An ethnography of a neighbourhood café: informality, table arrangements and background noise

Café society is something that many of us as customers and/or social theorists take for granted. Cafés are places where we are not simply served hot beverages but are also in some way partaking of a specific form of public life. It is this latter aspect that has attracted the attention of social theorists, especially Jürgen Habermas, and leads them to locate the café as a key place in the development of modernity. Our approach to cafés is to ‘turn the tables’ on theories of the public sphere and return to just what the life of a particular café consists of, and in so doing re-specify a selection of topics related to public spaces. The particular topics we deal with in a ‘worldly manner’ are the socio-material organisation of space, informality and rule following. In as much as we are able we have drawn on an ethnomethodological way of doing and analysing our ethnographic studies

Emotional labor and authentic leadership

Organizational research has begun to once again focus on the importance of emotions in the workplace. In particular, the concept of emotional labor, the management of emotions at work to influence clients and customers, has recently received much attention. While research has addressed the impact of emotional labor on both employees and clients or customers, research has not examined emotional labor within the context of leadership. Authentic leadership, an emerging construct in the study of leadership, is proposed to relate to emotional labor. Leaders\u27 authentic behavior has been shown to positively impact followers, such as increasing trust in their leader or positive job attitudes as in job satisfaction and organizational commitment. While authenticity refers to being true to oneself, emotional labor involves the alteration of one\u27s felt emotions in order to generate a particular emotional display. Given that engaging in emotional labor seems contrary to behaving authentically, emotional labor was expected to impact both leaders and followers through authenticity. Specifically, emotional labor was hypothesized to have detrimental effects on a leader\u27s felt authenticity and followers\u27 perceptions of authenticity, leader emotional exhaustion, and followers\u27 trust in their leader. However, emotional labor was expected to positively impact evaluations of leader emotional displays. In addition, individual differences in self-monitoring were expected to influence the emotional labor leaders performed. Self-monitoring was expected to exacerbate the effect of emotional labor; leaders high in self-monitoring were expected to engage in more emotional labor. This study examined these relationships using a controlled, laboratory design. Assigned leaders led a team instructed to perform a collaborative task. Leaders were responsible for communicating the task requirements to their group and for managing the group throughout the task. In addition to the task, participants completed surveys assessing emotional display rule perceptions, emotional labor, self-monitoring, leader emotional displays, authenticity, emotional exhaustion, and trust. Results indicate that leaders\u27 emotional labor was unrelated to their felt and perceived authenticity or leader emotional displays, but did relate to their emotional exhaustion. Self-monitoring did influence leaders\u27 emotional labor, although contrary to expectations. Leaders\u27 emotional displays and perceived authenticity did significantly relate to their followers\u27 trust

Managing Workplace Sexual Harassment: The Role of Training Diversity, Quantity, and Recency

Sexual harassment remains a persistent problem for business organizations. Case law, especially that emanating from the Supreme Court, makes it management’s responsibility to implement programs reasonably calculated to prevent harassment, or else face heightened liability. A common element often found in these preventative programs includes some form of harassment training. Indeed, several states have gone so far as to mandate sexual harassment training. Despite this, little research exists to demonstrate the efficacy of sexual harassment training programs. Further, no research has indicated that training equips managers with the ability to respond with an appropriate action. The following study addresses this issue by examining whether training diversity (i.e., number of training methods), training quantity (i.e., cumulative training hours), and training recency (i.e., elapsed time since training) predict one’s ability to (a) correctly identify instances of sexual harassment and (b) take an appropriate action. Results suggest that individual difference variables unrelated to training predict one’s ability to correctly identify sexual harassment. Training diversity, quantity, and recency add incremental variance to this prediction. No such relationship was found among these predictor variables and one’s ability to take an appropriate action. Implications concerning these results are offered along with directions for future research

Coordinated Induction of Antimicrobial Response Factors in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by dysregulated autoantibody production and complement activation leading to multi-organ damage. The disease is associated with increased intestinal permeability. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that SLE subjects have increased systemic exposure to bacteria. Since bacteria induce the expression of antimicrobial response factors (ARFs), we measured the levels of a series of clinically relevant ARFs in the plasma of SLE subjects. We found that levels of sCD14, lysozyme, and CXCL16 were significantly elevated in SLE subjects. A strong positive correlation was also observed between sCD14 and SELENA-SLEDAI score. Interestingly, the ratio of EndoCAb IgM:total IgM was significantly decreased in SLE and this ratio was negatively correlated with sCD14 levels. Although, there were no significant differences in the levels of lipopolysaccharide binding protein (LBP) and fatty acid binding protein 2 (FABP2), we observed significant positive correlations between lysozyme levels and sCD14, LBP, and FABP2. Moreover, galectin-3 levels also positively correlate with lysozyme, sCD14, and LBP. Since our SLE cohort comprised 43.33% males, we were able to identify gender-specific changes in the levels of ARFs. Overall, these changes in the levels and relationships between ARFs link microbial exposure and SLE. Approaches to reduce microbial exposure or to improve barrier function may provide therapeutic strategies for SLE patients

Benthic Predators and Northern Quahog (=Hard Clam) (Mercenaria Mercenaria Linnaeus, 1758) Populations

Increased numbers of benthic predators, especially crabs, have been proposed as a factor contributing to the decline of hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria Linnaeus, 1758) in Great South Bay, NY. The long-term trend in benthic predators in this system was examined using observations on the distribution and abundance of predators that have been collected by the Town of Islip, NY as part of an annual survey of hard clam populations. The survey began in 1978 and extends to the present and provides concurrent observations of habitat (sediment type, and presence/absence of eelgrass), and hard clam size-frequency distribution and abundance. Predator type and abundance were reported from 1978 to 1981 and 1991 to 2003, which represents one of the most comprehensive benthic predator data sets currently available for any estuarine system. The annual averages of predator abundance in the survey area primarily show interannual fluctuations in abundance. Xanthid crabs (mud crabs, primarily Dispanopeus sayi Smith, 1869) were the numerically dominant predator in the system; blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, 1895) appeared in the late 1990s. Hard clam abundance has declined by 44% since the early 1990s. An Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) Analysis of the predator and hard clam data sets showed that fluctuations in predator abundance are: 1) mostly in phase over the survey region and 2) dominated by year-to-year fluctuations in abundance. The EOF results for the hard clams show that hard clam abundance fluctuations are: 1) in phase over the survey region and 2) dominated by a decreasing trend in abundance over the time series. The primary EOF modes essentially were uncoupled, which implies no strong predator-prey interactions between the predators and hard clams. By inference, increasing predator abundance does not appear to be a primary factor producing the long-term decline in hard clam populations. Predation pressure per recruit may still have increased because of declining hard clam population abundance and the concomitant decline in recruitment