the rapidly increasing number of graying churches and synagogues.     

Spiritual Care: Recognizing Spiritual Needs of Older Adults

SUMMARY

This paper explores aspects of spiritual needs and assessment, while emphasizing the importance of aged care providers being spiritually self-aware. The context of this exploration is meaning in life, spirituality and quality of life as experienced by older adults. Depression and dementia are frequently seen among older adults in residential aged care with resultant lowered quality of life. Pastoral and spiritual care may be used effectively to help alleviate depression and support older people who have dementia. However, to be able to provide appropriate spiritual care, spiritual needs should be assessed. Ways of assessing spiritual needs are suggested.     

Spiritual Maturity and Meaning-Filled Relationships: A Sociological Perspective

SUMMARY

The process of self-development, spiritual maturity and the construction of new meaning-filled relationships in late life are analyzed through the actions and interactions observed in the biographical case history of Sarah-Patton Boyle. Atchley's four stages in the process of retirement applied to the case of Sarah-Patton Boyle identifies the changes in her social roles and relationships and the struggle to maintain a positive self-view in the midst of socio-environmental changes. The struggle to continue “spiritual self” identity and ties with the church are discussed.     

Ageing and Isolation: Is the Issue Social Isolation or Is It Lack of Meaning in Lige?

SUMMARY

Social and spiritual isolation are growing issues for an ageing society that promotes the ideals of autonomy and high levels of individuation amongst its citizens. This chapter explores the issues of social and spiritual isolation for older adults and ways of addressing these issues both now and in the future. The need for intimacy with God and with others is illustrated using material from in-depth interviews with older adults who live independently and others who are residents of aged care facilities.     

Reflections on Spiritual Maturity and Gerotranscendence: Dialogues with Two Sufis

ABSTRACT

Late life development-from the perspectives of spiritual development and gerotranscendence-has been studied using the Life History Approach followed up by thematic semi-structured interviews with Iranian Sufis residing in Sweden. On the basis of this study and proceeding from the theory of gerotranscendence, this article illustrates the distinct role of aging in the development toward wisdom and maturity when mystical ideas are already integrated into individuals' ways of thinking. This is achieved by contrasting, in terms of certain gero-transcendent dimensions, an aged Sufi's view of her/his Self and the surrounding world with that of a middle-aged Sufi.     

Personality and Campus Controversies: Preferred Boundaries as a Function of Openness to Experience

We explored the relationship between the “big five” personality factors of the Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness–Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985) and students' endorsement of two locally controversial activities—a Halloween street festival and the university's intercollegiate football program. Consistent with opponents' views of the kinds of students who take part in the Halloween street party, those who favored this activity scored low on agreeableness but high on openness to experience. Those who favored continuance of the football program scored low on openness. Results are discussed in terms of preferences for boundaries and structure within environments. The results add to the construct validity of the NEO–PI and to understanding of the openness construct.     

青少年领导力发展的研究述评

青少年时期是领导力发展的最佳时机和关键时机。青少年领导力发展是指对青少年所实施的帮助其增强领导力意识、发展领导力素质及掌握领导力技巧的各种经历或活动。本文在回顾国内外青少年领导力发展的模式、途径和内容等相关研究的基础上,提出了青少年领导力发展的未来研究趋势,主要包括：（1）青少年领导力发展理论模式的实证检验;（2）体育课或体育活动中青少年领导力发展的实证探索;（3）中国背景下青少年领导力发展的实证研究。     

Leading yourself and leading others: Linking self-leadership to transformational,transactional, and laissez-faire leadership

It has often been proposed that one must lead oneself before being able to lead others (e.g., Drucker, 1999 Drucker, P. 1999. Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review, : March–April, 65–74.  [Google Scholar]; Manz & Sims, 1991 Manz, C. C. and Sims, H. P. Jr. 1991. Superleadership: Beyond the myth of heroic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19: 18–35. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pearce, 2007 Pearce, C. L. 2007. The future of leadership development: The importance of identity, multi-level approaches, self-leadership, physical fitness, shared leadership, networking, creativity, emotions, spirituality and on-boarding processes. Human Resource Management Review, 17: 355–359. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In two studies, we empirically investigated associations among self-leadership (with subfacets) and the full range leadership model (transformational, transactional, laissez-faire leadership) in N = 447 professionals with leadership experience (Study 1) and N = 35 leaders with N = 151 followers (Study 2). In both studies, leaders' self-leadership was positively associated with active styles of leading (transformational and transactional leadership) and negatively with passive styles of leading (laissez-faire leadership), as indicated by self- and follower-reports. These relationships remained even after controlling for sex, age, and leadership experience. Overall, data support the notion that effectively leading oneself is associated with effectively leading others.     

Transformational leadership and customer service: A moderated mediation model of negative affectivity and emotion regulation

Integrating theories from leadership, emotion management, affectivity, and customer service, this study examines how transformational leadership leads to favourable customer intentions via the mediation of service employees' emotion regulation, job satisfaction, and their service performance and via the moderation of employee negative affectivity. Results obtained from data of 204 matched sets of managers, service employees, and customers show that the effect of transformational leadership on amplification of pleasant emotions was conditioned on service employees' negative affectivity. Employee service performance partially mediated the effect of job satisfaction on customer outcomes. Finally, overall results reveal that transformational leadership and amplification of pleasant emotions were more strongly related to the customer outcomes, as mediated through the intervening variables in the model, when negative affectivity was high than when negative affectivity was low. Results have implications for how service workers with negative affectivity can manage their emotions to achieve effective service outcomes through interactions with a leader, how the effect of transformational leadership can be bounded, and how transformational leadership and emotion regulation are relevant to customer service.     

Transformational and transactional leaderships,empowerment climate,and innovation performance: A multilevel analysis in the Chinese context

Innovation through creativity is an important factor in the success and competitive advantage of organizations. Theory and research suggest that both leadership and organizational climate have important consequences for individual creativity. However, researchers have rarely considered the interactive effects of leadership and organizational climate. This study taking a “Substitute for Leadership” perspective, develops and tests the idea that empowerment climate affect the relationship between leadership and followers' creative performance. Data were collected from 93 teams, including 465 team members and 93 team supervisors, in a large multinational company based in China. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to examine the hypothesized cross-level model. As expected, transformational leadership and team empowerment climate were positively related to subordinates' creative performance and transactional leadership was negatively related to subordinates' creative performance. In addition, the relationship between leadership and subordinates' creative performance was moderated by team empowerment climate. The study resulted in the implication of several major variables for explaining individual creativity in the Chinese context.