Social cognition and executive functioning predictors of supervisors’ appraisal of interpersonal behaviour in the workplace following acquired brain injury

BACKGROUND: Social cognition and executive functioning difficulties following acquired brain injury have been linked to negative employment outcomes, such as demotion and loss of vocational roles. These are very counter-intuitive and challenging difficulties for other employees and work supervisors who have little or no brain injury knowledge, whose perceptions of play a key role in their responses to these difficulties and the final outcome of such problems for vocational status. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to study the relationship between social cognition and executive functioning difficulties and the perceptions of work supervisors’ appraisal of survivor interpersonal behaviour and social skills in the workplace. METHOD: The performance of 73 survivors of acquired brain injury (47% TBI, 38% CVA, 15% other ABI type; 73% male; mean age 45.44 years, range 19-64 years; mean time since injury 6.36 years, range 10.5-31.33 years), currently in a vocational rehabilitation placement) on neuropsychological tests of executive functioning and social cognition was measured. Informant ratings on the Social Skills Factor subscale from the Work Personality Profile (WPP, Bolton&Roessler, 1986) were used as the primary outcome measure, a vocational functioning questionnaire assessing social and presentational aspects of workplace behaviour. The raters were non-clinical workplace informants acting in a supervisory role (supervisory placement providers and job coaches). RESULTS: Correlational analysis identified significant associations between the WPP and survivor goal-orientated planning and implementation, mentalising ability, recognition of positive and negative emotions, and recognition of simple sarcasm (all significant at p < 0.05). These correlates were entered into a stepwise multiple regression. The combination final of survivor mentalising ability and executive functioning explained 32%of the variance in the WPP ratings (F (2, 52) = 12.15, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Certain limitations of the study withstanding, the current findings add to previous literature in highlighting the relevance of survivor executive functioning and social cognition difficulties for the perceptions and appraisal of work colleagues, consistent with other studies that have identified negative vocational outcomes associated with such neuropsychological difficulties. The implications for vocational rehabilitation are discussed

Unprofessional Communication in the Workplace

This study creates a measurable definition of unprofessional communication in the workplace. First, literature is explored, looking at the existing information (or lack thereof) about professional and unprofessional communication in the workplace, along with additional information about politeness norms. A brief definition of unprofessional communication is offered. Next, a method for the study is offered, using both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine perceptions of unprofessional communication in the workplace. Results are then given, showing communicative behaviors that are viewed as both professional and unprofessional in the workplace. Behaviors such as being appropriate or being polite were seen as professional, whereas being untimely or inappropriate are considered to be unprofessional in the workplace. Implications of the findings are then explored, showing that professional and unprofessional communication as terms are opposites and the initial definition is edited to align with the study results. Lastly, limitations and future research is discussed

Dissecting the types and functions of religious humor in Nasreddin Hoja short-stories

Humor is a significant element in funny stories. This study aims to analyze the types and functions of humor in selected Nasreddin’s short stories from the book Nasreddin’s Funniest Stories (2011) by Yusup Priyasudiarja and Y. Sri Purwaningsih. By using the descriptive qualitative method, the study adopts textual analysis to examine the materials. Based on the analysis result, the types of humor applied in the stories are that joke, sarcasm, satire, replies to rhetorical question, clever replies, and double entendres. However, these writings lack some other typical types of spontaneous conversational humor used in short stories’ texts: puns and self-deprecation. Meanwhile, unintentional humor is also not found in the Nasreddin short stories because it is raised from the speaker’s misspellings, mispronunciations, errors in logic, and Freudian slips. Further reading shows that the underlying usage of humor in these stories is for social management: to control and mediate readers

How often is Employee Anger an Insider Risk I? Detecting and Measuring Negative Sentiment versus Insider Risk in Digital Communications

This research introduced two new scales for the identification and measurement of negative sentiment and insider risk in communications in order to examine the unexplored relationship between these two constructs. The inter-rater reliability and criterion validity of the Scale of Negativity in Texts (SNIT) and the Scale of Insider Risk in Digital Communications (SIRDC) were established with a random sample of email from the Enron archive and criterion measures from established insiders, disgruntled employees, suicidal, depressed, angry, anxious, and other sampled groups. In addition, the sensitivity of the scales to changes over time as the risk of digital attack increased and transitioned to a physical attack was also examined in an actual case study. Inter-rater reliability for the SNIT was extremely high across groups while the SIRDC produced lower, but acceptable levels of agreement. Both measures also significantly distinguished the criterion groups from the overall Enron sample. The scales were then used to measure the frequency of negative sentiment and insider risk indicators in the random Enron sample and the relationship between the two constructs. While low levels of negative sentiment were found in 20% of the sample, moderate and high levels of negative sentiment were extremely rare, occurring in less than 1% of communications. Less than 4% of the sampled emails displayed indicators of insider risk on the SIRDC. Emails containing high levels of insider risk comprised less than one percent or the sample. Of the emails containing negative sentiment in the sample, only 16.3%, also displayed indicators of insider risk. The odds of a communication containing insider risk increased with the level of negative sentiment and only low levels of insider risk were found at low levels of negative sentiment. All of the emails found to contain insider risk indicators on the SIRDC also displayed some level of negative sentiment. The implications of these findings for insider risk detection were then examined

How Individual Differences and the Use of Humor Shape Relationships in Teams Over Time

Due to its ability to influence social interactions and relationships, humor can play an important role in team dynamics. The aims of this project are to examine how team member individual differences in humor styles relates to the expression of humor over time, and how humor usage shapes relationships between team members. Hypotheses were tested using data from highly interdependent teams working together over an extended period. Results have implications for the selection of team members, and the training and management of unique teams. In all, this research provides validation evidence for the HSQ measure as a predictor of humor behaviors within teams, begins to shed light on how humor training can be used to decrease aggressive humor in specific teams, and highlights the importance of unstructured, casual activities to allow for positive humor flow

TensiStrength: Stress and relaxation magnitude detection for social media texts

Computer systems need to be able to react to stress in order to perform optimally on some tasks. This article describes TensiStrength, a system to detect the strength of stress and relaxation expressed in social media text messages. TensiStrength uses a lexical approach and a set of rules to detect direct and indirect expressions of stress or relaxation, particularly in the context of transportation. It is slightly more effective than a comparable sentiment analysis program, although their similar performances occur despite differences on almost half of the tweets gathered. The effectiveness of TensiStrength depends on the nature of the tweets classified, with tweets that are rich in stress-related terms being particularly problematic. Although generic machine learning methods can give better performance than TensiStrength overall, they exploit topic-related terms in a way that may be undesirable in practical applications and that may not work as well in more focused contexts. In conclusion, TensiStrength and generic machine learning approaches work well enough to be practical choices for intelligent applications that need to take advantage of stress information, and the decision about which to use depends on the nature of the texts analysed and the purpose of the task

Overcoming barriers to knowledge management: Visiting the dark side of the organization

Like many organisational endeavours, the success of knowledge management praxis is subject to the vagaries of human nature. There are many reasons, most of which are underpinned by the need for power, why people might choose to hoard, distort and manipulate information. Recent studies undertaken by the authors have demonstrated the way in which knowledge management processes can also be manipulated to impede the distribution of power. This dark side of organisational behaviour is usually subversive, can be unconscious or conscious and always acts against the interests of the group or part of the group. It is important for those involved in knowledge management practice to be acutely aware of the dynamics of the dark side and how they may interfere with their best intentions. As well as describing this phenomenon, this paper also suggests a number of ways in which the dark side might be overcome. Chiefly, drawing on general systems theory, we suggest some techniques that facilitate both open communication and open process

Customer rage: Triggers, tipping points, and take-outs

The article presents the results of a study of customer rage, which involved 50 interviews with enraged customers from the U.S., Australia, Thailand and China. It focuses on the psychological processes underlying incidents of customer rage. These are defined as cases where customers become so infuriated at a perceived lack of customer service that they may verbally or physically attack employees, or damage corporate property. It was found that such incidents typically were the result of escalating anger, rather than an immediate reaction. They usually were preceded by a series of interactions with the firm which were perceived as insulting or threatening by the customer

Determination of Burnout Syndrome among Middle and Senior Managers in Manufacturing Industry in Ciudad Juarez

AbstractBurnout syndrome is caused by chronic job stress and it is considered one of the main professional diseases of XXI Century. In developing countries like Mexico, occupations as middle and senior manager positions have not been sufficiently explored on this topic, especially in the industrial manufacturing sector. These personnel are fundamental for the growth of industries and usually must respond to high work demands, such as: short time decision making processes, extended working hours, personnel organization, production difficulties, among others. A sample of 361 participants was conformed; 34 were senior managers and 327 middle managers from several departments. The Maslach Burnout Inventory General-Survey (MBI-GS) was applied in six manufacturing companies in Ciudad Juarez. The Burnout was determined by grades and levels. Percentiles 33.3 and 66.6 were used as cut off points for each dimension: Emotional Exhaustion, Cynicism and Professional Effectiveness, five levels of Burnout were determined as none, low, middle, fairly and extreme. Results indicate a middle grade of Burnout for all three dimensions among senior and middle managers. By levels, 46.26% presents fairly and extreme level, 15.51% have a middle level and 38.23% presents none or low levels of Burnout. In conclusion, it is recommended that manufacturing industries take preventive actions that contribute to physical and mental health of their key workers