Improving Employee Productivity: The Role of Financial Counseling and Education

Literature has shown that a link exists between personal financial problems and employee productivity. This article presents the results of a survey that was designed to assess the personal financial behaviors of 220 clerical workers and to measure their desire for workplace financial education and counseling programs. It was found that a large percentage of employees were exhibiting poor financial behaviors and that more than 80% of respondents were interested in workplace financial counseling and education as long as the cost of such programs were relatively low. The financial behaviors of employees may be significantly improved through workplace counseling and education.     

Application of focusing‐oriented psychotherapy in dealing with issues of Asian immigrants: A single‐case study of a Korean immigrant in Japan

A single case study is presented of the successful application of focusing‐oriented therapy in the case of a Korean woman who migrated to Japan. The client had a host of problems related to the discrimination she faced from her own family and from Korean society for being female, as well as relationship and cultural difficulties in trying to adjust to married life in Japan. Through 10 sessions of focusing‐oriented therapy, the client was able to re‐examine her situation from a positive perspective and began to accept herself as a person, not necessarily as a woman or a Korean in Japan. Issues related to Korean women immigrants in Japan are explored and the related effectiveness of focusing‐oriented therapy for the particular population is discussed.     

Creativity as a Matter of Choice: Prior Experience and Task Instruction as Boundary Conditions for the Positive Effect of Choice on Creativity

This study investigates the effects of prior experience, task instruction, and choice on creative performance. Although extant research suggests that giving people choice in how they approach a task could enhance creative performance, we propose that this view needs to be circumscribed. Specifically, we argue that when choice is administered during problem solving by varying the number of available resources, the high combinatorial flexibility conferred by a large choice set of resources can be overwhelming. Through two experiments, we found that only individuals with high prior experience in the task domain and given explicit instruction to be creative produced more creative outcomes when given more choice. When either of these two conditions is not met (i.e., low prior experience or given non‐creativity instruction), more choice did not lead to more creative performance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.