“It only hurts when I laugh”: Tolerating bullying humour in order to belong at work

Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated, sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. In an ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour that was sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members. We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational culture influenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable and harmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is in identifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humour and bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational researc

En las profundidades

Para la finalización del Proyecto de tesis tomo, como elemento de partida, la vida marina a través de la mirada de un buzo que se sumerge en las profundidades del océano, con la finalidad de capturar momentos únicos en un mundo desconocido por gran parte de la humanidad. Esta idea surge con el objetivo de lograr trasmitir y mostrar, a partir del uso de elementos plásticos, la diversidad de ecosistemas submarinos, en los cuales habitan una gran cantidad de flora y fauna, con el fin último de dar a conocer, tanto la importancia que poseen los océanos en el ciclo de la vida, como la necesidad de contribuir, por medio de esta obra, en la concientización, el respeto y protección de la vida marina, así como fomentar la conservación de los mencionados ecosistemas. Para lograr el efecto marino, tomé como herramienta plástica la técnica del paper cut y pop up, puesto que permiten trabajar el espacio al generar la ilusión de profundidad, superposición de elementos y volumen.Facultad de Arte

Changes in nutritional status associated with unresectable pancreatic cancer.

Weight loss is common in patients with pancreatic cancer; however, the nature and progress of their nutritional depletion are not well documented. In this study, pre-illness weight and duration of weight loss were recorded in 20 patients with histologically confirmed unresectable cancer of the pancreas. Patients then underwent nutritional analysis at monthly intervals until death. The median period of assessment was 27 weeks (interquartile range 22.5-38.0 weeks). At the time of diagnosis, all patients had lost weight [median 14.2% (10.0-20.0%) of pre-illness stable weight], and this weight loss was progressive, increasing to a median of 24.5% by the time of the last assessment (P =0.0004). Body mass index was significantly reduced from a pre-illness median value of 24.9 kg m-2 (22.4-27.4 kg m-2) to 20.7 kg m-2 (19.5-23.6 kg m-2) at the time of diagnosis and further to 17.7 kg m-2 (16.6-23.1 kg m-2) just before death (P =0.0003). Further evidence of tissue depletion was evident from the significant reductions in lean body mass [43.4 kg (36.9-53.0 kg) to 40.1 kg (33.5-50.7 kg) P =0.008] and fat mass [12.5 kg (8.9-17.8 kg) to 9.6 kg (6.3-15.1 kg) P =0.03). This study confirms that the majority of patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer have already undergone significant weight loss by the time of diagnosis and that the natural history of this process is one of inexorable progression. These results highlight the need for selective non-toxic therapeutic intervention to attenuate cachexia and indicate that such interventions should be instituted early in the course of the disease

Txt msg n school literacy: Does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children‟s literacy attainment?

Abstract This paper reports on two studies which investigated the relationship between children's texting behaviour, their knowledge of text abbreviations and their school attainment in written language skills. In Study One, 11-12-year-old children provided information on their texting behaviour. They were also asked to translate a standard English sentence into a text message and vice versa. The children's standardised verbal and nonverbal reasoning scores were also obtained. Children who used their mobiles to send three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores than children who sent none. However, the children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text abbreviations ('textisms') tended to have better performance on a measure of verbal reasoning ability, which is highly associated with Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 3 English scores. In Study Two, children's performance on writing measures was examined more specifically. Ten to eleven-year-old children were asked to complete another English to text message translation exercise. Spelling proficiency was also assessed, and KS2 Writing scores were obtained. Positive correlations between spelling ability and performance on the translation exercise were found, and group-based comparisons based on the children's writing scores also showed that good writing attainment was associated with greater use of textisms, although the direction of this association is nor clear. Overall, these findings suggest that children's knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for children in this age range

Harmony and Distress: Humor, Culture, and Psychological Well-Being in South Korean Organizations

Humor is a contextual phenomenon that exists in all societies, although the impact of humor may differ across different cultures. The data for this research was collected using an ethnographic-based approach, incorporating participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Based in three different South Korean organizations, this research offered the opportunity to interact in depth with workers of varying ages, genders, hierarchical levels, and organizational roles. Humor styles incorporate both light and dark forms of humor that may be affiliative and self-enhancing or aggressive and detrimental or may contain elements from both styles simultaneously Observations were complimented by 46 in-depth interviews and ad hoc follow-up discussions. This paper adopts a Confucian perspective to understand the perception and use of workplace humor in these South Korean organizations. Confucian philosophy emphasizes the value of formality within society in order to maintain respectful relationships between individuals. We suggest that humor is used in these South Korean workplaces to support traditional Confucian values of harmony and hierarchy, and the changing cultural values in these workplaces influence humor perceptions in complex ways. The Confucian value of harmony maintained through the idea of hierarchy creates pressure for organizational members, to accept and cope with contentious humor in the workplace. In particular, the clash between the need to maintain harmonious relationships in the workplace (through obedience toward superiors) and the desire to reject some types of humor highlights issues for younger organizational members. Internal conflict creates distress for younger employees who may hold more Westernized values and this affects their emotional, psychological well-being. This study presents a cross-cultural perspective to organizational humor, and suggests that humor may not always be a positive experience for organizational members, but instead may create psychological distress in some employees

Textisms, texting, and spelling in Spanish

This study examines undergraduates’ perception of usage in smartphone text message and their relationship with the process of learning Spanish spelling. The aim is to establish whether subjects who have become competent language users in a digital environment accept the use of textisms and whether these textisms are perceived differently depending on their phonetic, lexical, and multimodal features. A total of 388 undergraduates from the Faculty of Education Science of the University of Seville participated in a nonexperimental study of a descriptive type based on surveys. The data showed that both standard Spanish writing and digital usage coexisted harmoniously in participants’ texts. However, a clear difference was established between textisms that modified Spanish writing rules and those that incorporated new elements not included in standard writing. Whereas textisms which modified the relationship between phonemes and graphemes were considered a challenge to standard writing as well as to academic literacy among young students (12--16), lexical textisms, emoticons, images, and videos were not considered harmful to standard Spanish. The study suggested that evolution of the writing rules set by the Spanish Academy could be influenced by the digital writing habits of young students. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved