Workplace Bullying and Victimization: A Mixed Method Approach

Purpose: The main scope of the survey was to examine how school bullying and victimization experiences affect workplace bullying and victimization, as also the role of the personality traits and workplace environment to this relation. It also aimed to investigate the consequences on mental health of employees who are targets of workplace victimization, as well as the reaction mechanisms of employees against bullying. Method: 302 employees from four private companies in Cyprus completed the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, Five Factor Personality Inventory Questionnaire, Retrospective Bullying Questionnaire, Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder Self-Rating, Negative Acts Questionnaire – Revised, and a list of coping skills, in one-time phase. Results: Based on the results, school victimization experiences and neuroticism, influenced the occurrence of workplace victimization, as also workplace climate affected the above relationship. Workplace climate, workplace victimization and neuroticism, found to be related with the development of Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder. In addition, neuroticism and workplace victimization mediated by employees’ coping skills

Pandemic, power and paradox: Improvising as the New Normal during the COVID-19 crisis

The global COVID-19 pandemic made salient various paradoxical tensions, such as the trade-offs between individual freedom and collective safety, between short term and long-term consequences of adaptation to the new conditions, the power implications of sameness (COVID-19 was non-discriminatory in that all were affected in one way or another) and difference (yet not all were affected equally due to social differences), whereas most businesses became poorer under lockdown, others flourished; while significant numbers of workers were confined to home, some could not return home; some thrived while working from home as others were challenged by the erosion of barriers between their private and working lives. Rapid improvisational responding and learning at all levels of society presented itself as a naturally occurring research opportunity for improvisation scholars. This improvisation saw the arrival of a ‘New Normal’, eventually defined as ‘learning to live with COVID-19’. The five articles in this special issue capture critical aspects of improvisation, paradoxes and power made salient by the COVID-19 pandemic in contexts ranging from higher-education, to leadership, to medical care and virtue ethics. In their own ways, each breaks new ground by contributing novel insights into improvisation scholarship.publishedVersio

Patterns and universals of mate poaching across 53 nations : the effects of sex, culture, and personality on romantically attracting another person’s partner

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, 16,954 participants from 53 nations were administered an anonymous survey about experiences with romantic attraction. Mate poaching--romantically attracting someone who is already in a relationship--was most common in Southern Europe, South America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe and was relatively infrequent in Africa, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Evolutionary and social-role hypotheses received empirical support. Men were more likely than women to report having made and succumbed to short-term poaching across all regions, but differences between men and women were often smaller in more gender-egalitarian regions. People who try to steal another's mate possess similar personality traits across all regions, as do those who frequently receive and succumb to the poaching attempts by others. The authors conclude that human mate-poaching experiences are universally linked to sex, culture, and the robust influence of personal dispositions.peer-reviewe

Are men universally more dismissing than women? Gender differences in romantic attachment across 62 cultural regions

The authors thank Susan Sprecher (USA), Del Paulhus (Canada), Glenn D. Wilson (England), Qazi Rahman (England), Alois Angleitner (Germany), Angelika Hofhansl (Austria), Tamio Imagawa (Japan), Minoru Wada (Japan), Junichi Taniguchi (Japan), and Yuji Kanemasa (Japan) for helping with data collection and contributing significantly to the samples used in this study.Gender differences in the dismissing form of adult romantic attachment were investigated as part of the International Sexuality Description Project—a survey study of 17,804 people from 62 cultural regions. Contrary to research findings previously reported in Western cultures, we found that men were not significantly more dismissing than women across all cultural regions. Gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment were evident in most cultures, but were typically only small to moderate in magnitude. Looking across cultures, the degree of gender differentiation in dismissing romantic attachment was predictably associated with sociocultural indicators. Generally, these associations supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment, with smaller gender differences evident in cultures with high–stress and high–fertility reproductive environments. Social role theories of human sexuality received less support in that more progressive sex–role ideologies and national gender equity indexes were not cross–culturally linked as expected to smaller gender differences in dismissing romantic attachment.peer-reviewe

Application of decatastrophize (Use of SDSS and MCDA to prepare for disasters or plan for multlple hazards) Decision Support Systems (DSS) tool

DECATASTROPHIZE (UsE of SDSS and MCDA To prepAre for diSasTeRs Or Plan for multlplE HaZards) was financed from the European Union's Directorate-General humanitarian aid and civil protection (DG-ECHO) under Grant Agreement ECHO/SUB/2015/713788/PREP02. This project developed tools that can be used effectively in early warning and alert systems ensuring lives and protecting people, properties and the environment from natural/man-made hazards. The aim of the project was to use/adapt existing models, systems or tools in an interactive and synergic capacity to prepare for disasters and plan for multi-hazard incidents. Through DECATASTROPHIZE, a web-based Geo-Spatial Early-warning Decision Support Systems (GE-DSS) platform was developed in combination with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), keeping systems interoperability and organizations cooperation in mind. The