Spirituality as a Resiliency Quality in Xhosa-speaking Families in South Africa

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore spirituality as a characteristic of family resilience in Xhosa-speaking families in South Africa. A parent, and in some cases an adolescent, represented each of the 51 families that participated. Participants were expected to respond to three open-ended questions regarding their family and identify factors or strengths that had recently helped their family. The results indicate that spirituality is an important coping resource. The core theme of spirituality consists of six related categories that facilitated the successful adaptation of the participating families after a crisis. These categories are Gifts from God; Guidance; God's Works; God's Plan; Prayer; and Faith.     

Team tenure and team performance: A meta-analysis and process model

Team tenure is a key component of models of team effectiveness. However, the nature of the relationship between team tenure and team performance is unclear due to underdeveloped theory on the nature of team tenure, various unintegrated theoretical conceptualizations of team tenure, and mixed empirical findings. Further, there is a lack of theory as to the intervening team processes and emergent states that account for the “black box” of the team tenure–team performance relationship. Accordingly, we conducted meta-analyses of the relationships of team tenure with team processes and performance. Our results, based on 622 effect sizes reported in 169 studies, show that team tenure, conceptualized as additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion, is positively related to team performance. Relative weights analysis found additive team tenure to be a relatively more important predictor of team performance than collective team tenure or team tenure dispersion. We found that team cognition, motivational-affective states, and behavioral processes mediate the relationships of additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion with team performance, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

Translating External Knowledge to Team Creativity in Turbulent Environments: The Role of Absorptive Capacity and Knowledge Integration

In seeking to understand factors contributing to team creativity in dynamic environments, we explored the role of external knowledge search on team creativity through absorptive capacity and knowledge integration. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 96 teams involving 421 employees in China. Results demonstrated that external knowledge search related positively to team creativity, fully mediated by both absorptive capacity and knowledge integration. In addition, environmental dynamism played a moderating role in the relation between external knowledge search and absorptive capacity, as well as in the relation between external knowledge search and knowledge integration. We discussed the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

The role of auditory context in action-effect-related motor adaptation

Previous research indicates that adding auditory effects to a (silent) action can lead to substantial efficiency gains in the performance of the action, while compromising the connection between the motor and the auditory event (e.g., by removing, or by delaying the auditory effects), leads the agent to compensate for the loss of auditory feedback by executing actions in a way which increases the probability of success or enhances feedback in other modalities, thus departing from the optimal action performance. The current study explored how this motor adaptation was affected when the quality of auditory feedback was reduced by contextual factors, while keeping the physical link between the action and auditory effect intact. In two experiments, participants elicited pure tones by pinching a force sensitive resistor (FSR). In some of the conditions action-effect contingency was reduced by intermixing externally initiated tones with the self-induced ones. Pinch-force measurements indicated that action optimization was affected by contextual factors. The influence of auditory context was the most pronounced when the discrimination of self-induced and external tones was made difficult by the similarity and temporal proximity of the self-induced and external tones. In these conditions, tone eliciting actions were more forceful in comparison to conditions in which no external tones were presented, and in comparison to conditions in which the external tones were easily distinguishable from self-induced ones. This suggests that contextual factors can induce similar motor adjustments as manipulating the physical connection between the action and its sensory consequences.     

外资企业跨文化适应模式分析：结构方程建模

在总结国内外有关文献的基础上,编制了跨文化适应问卷,并运用此问卷调查了外资企业的314名高中层管理者,采用探索性、验证性因素分析和结构方程建模技术探讨跨文化适应的结构维度和适应模式。结果表明决策价值前提、人力资源利用、管理规范化构成了跨文化适应的管理决策维度;中外经理沟通、直接上下级关系、中高层团队合作构成跨文化适应的人际合作适应维度。跨文化适应与企业的经营绩效有十分密切的关系。     

药物成瘾行为的脑机制及其研究进展

药物成瘾是脑内相关核团和细胞在药物反复作用下发生适应性变化的时间依赖过程。成瘾的适应性学说从ｃＡＭＰ水平调节、阿片和多巴胺受体与Ｇ蛋白家族耦联等方面,为成瘾形成机制提供了最基本的生物学范畴的理论解释。实验证据在一定程度上揭示了从给药到耐受、敏感、依赖,再到撤药症状的生物变化过程。然而,阐明从急性给药到特殊脑区持续性的适应机制仍然是当前成瘾研究最具挑战性的目标之一。     

Antecedents and Consequences of Creativity in Teams: When and How Leader Humility Promotes Performance via Team Creativity

The antecedents of team creativity and their effects on team task performance are explored in this study, with a particular focus on how leader humility promotes team creativity and when team creativity can be converted into performance. Hypotheses were tested via a multiple-source and time-lagged study with 341 employees and 104 teams from five different organizations in China. The results showed that leader humility promotes team creativity through team creative efficacy, and leader conscientiousness moderates this indirect effect. Furthermore, team creativity is more positively related to team task performance when teams are more future oriented. The theoretical contributions and management significance of these findings are discussed, followed by a discussion of limitations and directions for future research.     

Leiter-3 generalizability in Scandinavia

The Leiter-3 is a nonverbal assessment that evaluates cognitive abilities and has been adapted for use in Scandinavia. Generalizability of United States-based normative scoring for use with the Scandinavian population was evaluated. Leiter-3 scores from a sample of Scandinavian students were compared with scores obtained from the Leiter-3 standardization sample, controlling for confounding variables, across ages, using mixed-methods analysis. A Scandinavian-population-based sample was created from Leiter-3 standardization data and norms were constructed and were used to generate standardized scores from the sample data. Results suggest that overall the Scandinavian test-takers score higher than American test-takers, but that differences between groups were minimized when controlling for factors that may influence cognitive performance. Creating Scandinavian based scores was not effective at reducing gaps in performance, suggesting that differences in performance between the different populations may be attributable to factors other than those typically controlled for when constructing standardized tests. Implications of these results and recommendations for Leiter-3 adaptation are reviewed.     

The building blocks of shared leadership: The interactive effects of diversity types,team climate,and time

Despite the wealth of empirical studies and recent meta-analyses demonstrating the positive performance effects of shared leadership, knowledge regarding antecedents is limited. We draw upon a collective approach to leadership identity construction theory and team diversity in order to understand the member attributes that impact leadership sharing. We suggest that both informational/functional and social categorization diversity types are important dimensions when considering shared leadership antecedents. First, we suggest functional diversity will result in higher levels of shared leadership but will only be realized when teams elicit a cooperative climate. Second, we suggest that gender diversity, a salient social category, will have a negative impact on shared leadership, particularly in a low cooperative climate. We further hypothesize these effects will change over time as the positive effects of functional diversity strengthen and the negative effects of gender differences weaken. We test our hypotheses, including the impact on team performance, in a time-lagged sample of 267 undergraduate students in 73 teams competing in a complex business simulation and a constructive replication with 142 MBA students in 41 teams. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Car-following behavioural adaptation when driving next to automated vehicles on a dedicated lane on motorways: A driving simulator study in the Netherlands

Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to improve traffic flow efficiency and safety. The deployment of AVs on motorways is expected to be the first step in their implementation. One of the main concerns is how human drivers will interact with AVs. Dedicating specific lanes to AVs have been suggested as a possible solution. However, there is still a lack of evidence-based research on the consequence of dedicated lanes for AVs on human drivers’ behavior. To bridge this research gap, a driving simulator experiment was conducted to investigate the behavior of human drivers exposed to different road design configurations of dedicated lanes on motorways. The experiment sample consisted of 34 (13 female) licensed drivers in the age range of 20–30. A repeated measures ANOVA was applied, which revealed that the type of separation between the dedicated lane and the other lanes has a significant influence on the behavior of human drivers driving in the proximity of AV platoons. Human drivers maintained a significantly lower time headway (THW) when driving in the proximity of a continuous access dedicated lane as compared to a limited-access dedicated lane with a guardrail separation for AV platoons. A similar result was found for the limited-access dedicated lane in comparison to the limited-access dedicated lane with guardrail separation. Moreover, the results regarding the empirical relationships between THW and sociodemographic variables indicate a significant THW difference between males and females as well as a significant inverse relationship between THW and the years of driving experience.