Do flexible goal adjustment and acceptance help preserve quality of life in patients with Multiple Sclerosis?

Background Goal regulation strategies such as flexible goal adjustment and acceptance are believed to be protective factors in persons with chronic illness, but research on their relative contributions to quality of life in multiple sclerosis (MS) is lacking. Purpose We aimed to test the idea that acceptance and flexible goal adjustment (in contrast to tenacious goal pursuit) may help preserve the quality of life in persons with MS. Method A sample of 117 patients with MS was recruited. They completed questionnaires measuring quality of life (physical functioning, psychological distress), acceptance, flexible goal adjustment, and tenacious goal pursuit. Results Acceptance significantly accounted for variance in all three indexes of quality of life, beyond the effects of demographic and illness characteristics. The role of goal regulation style was less clear. Flexible goal adjustment significantly accounted for psychological well-being only. Surprisingly, tenacious goal pursuit predicted better psychological functioning and less psychological distress. No support was found for the hypothesis that acceptance and flexible goal adjustment would moderate the relation between illness severity and quality of life. Conclusion The findings suggest the potential importance of acceptance in understanding MS patients' quality of life, although its hypothesized protective function could not be confirmed. Further conceptual work on acceptance and goal regulation style is needed, as well as prospective work investigating their causal status

Integrating information and knowledge for enterprise innovation

It has widely been accepted that enterprise integration, can be a source of socio-technical and cultural problems within organisations wishing to provide a focussed end-to-end business service. This can cause possible “straitjacketing” of business process architectures, thus suppressing responsive business re-engineering and competitive advantage for some companies. Accordingly, the current typology and emergent forms of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies are set in the context of understanding information and knowledge integration philosophies. As such, key influences and trends in emerging IS integration choices, for end-to-end, cost-effective and flexible knowledge integration, are examined. As touch points across and outside organisations proliferate, via work-flow and relationship management-driven value innovation, aspects of knowledge refinement and knowledge integration pose challenges to maximising the potential of innovation and sustainable success, within enterprises. This is in terms of the increasing propensity for data fragmentation and the lack of effective information management, in the light of information overload. Furthermore, the nature of IS mediation which is inherent within decision making and workflow-based business processes, provides the basis for evaluation of the effects of information and knowledge integration. Hence, the authors propose a conceptual, holistic evaluation framework which encompasses these ideas. It is thus argued that such trends, and their implications regarding enterprise IS integration to engender sustainable competitive advantage, require fundamental re-thinking

CONCEPT OF „ FLEXICURITY” – IN ACTUALITY ON THE WORK MARKET FROM ROMANIA

An important element that may support the work control without legal contracts refers to the flexicurity – a modern concept that develops within many countries members of E.U. and where is combined as balance solution on the work market, the flexibility under different aspects with security and/or safety of the work place1. (There are cases when the employee avoids the conclusion of a work contract with normal duration of 8 continuum hours per day). For this reason there will be considered the examination of the flexibility degree stipulated in the standard contracts (contract with undetermined duration and with full norm) regarding the notices terms, costs and the procedures regarding the individual or collective dismissals, inclusively even the definition „ abusive dismissals”, this one being from historic point of view the key- element of the security of the work place for the employees.labour market, flexisecurity, employment

Nursing knowledge and the expansion of day surgery in the United Kingdom

Background: The amount of surgery undertaken within United Kingdom Day Surgery Units has risen considerably over the past 15–20 years. Throughout this pioneering era, nursing roles and responsibilities within the modern surgical environment have developed although have largely shadowed medical advances. Evidence based nursing knowledge appears to have contributed very little to the recent success of day surgery. This may be due, in part, to the lack of attention given to modern surgical practices within current pre-registration nurse education programmes of study. Aim: The aim of this educational audit was to evaluate the consideration given to modern surgical practices in the programmes of study of recently qualified staff nurses employed within Day Surgery Units in the United Kingdom in order to gauge the extent of the challenge. Method: A postal audit was designed and sent to n = 247 Day Surgery Units. The audit was intended to elicit information from the staff nurses regarding their experiences of modern, elective day surgery during their nurse education programmes of study. Results: Two hundred and seventy seven staff nurses responded revealing that the level of attention to day surgery practices within pre-registration programmes was extremely low. The professions’ actual and potential theoretical contribution to modern surgical practices was virtually nil. Their experience of pre-operative nursing intervention appeared mainly to involve the teaching of traditional surgical in-patients nursing skills. The inclusion of modern surgical practices into the theoretical assignments within the programmes of study was very limited. Once qualified, the vast majority of staff nurses experienced no additional formal education for their new role. Conclusions: The results are discussed in relation to the re-focusing of pre-registration nurse education, changing clinical roles and the future of nursing within the modern surgical arena

Six types of psychological contracts: their affective commitment and employability.

The purpose of this study is to identify a variety of employment relationships based upon an economy-wide, representative sample. We turn to psychological contract studies examining different types of psychological contracts. We expand two existing typologies by incorporating multiple features or underlying dimensions of psychological contracts. Such a feature-oriented approach allows us to construct a meaningful conceptualization of employer and employee obligations across different settings and to identify multiple types of psychological contracts in which combinations of different dimensions are prevalent. The cluster analysis indicates the existence of six types of psychological contracts, all having different patterns of mutual expectations: an instrumental, weak, loyal, unattached, investing and strong psychological contract. To validate the six-cluster solution, we develop clusters' profiles based upon individual, job, formal contract and organizational characteristics and further differentiate between the clusters by examining their outcomes in terms of affective commitment and employability.Characteristics; Cluster analysis; Contracts; Employability; Employment; Studies;

Emotional Processes in Elaborating a Historical Trauma in the Daily Press

Twentieth century has witnessed several cases of mass traumatization when groups as wholes were ostracized even threated with annihilation. From the perspectives of identity trauma, when harms are afflicted to a group of people by other groups because of their categorical membership, ethnic and national traumas stand out. This paper aims to investigate long-term consequences of permanent traumatization on national identity with presenting a narrative social psychological study as a potential way of empirical exploration of the processes of collective traumatization and trauma elaboration. A Narrative Trauma Elaboration Model has been introduced which identifies linguistic markers of the elaboration process. Newspaper articles (word count = 203172) about a significant national trauma of the Hungarian history, Treaty of Trianon (1920), were chosen from a ninety year time span and emotional expressions of narratives were analysed with a narrative categorical content analytic tool (NarrCat). Longitudinal pattern of data show very weak emotional processing of the traumatic event. Results are discussed in terms of collective victimhood as core element of national identity and its effects on trauma elaboration