INTERACTIVE EMPATHY AND LEADER EFFECTIVENESS: AN EVALUATION OF HOW SENSING EMOTION AND RESPONDING WITH EMPATHY INFLUENCE CORPORATE LEADER EFFECTIVENESS

Empathy has been shown to be a very powerful social and work ability. This study surveyed 754 employees of a privately held eastern United States company, and incorporated annual performance evaluations to empirically link interactive empathy to leader performance of 102 leaders. Data was collected from the leader’s followers, peers, and supervisors and from self-report personality evaluations. The results of this study show that leaders that are willing to engage their followers with empathic displays are seen as better leaders from their supervisors and have more engaged employees. Other contributions of this study include validation of the interactive empathy scale in a corporate environment and empirical support to show how interactive empathy adds incremental explanatory power of leader’s performance above and beyond that explained by personality. Directions for future research and practical implications of these results are also offered

Student Engagement: An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Implementing Mandatory Web-Based Learning Systems

Student engagement has, and will continue to be, a key desire for educators. However, some policies that are aimed at increasing engagement may actually have the opposite effect. This study of 98 students investigates one mandatory policy to use a web-based learning system and presents the level of student engagement compared to other classes where the learning system was not used. Results show that students that were required to use the web-based material had lower engagement, thus providing evidence that participation is not synonymous with engagement. Implications for practice and research are proposed

The Effects of Innovative Shotgun Shooting Methods on Collegiate Shotgun Shooters

Sporting activities are classified according to movement demands and can be categorized as either dynamic or static actions. Many events exist within the discipline of “shooting sports”, and dynamic and static demands vary drastically among those events. However, consideration for differences in movement demands is frequently disregarded in shooting sports; common practice protocol encourages shooters to utilize static shooting techniques for all shooting sport events. In particular, shooting techniques for shotgun shooting, a dynamic sporting event, regularly align with rifle shooting (static activity) methods. Innovative dynamic shotgun shooting techniques have recently been developed, however, no previous studies have examined the outcomes of employing these dynamic techniques. Therefore, the current research investigated the effects of innovative shotgun shooting methods on collegiate shotgun shooters (n=38). Pre and post trap and skeet scores were collected at a certified International Shooting Sport Federation and USA Shooting competition field. Upon completion of pre-test shooting, subjects participated in an Optimum Shooting Performance (OSP) intervention that outlined innovative dynamic shooting and practice techniques. Post-test shooting scores were collected after 2-weeks of OSP practice. A paired sample t test identified statistically significant improvements for trap shooting scores (t[32] = 2.82, p = .008, 95% CI [0.431, 2.660], d = .49), skeet shooting scores (t[32] = 2.59, p = .01, 95% CI [0.436, 3.625], d = .45), and total shooting (sum score of trap and skeet tests) scores (t[32] = 3.37, p = .002, 95% CI [1.417, 5.734], d = .59). These results suggest that learning and utilizing the OSP methods significantly increased the shooting performance of college shotgun shooters

Increasing Knowledge by Leaps and Bounds: Using Experiential Learning to Address Threshold Concepts

The discussion of threshold concepts is growing in the management education literature. These concepts create challenges for students and instructors since they act as barriers to learning. The reward for overcoming these obstacles is the opening of new ways of thinking that were not available before the student mastered the threshold concepts. We propose in this article that many students believe business education is “common sense” and do not understand that management is practice informed by theory. When students master the threshold concept concerning the “underlying game” of management, they begin to develop deeper and more meaningful understandings. From this perspective we demonstrate how we have used experiential exercises in an operations management class to facilitate active, social, and creative learning that exposes this threshold concept and moves the student through the preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages of threshold concept mastery

Administrative Withdrawal Policies: ‘Good’ Policies or ‘Bad’ Ethics

Many universities have adopted Administrative Withdrawal Policies that allow administrators to remove students from classes without the student’s permission. These policies potentially protect students but also provide a means of artificially improving key funding metrics. This study uses Agency Theory to examine over 1,100 Division I, II, and III U.S. universities and compares the usage of Administrative Withdrawal Policies to state and federal funding. Results show Division II schools receiving less state funding have adopted these policies at a higher rate than Division II schools receiving more. Recommendations for future use of these policies is provided

The benefits of merging leadership research and emotions research

A closer merging of the literature on emotions with the research on leadership may prove advantageous to both fields. Leadership researchers will benefit by incorporating the research on emotional labor, emotional regulation, and happiness. Emotions researchers will be able to more fully consider how leadership demands influence emotional processes. In particular, researchers can better understand how the workplace context and leadership demands influence affective events. The leadership literature on charisma, transformational leadership, leader-member exchange, and other theories have the potential to shed light on how rhetorical techniques and other leadership techniques influence emotional labor, emotional contagion, moods, and overall morale. Conversely, the literature on emotional labor and emotional contagion stands to provide insights into what makes leaders charismatic, transformational, or capable of developing high quality leader-follower relationships. This review examines emotions and leadership at five levels: within person, between persons, interpersonal, groups and teams, and organizational wide and integrates research on emotions, emotional contagion, and leadership to identify opportunities for future research for both emotions researchers and leadership researchers

The cost of maintaining a naval inventory system with inaccurate records

Management of the Naval integrated supply system depends on data to provide reliable information on the quantities of items in stock at any given time. Because of the high volume of transactions that continually alter data in the inventory system, inventory record errors are practically unavoidable. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the effects of inventory data errors on both cost and effectiveness of operations at a Naval inventory site. The methodology adopted for research consists of a series of multiple-item, single-warehouse, Monte Carlo simulations, focused on one U.S. Navy inventory site, using estimates of inventory data accuracy obtained at that site. Results of the simulations show that inventory costs can be decreased and customer demand effectiveness increased by decreasing the magnitude of inventory record errors to less than ten percent. It is therefore recommended that the Navy expand its inventory accuracy goal to require that no item have an inventory record error magnitude greater than ten percent. Inventory costs and effectiveness in meeting demand for Naval material were not found to be substantially affected by inventory record inaccuracy if the magnitude of error is less than ten percent.http://archive.org/details/thecostofmaintai109451140Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

How Entrepreneurial Leaders Use Emotional Labor to Improve Employee Attitudes and Firm Performance

This study takes a deep look at how entrepreneurial leaders use all three forms of emotional labor. The results from this analysis of 147 dyadic pairs of entrepreneurial leaders and their subordinates are presented herein. This study is the first to investigate the relationship between emotional labor strategy and the display of discrete genuine emotions (enthusiasm, liking, irritation). Leader genuine emotional labor and leader displays of positive discrete emotions were positively correlated with employee job satisfaction, affective commitment, and lower intentions to quit. Additionally, this study provides empirical evidence that the display of discrete emotions moderates the effects of leader genuine emotion on firm performance. From a practical standpoint this study benefits entrepreneurs by outlining emotionally healthy methods to display the appropriate emotions when interacting with stakeholders to enhance firm performance

Cybersecurity Continuity Risks: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The scope and breadth of the COVID-19 pandemic were unprecedented. This is especially true for business continuity and the related area of cybersecurity. Historically, business continuity and cybersecurity are viewed and researched as separate fields. This paper synthesizes the two disciplines as one, thus pointing out the need to address both topics simultaneously. This study identifies blind spots experienced by businesses as they navigated through the difficult time of the pandemic by using data collected during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. One major shortcoming was that most continuity and cybersecurity plans focused on single-axis threats. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in multi-axes threats, pointing out the need for new business strategies moving forward. We performed multiple regression analysis and constructed a correlation matrix to capture significant relationships between percentage loss of revenue and levels of concern for different business activities moving forward. We assessed the most pervasive issues Florida small businesses faced in October 2020 and broke these down by the number of citations, the total number of impacts cited, and industry affectedness. Key security risks are identified and specific mitigation recommendations are given