Factors influencing work readiness of graduates: An exploratory study

This study aimed to determine the factors that influenced the work readiness of graduate and post-graduate social sciences students. An ex post facto design study was undertaken with 183 participant students from Makerere University, Uganda (n=73) and the University of Venda, South Africa (n=110) (females=58%; age range 20–40 years). They completed the Genos Emotional Intelligence (EI) Inventory, a Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-24), an Orientation to Life Questionnaire (OLQ) as well as a Work Readiness Scale (WRS). Regression analyses were conducted to predict work readiness, with emotional intelligence (EI), psychological capital (PsyCap) and sense of coherence (SOC). Results revealed EI and PsyCap to strongly predict work readiness.     

Serving first for the benefit of others: preliminary evidence for a hierarchical conceptualization of servant leadership

In this paper, we examine servant leadership as a promising leadership style for today's dynamic sales environments. Conceptual and empirical literature points to servant leadership's strong potential in facilitating benefits to salespeople and the organization. Yet that same literature evidences a problematic lack of consensus regarding components that distinctly reflect servant leadership. Existing conceptualizations include dimensions like humility and providing direction, which clearly overlap with various other leadership styles. In this paper, we first consider unique distinctives of servant leadership. We then propose an extension of the augmentation hypothesis from the transactional and transformational leadership literature. Specifically, we posit that servant leadership distinctives are hierarchically built on transformational characteristics, which themselves are built on transactional characteristics. Using secondary data from a sample of professional salespeople, we apply Guttman scaling and show this hierarchical conceptualization to be empirically tenable. We demonstrate that sales leadership at higher levels on the hierarchy produces incremental gains in salesperson satisfaction, salesperson performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and corporate social responsibility. We confirm our findings in a validation sample and demonstrate an additional relationship with customer-directed extra-role behaviors. Our results imply that sales organizations can reap enhanced multi-faceted benefits through higher levels of servant leadership.     

Determinants of cognitive outcomes of perinatal and childhood stroke: A review

Our understanding of cognitive and behavioral outcomes of perinatal and childhood stroke is rapidly evolving. A current understanding of cognitive outcomes following pediatric stroke can inform prognosis and direct interventions and our understanding of plasticity in the developing brain. However, our understanding of these outcomes has been hampered by the notable heterogeneity that exists amongst the pediatric stroke population, as the influences of various demographic, cognitive, neurological, etiological, and psychosocial variables preclude broad generalizations about outcomes in any one cognitive domain. We therefore aimed to conduct a detailed overview of the published literature regarding the effects of age at stroke, time since stroke, sex, etiology, lesion characteristics (i.e., location, laterality, volume), neurologic impairment, and seizures on cognitive outcomes following pediatric stroke. A key theme arising from this review is the importance of interactive effects among variables on cognitive outcomes following pediatric stroke. Interactions particularly of note include the following: (a) age at Stroke x Lesion Location; (b) Lesion Characteristics (i.e., volume, location) x Neurologic Impairment; (c) Lesion Volume x Time Since Stroke; (d) Sex x Lesion Laterality; and (e) Seizures x Time Since Stroke. Further, it appears that these relationships do not always apply uniformly across cognitive domains but, rather, are contingent upon the cognitive ability in question. Implications for future research directions are discussed.     

Understanding the shear band interaction in metallic glass

Qualitative and quantitative models were proposed to understand the shear band (SB) interaction scenario found in the compressive tests on specimen with two symmetrical semi-circular notches. The so-called ‘work-hardening’ behavior could be ascribed as the stress interaction which was caused by stress fields around the SB tips. Besides, the SB bending was observed along propagation orientation. The quantitative analysis based on traditional shear deformation mechanism could reasonably account for how the SB was bent. It is anticipated that the present work could provide a pathway to understand the deep SB deformation mechanism of metallic glass.     

Data Labours: How the Sequence Databases GenBank and EMBL-Bank Make Data

What actually happens inside genetic databases, how do they work upon data and who does this work? While they have become central tools for doing science, not much is known about the work that goes on inside these vital infrastructures. Ethnographic explorations of two of the world’s largest nucleotide sequence databases, GenBank and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s EMBL-Bank, reveal manifold goings-on. Like most infrastructural work, it is modest and invisible routines that build and maintain the vast interconnected suite of bioinformational resources. Data curators construct organisms out of sulphuric sludge, dataflow engineers as self-styled “genetic information plumbers” keep the data deluge flowing, and a data submissions support assistant manages to make room for care amidst this deluge. Taken together, these data labours render tangible the modest and processual aspects of data infrastructure while also revealing the databases to be situated and lively spaces of convergence. Inventively analysing data labours paves surprising ways for encountering and making sense of databases, data and the work they do. Here, practices of natural history, like specimen-making and curation, are continued by other means while the assembly of sludge sheds light on the absences and deletions which mystify infrastructural maintenance work.     

Towards More Rigorous Personality Trait–Outcome Research

Much of personality research attempts to identify causal links between personality traits and various types of outcomes. I argue that causal interpretations require traits to be seen as existentially and holistically real and the associations to be independent of specific ways of operationalizing the traits. Among other things, this means that, to the extents that causality is to be ascribed to such holistic traits, items and facets of those traits should be similarly associated with specific outcomes, except for variability in the degrees to which they reflect the traits (i.e. factor loadings). I argue that, before drawing causal inferences about personality trait–outcome associations, the presence of this condition should be routinely tested by, for example, systematically comparing the outcome associations of individual items or facets, or sampling different indicators for measuring the same purported traits. Existing evidence suggests that observed associations between personality traits and outcomes at least sometimes depend on which particular items or facets have been included in trait operationalizations, calling trait‐level causal interpretations into question. However, this has rarely been considered in the literature. I argue that when outcome associations are specific to facets, they should not be generalized to traits. Furthermore, when the associations are specific to particular items, they should not even be generalized to facets. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Eyes on the Prize? Evidence of Diminishing Attention to Experienced and Foregone Outcomes in Repeated Experiential Choice

Recently, there has been increased interest in decisions‐from‐experience (where decision makers learn from observing the outcomes of previous choices), which provide valuable insights into the learning and preference construction processes underlying many daily decisions. Several process models have been developed to capture these processes, and while such models often fit the data well, many assume that the decision maker is a vigilant observer, processing each outcome. In two studies, we provide a critical test of this assumption using eye tracking to record directed visual attention when participants choose repeatedly among two options, each time being shown the outcome for their chosen option and for the foregone option. Consistently, we find that the vigilance assumption is not supported, with decision makers often not attending to outcome information. Moreover, (in)attention to outcomes is predictable, with vigilance decreasing as more choices are made, and being greater for obtained than for foregone outcomes, and when options deliver only gains as opposed to losses or a mixture of gains and losses. Furthermore, we find that this variation in attentional allocation plays a central role in the apparent indecisiveness (inconsistency) in choice, with increased attention to foregone outcomes predicting switches to that option on the next choice. Together, these findings highlight the value of eye tracking in investigations of decisions‐from‐experience, providing novel insight into the cognitive processes underlying them. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Early language processing efficiency predicts later receptive vocabulary outcomes in children born preterm

As rates of prematurity continue to rise, identifying which preterm children are at increased risk for learning disabilities is a public health imperative. Identifying continuities between early and later skills in this vulnerable population can also illuminate fundamental neuropsychological processes that support learning in all children. At 18 months adjusted age, we used socioeconomic status (SES), medical variables, parent-reported vocabulary, scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (third edition) language composite, and children’s lexical processing speed in the looking-while-listening (LWL) task as predictor variables in a sample of 30 preterm children. Receptive vocabulary as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (fourth edition) at 36 months was the outcome. Receptive vocabulary was correlated with SES, but uncorrelated with degree of prematurity or a composite of medical risk. Importantly, lexical processing speed was the strongest predictor of receptive vocabulary (r = ?.81), accounting for 30% unique variance. Individual differences in lexical processing efficiency may be able to serve as a marker for information processing skills that are critical for language learning.     

Working hours, job stress, work satisfaction, and accident rates among medical practitioners and allied personnel

Predictors of accident behavior among German medical staff revealed that work-related injuries/accidents experienced during a recent 12-month period were significantly related to working hours per week, distance from home to practice, number of dependent children, gender, and job-related stress. The average yearly number of car accidents was predicted by age and number of working hours. Furthermore, driving accidents going to or coming from work during the last year was determined by working climate, hours of work, length of lunchtime break, distance traveled to and from work, number of dependent children, and gender. Physicians working in excess of 48 hours per week displayed significantly more driving accidents but not work-related accidents, and they reported significantly higher levels of job-related stress than those colleagues working fewer than 48 hours per week. The implications of these results are discussed in the framework on risk management in the health services.     

Organizational response to recommendations based on a study of stress among correctional officers

A study was recently commissioned by the South Australian Government to study the nature and sources of stress among correctional (prison) officers. The paper reports on the key variables found to have significant predictive effects on strain (a composite measure comprising psychological distress, physical ill-health symptoms, job dissatisfaction, and work-home conflict). These included demographic variables (length of service, finances), personal variables (negative affectivity), work environment variables (work role ambiguity, institutional relationship concerns, inmate concerns, worktime concerns, low autonomy, and low involvement), and emotional suppression. Recommendations were formulated including: the appointment of a full-time mental health counselor, organizational and individual strategies aimed to improve supervisor support and management training, greater participation in organizational decision making, and post-shift debriefing. It was also suggested that in selecting correctional officers those displaying high levels of negative affectivity should be screened out. Finally, it was recommended that intervention should target the most vulnerable individuals, including shiftworkers, officers who had been employed in the organization the longest, officers currently on stress leave and officers, who have previously been on stress leave and have returned to work. The paper reports on the organizational response to the recommendations and the implications of the study are discussed in the context of ongoing surveillance and evaluation of the impact of intervention strategies.